Senator Chris Dodd (D-Ct)

,June 13, 2008

Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #101
Hartford, CT. 06103

RE: A long time coming

Senator Dodd,

It’s been a long time but maybe things do come right in the end.

A bit of background is in order.

“Character is destiny”, or so said Heraclitus,

“Character”, said James Madison when asked what was the most important thing to look for in a candidate for any public office. “Character is all.”

“We cannot be too curious when inquiring about the character of men seeking public office.” Credit that to a member of the Adams family. It was either Samuel, John, or Edie.

Hark back to the end of the glorious Carter era.

We met at a fundraiser for you in a spectacular Park Avenue apartment. It was a very hot summer evening. I was with Norman Kelly. He had done a favor for your mother in honoring your father’s memory. She was pleased and you were most warm and gracious in your greeting of him. Whatever it was he had done you were most thankful...

As we chatted our similar backgrounds became apparent.

We both were Irish Catholic. We both were sons of attorneys. We both went to Catholic schools. We both were History majors. We both were in the Peace Corps.

Here the road splits.

I asked you about Central America in general and the Sandinistas in particular. You gave me very specific answers.

Your subsequent public statements and votes in the Senate indicate one thing.

You looked me in the face and lied.

That’s why the straight line from that lie to being a “Friend of Angelo” is so obvious.
That you have ca. $1,000,000 in mortgages held by a company that looks like it shares quarters with poltroons, grifters, boosters, and con men is a matter of public record. The 800 pound gorilla sitting in the corner is how you qualified for that much debt on a salary of $165,000. It would appear that 80% of your net income goes to debt service. That doesn’t leave much for cocktails, does it? I hope you have your daughters on the inside track for “Friends of Angelo” scholarship fund.

Maybe you are a “Special Friend of Angelo”. Maybe Tony Soprano sent you. Maybe you do some collection work for him. Maybe you do some “facilitating” for him.

Private men of wealth, men such as Angelo, like to have public men running interference for them. Since we met at the end of the Carter administration it is well to note that Archer-Daniels-Midland purchased an insolvent peanut farm in the early ‘80s. They assumed some past due obligations and tossed the seller a few bucks. They are a world wide food company. They were into globalization before anyone had even heard of the term. ADM got a marker on a former President for about $4. Carter, the worst President of the 20th century, sold his birthright for considerably less than a bowl of porridge. When he parlayed his treacly nostrums, his dry wall hanging ability, and his penchant for publicly pissing in his country’s soup into a Nobel Prize the value of the trade was confirmed.

Maybe you work the phones for Angelo getting the deadbeats to pay up. Maybe you greased the skids for him with regulators.

Either way neither a hot stove nor the pennies on a dead man’s eyes are safe when you are around.

Either way “the sins you did two by two you pay for one by one”.

Either way you are still a liar.