Kerry and BCCI. If the voters want a tough guy,...

[Armstead]

Here's a article from Washington Monthly about Kerry and BCCI.

His campaign ought to hammer this, as it's more relevant to today's post 9-11 concerns than Vietnam. It also shows that Kerry is tough and relentless in contrast to then "flip flopper" nonsense. It also gives the lie to theit "avoiding his 20 year record" bullsheit.

Compare and contrast what Bush and Kerry were doing in the late 80's and early 90's.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html

Follow the Money
How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank.

By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.


More than a decade later, Kerry is his party's nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who's weak on fighting terrorism. "After 19 years in the Senate, he's had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements," President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that's been echoed by Bush's surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: "How can John Kerry win a war if he doesn't know the enemy?"

Snip

But legislation is only one facet of a senator's record. As the BCCI investigation shows, Kerry developed a very different record of accomplishment--one often as vital, if not more so, than passage of bills. Kerry's probe didn't create any popular new governmental programs, reform the tax code, or eliminate bureaucratic waste and fraud. Instead, he shrewdly used the Senate's oversight powers to address the threat of terrorism well before it was in vogue, and dismantled a key terrorist weapon. In the process, observers saw a senator with tremendous fortitude, and a willingness to put the public good ahead of his own career. Those qualities might be hard to communicate to voters via one-line sound bites, but they would surely aid Kerry as president in his attempts to battle the threat of terrorism.

[DeepModem Mom]

1. Thanks for posting!

[Bongo Prophet]

2. Important and highly relevant

How to bullet point, soundbite and organize into an over-arching theme are the keys to making it useful... ideas, DUers?
:think: :think: :think:

[Armstead]

3. He was relentless against terrorism

The deiatls of BCCI are very confusing, but what stands out is in stark contrast to the "flip flop" and the "did nothing for 20 years" mantrta.

He was relentless about going after a huge criminal enterprise, and it was a politically unpopular thing to do. He was ahead of his time in terms of going after the roots of international crime and terrorism.

[newyawker99]

10. Hi Calico_Janitor!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Armstead]

4. Kick

:kick:

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cheezus]

6. nobody knows about BCCI, and nobody seems to care

but from the bits I've picked up around here, it seems like a VERY BIG DEAL. What gives?

[Armstead]

7. It was a huge criminal enterprise

BCCI was an octopus that extended into every seedy aspect of life, from drugs to terrorism.

When all of the bigwigs (of both parties) wanted to sweep it under the rug, Kerry and Tom Harkin refused to let go of their investigation.

Like I said originally, the issue is complex but the bottom line is simple. Kerry fought to expose an enterprise that extended right into thge heart of terrorist financing long before most people were willing to bring it to light.


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

The BCCI Affair
A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
by
Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown
December 1992
102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102-140

Introduction and Summary of Investigation

BCCI cannot be taken as an isolated example of a rogue bank, but a case study of the vulnerability of the world to international crime on a global scope that is beyond the current ability of governments to control. Its multi-billion dollar collapse is merely the latest in a series of international financial scandals that have bedeviled international banking this century. Its techniques and its associations with government officials, intelligence agencies, and arms traffickers, were neither new nor unique.

Snip


The scope and variety of BCCI's criminality, and the issues raised by that criminality, are immense, and beyond the scope of any single investigation or report. This report, the product of some four years of investigation by the Subcommittee, while extensive, can merely provide a basic guideline to the fundamental facts and issued raised by the BCCI affair.

The Subcommittee investigation of BCCI began in February, 1988, early in the second year of a two-year investigation of the relationship between drug trafficking to U.S. foreign policy and law enforcement that had been authorized by the full Committee. During a hearing on General Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering, BCCI was identified as facilitating Noriega's criminal activity. In March, 1988, the Foreign Relations Committee authorized the issuance of subpoenas to BCCI and those at the bank involved in handling Noriega's assets, and the accounts of others in Panama and Colombia. Service of those subpoenas was delayed, at the request of the Justice Department and U.S. Customs Service, due to concern that its service could interfere with an ongoing sting operation of BCCI in Tampa, Operation C-Chase. By the time the Subcommittee secured the permission of federal authorities to move forward with service of the subpoena, in late July 1988, the Subcommittee had completed the public hearings in connection with its investigative mandate, and was proceeding to complete its final report, with no further investigative efforts planned.

However, service of the subpoena set into motion a series of contacts during the late summer and early fall involving the Subcommittee, BCCI officials, and BCCI's attorneys, including Clark Clifford and Robert Altman. During those contacts, BCCI officials advised Subcommittee counsel Jack Blum that in their view, BCCI and its attorneys were obstructing the Subcommittee's efforts to investigate the bank. The Subcommittee conducted a deposition of one key BCCI official, Amjad Awan, shortly before his arrest in the Customs' sting, and deposed a second, former BCCI officer following the sting, during the final days of the authorization given the Subcommittee by the Foreign Relations Committee. Thus, as the two-year investigation of the Subcommittee authorized by the Foreign Relations Committee ended, investigating BCCI remained a major piece of unfinished Subcommittee business.

In the spring of 1989, Senator Kerry, chairman of the Subcommittee, authorized Blum as he was leaving the Subcommittee, to provide the information he had developed to the Justice Department. After the Justice Department, in Blum's view, had failed to follow up on the information provided, he took the same information to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who shortly commenced his investigation of BCCI, based in substantial part on the leads provided him by Blum and the Subcommittee.

MUCH more

[iamjoy]

8. Kerry Should Do More To Promote It

and didn't he also expose the Iran-Contra mess? Of course, these are political hot potatoes, so maybe that's why. But wasn't Jesse Helms with him on the Iran Contra stuff because the Contras were involved with drug smuggling and the only thing Helms hated as much as Commies were drug dealers?

[Karenina]

9. Kick!

:kick:

[JohnKleeb]

11. Its amazing he did all this as a freshman senator too

Really, I'd love to have that man as senator, but it comforts me to know that at least I'll have him as president but he is and was an amazing investigator which I envision he got those skills from being DA.

[Bongo Prophet]

12. Yes, and as president...

FINALLY, someone might have a look through some classified material evidence (What is still left) and know what to do with it. Open gov would have a chance again. RICO anyone?

It is important to educate and set the background in case this is raised as an issue we will be pre-briefed. Memes need to be set in fertile soil.
Difficult in short and long term memlossed A.D.D. addled populace, but still...:smoke:

[A_Possum]

13. Plus Bush got a LOAN from those guys

My ad copy, once again:

"Bush did business with Bin Laden's bankers while Kerry...was fighting to shut it down to terrorist and drug connections."

"Long before September 11, 2001, George W. Bush got a 25 million dollar loan from the same bankers that dealt with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while John Kerry was fighting to stop this bank's global laundering of money for drug lords and terrorists. John Kerry shut it down. He's been fighting terrorism at its roots since before George Bush ran for office."


Feel free to use at will.