So, what would you do if Danny Casolaro asked for your help?

[LilyPatToo]

I am not so sure about that, I have met him countless times and it takes 5 minutes to know what he is all about.

Of course I am not a vulnerable person which is what he pretty much preys upon, and such people cling to anyone who will listen to them and take them seriously.

That's very definitely a big part of the problem with people like me who lack appropriate boundaries. But I know smart people who aren't trauma survivors who also get sucked in by predatory fringe con artists. Resistance to parapolitical con games and gamers isn't entirely a product of high general intelligence. Instead it seems to be relative to the individual's exposure to accurate information about the crapstorm raining down in and around the rabbit hole district.

The learning curve for this stuff is steep and the path littered with burnt-out seekers who gave up and went back into denial when they couldn't figure out who to listen to or trust.

LilyPat

[Searcher08]

Percival wrote:

However, none of this changes the fact that she works with TG and MR. That remains THE ISSUE as far as I am concerned.

Yes, very important point. Neither of those two deserves much trust at all.

P,
Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'THE ISSUE'?

IMHO These statements can be made with certainty:

1 Michael Riconoscuto is very very smart.
2 Michael Riconoscuto comes from an inter-general, highly elite connected CIA family.
3 Ted Gunderson was once a highly placed FBI officer.
4 Ted Gunderson is now over 80 years old.
5 Michael Riconoscuito is in jail
6 There is a much higher chance than normal chance of unusual unexpected death in their network

[Col. Quisp]

Wow...sorry I didn't take her up on her offer to meet IRL now.

[Percival]

Wow...sorry I didn't take her up on her offer to meet IRL now.

Still not sure that would be a good idea, you dont want throw yourself in to the middle of this unless there is a real good reason.

[Percival]

Percival wrote:

However, none of this changes the fact that she works with TG and MR. That remains THE ISSUE as far as I am concerned.

Yes, very important point. Neither of those two deserves much trust at all.

P,
Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'THE ISSUE'?

IMHO These statements can be made with certainty:

1 Michael Riconoscuto is very very smart.
2 Michael Riconoscuto comes from an inter-general, highly elite connected CIA family.
3 Ted Gunderson was once a highly placed FBI officer.
4 Ted Gunderson is now over 80 years old.
5 Michael Riconoscuito is in jail
6 There is a much higher chance than normal chance of unusual unexpected death in their network

Have you done any real reseach in to those two, they have jobs to do and their jobs arent to help people like you and I find the truth. If MR was telling anyone anything of note he would have been shanked in his cell long ago.

As for TG, I dont think anything needs to be said, his record speaks for itself.

[OP ED]

Wow...sorry I didn't take her up on her offer to meet IRL now.

Still not sure that would be a good idea, you dont want throw yourself in to the middle of this unless there is a real good reason.

indeed.

...

btw. i think there is a good point somewhere wrt Gunderson, in that, his tendency to believe and claim as fact his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary might be (at least in some cases) more a side effect of his being an (very) olde repbulican than of his necessarily being an "agent" of whatever sort.

[Percival]

If we are to believe what Casolaro said and I think we can to some extent, then TG and MR were deeply involved in large scale international drug running. As far as I am concerned anyone involved in that, whether they have changed or not, has to be pretty fucked up to begin with. TG has been protecting and working with these people all his life, now suddenly he has joined the crusade against them? I think not.

I could be wrong but I am going to err on the side of what my gut tells me about those two.

[OP ED]

deeply involved in large scale international drug running

so was Jimmy Carter.

not that he's a saint now, but maybe getting olde and believing in god has a way of getting to you eventually. [look at Hughes]

not that any of it comes without a truckload of salt.

just sayin' again that being measurable degrees of seperation from anyone doesn't really prove anything. i wouldn't personally trust TG any further than i could throw 'em, but that doesn't mean i wouldn't listen to what he had to say.

[American Dream]

OP ED wrote:

deeply involved in large scale international drug running

so was Jimmy Carter.

NOT how I see Jimmy Carter. While it is possible that he got the briefings that made him fully aware how intertwined the state apparatus was with drug trafficking, I tend to see things differently.

It seems to me like the U.S. populace had swung left after Vietnam, Watergate etc. and that Jimmy Carter was anointed by the PTB as a liberal they could use.

Then he fired all those covert cowboys from the CIA, spoke about human rights a little too much and variously pissed off the PTB.

So instead we got the October Surprise, Oliver North, cheap crack, and all the rest. But did Jimmy Carter know everything that was going on under his administration? Not necessarily...

[Jeff]

just sayin' again that being measurable degrees of seperation from anyone doesn't really prove anything. i wouldn't personally trust TG any further than i could throw 'em, but that doesn't mean i wouldn't listen to what he had to say.

My biggest issue with Gunderson is that he's zero degrees of seperation from himself. And I'll listen to anyone, though it may be for entertainment purposes only.

[Percival]

just sayin' again that being measurable degrees of seperation from anyone doesn't really prove anything. i wouldn't personally trust TG any further than i could throw 'em, but that doesn't mean i wouldn't listen to what he had to say.

My biggest issue with Gunderson is that he's zero degrees of seperation from himself. And I'll listen to anyone, though it may be for entertainment purposes only.

Good points OP ED, I certainly wouldnt defend Carter either FWIW.

Also, well said Jeff.

[Project Willow]

(thread page 6) Update:
...
July 3, 2009
By Nathan Baca, News Channel 3 Reporter

Rachel Begley has written a full account of her search for her father's murderer at http://desertfae.com/pressrelease.htm

I'm just catching up with this thread and the main thing I'm trying to understand is why opinions about Rachel didn't turn immediately after that update.

(same post)OTOH, to equivocate completely, I'd do all these things too if I had been the victim of trauma-based MC with instructions to do all this squawking when an alter is triggered.

Even though that is such an astute observation it makes me cringe.

(thread page 7)Bolded bit above is why I occasionally have to take a vacation from RI myself. The folks who constantly attack seem to almost completely lack a basic empathy that would allow them to see how their words might affect their chosen targets.

Yeah, I have felt like that too. I never weighed in on the entire thing and it made me uncomfortable to see it siting in GD. I didn't know enough to make an informed comment and didn't have time to untangle all the tentacles of possible information.

(thread page 12) btw, one of the things that is making me reconsider my positions on this is becoming more familiar with Virginia McCullough's writings.

note: she favorably compares herself to Aquino while dissing Gunderson.

I noticed that too and I agree with Op Ed, it's creepy. I also agree with C2W's analysis of VM's language, for someone who's not in the trade why is she so focused on the craft in her aspersions?

If I were an intelligent and well organized criminal network trying to cover my tracks, Gunderson would not be in my employ. He's far too sloppy. I would, however, like it if one of my people got their hands on the Brusell stuff, but all that's supposition, and it seems like these subjects need more fact digging and less supposition. Or if we're to do more supposition, perhaps it should include a much wider grey area for characters with varying motivations, loyalties and frailties.

[JM]

Percival wrote:

However, none of this changes the fact that she works with TG and MR. That remains THE ISSUE as far as I am concerned.

Not that I know for sure if DesertFae is who she says she is or not, but with my vast experience with media types I have to ask you a very important question...
Do you really think the "media" checks all of their facts/sources before their stuff is published/broadcast?

[hava1]

[
If I were an intelligent and well organized criminal network trying to cover my tracks, .

wouldnt you find RI a true bargain ?

[compared2what?]

Percival wrote:

However, none of this changes the fact that she works with TG and MR. That remains THE ISSUE as far as I am concerned.

Not that I know for sure if DesertFae is who she says she is or not, but with my vast experience with media types I have to ask you a very important question...
Do you really think the "media" checks all of their facts/sources before their stuff is published/broadcast?

JM --

Not only do I not really think the "media" checks all of their fact/sources before their stuff is published/broadcast, I know with absolute certainty that they do not.

However, in general terms. I also know which facts/sources they do check and which they don't. And the only reason I wouldn't say that it's really very, very unlikely that a major daily newspaper in California wouldn't bother touching base with a spokesperson somewhere in the state capital before taking Begley's word for it that she was who she said she was is that it's even more unlikely that she's not in fact actively publicizing the story with either the tacit or explicit support of the office of California Deputy Attorney General Michael Thomas Murphy.

Because he's a prominent public servant whose name and reputation are now attached to the case and to the story. So the chances that he'd be letting some lunatic run around shooting her mouth off about his very-high-profile arrest are so low that they seriously border on totally out-of-the-question. Because that might end up kind of discrediting his case and/or reflecting very very badly on him in the eyes of the public whose servant he is. So if she weren't on the real, it would be pretty fucking difficult to see how the possibility of that problem arising wouldn't have occurred to him a long time ago. Or that he wouldn't have shut her down when it did. In any event, even if I'm wrong about that, at this point, he'd definitely have to debunk her immediately if she wasn't the real thing. So if there's no correction and retraction up at the LA Times site right now, I'd say that as a matter of plain common sense, it's probably safe to conclude that she's not a fraud.