Word: caper
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet economy. "It is an extremely corrupt society where graft and bribery of officials is enormously widespread and where stealing on the job is commonplace and far more sophisticated than crude break-ins or thefts at state warehouses." One of the biggest frauds of the 1970s was the caviar caper, in which officials of the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries shipped expensive black caviar abroad in large cans marked "smoked herring." Western firms cooperating in the fraud repacked and resold the caviar. They put the Soviet conspirators' share of the profits into Swiss bank accounts. The swindle is still officially...
...success of the sanctions imposed by its allies. Said Richard Helms, former CIA chief and onetime Ambassador to Iran: "The timing is peculiar. You spend so much effort getting your allies to take some other line of approach. And just when you seem to be succeeding, you pull this caper...
Sitting Ducks starts out as a routine comic caper in which a pair of incompetent criminals (Zack Norman and Michael Emil) make off with the day's take of the Mob's New York gambling operations and make their way toward Miami and a rendezvous with a seaplane that is supposed to take them to a haven in Costa Rica. Indeed, the first glimpses of this enterprise are inordinately depressing: the shooting and editing are tacky, and the dialogue meanders witlessly from one half-improvised notion to another...
...caper, like QEII, is carried out by a mixed band of Irish, German and Arab thugs. Far from aiming to bring capitalist society to its knees, the attackers just want the capital. There is an ideological twist to the scheme, however. As envisioned by Harlan Stone Huckleby, an embittered retired major general and wealthy industrialist who finances the siege, the island's capture is intended to drive home the message to all Americans that the nation is woefully unprepared to resist enemy attack. The dotty general's Götterdammerung is orchestrated by Peter Stiehl, an engaging mercenary...
Cherrey angrily called the school board's purchasing department, which canceled the order. The board began an investigation into what Miami's newspapers soon dubbed "the gold-plated plumb ing caper." The elaborate fixtures had been picked out by MacArthur Principal Solomon Barnes, 36, although a salesman at the plumbing-supply house claims he had tried to get him to buy cheaper items. Johnny Jones, 46, superintendent of schools for the 225,000-pupil Dade Coun ty system, fifth largest in the nation, approved the purchase as a "special needs" requisition, which took it out of normal channels...