Danny Schechter - ColdType

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I said, “I’m making a film in part about the role of the media
in exposing this story.”
He quipped, “that will be a short documentary.”
His comment was a humorous admission that most of the
media has been late to the story if not complicit in keeping it
covered up so long. Once the media made it a big deal, the
public went ballistic: Standing outside the Courthouse in
Lower Manhattan with hundreds of journalists and TV crews
from around the world, I spoke to Richard Friedman who lost
over a million dollars. I asked, “How did he get away with this
for so long?”
“I wondered that myself,” he replied, “how a person could
run a scam for so many years without being detected – that
was one of the players who do as much business with each
other (with few questions asked) as they compete against each
other. It can’t be a scam. Nobody can successfully run a scam
for that long,” suggesting that the government was in on it.
His answer to my question about that: “Of course there is a
cover-up. The government does not want people to know how
grossly negligent the SEC was in investigating him. The largest
fraud in history and they didn’t know about it.”
Actually Madoff appeared before the SEC on more than
one occasion. His niece, Shana Madoff, even married an SEC
investigator, Eric Swanson. Court documents showed that the
SEC closed an investigation in 2006 after Madoff responded to
questions with false testimony.
The SEC’s chief watchdog in New York said that she missed
it too, telling the New York Post: “Why are you taking a midlevel
staff person and making me responsible for the failure
of the American economy?’ an upset Meaghan Cheung, with
eyes tearing up, told the Post.”
The Agency’s former head, Harvey Pitt, said, “The U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission should have apologized
for missing Bernard Madoff ’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme.”