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Comment by mcantelon | Hacker News Reader

This article presents a pretty convincing argument for the idea that DSK was set up:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/what-re...

>the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.* They are then shown standing by the service door leading to 45th Street—apparently waiting for the police to arrive—where they are joined at 2:04 PM by Florian Schutz, the hotel manager.

>the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris ... responsible that weekend for handling emergencies at Accor Group hotels, including the Sofitel in New York ... sent a bizarre e-mail to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” DSK

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This has been debunked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn#Conspi... "The New York Review of Books subsequently corrected one of its allegations, reporting that a "dance of celebration" between two Sofitel employees lasted 13 seconds, not the 3 minutes originally reported."

A shorter dance of celebration doesn't debunk the theory as a whole.

what is left?

The whole article reads very conspiratorially. A whole series of stars have to align just right to pull things off --and they do, if we take the article's hints.

It's a whole lot of supposition and reading into after the fact.

>>the two men high-five each other, clap their hands...

People high-five for al sorts of reasons not related to what they are actually doing at the moment. "Hey, by the way, that date I taked to you about --yeah, it went off really well last night". That kind of unrelated stuff.

>the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris… sent a bizarre e-mail to… the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” DSK

Again. Anyone could claim anything. People brag about things they never did frequenlty -spec. when they find out about something they are excited about. It in and by itself is not evidence of anything conspiratorial.

This is really like a "The Globe" article. Full of supposition and innuendo --nothing concrete, but nothing quite provably wrong --just improbable.

It's unbelievable that they (whomever they are) could coordinate this whole thing in secrecy but then go on to do and say stupid things to bring things to light. It's like they're really smart and really dumb at the same time. It's an unlikely scenario --but not impossible.

To put it succinctly, when I hear people laughing, they're probably not laughing at me.

>A whole series of stars have to align just right to pull things off --and they do, if we take the article's hints.

On the difficulty scale of skullduggery and covert action, a fake rape accusation is about as easy as it gets.

>This is really like a "The Globe" article. Full of supposition and innuendo --nothing concrete, but nothing quite provably wrong --just improbable.

It's hardly improbable. People have used sex for blackmail, intelligence gathering, and character assassination for thousands of years.

>a fake rape accusation is about as easy as it gets.

And yet, if it had really been planned, it appears they would have made lots of mistakes. I would think it would be much easier just to take someone out than it is to do this kind of alleged framing. Framing involves too many variables and too many lose ends. Taking someone out, I imagine, is a lot cleaner, from a plan execution Pov.

>It's hardly improbable. People have used sex for blackmail, intelligence gathering, and character assassination for thousands of years.

Yeah, the thing is, you are comparing two very different things. I implied that the whole series of events ending in framing, as it unfolded, was improbable --not that framing in itself was improbable. That's a strawman.

DSK had enough stuff in his closet that this kind of framing is unnecessary. I know the French are ok with politicians and their peccadilloes. He seems to have had a penchant for this behavior --moreso than say, Mitterand.

>Taking someone out, I imagine, is a lot cleaner, from a plan execution Pov.

From a plan execution pov, perhaps, but not from a political pov. Even if a smoking gun pointed to Sarkozy, many people would likely chalk it up to political roughhousing and blame DSK for getting himself in the mess by not seeing the trap. If DSK had been killed people suspected Sarkozy, people would react differently.

>I implied that the whole series of events ending in framing, as it unfolded, was improbable

In what sense? That he was charged? The legal reaction itself was quite extraordinary: an international figure denied bail, put under grand jury investigation, and in court two days after being arrested. Maximum humiliation delivered with the utmost efficiency. DSK did have a history, of course, that complemented this kind of setup. One could be relatively sure that a sexual favor offered would be well received.

>an international figure denied bail, put under grand jury investigation, and in court two days after being arrested

France does not have extradition. So if he eventually was asked to come in for trial, he could have chosen to halt extradition and France would have complied as they do not extradite. It's not that strage a stance given that.

So what if he's an international figure? He goes thru the process like any other suspect in a credible rape allegation.

Europeans are somewhat used to politicians given some extra slack when it comes to these things --but here he was just another guy who allegedly raped a maid.

>So what if he's an international figure? He goes thru the process like any other suspect in a credible rape allegation.

So if this is a predictable result of this sort of scenario, why is it "the whole series of events ending in framing ... was improbable"?

Because while that part of the law is not unpredictable, the rest of the events rely on too many variables any of which could fail.

Why go thru such Goldbergian process to discredit some politician. It's overly complicated. The result of this kind of alleged "framing" isn't even guaranteed -see Berlusconi.

I just don't see how it's complicated. You find someone who'll have private physical access to DSK, pay them to offer a sex act, use the sex act to create a rape charge, and the rest takes care of itself.

On the other hand, if they had access to his communication, why not simply plant some illicit information or files on his systems. Files could be stuff like banking schemes, fraud, anything you can think of which could cause concern. Another option is to set him up as a source for leaks of some monumental kind.

If we believe his claims, his systems had been infiltrated. So why not take advantage of that?

Instead hope he finds the maid desirable (he so much agrees there was sex), hope the maid is believed and there isn't a delay in her reporting the crime and the crime being reported (forwarded to police), hope DSK does not get on the plane on time (hope he keeps his lunch appointment, hope the police do not defer to an IMF bank head, etc. It's really flimsy supposition.

It's not as though it was long term "grooming". It was very spontaneous kind of arrangement. How can any one find this probable? It's just very unlikely.

If you're paying her, she's going to report the crime promptly. If the police are slow to respond, you have her go to the press. Getting sufficient play in the press so DSK is smeared is really the end goal.

Planting banking scheme, fraud, etc. document would be another angle. Not quite as likely to grab international attention as a hotel rape, though. Sex scandals are news gold.

Whether the maid had a long-term or short-term relationship with her handler, who knows.

Here's the deal. I find the allegation that it was a set-up highly improbable. I thus don't believe it.

You choose to think it's in the realm of likely probability -we differ.

Scandal? Get some composite pictures of him on his Ipad whatever, of him having sex with dogs and Eastern European white-slave hookers. Do it in Paris.

Agreed... we see what's probable largely based on our internal models of how the world works. As the world is changing at an accelerated rate, there's going to be an even wider range of the interpretation of what is probable.

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