Geesh! ... They Could Have Used Wooly Willy ...

Oh man, this is a good one.

I suppose, since The Commander Guy, after his woody with the bullhorn, and all his "Bring it on!" and "Dead or Alive!", effectively, punted, and gave up the hunt, the FBI had to start somewhere when looking for the most notorious terrorist, this side of Cheney-Rumsfeld Smash-and-Grab Syndicate, Osama bin Laden.

But did they have to start in the Spanish Parliament?



Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster

Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster.

He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless".

The FBI admitted a forensic artist had obtained certain facial features "from a photograph he found on the internet".

[snip]

The FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology, but Mr Llamazares said it showed the "low level" of US intelligence services and could cause problems if he was wrongly identified as the Saudi.

"Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said, adding that he was considering taking legal action.

Later, an FBI spokesman told the BBC that it was "aware of the similarities in hairline features of the age-progressed photograph of Osama Bin Laden, posted on the web yesterday, and that of an existing photograph of a Spanish public official".

"When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image."

Holy Cow!

With their army of lab monkeys, and bloated budgets, some FBI schmuck does what I, and thousands of other bloggers do on a daily basis - head out to Google Images!

We could slash that budget by about 90% and just job out the work to some 7th grade somewhere in the country.

Or, they expense-account it, for about two-bucks ...

They could just have used Wooly Willy.





Bonus FBI Boners

Chris in Paris: FBI uses photo of Spanish MP to make updated bin Laden poster

Steve Hynd: FBI Alters Spanish MP's Picture, Calls Him Bin Laden

Paul Carr: NSFW: Nobody suspects the Spanish politician


Bonus Bonus

Retro Garlic: J. Edgars Gay Dating Service?

D.B. Cooper Is Barbarosa ... Or Is It Barbarosa Is D.B. Cooper?

Top Ten Cloves: Difficulties DC Comics' Batman May Have Fighting Osama bin Laden

Retro Garlic: J. Edgars Gay Dating Service?

Maybe he wasn't building dossiers for the purpose of being evil and nefarious, to blackmail and embarrass people, ruin their careers.

Perhaps J. Edgar Hoover was a pioneer, wanting to get out of the FBI, and his own closet, and was setting about to launch the first Gay Dating Service.

Naw!

He was just a first-class prick.

From today's Washington Post;

Valenti's Sexuality Was Topic For FBI ... Under Pressure, LBJ Let Hoover's Agents Investigate Top Aide

Valenti was a successful Texas businessman before joining Johnson in the White House in the hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. After three years in Washington, Valenti was named head of the Motion Picture Association, where he served as Hollywood's chief lobbyist from 1966 to 2004. His tanned face became a fixture on the annual Academy Awards broadcast.

The FBI file shows that a routine background check performed when Valenti joined the Johnson administration in 1963 turned up a series of picayune concerns. The file noted that Valenti's father and father-in-law had spent time in prison for embezzlement, and that his father-in-law had an "undesirable credit record" and had once been arrested for "being drunk."

[Snip]

One informant told agents that when Valenti was a bachelor, "he always dated extremely attractive women" and that "his only trouble with his female acquaintances was 'they all wanted to marry him.' "

[Snip]

Nothing discovered during the background check was solid enough to endanger Valenti's position as a special assistant to the president.

Then, in October 1964, a man whose name has been redacted from the records called an FBI official in New York. The caller encouraged the FBI to investigate Valenti "as a sex pervert," files show. "He based this request on the fact that he had read in the newspapers that Valenti swims in the nude in the White House pool."

[Snip]

The agents learned that Valenti was a frequent party host in Houston, and the photographer often attended. An FBI memo dated Nov. 12, 1964, stated that the photographer "has the reputation of being a homosexual." The photographer and "Valenti have allegedly been having an affair for a number of years," the memo said.

Six days later, Hoover reported the allegations to the president. Johnson spoke to Hoover lieutenant Cartha D. DeLoach and asserted that "Valenti was all right; however, his judgment was faulty inasmuch as he felt Jenkins had been all right," files show.

DeLoach advised Johnson to have Valenti submit a sworn affidavit regarding his association with "this homosexual." Johnson demurred, saying Valenti had no need to defend himself.

The Retro Part;

Movie Industry Titan, and LBJ Lackey, Rolls His Final Credits - Jack Valenti Obit

Too bad Valenti wasn't around.

I would love to see him on, say, The Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer grilling him, watching that tanned face become Day-Glo red, as he harumphed around the questions, or, perhaps more to Valenti's style, he, more likely, would have thrown Gay Hollywood under the bus.

Valenti wouldn't have been able to run fast enough to all the cable shows, shouting how "Jack Valenti es muy macho!"

After all, as Wikipedia noted, "Valenti was so loyal to Johnson that it was once said of him "If LBJ dropped the H-bomb, Valenti would call it an urban renewal project."

The article also "outted" (pun intended) legendary journalist Bill Moyers, as, perhaps, an LBJ gay hunter?

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

Hmmm ...

To bad Hoover didn't wait a few years.

He could have held off, for when Valenti went out to Hollywood, before springing the file on him.

The cost to keep it on the QT?

Just give Hoover an armful of all those delicious dresses worn by those big screen starlets, for the FBI director to prance around in.

And, just what was the point of the Washington Post coming out with this article now, nearly 50-years after-the-fact?

Seems a bit conspicuous, a few days before the big Academy Awards Oscar bash, no?

Maybe throwing a bone (boner?) to the pro-Prop 8 crowd, a reminder how sinful Hollywood, California is?


Bonus "Mary Hoover" Riffs

Jesse Walker: Jack Valenti's R-Rated White House Waterplay: A Sign of Secret Gay Hi-Jinks? Your FBI Is On the Case!

TowleRoad: PAPER: FBI Targeted Former MPAA Pres Valenti in Gay Witch Hunt

Ryan Tate: Is PBS Harboring the Man Who Led the Jack Valenti Homo Hunt?

Andrew Sullivan: Quote For The Day

Robert Stein: A Dip in 50-Year-Old Dung

History of Gay Bars in New York City: Our Sister J. Edgar Hoover

D.B. Cooper Is Barbarosa ... Or Is It Barbarosa Is D.B. Cooper?

[Don Baulio has chosen the next one to go after Barbarosa]
Don Braulio Zuvalla: Eduardo. You are the one. You will go after Barbarosa. Will you know him?
Eduardo: Si, I will know him. From the songs we sing and the stories we tell, I will know him.
Don Braulio Zuvalla: Kill him; kill this Barbarosa. Bring me his cojones. Bring them to me on a stick so we can see them and honor you.

From "Barbarosa", starring Willie Nelson, Gary Busey and Gilbert Roland

Boy, don't these guys have anything better to do?

One would think that the CIA Interrogation Tapes case, which the Justice Department announced today they will investigate, will need some extra bodies.

After all, that's a crime that leads directly, and squarely, into the Oval Office.

But no.

Perhaps swayed by television shows that solve their cold cases in about 48-minutes (gotta have the commercials accounted for), the FBI has announced it is reinvestigating the 36-year-old "D.B. Cooper" hijacking case, the nation's only unsolved hijacking.

“This case is 36 years old, it’s beyond its expiration date, but I asked for the case because I was intrigued with it,” said Larry Carr, a federal agent based in Seattle who usually investigates bank robberies, and who was 4 when the hijacking occurred. “I remember as a child reading about it and wondering what had happened. It’s surreal that after 36 years here I am, the only investigator left. I wanted to take a shot at solving it.”

Since the case was turned over to him about six months ago, Mr. Carr has come up with a new way of seeing the incident: as a bank robbery that just happened to be on an airplane. The fresh perspective led to new investigating techniques.

“The classic way we solve bank robberies is with the public,” Mr. Carr said. “Everything we know — pictures, descriptions, m.o., everything. We put it all out there.”

D.B. Cooper jumped from the back of a Boeing 727 jet airplane on the night of November 24th, 1971, somewhere between Seattle and Reno, with $200,000, in unmarked $20-bills and was never seen or heard from again.

Speculation has rested heavily that he died from the jump.

In 1980, an eight-year-old boy found $5,800 of the money, near the banks of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, but that's all that has surfaced.

Let us hope that it doesn't take 36-years to bring the Bush Grindhouse to justice.

After all, we already have, seven-years-worth, of "pictures, descriptions, m.o., everything ..."

Bonus D.B. Cooper Links

D.B. Cooper, where are you? Saturday is 36th anniversary of hijacker's leap into legend

The D.B. Cooper Story: A Mystery

D.B. Cooper's Disappearing Act