Spider
08-05-2005, 08:20 AM
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_216190603.html
(CBS) A spokesman for speaker of the House Speaker Denny Hastert tonight is ridiculing a magazine story that claims Hastert may have taken bribes.
There is little hard evidence to support the explosive allegations. The claim is that Hastert may have accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for blocking a Congressional resolution about a bloody Armenian-Turkish Conflict.
As CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, that conflict 80 years ago claimed more than one million Armenian lives.
It was only after a personal appeal from then-President Clinton that Speaker Hastert agreed to block a Congressional vote on the resolution. Armenian-Americans have long wanted the U.S. government to declare that Turkey was guilty of genocide in 1915, when more than one million Armenians died.
“My own family were driven into the Syrian desert, where almost everybody perished. My father and his brother were among the few survivors,” said Ann Lucine.
Enter Vanity Fair magazine's David Rose. In next month's edition, he claims that sources told him of secret recordings in which diplomats from Turkey were heard referring to Hastert as "Denny-Boy" and allegedly discussed making campaign contributions of $500,000 to get Hastert to block the genocide resolution.
Hastert was in Japan today, one stop on an official trip to AsIa.
In a statement, a spokesman said: “This story is nonsense. It makes for great summertime reading. Next thing you know, they'll blame the speaker for the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt breakup."
“I took a quick look at the Vanity Fair article,” Lucine said. “I would be shocked if the allegations of bribery or criminal actions were true.”
Like Ann Lucine, Armenian-American activists disagreed strongly with Speaker Hastert when he withdrew the genocide resolution from a House floor vote he had promised. But they knew President Clinton and then-Sec. of State Madeline Albright were pressuring Hastert, telling him of Turkish threats to close American military bases vitally needed for the fight against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
(CBS) A spokesman for speaker of the House Speaker Denny Hastert tonight is ridiculing a magazine story that claims Hastert may have taken bribes.
There is little hard evidence to support the explosive allegations. The claim is that Hastert may have accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for blocking a Congressional resolution about a bloody Armenian-Turkish Conflict.
As CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, that conflict 80 years ago claimed more than one million Armenian lives.
It was only after a personal appeal from then-President Clinton that Speaker Hastert agreed to block a Congressional vote on the resolution. Armenian-Americans have long wanted the U.S. government to declare that Turkey was guilty of genocide in 1915, when more than one million Armenians died.
“My own family were driven into the Syrian desert, where almost everybody perished. My father and his brother were among the few survivors,” said Ann Lucine.
Enter Vanity Fair magazine's David Rose. In next month's edition, he claims that sources told him of secret recordings in which diplomats from Turkey were heard referring to Hastert as "Denny-Boy" and allegedly discussed making campaign contributions of $500,000 to get Hastert to block the genocide resolution.
Hastert was in Japan today, one stop on an official trip to AsIa.
In a statement, a spokesman said: “This story is nonsense. It makes for great summertime reading. Next thing you know, they'll blame the speaker for the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt breakup."
“I took a quick look at the Vanity Fair article,” Lucine said. “I would be shocked if the allegations of bribery or criminal actions were true.”
Like Ann Lucine, Armenian-American activists disagreed strongly with Speaker Hastert when he withdrew the genocide resolution from a House floor vote he had promised. But they knew President Clinton and then-Sec. of State Madeline Albright were pressuring Hastert, telling him of Turkish threats to close American military bases vitally needed for the fight against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.