Reply #46: Robert Gates: 'The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International'

[Octafish]

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was created by a Pakistani using Saudi petrobillions to finance the Pakistani bomb and bribe politicians the world over. The bank helped launder drug money and finance arms sales. The CIA and KGB kept accounts there, as did terrorists like Abu Nidhal and drug kingpins and BFEE toadies like Manuel Noriega. In the USA, BCCI secretly owned First American Bank -- headed by Democrat eminence gris Clark Clifford.

No wonder Mr. Gates called it the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" and helped divert attention from its seamier aspects -- bribing US Government officials. So it's really no wonder that few helped Sen. John Kerry investigate the outfit.

For those new to the subject:

The Subcommittee Investigation and the CIA

The Subcommittee's contact with the CIA regarding BCCI began in March, 1991, when staff learned from a Subcommittee source that the CIA had prepared a report concerning BCCI's criminality which was made available to Customs in late 1988. Cleared staff contacted the CIA's congressional liaison office to request a copy of the document. The staff was told that no such document had ever existed. Perplexed, staff contacted its source to determine whether he was certain that the material had been provided. The source referred staff to former Customs Commissioner William Von Raab, who confirmed the existence of the document. Staff contacted the CIA a second time, and informed the agency that a senior Reagan administration official had viewed the document. Again, the Subcommittee was told that no documents concerning BCCI had ever been created by the CIA.(1)

Staff then met with Von Raab, who revealed that not only had the CIA provided him with a briefing paper regarding BCCI, but that he obtained it through the offices of then-CIA assistant director Robert Gates, who referred to BCCI as "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals." Von Raab also advised the Subcommittee that Customs agents handling the C-Chase investigation of BCCI had discovered in the course of their work several BCCI accounts that were actually accounts held by the CIA. Von Raab told Subcommittee staff that his agents were told to cease their investigation of those particular accounts.(2) However, in an interview with Subcommittee staff, AUSA Mark Jackowski denied that he had ever uncovered any CIA involvement with the bank and Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller testified that "at no time ...has anyone from the CIA ... attempted to obstruct or interfere with the Department of Justice's investigation and prosecution of BCCI."(3)

On May 14, 1991, Senator Kerry wrote CIA Director Webster to again request the briefing paper on BCCI prepared by the CIA, as well as information on the CIA's own use of the bank. No reply was received in response to this letter from the CIA for over two months, during which BCCI was closed globally following its seizure in the United Kingdom by the Bank of England on July 5, 1991.

In the meantime, cleared staff requested a formal briefing from CIA staff concerning the CIA's knowledge of BCCI's activities. The CIA provided an oral briefing at its offices in June, 1991 at the "secret" level, consisting of very general information concerning BCCI's use by drug traffickers, material which was by then already largely a matter of public record. The briefer provided by the CIA to Congressional staff was unfamiliar with other basic information about BCCI, such as the names of BCCI's shareholders, including former Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham, the key figure in BCCI's secret takeover of First American, and the CIA's former principal contact in the Arab Middle East. Further, the briefer also appeared to be ignorant of the principal analytic documents concerning BCCI previously prepared by the CIA and disseminated to Executive Branch agencies, which contained this and other more important information about BCCI.(4)

On July 23, 1991, CIA director Webster replied to Senator Kerry's May 14 request by letter, admitting to the existence of two documents concerning BCCI, which were described as "extremely sensitive" and therefore restricted to being held by the Senate intelligence committee.(5) On reviewing these memoranda, Senator Kerry recognized that the earlier of the two documents, created in early 1986, contained startling information -- that the First American Bank in Washington was secretly owned by BCCI. The distribution list attached to the memorandum indicated that the CIA had communicated this information at the time to the Treasury Department. These was no indication that either Treasury or the CIA had ever advised the Federal Reserve, the primary regulator of First American, of this critical information.

Senator Kerry asked Judge Webster to declassify immediately the fact that the CIA had known as of 1986 that BCCI owned First American, and to begin the process of declassifying the entirety of both memoranda. On July 31, 1991, the CIA advised Senator Kerry that he could reveal the information concerning BCCI's secret ownership of First American, but no other information from the memos. The CIA had not yet acknowledged its own use of BCCI to the Subcommittee, or provided access to any other materials prepared by the CIA concerning BCCI.

When the single sentence from the 1986 memorandum was declassified, Senator Kerry supplied it immediately to the Federal Reserve, whose counsel expressed shock that the CIA, Treasury, State Department, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had possessed this information in 1986 and never provided it to the Federal Reserve.(6)

On August 2, 1991, with Congress in recess, acting CIA director Richard Kerr chose to provide the first public account of the CIA's involvement with BCCI at the National Press Club, to a group of high school students, who were not permitted to ask questions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.h...

Thanks for giving a damn, gordianot. It's taken decades, but the Truth will out these lying, thieving, murdering traitors eventually.