Reply #134: lawyers guns and money

[Snazzy]

(this post was originally intended for thread 3, which got too big--seems to fit here sorta)

I know there's been excellent bits and pieces here, including the motherlode of Riggs news archive posts by Seemslikeadream (links for what I’m getting at are mostly in there—just my thoughts here). I suspect Riggs is just the tip of the iceberg--really a small bank, though formerly respected and certainly very symbolic, that got caught with its hand in the jar because of new bank secrecy act regs in the Patriot Act.

Jonathon Bush showed up, pissed in the temple, and now they are mopping up and sniffing for a buyer.

I’ve been thinking BCCI is still kicking, or rather the same money and methods are, in a way, isn’t it? I wonder if we are ramping up to some sort of massive bank scandal that the BFEE will again ask taxpayers to bail. After all, BFEE finds a scam and sticks with it.

I'm not sure I ever spent enough time to totally understand the extent of BCCI, and especially bin Mahfouz--one thing I wonder about is going back even further with an eye on Nazi money. Another time on that! Interesting, isn’t it, that BCCI is today in court re: Bank of London, although I don't think we are reading much about it.

But we do have a broken Riggs to look at. Now divorcing itself of its international banking unit, based in Florida. Processing funds for the Saudis, which in at least two cases aided 9/11 hijackers, and also involved with the brutal dictator of Equatorial Guinea, who was buying up US properties with oil profits from US oil companies, at the expense of his people. I think that's a model. Find somewhere 'we' want the oil (that's = anywhere with oil), and teach your dictator well. How much in US properties did MM say the Saudi's owned?

Steven B. Pfeiffer runs (or maybe ran, things are changing) Riggs International, including the London and Channel Island branches, with Florida reporting to him. Interesting guy: Yale Law, Council on Foreign Relations, a former NATO commander, Navy, on board of a prominent SA co. too. But most interesting is he also a bigwig at Fulbright & Jaworski. Yeah, giant law firm, but also a giant energy law firm, and also a giant help the Saudis law firm. One notable client: Mahfouz.

Riggs Florida, the actual bank that processed foreign banks transactions, was/is run by a guy named Juan Luis Toro. Haven't turned up too much on him, except he's (or was until very recently) on two boards: FIBA (Florida International Bankers Association), where the current is President Thomas P. Noonan (an evil name if I ever heard one!).

Noonan runs BAC Florida (no relation to Bank of America--that's their stock symbol), the US face of a giant Nicaraguan bank/investors, mainly doing offshore credit card processing and buying property in Florida. BAC Florida was also just slapped with an enforcement from the Comptroller of Currency, just like Riggs. Jeb Bush and Noonan keynoted the Annual Assembly of the Federation of Latin American Bankers this past November, right after FTAA. Noonan also keynoted FIBA's annual money laundering conference in March. Noonan is now out of there--guess he wasn't a total expert on money laundering or they all wouldn't have been caught. Point is, Florida is the nexus.

Toro is also the most recent past prez of the Miami Bond Club (sadly, I know even less about bonds than I do about banking). Current prez is from UBS--also just fined, $100 million, for money laundering involving cash to Cuba, Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia.

Now all this I'm typing is just, so far, a guilt by association thing, i.e. suspicion and adding some pieces. But where there's a lot of Bush boys there's corruption smouldering (Jeb enabling this in Florida somehow, Jonathan with Riggs in DC; plus Shrub's cabinet applying fox and henhouse with treasury and other financial agencies, and a Bush Pioneer owning Riggs) and Saudi's in these associations, not to mention its base being in Florida. I think something is brewing, or maybe would be brewing if this wasn't so complicated to investigate for an actual journalist, perceived as too complicated or boring to present to the public, or Congress really gave a shit.

Not even getting into how money that passes through some of these probably continues to fund black ops, coups, mercs, and all that good old stuff from the BCCI, Iran/Contra days. And the sub threads of gold and diamonds that Bush Sr. likes so much. Not to mention Iraq money is tied in here somewhere--read something about that. Or what the heck is going on with Russia's banks and oil. And what bank(s) does the Halliburton bribe money call home?

Way too much for me to piece together--and they count on that, don't they? So many scandals to track, so many interconnections in the scandals. The ever present labeling of being a conspiracy nut when you do put something together. This stuff is complicated, and complicated on purpose. Is it even possible to "follow the money" today? Was Plame trying to?

Trivia: That’s Riggs behind the Treasury on the old 10-spot:



(On the front, of course, is Hamilton, shot by power hungry former VP Burr in a duel traced to a contentious election of Jefferson. Sounds familiar.)

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Unrelated:

I don't think I saw Plame's front company has been mentioned in these threads so far. Remember Novak also outted them—Brewster Jennings & Associates. For one, who’s inside joke was that? Standard Oil, right? Does that hint at something she was after? Was that cover to make her look legit to Saudi’s? Were other people using that front? Likely we will never know, unless that is a separate crime, which it must be, more so if other assets were exposed.

Mayber not much of a front:
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/10/apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover/

And lastly, I still wonder about that guy who jumped off the roof of Foggy Bottom not all that long after Plamegate started, wasn’t it? He worked in the State Dept’s Intelligence and Research Bureau—their internal intel, most analysts. INR wrote the dissenting section, the footnote as Condi famously called it, about the yellowcake in the Nation Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that the State of the Union was based on. The footnote that was ignored. I don’t know how the hell somebody suspiciously jumps/is pushed off the locked roof of the State Dept. and it stays so buried unless it is some national security thing at the highest level. Is it related? Guy’s name was Kokal. Never got an obit. Did they find his shoes?