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by Stephen Morgan » Thu Jun 09, 2011 5:37 am
by Stephen Morgan » Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:34 pm
by Peachtree Pam » Sun Jun 12, 2011 9:34 am
IMF hit by major cyber attack - large quantity of data targeted
12.06.2011
The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s servers have been breached in a sophisticated cyber attack, adding to its woes in light of the highly publicised arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn last month and its ongoing search for a new leader.
The IMF is responsible for managing financial crises around the world, including Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
The attack is understood to have occurred before Strauss-Kahn’s arrest but it was late Friday night, Saturday morning before news of the attack filtered out. A large quantity of data was accessed..
The attack is believed now to be connected to a foreign government and the intention was to retrieve emails and other documents.
The IMF hasn’t revealed many details but it is believed that because the IMF is at the heart of economic bailouts for many nations around the world, it has become a target for increasingly militant hackers.
The IMF’s servers contain sensitive data on many of these countries and potentially explosive information on the goings-on in these countries that lead to their respective economic collapses.
Hacktivism attack?
It is not clear yet what information the hackers were able to access but it is likely that such information could end up being published online as a form of hacker activism.
It is believed that the World Bank, which is located on the same street at the IMF, cut the chord on its computer links with the IMF to prevent the attack spreading to its servers.
Increasing militant hackers have been launching attacks on Sony, RSA, Google Lockheed-Martin, Citigroup, MasterCard and many others. Financial institutions are typically loathe to admit to have been attacked for fear of negative publicity.
Some reports have suggested a spear-phishing method was used whereby a worker clicks on a seemingly innocent looking link that launched the attack.
IMF staff were issued with memos in recent weeks saying a desktop had been compromised and suspicious file transfers were detected. Staff were warned to be on their guard.
The recent attack on RSA that saw thousands of security tokens accessed is not believed to have been a factor in the current attack on the IMF.
Earlier this week it emerged that police in Spain the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria have arrested three people suspected of being part of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
The three people are said to have been involved in co-ordinating the group's activity in Spain.
A computer seized from the home of one suspect was used in hacks on Sony, Spanish banks and co-ordinated action in support of WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website that published US embassy cables, a statement from Spanish national police said.
by Peachtree Pam » Mon Jun 13, 2011 5:52 am
Alan Dershowitz
Harvard’s attorney-to-the-stars on whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn will end up walking free.
What do you think about the Strauss-Kahn case so far?
This case is going to be resolved outside the courtroom. There are three distinctive parties in this case, all of whom have different interests. There is the prosecution, Cy Vance; he wants to go to trial and he wants to get a conviction. Clearly the defendant wants to avoid trial and wants to see if he can work out a deal that’s acceptable to him. And my sense is that the victim would like a big payday. Why does she want to make a deal now? Why not wait until the conviction, and then sue? [Because] the defendant doesn’t have much money. All the money is his wife’s money. And if you win a suit—let’s assume she wins a $10 million judgment against him. She’s not going to collect it. He’ll go bankrupt. Whereas if she settles the case, the wife pays up. So the difference is between getting, say, a million right now from the wife, or $10 million from the husband which the lawyer has to spend the rest of his life chasing. It’s in DSK’s best interest to settle this case. It’s only not in Vance’s interest to settle the case. You saw in the paper that the lawyer for the victim is “working together” with the prosecution. Nonsense. He’s probably working together with the defense. They have a joint interest.
Do you think they realize that?
I do. The problem is the high-wire dance is going to be very hard to orchestrate here. Because nobody can say: “I will give you a million dollars, $2 million, $3 million, and you have to not testify.” That’s obstruction of justice, that’s a crime. So the request essentially has to come from the victim. Did you ever hear of the concept of the Shabbos goy? The Shabbos goy is when an Orthodox Jew wants the light to be on, on a Saturday, and he sees a Gentile. He can’t ask the Gentile to turn on the light, because that would be a sin. But he can say to the Gentile, “Boy, it’s really dark here.” And then the Gentile has to come up with the idea, “Hmmm, it would be nice if I turned on the light.” [The defense lawyer], because he’s an Orthodox Jew, understands that he needs a Shabbos goy here. He needs somebody who will understand that he can’t ask for something that he wants. And what he wants is for this witness to go away.
What would you suggest if you were on the defense team?
Make a deal. Other than that, they have to come up with a consistent defense. I think their big mistake is they first suggested that maybe he had an alibi [but] the timeline didn’t work. Then he said it was consensual. So they have to come up with a consistent, coherent defense theory that explains to the jury why this woman would have consented to having a sexual encounter with a much older man. And if he makes the consent defense, he almost certainly will have to testify. And if he testifies, he can then be asked about his prior encounters.
Say he gets convicted. What’s he looking at in terms of time?
A couple years in a very un-nice place. He’d have been much better off doing this in the District of Columbia.
by Byrne » Fri Jun 17, 2011 8:20 pm
How Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York worsened Europe's woe
Bitter infighting over Greek bailout has intensified without former IMF chief at the helm
Ian Traynor in Brussels
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 June 2011 21.31 BST
...
But the alleged attempted rape of a chambermaid by Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a plush Manhattan hotel suite last month may also have compounded Europe's year-long currency crisis, with the fate of the euro and the continent's big banks hinging on how – and if – Greece can be saved from sovereign default for the second time in a year.
As intense bargaining continued behind the scenes over Europe's response to the escalating Greek turmoil, the Guardian has learned that the change in leadership at the top of the International Monetary Fund last month also brought an abrupt shift in IMF style and policy on Europe's bailout of Greece.
...
Senior officials involved in the high-stakes negotiations say that the turning point came in the elegant resort of Deauville on the Normandy coast late last month, where Nicolas Sarkozy hosted Barack Obama and other world leaders at a G8 summit.
blah blah....
John Lipsky profile
John Lipsky smiles and jokes easily in private meetings and in front of the cameras, but as an economist he raises few laughs, especially in Greece.
The 64-year-old interim boss of the International Monetary Fund is closely aligned with the Chicago school of economists whose adherence to free and unregulated markets in the 90s is largely blamed for the financial crisis. In the 1990s, as chief economist at first Salomon Brothers and then JP Morgan, he rode the stock market boom and lectured countries on fiscal rectitude.
He has made clear he is very different from his predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who voiced concerns about the lack of jobs created by western governments and the potential for social unrest. In all his public pronouncements, Lipksy has read the IMF rulebook about cutting public spending to meet debt obligations.
by Peachtree Pam » Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:46 am
How Strauss-Kahn’s wife could buy his freedom
Alexander Cockburn:
If the maid is more interested in money than justice then DSK could go free
LAST UPDATED 9:06 AM,
JUNE 23, 2011
It's been set up as a battle of moralities, in the simplest terms: the poor immigrant black African house-keeper versus the rich, white Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with the principals and their lawyers going mano a mano in a trial presently scheduled to begin on July 18.
This side of the Atlantic, Americans have been thumping themselves on the back for the supposedly robust ethos of one-law-for-the-rich-and-poor-alike that has seen the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr press charges of rape and kindred sexual offences against the powerful former managing director of the IMF. A New York judge set stringent and costly conditions of bail for the accused. If convicted he faces a prison term.
Meanwhile some French whine, without any convincing evidence, that DSK is the victim of conspiracy. Others say this is a wake-up call. Emboldened feminists roll out charges that rich French men regularly get away with serious unwanted sexual onslaughts, dint of money, power, cultural attitudes.
Of course money counts in the justice system, on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably more rich people end up in prison in the US than in France, but most rich crooks don't. They don't even get charged. Ask the bankers, bonds rating agencies and hedge fund operators who bankrupted America with egregious fraud in 2008.
All in all it's still surprising that the alleged assault at a fancy hotel wasn't promptly covered up, as generally happens, whether the perp is French, American, Arab or indeed African. The difference may have been a new police investigator, a new Manhattan DA, a new union rep, video cameras in the hallway, or some variable making it impossible for the hotel to hush it up.
DSK is married to a very rich woman, Anne Sinclair, granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, Picasso's principal art dealer through the late 1920s and 1930s. Loyal to her man, vocally complaisant about his sexual activities during their marriage, she seems set to spend what it takes.
The accuser is poor, and comes from a poor family in Guinea. Her first lawyer - Jeffrey Shapiro, rather mysteriously described as a "family friend" - is now off the case. So is the well known civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel. Neither will say why. As CounterPunch's Pam Martens reported on Monday, "Siegel, a stalwart defender of the First Amendment, was uncharacteristically sparse in his explanation by phone: 'I can only say I am not representing her'."
Enter Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who recently laid out the arguments for a deal with some verve in Newsweek: "...my sense is that the victim would like a big payday. Why does she want to make a deal now? Why not wait until the conviction, and then sue? [Because] the defendant doesn't have much money.
"All the money is his wife's money. And if you win a suit - let's assume she wins a $10 million judgment against him. She's not going to collect it. He'll go bankrupt. Whereas if she settles the case, the wife pays up.
"So the difference is between getting, say, a million right now from the wife, or $10 million from the husband which the lawyer has to spend the rest of his life chasing."
A reporter from Le Figaro asked Dershowitz "how to seal such an agreement without obstructing justice", and the professor responded: "This is possible through a parent who does not fall under the jurisdiction of New York. The family members of DSK in Paris, for example, do not. If they try to reach an agreement directly with the New York lawyer, they can be charged with obstruction. But they can negotiate directly with the family of the complainant outside the State of New York or Guinea.
"It is an extremely delicate dance to lead... [the prosecutor] cannot prevent the family from making an agreement. All he can do is threaten to open an investigation for obstruction of justice. He can say: 'If ever I hear of an explicit agreement or implicit exchange of money in order to buy the silence of the victim, you will go to jail.' Then each risk up to five years in prison.
"But it is still difficult for the prosecutor to stop the agreement... [the woman's lawyer] may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important."
Dershowitz argued that when the accuser's lawyer said he was cooperating with the prosecutor, "it was just a message to the defence that said he expected an offer".
So, who has the Sofitel housekeeper now got representing her? None other than Thompson Wigdor, a New York law firm that, in Martens's words, "represents the management of large multinational companies against their employees while simultaneously representing the lone employee fighting for justice against, uh, large multinational companies - a David v. Goliath firm or Goliath v. David firm, depending on the particular day's press release."
Martens emphasises that these are aggressive, well-credentialed lawyers who have scored big wins. She knows what she's talking about. Before retirement she worked for years on Wall Street and saw close-up how the big firms used legal muscle to crush efforts to bring them to book for sexual discrimination and harassment.
In substantive terms, the prime obstruction to a deal is Cyrus Vance Jr, son of a former secretary of state and most definitely a member of the WASP legal elite. He's a favourite of upper-tier liberals. Endorsing his bid to become DA were such figures as Gloria Steinem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, Caroline Kennedy and former mayor David Dinkins.
Vance will certainly be reluctant to have his reputation tarnished in a high profile case by rolling over in some deal slathered with Mme Sinclair's cash and clearly designed to outflank the implacable march of justice and the eagerness of progressives to see DSK locked away.
We can assume that the accuser is being buffeted by advocates of possibly opposing strategies. Of course her formal attorney, Kenneth Thompson of Thompson Wigdor, has her ear. According to Martens, "there is no evidence that her colleagues at the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council union are able to stay in touch with her and provide her a support network."
The New York Times has reported that her brothers in Guinea have been unable to reach her on her cell phone. We can assume that the DA's office knows where she is, and is therefore in a position to make her aware of the legal stakes and issues involved.
There is a recent interesting semi-parallel. In February, the US government was able to spring the CIA agent Raymond Davis from a Lahore jail, after he had been charged with shooting to death two young Pakistanis on January 27 who, he claimed, were trying to kill him.
Informed sources told CounterPunch's Shauquat Qadir that a price tag of about $1.5 million per family has been paid, with US citizenship for a dozen or more members of each family, with job guarantees for those of age and education opportunities guaranteed for children - more than they could ever dream of and sufficiently tempting for them to pardon Davis.
Money in sufficient quantity rarely loses its persuasive powers.
by semper occultus » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:21 am
I've just finished reading DSK: The Secrets of a Presidential Contender, by a former member of Strauss-Kahn's spin team known only as "Cassandre", and my sympathy for his wife, Anne Sinclair – photographed this week without her wedding ring – has increased twofold.
Nicknamed "Lead Bottom" by colleagues, the former IMF chief is described as an inveterate glutton. A far greater giveaway than hotel receipts or mobile phone conversations in your driveway (no one has a conversation in their driveway unless they're having an affair – how's that for a generalisation?), gluttony should act as a red flag to any wife. "We've got to do something," says a worried member of DSK's team at one point. "The other night he disappeared at the end of a dinner, and everyone kept asking where he was. They found him sitting in the kitchen with his head in a huge bowl of chocolate mousse. When he pulled it out, he looked up at everyone like a kid who'd been caught out. It was too funny – he was in it right up to his ears."
by Stephen Morgan » Sat Jun 25, 2011 10:42 am
by JackRiddler » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:28 pm
SNIP
DSK: Is the Fix In?
Let's move now to the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Lenin would have given yet another caustic laugh at the sight of Strauss-Kahn calculating that the post of managing director of the IMF – bludgeon of the major capitalist powers to extort money from the poorer nations – as a fine qualification to be the presidential candidate of the French social democrats. To assist in this cause, Mark Hosenball revealed recently for Reuters that he retained TD International, a Washington DC consulting firm run by former CIA officers and U.S. diplomats, to promote his quest for the IMF post. Lately Strauss-Kahn's legal team has informally sought public relations advice from TD International.
Now for the present status of the case. It's been set up as a battle of moralities, in the simplest terms: the poor immigrant black African, Nafissato Diallo, versus the rich, white Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with the principals and their lawyers going mano a mano in a trial presently scheduled to begin on July 18.
This side of the Atlantic, Americans have been thumping themselves on the back for the supposedly robust ethos of one-law-for-the-rich-and-poor-alike that has seen the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr press charges of rape and kindred sexual offences against the powerful former managing director of the IMF. A New York judge set stringent and costly conditions of bail for the accused. If convicted he faces a prison term.
Meanwhile some French whine, without any convincing evidence, that DSK is the victim of conspiracy. Others say this is a wake-up call. Emboldened feminists roll out charges that rich French men regularly get away with serious unwanted sexual onslaughts, dint of money, power, cultural attitudes.
Of course money counts in the justice system, on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably more rich people end up in prison in the US than in France, but most rich crooks don't. They don't even get charged. Ask the bankers, bonds rating agencies and hedge fund operators who bankrupted America with egregious fraud in 2008.
All in all it's still surprising that the alleged assault at a fancy hotel wasn't promptly covered up, as generally happens, whether the perp is French, American, Arab or indeed African. The difference may have been a new police investigator, a new Manhattan DA, a new union rep, video cameras in the hallway, or some variable making it impossible for the hotel to hush it up.
DSK is married to a very rich woman, Anne Sinclair, granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, Picasso's principal art dealer through the late 1920s and 1930s. Loyal to her man, vocally complaisant about his sexual activities during their marriage, she seems set to spend what it takes.
The accuser, Nafissato Diallo, is poor, and comes from a poor family in Guinea. Her first lawyer - Jeffrey Shapiro, rather mysteriously described in the immediate aftermath of DSK's arrest on charges of a sexual onslaught on the hotel house-keeper, as a "family friend" - is now off the case. So is the well known civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel. Neither will say why. As
CounterPunch's Pam Martens reported here last Monday, "Siegel, a stalwart defender of the First Amendment, was uncharacteristically sparse in his explanation by phone: 'I can only say I am not representing her'."
Enter Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who recently laid out the arguments for a deal with some verve in Newsweek:
"...my sense is that the victim would like a big payday. Why does she want to make a deal now? Why not wait until the conviction, and then sue? [Because] the defendant doesn't have much money.
"All the money is his wife's money. And if you win a suit - let's assume she wins a $10 million judgment against him. She's not going to collect it. He'll go bankrupt. Whereas if she settles the case, the wife pays up.
"So the difference is between getting, say, a million right now from the wife, or $10 million from the husband which the lawyer has to spend the rest of his life chasing."
A reporter from Le Figaro asked Dershowitz "how to seal such an agreement without obstructing justice", and the professor responded:
"This is possible through a parent who does not fall under the jurisdiction of New York. The family members of DSK in Paris, for example, do not. If they try to reach an agreement directly with the New York lawyer, they can be charged with obstruction. But they can negotiate directly with the family of the complainant outside the State of New York or Guinea.
"It is an extremely delicate dance to lead... [the prosecutor] cannot prevent the family from making an agreement. All he can do is threaten to open an investigation for obstruction of justice. He can say: 'If ever I hear of an explicit agreement or implicit exchange of money in order to buy the silence of the victim, you will go to jail.' Then each risk up to five years in prison.
"But it is still difficult for the prosecutor to stop the agreement... [the woman's lawyer] may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important."
Dershowitz argued that when the accuser's lawyer said he was cooperating with the prosecutor, "it was just a message to the defense that said he expected an offer".
To clarify the issues in Newsweek Dershowitz reached for a helpful parallel:
"The problem is the high-wire dance is going to be very hard to orchestrate here. Because nobody can say: 'I will give you a million dollars, $2 million, $3 million, and you have to not testify.' That's obstruction of justice, that's a crime. So the request essentially has to come from the victim. Did you ever hear of the concept of the Shabbos goy? The Shabbos goy is when an Orthodox Jew wants the light to be on, on a Saturday, and he sees a Gentile. He can't ask the Gentile to turn on the light, because that would be a sin. But he can say to the Gentile, 'Boy, it's really dark here.' And then the Gentile has to come up with the idea, 'Hmmm, it would be nice if I turned on the light.' [The defense lawyer], because he's an Orthodox Jew, understands that he needs a Shabbos goy here. He needs somebody who will understand that he can't ask for something that he wants. And what he wants is for this witness to go away."
(This led the Mostly Kosher website to headline the Dershowitz quote "Worst use of a Jewish metaphor" and to ask plaintively, "Couldn't we find a non Jewish metaphor to suggest doing something illegal?")
So, who has Ms. Diallo now got representing her? None other than Thompson Wigdor, a New York law firm that, in Martens's words, "represents the management of large multinational companies against their employees while simultaneously representing the lone employee fighting for justice against, uh, large multinational companies - a David v. Goliath firm or Goliath v. David firm, depending on the particular day's press release."
Martens emphasizes that these are aggressive, well-credentialed lawyers who have scored big wins. She knows what she's talking about. Before retirement she worked for years on Wall Street and saw close-up how the big firms used legal muscle to crush efforts to bring them to book for sexual discrimination and harassment.
In substantive terms, the prime obstruction to a deal is Cyrus Vance Jr, son of a former secretary of state and most definitely a member of the WASP legal elite. He's a favorite of upper-tier liberals. Endorsing his bid to become DA were such figures as Gloria Steinem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, Caroline Kennedy and former mayor David Dinkins.
Vance will certainly be reluctant to have his reputation tarnished in a high profile case by rolling over in some deal slathered with Mme Sinclair's cash and clearly designed to outflank the implacable march of justice and the eagerness of progressives to see DSK locked away.
We can assume that the accuser is being buffeted by advocates of possibly opposing strategies. Of course her formal attorney, Kenneth Thompson of Thompson Wigdor, has her ear. According to Martens, "there is no evidence that her colleagues at the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council union are able to stay in touch with her and provide her a support network."
The New York Times has reported that her brothers in Guinea have been unable to reach her on her cell phone. We can assume that the DA's office knows where she is, and is therefore in a position to make her aware of the legal stakes and issues involved.
There is a recent interesting semi-parallel. In February, the US government was able to spring the CIA agent Raymond Davis from a Lahore jail, after he had been charged with shooting to death two young Pakistanis on January 27 who, he claimed, were trying to kill him.
Informed sources in Pakistan told CounterPunch's Shauquat Qadir that a price tag of about $1.5 million per family was been paid, with US citizenship for a dozen or more members of each family, with job guarantees for those of age and education opportunities guaranteed for children - more than they could ever dream of and sufficiently tempting for them to pardon Davis.
Money in sufficient quantity rarely loses its persuasive powers.
Galleano and Shakespeare … and the Earl of Oxford
Meanwhile in Paris we have had the sad spectacle of former Dior designer John Galliano on trial, dumped by Dior, for a drunken anti-Semitic diatribe to a couple in a café in the Marais in Paris, yet another ludicrous episode in the ongoing repression of free speech. Charge him with being drunk and disorderly maybe, but for verbal ethnic and historical slurs? If DSK makes it back to Paris in the foreseeable future and some says to him in a café, "You dirty sexual pervert" no crime will have been committed. "You dirty Jewish sexual pervert" brings the prospect of heavy fines and even jail time for the perp.
...
by JackRiddler » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:03 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyreg ... nted=print
June 30, 2011
Strauss-Kahn Case Seen as in Jeopardy
By JIM DWYER, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JOHN ELIGON
The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.
Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.
Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.
Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will return to State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Friday morning, when Justice Michael J. Obus is expected to consider easing the extraordinary bail conditions that he imposed on Mr. Strauss-Kahn in the days after he was charged.
Indeed, Mr. Strauss-Kahn could be released on his own recognizance, and freed from house arrest, reflecting the likelihood that the serious criminal charges against him will not be sustained. The district attorney’s office may try to require Mr. Strauss-Kahn to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but his lawyers are likely to contest such a move.
The revelations mark a stunning change of fortune for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was a leading candidate for the French presidency before being accused of sexually assaulting the woman who went to clean his luxury suite at the Sofitel New York.
Prosecutors from the office of District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who initially were emphatic about the strength of the case and the account of the victim, plan to tell the court on Friday that they “have problems with the case” based on what their investigators have discovered, and will disclose more details of their findings to the defense.
“It is a mess, a mess on both sides,” the official said.
According to the two law enforcement officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He was among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and New York.
They also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five different companies. The woman insisted she only had a single phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.
In addition, the official said, she told investigators that part of her application for asylum included a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.
A lawyer for the woman, Kenneth Thompson, could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday evening.
In recent weeks, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and William W. Taylor III, have made clear that they would make the credibility of the woman a focus of their case. In a May 25 letter they said that they had uncovered information that would “gravely undermine the credibility” of the housekeeper.
Still, it was the prosecutor’s investigators who found the information about the alleged victim.
The case involving Mr. Strauss-Kahn has made international headlines and renewed attention on his alleged past inappropriate behavior toward women, while, more broadly, triggering soul-searching among the French about the treatment of women.
The new revelations are likely to buttress the view of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s supporters, who complained that the American authorities had rushed to judgment in the case.
Some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s allies even contended that he had been set up by his political rivals, an assertion law enforcement authorities said there was no evidence to support.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn resigned from his post as managing director of the International Monetary Fund in the wake of the woman’s allegation and was required to post $1 million bail and a $5 million bond.
He also agreed to remain under 24-hour home confinement while wearing an ankle monitor and providing a security team and an armed guard at the entrance and exit of the building. The conditions are costing Mr. Strauss-Kahn $250,000 a month.
Prosecutors had sought the restrictive conditions in part by arguing that the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn was a strong one, citing a number of factors including the credibility of his accuser, the housekeeper, saying her story was “compelling and unwavering.”
The French politician was such a pariah in the initial days after the arrest that neighbors of an upper East Side apartment building complained when he and his wife attempted to rent a unit there. He eventually rented a three-story town house on Franklin Street in TriBeCa.
Under the newly relaxed conditions of bail set to be presented on Friday, the district attorney’s office would retain Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s passport and he would be permitted to travel within the United States.
After the indictment was filed, Mr. Vance took to the steps of the courthouse and characterized the charges as “extremely serious,” and that the “evidence supports the commission of non-consensual forced sexual acts.”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, Mr. Brafman and Mr. Taylor, declined comment on Thursday evening.
The case was not scheduled to return to court until July 18.
by barracuda » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:08 pm
by JackRiddler » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:19 pm
barracuda wrote:You can't rape a drug dealer. It's impossible.
by Stephen Morgan » Fri Jul 01, 2011 5:53 am
by 8bitagent » Fri Jul 01, 2011 7:11 am
by Stephen Morgan » Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:06 am
8bitagent wrote:Lengthy ties to drug worlds and money laundering, found to have a long history of making stuff up. Did someone put her up to it as originally hypothesized?
If it turns out the whole thing was a lie and a setup, then I definitely take back my words. And it goes to show, ya truly can't believe everything...unless, this is the planned narrative all along
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