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Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., September 30, 2007: “These days, the internet is host to an enormous flood of rumors tarted up as fact concerning the attacks on the Pentagon and the WTC buildings. We know here that much of this is government-sponsored disinformation grafted onto the ubiquitous idiot fringes of our society that see sinister plots in potholes and hurricanes but there are two aspects of this attack that simply are not part and parcel of the myths. The most important one is one of pre-information on the part of our senior officials and the second is the immense amount of money that was made, using prior knowledge of this attack, by Israeli businessmen and, regrettably, by members of our intelligence and government communities. It is known inside the Beltway that the Bush people know, almost to the day, about the attack. They did nothing about this, heightened no security, issued no alerts, because it suited their Mideast expansionist policy to permit it to continue and give Bush popular support for his long-planned plot to lay his hands on Iraqi oil. After all, the Bush family made their money in oil and they are all connected with other oil industry people. Cheney ran Halliburton that was a support industry for the oil people and men like Cheney always keep their eyes open for a chance to make money. The best example of making gold out of blood are the stock market manipulations that took place just before the attack. This is a subject which briefly surfaced in the media and then was ruthlessly shut down on orders from the White House. In spreading disinformation for the purpose of self-protection, it is not a good idea to let the public know certain matters that might result in unpleasant conclusions.”

The Financial Plot Behind 9/11

September 30, 2007

by Harold R. Kreig, LtCol USA (ret)

On the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, an article appeared in a reputable French financial magazine, Les Echos [http://www.lesechos.fr/info/marches/4620847.htm]

Between August 26 to September 11, 2001, a group of speculators, identified by the American Securities and Exchange Commission as Israeli citizens, sold “short” a list of 38 stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as a result of the pending attacks. These speculators operated out of the Toronto, Canada and Frankfurt, Germany, stock exchanges and their profits were specifically stated to be “in the millions of dollars.”

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a clandestine but official effort to resolve the market manipulations There has been a great deal of talk about insider trading of American stocks by certain Israeli groups both in Canada and Germany between August 26 and the Sept.11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

.On September. 6, 2001, the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this yielded to speculators, at a bare minimum, between $2 million and $4 million in profit.

The question of pre-knowledge of the attacks and, most importantly , the issue of the highly sensitive question of the identities not only of the individuals involved but also where an open investigation might lead. This immediately became a subject of great official concern, both in Washington and Tel Aviv.

In the United States, a number of agencies were involved in this investigation: the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and DOJ –were early on forbidden to speak to the media about the allegations of insider trading. Suspicion of insider trading to profit from the September 11 attacks was not limited to U.S. regulators. Investigations were also initiated in  Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain. At the urgent request of   the United States,  these inquiries were conducted under conditions of strict secrecy.

Lynne Howard, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), stated that information about who made the trades was available immediately. "We would have been aware of any unusual activity right away. It would have been triggered by any unusual volume. There is an automated system called 'blue sheeting,' or the CBOE Market Surveillance System, that everyone in the business knows about. It provides information on the trades - the name and even the Social Security number on an account - and these surveillance systems are set up specifically to look into insider trading. The system would look at the volume, and then a real person would take over and review it, going back in time and looking at other unusual activity."

Howard continued, "The system is so smart that even if there is a news event that triggers a market event it can go back in time, and even the parameters can be changed depending on what is being looked at. It's a very clever system and it is instantaneous. Even with the system, though, we have very experienced and savvy staff in our market-regulations area who are always looking for things that might be unusual. They're trained to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if it's offshore, it might take a little longer, but all offshore accounts have to go through U.S. member firms - members of the CBOE - and it is easily and quickly identifiable who made the trades. The member firm who made the trades has to have identifiable information about the client under the 'Know Your Customer' regulations (and we share all information with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)"

Given all of this, at a minimum the CBOE and government regulators who are conducting the secret investigations have known for some time who made the options puts on a total of 38 stocks that might reasonably be anticipated to have a sharp drop in value because of an attack similar to the 9/11 episode. The silence from the investigating camps could mean several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the listed stocks or others besides terrorists had foreknowledge of the attack and used this knowledge to reap a nice financial harvest from the tragedy.

Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a North Dakota-based private consulting company that publishes research on markets worldwide, stated that "I heard that $22 million in profits was made on these put options..."

Federal investigators probing into these deals became very reluctant to even discuss their probings, let alone to release any information they might have disclosed. Bits and  pieces appearing in the American media made it obvious that these trades existed and that it was expected to reveal the persons and groups involved. The feverish rise of rampant rumor following the attacks were seen by American authorities, in specific the top levels of the Bush administration, as leading to unwanted conclusions. Strong protests were made to the White House by Israeli diplomatic entities asking for a blackout on any Federal investigations because they would clearly lead to the exposure of not only Israeli business interests but to the involvement of the Israeli government itself.  The study is certainly not the first on possible insider trading in connection to the attacks but it is disconcerting in comparison with the conclusions of the regulatory authorities. As of September 2001, the Securities Exchange Commission and its European counterparts were interested in the atypical stock exchange movements before the attacks.

In an official statement of July 2004, the official American regulatory agency stated that it examined more than 9,5 million transactions in the weeks preceding September 11, then delivered its conclusions to the National Commission on the terrorist attacks (911 commission).

According to this commission, unusual transactions certainly took place but each had a’ non-criminal explanation.’ The authorities evoke, for example, analyst’s investor advice to explain certain rises of volumes.

An identical and cooperative attitude on the part of the ex-COB now the AMF (French SEC), which stated in its annual report of 2002: "the elements obtained forbid to show any evidence that financial groups related to the instigators of the attacks could have used the Stock Exchange to realise operations"

Just a month after the attacks the SEC sent out a list of 38 stocks to various securities firms around the world requesting  information. The list included stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and US Airways airlines, as well as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the American International Group, AIG, Cigna, CAN Financial, John Hancock, MetLife, General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns

Six years after the attacks of World Trade Center, it is the disconcerting conclusion of a recent study by Marc Chesney and Loriano Mancini, professors at the University of Zurich, that: “Atypical volumes, very rare on certain titles, lead to suspicions of insider trading. "

The authors, one a specialist in derivatives, the other a specialist in econometrics, worked on the options to sell, used to speculate on the fall, of 20 great American groups, in particular in aeronautics and finance.

Their analysis relates to the transactions carried out between the 6 and September 10, 2001 compared to the average volumes recorded over long period (ten years for the majority of the companies).

The two specialists, in addition, calculated the probability of several options of the same sector having significant volumes in a few days.

"We tried to see whether the movements recorded on certain titles little before the attacks were common. We show that, for certain companies like American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Marsh & McLehnan, movements are scarce from a statistical point of view, a fortiori in comparison to the volumes observed for other values like Coke or Hewlett-Packard, explains Marc Chesney, a former professor with (the prestigious business school) HEC, author of "Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism" (published by Ellipses Editions).

“For example, 1.535 contracts of options to sell in the term October 2001, with 30 dollars, were exchanged on American Airlines on September 10, against a daily average of approximately 24 contracts over the three previous weeks "the fact that the market is bear at the time" does not explain enough these surprising volumes "

The authors also studied the profitability of the options to sell, and of purchase, for an investor having bought a product between the 6th and the 10th "For certain titles, the profits were enormous. For example, investors having acquired options to sell of Citigroup with a maturity at October 2001 could potentially have gained more than 15 million dollars "

The conjunction of the data between volumes and profitability, the two authors conclude "the probability that there were offences of initiates (insider trading) is strong for American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan.

Chronology of events prior to the 9/11 attacks:

September 6-7, 2001: 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal]

September 10, 2001: 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal.]

September 6-11, 2001: No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating "airline stocks may be poised to take off."

September 6-10, 2001: Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks.

It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such types of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001, to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that the CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Washington Times, June 15, 2001; “Fox News,” October 16, 2001]

Conclusion: It should be fairly obvious to most objective readers that the 9/11 attack came as no surprise to a number of groups and individuals who, while not directly involved in it, nevertheless took advantage of insider information to profit by it handsomely. And it should be equally evident that no one wanted to lose any profits they might make as a result of the attack and said nothing to anyone.That all this was shut down should not come as any kind of a surprise to Americans who have become painfully aware of the immense flood of deliberately misleading disinformation and suppression of unwanted and unwelcome news in the American media. BH

Government shuts down NetBank

Mortgage defaults cited as FDIC named receiver, ING takes over deposits

September 28, 2007

AP

WASHINGTON - NetBank Inc., an online bank with $2.5 billion in assets, was shut down by the government on Friday because of an excessive level of mortgage defaults.

It was the largest savings and loan failure since the tail end of the industry's crisis more than 14 years ago. Federal regulators appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as a receiver for Alpharetta, Ga.-based NetBank.

Customers with less than $100,000 deposited with NetBank will be protected by FDIC insurance.

While dozens of mortgage companies have closed due to soaring defaults of home loans made to borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit, those problems previously had occurred among non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. NetBank, in contrast, is federally regulated.

Loose mortgage standards in recent years — especially among lenders catering to subprime borrowers — have resulted in a spike in home loan defaults.

Bert Ely, a banking consultant based in Alexandria, Va., said NetBank was in "deep trouble" before the subprime mortgage market's woes accelerated this year. Regulators, he said, "should have closed it a long time ago."

While some Internet-only banks are successful, he said, operating one without retail branches can be a difficult strategy to maintain.

ING assumes insured deposits

The FDIC said Friday that $1.5 billion of NetBank's insured deposits will be assumed by ING Bank, also a major online bank that is part of Dutch financial giant ING Groep NV. ING will pay $14 million for the deposits and receive 104,000 new customers.

NetBank, which had no physical branches, sustained significant losses last year "primarily due to early payment defaults on loans sold, weak underwriting, poor documentation, a lack of proper controls, and failed business strategies," the Office of Thrift Supervision said in a statement.

The FDIC said NetBank had $2.5 billion in total assets and $2.3 billion in deposits as of June 30.

The OTS oversees about 830 savings and loan institutions, or thrifts, ranging in size from giants like Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc. to small community banks. By law, thrifts must have at least 65 percent of their lending in mortgages and other consumer loans.

The last major thrift to be closed by regulators was Superior Bank of Hinsdale, Ill. It had total assets of $1.9 billion and was shut down in July 2001. Its failure has so far cost the FDIC's insurance fund an estimated $273 million.

In June 1993, regulators shut down Western Federal Savings and Loan Association, which had total assets of $3.8 billion. That thrift's owners included former Treasury Secretary William Simon and former Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Preston Martin.

Sale of assets fell through

NetBank had reached a deal to sell its deposit accounts and other assets to privately held EverBank of Jacksonville, Fla., but EverBank announced this month that the deal fell through.

EverBank in July completed its acquisition of NetBank's mortgage servicing business, and the FDIC said Friday that EverBank will purchase about $700 million in mortgage loans.

"Customers of NetBank should have confidence and security knowing that they will have access to their insured funds in a timely and orderly manner," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said in a prepared statement.

The FDIC insures bank deposits of up to $100,000.

NetBank had $109 million in deposit accounts that exceeded the FDIC limit. Those customers will become creditors in NetBank's receivership, the FDIC said.

The FDIC has a toll-free number for customers affected by the failure: 1-888-256-6932.

Blackwater case deepens as investigations multiply

September 29, 2007

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - US and Iraq investigations into powerful private security group Blackwater USA are multiplying as more questions are raised about the firm's actions in a Baghdad shooting that left at least 10 Iraqis dead.

On Friday the US Department of State announced it was sending a team to Iraq led by a senior official to evaluate security measures for US diplomats who have relied on Blackwater and other private security firms for protection in the violence-ridden country.

"My instructions to the panel are simple: their review should be serious, probing and comprehensive," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement about the review.

"Once they have established the baseline facts, I look forward to hearing their recommendations on how to protect our people while furthering our foreign policy objectives."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also sent off a five-man team to Iraq to investigate relations between US forces and private security contractors, who are often heavily armed with armored vehicles and helicopters.

And in Iraq, a joint US-Iraqi commission to study the security firms was preparing to meet, according to the US embassy in Baghdad.

The enquiries have been sparked by the September 16 shoot-out in which at least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded by Blackwater guards protecting a State Department official.

Nearly two weeks later, the circumstances of the bloody shoot-out remain blurred, with Iraqis angry and indignant and the country's prime minister having demanded Blackwater's expulsion.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki initially said Washington should immediately replace Blackwater but later backed down and agreed to await the outcome of investigations.

Furious over the killings, the Iraqi government has threatened to try the Blackwater guards under Iraqi law and is preparing legislation to bring supervision of private contractors under its control.

Blackwater, which has some 1,000 people working in Iraq under reportedly 109 million dollars in security contracts with the State Department, insists that its employees only fired after they were fired upon and threatened by a suspicious vehicle.

According to the US television network ABC, Blackwater employees testified in initial investigations that their convoy, which was speeding back to Baghdad's Green Zone near midday after a car bomb went off near where they had been guarding the diplomat in a meeting, were threatened by a white car bearing down on them in Baghdad's busy Nisoor Square.

According to ABC, when the vehicle would not heed signals to halt, the Blackwater team opened fire until it was disabled.

According to the New York Times, citing a US official close to the investigation, the shooting continued even as one Blackwater employee ordered the others to stop firing.

Iraqi witnesses paint a different picture, however, claiming that the Blackwater teams opened fire without provocation.

Blackwater's case suffered somewhat more this week with the release of a US Congressional report on the horrific murder of four of its staff in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, an act which sparked a brutal US military assault on the city.

A Congressional committee said that Blackwater had sent the men into the extremely dangerous district on a security mission without proper support or equipment. They were caught by Iraqi attackers and killed, and their charred bodies were later suspended from a bridge.

The report accused the company of having ignored warnings that the mission was too dangerous and of cutting the size of the team to save money.

"These actions raise serious questions about the consequences of engaging private, for-profit entities to engage in essentially military operations in a war zone," the report said.

Are Mega-Preachers Scandal-Prone?

September 29, 2007

by David Van Biema

TIME

Juanita Bynum's story may read like soap opera, but her travails are a reminder of the longtime magnetism between celebrity Pentecostal preachers and scandal. The 48-year-old regular on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) made her reputation with a sermon renouncing pre-marital sex to search for a holy partner. She appeared to find one in a minister named Thomas Weeks III, wed him in a $1 million on-air ceremony, and together they went out to preach and teach the perfect Christian marriage. Then, in August she accused him of badly beating her in a parking lot (he has been charged, but claims he "walked away" from the confrontation), and said she planned to seek a divorce - and to become the "new face of domestic violence." A dramatic reversal of fortunes, certainly, but hardly the first in her particular corner of Christianity.

Bynum's misfortune coincided with the divorce by an even more popular Pentecostal figure, Paula White, and her co-pastor husband Randy, of the Without Walls International megachurch in Tampa, Fla. Divorce, once a taboo in evangelical culture, is now a fact of life. But the Whites' apparently no-fault parting appeared so matter-of-fact - few details were offered, and neither partner seemed to take a time out from preaching - that some grumbled about the unchristian notion of marriage as a convenience. Then there was the drugs-and-call-boy-abetted exit of marquee-name Pentecostal pastor Ted Haggard from his leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals. Clearly, Pentecostalism is facing testing times.

Some suggest that the risk of high-profile meltdowns may be in the very nature of Pentecostal leadership roles. "There's a lot of soul searching in our movement right now," says J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, because of the spectacle of highly successful preachers losing their way. "There's a saying, 'Your anointing can take you to a place where your character cannot sustain you.' I'm hearing that a lot more often these days."

"Anointing" refers to the Pentecostal belief not only in the conversion experience, but in a "second anointing in the Holy Spirit" that bestows such gifts such as speaking in tongues, healing and prophesying. From its emergence in Los Angeles exactly a century ago, it has tended to be exuberant, physical and generally more theologically adventurous than its evangelical cousins. And despite thousands of pastors and churches that pursue their joyous vision without taint, scandal has dogged some of its most prominent figures. Among the best-known were the late 1980s downfalls of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart: Bakker, who was undone by charges of fraud, and Swaggart who was caught with a prostitute, had preached a "theology of prosperity" suggesting that there would be divine rewards in this world for those who donated to the ministry.

Some critics, such as Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Southern Theological Seminary, see the movement as hardwired for scandal. "The Charismatic movement is so driven by emotion and by passion that it sometimes lacks both theological and moral accountability," he says. Others, such as Tim Morgan, an editor at Christianity Today, see it as a more organizational problem - the absence of the kind of internal oversight common in mainline Protestantism and more recently in non-Pentecostal Evangelicalism. "Quite a few of these independent churches feel they are beholden to God alone," says Morgan.

But Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Rochester in New York believes Pentecostals are no more trouble-prone than other Protestants. "The same sort of thing is happening to Baptists and Presbyterians," she says. "Except for one big thing. They are not media figures." Notes Charisma's Grady: "There's something about someone who is excited about the things of the Holy Spirit that makes them want to get up and proclaim it" - often on TV. "But you'd better have character, or there's going to be a national scandal."

Many supporters and critics of the Pentecostal movement agree that a troubling factor is the recent resurgence of the prosperity theology (known, among other terms, as Word of Faith or neo-Pentecostalism), which introduces a material aspect to worship that could be an inducement to sin.

Practitioners of prosperity philosophies of varying intensity include some of the biggest names in Pentecostalism, including the Whites, Joyce Meyer and Creflo Dollar. None of these has had trouble with the law, although in 2006, after years of fencing, Joyce Meyer Ministries came to agreement with local authorities to pay 52% taxes on parts of its headquarters, which the county had maintained were a business. Nonetheless, Hank Hanegraaff, a non-Pentecostal evangelical broadcaster who calls himself the Bible Answer Man, expresses concern "about people out there emptying out their bank accounts so their daughter with leukemia can be healed." He recently read on the air a editorial by Grady denouncing "Celebrity Christianity," which described the case of an unnamed female evangelist whose appearance contract included a five-figure honorarium, a $10,000 fuel deposit for a private plane, a five-star hotel, room-temperature Perrier and two bodyguards. The column ended, "May God help us root out the false apostles ... who are making the American church sick with their.... money-focused heresies."

But Pentecostals tend to be forgiving of their preachers' lapses - both Bakker and Swaggart are back in the ministry, for example - because of a theological distinction between Pentecostalism and more austere forms of conservative Christianity. Says the University of Rochester's Butler: "Calvinism is [God's] grace, one time. This is grace after grace after grace. You can mess up a thousand times."

So, will this forgiving trait help Bynum keep her flock? Yes, say Butler and others. "Where else can you say that you were the church Jezebel," marvels Butler, "and then recast yourself as a pure, holy single woman living a godly life, then all of a sudden you get married in a big elaborate wedding to a bishop, with 40 bridesmaids and then go off and have a ministry with that husband and tell other church couples, 'This is how to love your husband because we got it right'? - and then your husband beats you up in the parking lot, and now you're an advocate for domestic violence?"

Yet Harvard African-American studies and religion scholar Marla Frederick says many of the women with whom Bynum's preaching resonates have seen just as many reversals as in their own lives, and they yearn for a God who will ride the roller coaster with them. "Pentecostal faith is really about the power of the Holy Spirit to instantaneously transform life," she says. But she admits she personally is troubled that "taking a personal story and turning it into a narrative of triumph also becomes something that can be marketed for profit."

Indeed, beyond the scandal of the moment, Pentecostalism has produced a culture of superstar preachers whose lives are always at risk of being turned into something close to secular entertainment.