You may recall the federal crime called “structuring.”  Former speaker of the House Denny Hastert is currently behind bars for violating it.  Structuring consists of managing the amount of bank transactions so as to keep each below the ten-thousand-dollar level that would necessitate reporting the transaction to the feds, who are eager to capture drug dealers.  Hastert was caught because he was trying to keep his blackmail payments secret. So what is going on with the State Department, acting the same way, but with amounts ten thousand times higher?  Claudia Rosett reports: in the New York Sun: Congressional investigators trying to uncover the trail of $1.3 billion in payments to Iran might want to focus on 13 large, identical sums that Treasury paid to the State Department under the generic heading of settling “Foreign Claims.” The 13 payments when added to the $400 million that the administration now concedes it shipped to...(Read Full Post)