BCCI class action begins January 13th, London, UK

[emad]

In the Royal Courts of Justice in Central London, the much delayed creditors' action aganist the Bank of England finally starts. Despite 12 years' of obstruction, obfuscation, suborning of witnesses and political blocking of sensitive evidence, the case is finally coming to trial. Most relevant will be evidence held in the Bingham Enquiry Unit which contains data banks of forensic information that was suborned by successive UK prome ministers, including John Major and Tony Blair.

To all those who testified before the Bingham - and previously before Bob Morgenthau when he busted BCCI in NY - and to all those whose families have been subjected to violent criminal harassment as a result of leaks emanating from the BFEE - A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Interesting to note that the Carribean offshore companies registered in the late 1970s and early 1980s which controlled the parent holding companies of BCCI and its subsidiaries show shareholdings affiliating George Walker Bush and the recently-busted Parmalat chief Calisto Tanzi, now wanted for a $400 million heist of european dairy industry shareholders' funds. This data is not currently available on-line, hence on link. However, the chief witnesses testifying on behalf of the creditors are published journalists whose reference works are stored both in the British Library in the UK, the Library of Congress and the archives of the Federal Reserve.

The case is sub-judice which means that no more can be stated at this stage either in print and on the web.

Hope to keep you updated as and when the trial judge rules on what is admissible to the public domain.

In the meantime, a personal wish for Jenna and Barbara: hope you get to meet your true, extended family in the UK and elsewhere - siblings included - in 2004, before their own stories hit the press....

[seemslikeadream]

1. A Very Happy New Year

to you emad aisat sana

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

74. Here's Kerry's big chance!

If his investigations into BCCI, the S&L debacle, and the Iran/Contra October Surprise actions of the Bush regime were anything more than a whitewash, here's his chance to talk about it in public...

[seemslikeadream]

75. All Kerry's got to do is start singing

and I'm jumping off the fence!

[emad]

2. Addendum

OK, just because it's a leap year and because I hope to OK it with the Judge, here is a pic of Florida man David Francis Bieber (sic) who was busted in Gateshead, Tyne/Wear in the UK earlier this week for murdering a UK and attempting to kill the cop's two partners:



The name is fictitious. His parents are two IRA thugs living in the UK and are called Henry Lieberman and Anne Berkovits. They are part of the BFEE and dna-related to Shrub.

All this family tree is in the BCCI evidence.

And so is the other Dallas '63 footage for which the Zapruder is a cover.

xxxxx

[blm]

51. Holy Smokes...he looks just like Jeb and his kid.

.

[RainDog]

3. so, can you recommend any good books

or articles on this subject?

...some authors worth recommending?

[Minstrel Boy]

5. Here's a good online article: "9/11: The BCCI Connection"

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html

[seemslikeadream]

8. we're on the same track this morning

A bit more

The real scandal of BCCI, however, was not simply that it was a worldwide Ponzi scheme defrauding its investors of billions - for that is the "limited", official version - but that, in the context of 9/11, it provides a glaring spotlight on the very networks most intimately connected with the corruption. BCCI, the brainchild of British intelligence, was the ideal tool by which a supra-natural network of compromised politicians and corrupt officials would play ball", fattened up with a stream of capital furnished through the fruits of drugs, arms, and terrorism.

As Oliver North had pioneered the use of the counter-terrorism office in dealing with narco-terrorists like Monzer al-Kassar (connected to the PanAm explosion over Lockerbie), would it be such a stretch to posit that the counter-terror apparatus - this time under Richard Clarke and John O'Neil - was once again being employed to "work" the corrupt networks wrought by BCCI? Can it be a mere coincidence that the arteries of the bin Laden strain of terrorism were fed not by Iran or Syria - the "traditional" sponsors of the more low-key types of terrorism in the 80's - but rather by those very countries that have long served as agents and proxies of their American-Anglo cohorts in crime: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates (i.e. the principal countries fronting for BCCI)?Could it be that the mutually corrupt global relationships wrought by BCCI persist to this day, with a bevy of compromised political officials standing ready to make their contribution to the New World Order - and perhaps scam extra pocket change on the side?

[seemslikeadream]

6. I think this is interesting

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html

Could it, then, perhaps have been nothing more than a coincidence that a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Khalid bin Mahfouz, was reported in the early 90's to own a 20% stake in BCCI - and that bin Mahouz, as reported by the Houston Chronicle on June 4, 1992, had intimate business dealings with James Bath, the personal representative of bin Laden's interest in the Houston Gulf Airport after Salim met his demise in an airplane crash over Houston in 1988 ( the same year that Iran-Contra witness, and Israeli counter-terror coordinator, Amiram Nir met his own fortuitous demise by airplane over Mexico, thus denying Congress one witness who could testify to Vice-President Bush"s personal involvement in the scandal).

[Octafish]

96. BCCI ties straight through to 9-11.

BCCI IS the Bush–bin Laden Axis of Evil. If DUers can't find the books from Reply #22, here's another nice overview, w/links, from "The Catbird's Seat." Sorry, folks, the BFEE is bipartisan:

The Strange Saga of BCCI

EXCERPT...

1978

Hillary Clinton, the Arkansas governor's wife, is getting considerable business from Stephens Inc.

George W. Bush begins operations of his oil firm, Arbusto Energy. He assembles several dozen investors in a limited partnership including Dorothy Bush (a friend of BCCI figure Robert Altman), Lewis Lehrman, William Draper, and James Bath, a Houston aircraft broker who bought several planes from Air America, a CIA front. Bath's firm appears to be owned by Saudi investors. He also was a part-owner of a Houston's Main Bank, along with a couple of BCCI figures.

Stephens brokers the arrival of BCCI to this country, and steers BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi to Bert Lance.

Stephens Inc tries to sell Riady stock in the National Bank of Georgia. The Washington Post quotes a US banker suggesting that Riady is working for Suharto, who is trying to butter up Carter: "They think of this country like a 'regime' similar to their own and they just don't realize that such a ploy wouldn't work." There's no deal. Lance's bank will eventually be taken over by a BCCI front man -- Ghaith Pharaon. Pharaon later sells his bank to First American. Pharaon will be fined $37 million by the Federal Reserve Board and become a fugitive.

Abedi moves to secretly take over First American Bankshares -- later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted in the US.

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm

[RainDog]

4. Announcement of the trial in Jan. 03 Observer

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,877668,00.html

faces a giant lawsuit brought in London by BCCI's victims, who claim it is guilty of negligence amounting to 'misfeasance', or wilful misconduct. The Bank has fiercely denied the charge, and made every effort to get the legal action thrown out.

And no wonder. BCCI's creditors are claiming up to £1bn in damages. They are also breaking new ground by challenging the Bank's statutory immunity against being sued.

The Government's worries do not stop there. It will have to answer potentially embarrassing questions over what Ministers, civil servants and the regulator knew about BCCI before it crashed. The Bank's most senior officials, past and present, are expected to go into the witness box, and the High Court will also consider evidence from John Major, the former Prime Minister, as well as former Chancellors Norman Lamont, Nigel Lawson and Denis Healey.

Then there is the small matter of the role played by Britain's intelligence services, whose relationship with BCCI has long been questioned. Did MI6 use accounts at the secretive bank to pay sources and operatives around the world? Did BCCI channel Western funds to Mujahideen fighters in the Eighties - or even, as some conspiracy theorists have surmised, to Osama bin Laden?

[RainDog]

7. US Senate Report on BCCI

SENATE BCCI INVESTIGATION

the congressional report

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

every American needs to read this report.

ignorance is not bliss.

[RainDog]

9. Still Open Questions about BCCI and the US

from the congressional report-

These questions are still to be answered in the investigation of BCCI in the United States.

1. The extent of BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program. As set forth in the chapter on BCCI in foreign countries, there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear program through the BCCI Foundation in Pakistan, as well as through BCCI-Canada in the Parvez case. However, details on BCCI's involvement remain unavailable. Further investigation is needed to understand the extent to which BCCI and Pakistan were able to evade U.S. and international nuclear non-proliferation regimes to acquire nuclear technologies.

2. BCCI's manipulation of commodities and securities markets in Europe and Canada. The Subcommittee has received information that remains not fully substantiated that BCCI defrauded investors, as well as some major U.S. and European financial firms, through manipulating commodities and securities markets, especially in Canada, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. This alleged fraud requires further investigation in those countries.

3. BCCI's activities in India, including its relationship with the business empire of the Hinduja family. The Subcommittee has not had access to BCCI records regarding India. The substantial lending by BCCI to the Indian industrialist family, the Hindujas, reported in press accounts, deserves further scrutiny, as do the press reports concerning alleged kick-backs and bribes to Indian officials.

4. BCCI's relationships with convicted Iraqi arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, Syrian drug trafficker, terrorist, and arms trafficker Monzer Al-Kassar, and other major arms dealers. Sarkenalian was a principal seller of arms to Iraq. Monzer Al- Kassar has been implicated in terrorist bombings in connection with terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Other arms dealers, including some who provided machine guns and trained Medellin cartel death squads, also used BCCI. Tracing their assets through the bank would likely lead to important information concerning international terrorist and arms trafficker networks.

5. The use of BCCI by central figures in arms sales to Iran during the 1980's. The late Cyrus Hashemi, a key figure in allegations concerning an alleged deal involving the return of U.S. hostages from Iran in 1980, banked at BCCI London. His records have been withheld from disclosure to the Subcommittee by a British judge. Their release might aid in reaching judgments concerning Hashemi's activities in 1980, with the CIA under President Carter and allegedly with William Casey.

6. BCCI's activities with the Central Bank of Syria and with the Foreign Trade Mission of the Soviet Union in London. BCCI was used by both the Syrian and Soviet governments in the period in which each was involved in supporting activities hostile to the United States. Obtaining the records of those financial transactions would be critical to understanding what the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, Chernenko, and Andropov was doing in the West; and might document the nature and extent of Syria's support for international terrorism.

7. BCCI's involvement with foreign intelligence agencies. A British source has told the Bank of England and British
investigators that BCCI was used by numerous foreign intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom. The British intelligence service, the MI-5, has sealed documents from BCCI's records in the UK which could shed light on this allegation.

8. The financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including
the possibility that BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States. The Subcommittee found numerous connections among Keating and BCCI-related persons and entities, such as BCCI director Alfred Hartman; CenTrust chief David Paul and CenTrust itself; Capcom front-man Lawrence Romrell; BCCI shipping affiliate, the Gokal group and the Gokal family; and possibly Ghaith Pharaon. The ties between BCCI and Keating's financial empire require further investigation.

9. BCCI's financing of commodities and other business dealings of international criminal financier Marc Rich. Marc Rich
remains the most important figure in the international commodities markets, and remains a fugitive from the United States following his indictment on securities fraud. BCCI lending to Rich in the 1980's amounted to tens of millions of dollars. Moreover, Rich's commodities firms were used by BCCI in connection with BCCI's involving in U.S. guarantee programs through the Department of Agriculture. The nature and extent of Rich's relationship with BCCI requires further investigation.

10. The nature, extent and meaning of the ownership of shares of other U.S. financial institutions by Middle Eastern political
figures. Political figures and members of the ruling family of various Middle Eastern countries have very substantial investments in the United States, in some cases, owning substantial shares of major U.S. banks. Given BCCI's routine use of nominees from the Middle East, and the pervasive practice of using nominees within the Middle East, further investigation may be warranted of Middle Eastern ownership of domestic U.S. financial institutions.

11. The nature, extent, and meaning of real estate and financial investments in the United States by major shareholders of BCCI. BCCI's shareholders and front-men have made substantial investments in real estate throughout the United States, owning major office buildings in such key cities as New York and Washington, D.C. Given BCCI's pervasiveness criminality, and the role of these shareholders and front-men in the BCCI affair, a complete review of their holdings in the United States is warranted.

12. BCCI's collusion in Savings & Loan fraud in the U.S. The Subcommittee found ties between BCCI and two failed Savings and Loan institutions, CenTrust, which BCCI came to have a controlling interest in, and Caprock Savings and Loan in Texas, and as noted above, the involvement of BCCI figures with Charles Keating and his business empire. In each case, BCCI's involvement cost the U. S. taxpayers money. A comprehensive review of BCCI's account holders in the U.S. and globally might well reveal additional such cases. In addition, the issue of whether David Paul and CenTrust's political relationships were used by Paul on behalf of BCCI merits further investigation.

13. The sale of BCCI affiliate Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP) in Geneva, to the Cukorova Group of Turkey, which owned an entity involved in the BNL Iraqi arms sales, among others. Given BNL's links to BCCI, and Cukorova Groups' involvement through its subsidiary, Entrade, with BNL in the sales to Iraq, the swift sale of BCP to Cukorova just weeks after BCCI's closure -- prior to due diligence being conducted -- raises questions as to whether a prior relationship existed between BCCI and Cukorova, and Cukorova's intentions in making the purchase. Within the past year, Cukorova also applied to purchase a New York bank. Cukorova's actions pertaining to BCP require further investigation in Switzerland by Swiss authorities, and by the Federal Reserve New York.

14. BCCI's role in China. As noted in the chapter on BCCI's activities in foreign countries, BCCI had extensive activity in China, and the Chinese government allegedly lost $500 million when BCCI closed, mostly from government accounts. While there have been allegations that bribes and pay-offs were involved, these allegations require further investigation and detail to determine what actually happened, and who was involved.

15. The relationship between Capcom and BCCI, between Capcom and the intelligence community, and between Capcom's shareholders and U.S. telecommunications industry figures. The Subcommittee was able to interview people and review documents concerning Capcom that no other investigators had to date interviewed or reviewed. Much more needs to be done to understand what Capcom was doing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Oman, and the Middle East, including whether the firm was, as has been alleged but not proven, used by the intelligence community to move funds for intelligence operations; and whether any person involved with Capcom was seeking secretly to acquire interests in the U.S. telecommunications industry.

16. The relationship of important BCCI figures and important intelligence figures to the collapse of the Hong Kong Deposit and Guaranty Bank and Tetra Finance (HK) in 1983. The circumstances surrounding the collpase of these two Hong Kong banks; the Hong Kong banks' practices of using nominees, front-companies, and back-to-back financial transactions; the Hong Banks' directors having included several important BCCI figures, including Ghanim Al Mazrui, and a close associate of then CIA director William Casey; all raise the question of whether there was a relationship between these two institutions and BCCI-Hong Kong, and whether the two Hong Kong institutions were used for domestic or foreign intelligence operations.

17. BCCI's activities in Atlanta and its acquisition of the National Bank of Georgia through First American. Although the Justice Department indictments of Clark Clifford and Robert Altman cover portions of how BCCI acquired National Bank of Georgia, other important allegations regarding the possible involvement of political figures in Georgia in BCCI's activities there remain outside the indictment. These allegations, as well as the underlying facts regarding BCCI's activities in Georgia, require further investigation.

18. The relationship between BCCI and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. BCCI and the Atlanta Branch of BNL had an extensive relationship in the United States, with the Atlanta Branch of BNL having a substantial number of accounts in BCCI's Miami offices. BNL was, according to federal indictments, a significant financial conduit for weapons to Iraq. BCCI also made loans to Iraq, although of a substantially smaller nature. Given the criminality of both institutions, and their interlocking activities, further investigation of the relationship could produce further understanding of Saddam Hussein's international network for acquiring weapons, and how Iraq evaded governmental restrictions on such weapons acquisitions.

19. The alleged relationship between the late CIA director William Casey and BCCI. As set forth in the chapter on intelligence, numerous trails lead from BCCI to Casey, and from Casey to BCCI, and the investigation has been unable to follow any of them to the end to determine whether there was indeed a relationship, and if there was, its nature and extent. If any such relationship existed, it could have a significant impact on the findings and conclusions concerning the CIA and BCCI's role in U.S. foreign policy and intelligence operations during the Casey era. The investigation's work detailing the ties of BCCI to the intelligence community generally also remains far from complete, and much about these ties remains obscure and in need of further investigation.

20. Money laundering by other major international banks. Numerous BCCI officials told the Subcommittee that BCCI's money laundering was no different from activities they observed at other international banks, and provided the names of a number of prominent U.S. and European banks which they alleged engaged in money laundering. There is no question that BCCI's laundering of drug money, while pervading the institution, constituted a small component of the total money laundering taking place in international banking. Further investigation to determine which international banks are soliciting and handling drug money should be undertaken.

from: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm

[blm]

10. And THIS is why BushInc. needed Kerry defeated in the primaries.

Because BCCI was scheduled to heat up again and Kerry would have TOO much media focus in a general election.

BushInc. thanks all who are working to assure their needs are met.

[RainDog]

14. Tell Kerry to put up or shut up

that's how I see it. blm, he has a public forum RIGHT NOW. he's campaigning every day, right?

There is nothing to stop him from taking on Bush right now.

He doesn't have to attack a dem in order to take on Bush, he can simply tell the truth and back it up with documents.

So, if Kerry is our savior, then let him turn Bush bullshit into the hard truth.

[blm]

17. He knows the media is all about process right now, RainDog.

Js going to heat up again by spring and tto say put up or shut up now is kneejerk and unrealistic.

You know darn well that not even half those who will be voting in the primary even KNOW about BCCI and couldn't understand how it connects to 9-11. The media will NEVER let Kerry have the amount of time or focus it would require to educate and re-educate the electorate.\

I am surprised that you would even consider telling him to shut up as an option. That's unhelpful and you should reconsider the heat and seek greater light.

[RainDog]

21. I've heard him mention the BCCI investigation

when he's given speeches..but as a part of his resume.

All I'm saying is that if Kerry has information, this is certainly a time to start educating the public, since it's the campaign primary, and if he wants to win, he needs to make himself more highly visible and highlight the things which separate him from Bush.

But to say that Kerry would only be able to do this if he won the nomination seems to deny where we are in the here and now.

Any person who wants to lead the dem ticket needs to really and truly lead by telling some truth and making enough noise to get some headlines.

what's so strange about that? Isn't that what this whole mess is about?

If he expects the press to get any easier to deal with, then he's got a big surprising coming. surely, when he was considered a front runner and his haircut cost was the big media question...

don't you think it makes more sense for a candidate to create the issues which are discussed in relation to his candidacy?

If he goes on tv and talks about these things, he will surely get the attention of lots of dems.

Let him lead if he wants to.

[blm]

24. The trial hasn't even gotten ANY play in the US press.

It won't until he heats up which will be past the early primaries.

I'm sorry it's like that and the press is so in the tank with BushInc. but that is a reality that ALL of us have to deal with. Kerry will not be GIVEN the adequate coverage to connect all the BCCI dealings. He doesn't provide the "emtertainment factor" for the beasts looking to be fed right now.

Maybe that is the fault of the beasts within our own party who want Kerry drowned out for their own personal political gain.

[cthrumatrix]

11. So when and how will this affect our "shrub"...?

any guesstimates...will a major "event" need to accour to prevent any of this from reaching the public..?

[0007]

47. Read the provided links closely and slowly, maybe then you'll be able to

tell us. An excellent post is right below this one!

[seemslikeadream]

12. The 'Conspiracy' Art of Mark Lombardi

is really fascinating.

Nov.1, 2003 -- A few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark Lombardi, an artist who had committed suicide the year before. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper, Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and international terrorism.

In other drawings, Lombardi explored subjects ranging from the collapse of the Vatican bank to the Iran-Contra scandal.
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1487185.html

[Octafish]

95. Lombardi was another Victim of the BFEE.

The guy not only knew too much, he diagrammed the Octopus.



George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979-90, 5th Version, 1999

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html

[rman]

13. it'll be interesting to see how they're going to control the damage

I mean, there's no guarantee this is going to be the big breaktrough is there?

[blm]

18. They are already controlling the damage with the Dem primary.

They are making sure the heat gets the attention and not the true light that can further connect their complicity.

[Misterpilot]

15. Princess Diana and the Royal Connection

It is clear from recent evidence that the Royals were inextricably tied to this whole mess and Diana being the only one of any character, was ready to step forward. Interesting she met a grisly fate in a tunnel in France before this could happen. From what I hear, there is a Chinese and North Korean tie to this whole thing through drug profits out of Afghanistan, but that is hearsay and I will leave it to you to do your own research.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

79. hmm, the British royal family involved in drug-dealing BCCI?

Sounds like that nutcase Larouche! :evilgrin: Too bad it's true! (Interesting, the Saudi Royal family involved in BCCI, and our own wanna-be royalty the Bushes right here in America.) Curiouser and curiouser. What happened to that Gary Webb guy anyway?

[RainDog]

16. BCCI figures and The October Surprise

Khashoggi/October Surprise

http://www.ncf.ca/coat/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/1980_iran_usa.htm


Gary Sick details the 1980 "coup" October Surprise.  Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran during the hostage crisis.  His book is based on his years on Carter's and Reagan's National Security Council staffs, three years of research and hundreds of interviews. 

      Republicans began secret dealings with Iran early in 1980 when Reagan's future CIA director, William Casey, initiated stealth contact with Iranian intermediaries.  The Reagan-Bush campaign feared that President Carter would make a deal to have the hostages released just before the election.  According to Sick's sources, Bill Casey met with high-level Iranians before the election and worked out an agreement to delay the hostage's release until after the election.

      The Republican deal involved funnelling weapons to Iran, and tires for their U.S.-built fighter planes.  The Iranians released the hostages "minutes after Reagan took the oath of office."  Sick adds that almost immediately after Reagan took office, the flow of arms to Iran greatly increased. 

      Gary Sick writes, "to the extent that these people may have attempted to thwart the legitimate policies of the U.S. government or to manipulate the electoral process, they were engaged in nothing less than a political coup." Republicans did it before - during Watergate - and they have done it since, with the Clinton impeachment.  Some of the players remain the same from one attempted coup to another.  For example, Clinton's nemesis Lucianne Goldberg spied on McGovern for the Nixon campaign.  Goldberg then resurfaced to try to bring Clinton down during the impeachment-via-sex scandal coup attempt. 
---

also -- "Bush: Hostage Negotiator"

U.S. Navy pilot Captain Gunther Russbacher, who worked with Naval Intelligence and the CIA, says that on Oct. 19, 1980 (three weeks before the election) he flew U.S. officials to Paris to arrange the "October Surprise." On board, says Russbacher, were George Bush, William Casey, Robert Gates (Bush's future CIA Director) and Donald Gregg (whose CIA work began when Bush was director). They met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Ayatollah's second in command and Adnan Khashoggi, a powerful Saudi Arabian arms dealer. Arrangements were apparently made to give Iran $40 million as a down-payment to delay release of the hostages


...and just to connect a few dots...

Khashoggi and BCCI are linked, Ghaith Pharon (partner of Bush buddy and former national guard boy, James Bath) and bin Laden are connected (all via BCCI)...

Was it Feith who was called out by the CIA for contacting Khashoggi again in the fall before the Iraq invasion? The CIA said the guy was a discredited source...but what sort of info did he provide for Team B to build a case for an illegal invasion?

Maybe I'm wrong, but with this, the investigation of Cheney for bribery in France, the CIA agent outing from someone in the White House administration...

feels like a great big storm of s%&t is about to hit the Bush fans.

If the American media does not report these stories...well, what does that tell you about a free press, or democracy in this country?

[bobthedrummer]

20. The Saudis, Regan/Bush/Thatcher and BCCI

It is a complex thing but thanks to the Internet and people in this thread the facts, names and dates of what this administration would prefer remain submerged keep rising to the surface.

http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.htm

[seemslikeadream]

25. GOLD!

As we look back we should have known gold was being accumulated by the elitists. Bush, Mulrooney and Margaret Thatcher's husband, Dennis, are on Barrick's board. They wouldn't have been on there unless something big was in the making. Barrick is very close with Hollinger and Conrad Black. Both Monk of Barrick and Black are very close with Britain's Royal Family. Over the past five years central banks have been selling 500 to 1,000 tons of gold a year, which was purchased by elitist's and their institutions. Barrick received first right of refusal to mine Bre-X through the good offices of their puppet Suharto. Before it was discovered to be a hoax it was supposed to be the largest gold mine in the world. After the debacle gold prices headed lower. Barrick, et al had to know down the line that gold prices headed higher eventually. The sales previously at bargain basement prices continued to deliberately keep gold prices depressed and in a last effort to place more gold, that belonged to British citizens, in the hands of these elitists they drove prices even lower. All this when all central banks knew of the effort to stop official sales and leasing at least 4 to 6 months ago. Knowing this, how could or why would the Bank of England be selling their gold? It has to be a give away. We think now that there will be an effort at these still low prices by the elitists to purchase as much gold as possible to create a corner on the market. This is not fantasy, but a very real possibility. If we are right prices over $1,000 an ounce won't be far fetched. This move could also be signaling the collapse of the financial system and all the dangers it entails.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_99/chapman101999.html

George Bush Sr. ties to Barrick

Khashoggi started the Canadian company and in his last days in office George Bush Sr. citing an 1870's mining law gave Barrick 10 billion in gold mining rights on U.S. public land for 10,000 dollars. Bush then joined Barrick as a highly-paid "international consultant" brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior's presidential run. And in another quid for the pro quo, last year Junior dutifully approved Barrick's controversial acquisition of a major rival.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html

[Minstrel Boy]

26. "Poppy Strikes Gold"

Excerpt from Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy":

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/07/09_gold.html

Barrick is a bloody, wicked firm.

[cthrumatrix]

27. does this imply that "the powers that be" are hoarding gold vs the fiat $?

[Minstrel Boy]

28. it's further corroboration that what's good for them

is NOT what's good for most Americans, and certainly not for the rest of us.

They are, in effect, stateless. Their fortunes are not tied to the fate of a nation. And in fact, their fortunes may rise as the US economy enters steep decline.

[seemslikeadream]

30. Oh yes bloody, bloody wicked firm

And who else to represent Barrick, Burson-Marsteller.

Burson-Marsteller is one of the largest public relations agencies in the world and also the most reviled due to its mercenary attitude in choosing clients and contracts, and its frequent run ins with activists for environmental and other progressive causes. When helping its industry clients to escape environmental legislation or sprucing up the image of some of the most repressive governments on Earth, B-M brings to bear state of the art techniques in manipulating the mass media, legislators and public opinion.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/burson/burson1.htm

Dirty hands - a few of Burson-Marsteller's less public clients

Regimes

Argentina's fascist junta
Indonesian Government
El Salvadorian Government
Nigerian Government
Saudi Arabia - was hired on Sept 14 to promote Saudi interest in the US following the terrorist attacks
Mexican Government to promote NAFTA
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu
South Korea

Corporate

Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster, which killed thousands
Babcock & Wilcox for Three Mile Island nuclear accident
Exxon following the Exxon Valdez oil spill
EUROPABIO a body representing the biotechnology industry

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/magazine/corpwatch/burson.htm

And one other famous client of Burson
INC Seeks Enhanced Credibility
Burson-Marsteller is working to enhance the credibility of the Iraqi National Congress as it seeks to establish itself as a legitimate force in postinvasion Iraq," writes the Holmes Report, a PR trade publication. B-M has been working with the Congress, led by highprofile Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, since 1999, under a state department contract...
http://www.guerrillanews.com/media/doc1876.html

[Minstrel Boy]

19. BCCI is of tremendous importance to understanding the deep nexus of

US intelligence, its "terrorist" proxies and organized crime. The arms dealing, the drug running, the money laundering: they're all in it together.

[bobthedrummer]

34. The bonds were forged in WWII between the OSS and the Mafia

this involved Lucky Luiciano and labor peace at the docks in the US and also in liberated Sicily. Of course organized crime has always been free market exponents of base commodity unrestricted monopolistic
trade and ardent anti-communists, like the Nazis brought into US national security during Operation PAPERCLIP and other US Nazi recruitments to battle godless communism.

We haven't been the same since IMO and fascism is here in the form of the traitorous neo-conservatives that, hopefully, will be on trial before US someday.

These folks sure belong to a lot of secret societies too, no wonder they're undemocratic at heart and evil too. W is probably kept on drugs or something by his handlers, Cheney makes appearences at small DoD or energy contractor's with longtime GOP ties, many extreme RW audiences for him there.

It has happened here IMHO militaristic fascism during peak oil epoch.
They are one and the same-combined elements of intelligence, military and organized crime that first operated together during WWII part of the conceptual structural framework of the BFEE and I didn't mention organized religion either, another corrupted player of realpolitik.

[Octafish]

52. WallStreetNAZIMafiaBigOilMIComplexMcMedia.gov = BFEE

The Bush Organized Crime Family is a player in each of these circles. Odd how one name is fertilized by pure manure and yet comes up smelling like a rose.

You all said it. These monsters are nothing more than gangsters!

EDIT: Oops! It's not dot com.

[RainDog]

22. books of note

Books of note

A Full Service Bank: How BCCI Stole Billions Around the World
by James Ring Adams, Douglas Frantz (Contributor), Jane Chelius (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671729128/qid=1043078199/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-0326214-5431272


False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire
by Peter Truell, Larry Gurwin (Contributor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395623391/qid=1043078199/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books

The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI
by Jonathan Beaty, S. C. Gwynne (Contributor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679413847/qid=1043078199/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books

Dirty Money: BCCI: The Inside Story of the World's Sleaziest Bank
by Mark Potts, Nicholas Kochan, Robert Whittington (Contributor), Nick Kochan (Contributor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0915765993/qid=1043078199/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books

Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI (The Reference Shelf, Vol 65, No. 3)
by Robert Emmet Long (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0824208420/qid=1043078199/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books

The BCCI affair : hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Second Congress, first session
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0160372550/qid=1043078199/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books


Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) investigation : hearing before the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, first session
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0160376653/qid=1043078199/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/002-0326214-5431272?v=glance&s=books

[Aries]

46. The cast remains the same...Robert Mueller and BCCI

(recounting an appearance on ABC's "Nightline" including Mueller, Kerry, and the author of The Outlaw Bank)

From "The Outlaw Bank", pp.119-121, by Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Random House, 1993:

"...Kerry and Mueller duelled politely over whether the plea bargain with BCCI in the Tampa money-laundering case was a giveaway. Mueller insisted that the Justice Department had won a major victory. He also disputed any charges that his department had not proceeded vigorously with further investigations, and he ignored Senator Kerry's attempt to bring up the subject of the missing tape of Blum's interviews with the former BCCI bankers who talked about political payoffs and BCCI's secret ownership of First American. When Koppel tried to point out that the assistant attorney general had not answered the Senator's question about the missing tapes, Mueller ignored him too and bragged that BCCI's offices in Florida had been shut down as a result of information the Justice Department provided the Florida banking regulators.

Kerry was beginning to sputter, and Beaty, outraged enough at Mueller's deceptive tactics to forget that he was on national television, jumped in. "But Mr. Mueller--I'm sorry, but the senator is quite accurate. You may have provided the reason for shutting down the bank by convicting it of money laundering, but then a very high-level person in your own department turned around and asked the State of Florida to keep this bank open, despite the fact that your own prosecutors had testified that drug-money laundering was a policy of the bank and that it wasn't a matter of employees taking some kind of independent action. When you plea-bargained out, you let the bank go and took the low-level employees, which is kind of in reverse..."

...Koppel <...> broke it up and turned to Time's charges that U.S. intelligence agencies employed BCCI as a means of funding covert operations and asked if that might have had something to do with the Justice Department's limited response to evidence. "That is absolutely incorrect...there is just no truth to the allegation and unsupported allegation that the intelligence community is in any way trying to shape or stop this investigation.," Mueller stated...

..."Mr. Mueller," Beaty cut back in, "we haven't made the accusation that this has been shaped by the intelligence community. All we have tried to do is point out the stunning lack of curiousity and aggression on the part of the Justice Department."....

[blm]

59. And THIS is why Mueller is head of the FBI today.

They KNEW this was going to come up again.

Damn the media for distracting this nation.

[Widgetsfriend]

23. IMPORTANT link from DU...

on this subject. Go there and read.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=11956&forum=DCForumID61

It's a good weekend to catch up if you don't know about the BFEE crime family and the far reaching nature of their crimes. Absolutely everything becomes very clear once you understand. Read as many of the links at that DU post as you can. THEN, let's all meet back here another day and hash this out again. Every time this comes up, I learn something new.

[Octafish]

54. Thanks, Widgetsfriend! Those were the days...Here's some mo' DU LINKS!

Here're a few more links o' relevance, each filled with loads o' links...

George W Bush connection to the BCCI scandal?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=157573


Kissinger & BCCI spells BUSH & 9-11

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=377323


Guess who ties ENRON to BCCI?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7548&forum=DCForumID70&archive=


BCCI redux? bank failure in CA

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=35668&forum=DCForumID60&archive=


BTW: You know what happened to (cough) Oblomov?

[Minstrel Boy]

62. great links there, octafish, thanks!

It still surprises me, though I know it shouldn't, how often the same names crop up when we talk of the high crimes of America's shadow history. And you kick over the rock of BCCI, and there they all are. Amazing.

It's true for all crimes: follow the money. Those who sneer at talk of the "Octopus" or the BFEE should do the same, and there they'll find BCCI. For God's sake, we're not making this stuff up - it's not all in our heads. Though we all might wish it were.

[Octafish]

64. Anytime, Brother Minstrel Boy! BTW: Didja hear 'bout Dr. Khashoggi?

...Seems he ties the house of Saud and bin Laden helped his son, Adnan, do "well" with the Bushes. A footnote from Linda Minor:

FOLLOW THE YELLOW
BRICK ROAD:
FROM HARVARD TO ENRON

4)   http://www.corpwatch.org/bulletins/PBD.jsp?articleid=420 .   According to Robert Lacey's book, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud, Mohammed bin Laden was a patient of Khashoggi's father, a prominent Iranian physician. The young Khashoggi became a middleman for the bin Laden conglomerate in the late 1950s, getting his start by negotiating a big truck sale that earned the Iranian $25,000.  http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1173.  "Of all the bin Ladens, it was Saleem who had the close relationship to the Bushes. The connection was a Houston wheeler-dealer named James Bath, who haunted the darker back corridors of the Bush-Reagan years, amid the fragrance of scandals ranging from Iran/contra to BCCI to the Silverado Savings and Loan debacle to Iranian weapons mogul Adnan Khashoggi. ... In the mid-1970s, Bath became vice-president of Atlantic Aviation, one of the world's top business-aircraft sales companies. At the time, Atlantic was owned by Edward DuPont, of the DuPont chemical empire. DuPont's brother, Richard, served on the board of Atlantic. According to Gerard Colby's excellent book, DuPont Dynasty, Richard's own company, Summit Aviation, was a longtime CIA contractor. ...Through the bin Ladens, Bath was also introduced to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, the CEO of the National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia's biggest bank. The NC bank was a prime lender for Khashoggi. In 1985, at a time when the arms dealer was moving weapons to Afghanistan, Iran and the contras, NCB loaned Khashoggi $35 million. Bath would team with Khalid, and former Texas governor John Connally, in buying the Main Bank in Houston, an institution that helped finance the campaigns of many Texas politicians through the late 1970s and 1980s. Khalid's banking empire would eventually extend to a stake in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the institution that catered to crooks and spooks. Among other criminal enterprises, BCCI served as Khashoggi's chief bank for his arms deals with Iran, a depository for Oliver North's covert action funds and the conduit for CIA money bound for the Muj in Afghanistan. Khalid was indicted for fraud in 1992....The bin Laden family has also invested at least $2 million in the Carlyle Group's Partner's II Fund, which specializes in the acquisition of aerospace companies. "

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lm4,30,02,harvardtoenronpt4.htm

[RainDog]

66. Widget'sfriend! I'm so glad you have that link.

I transferred it and was trying to sort it out and my computer crashed and I lost most all of it.

here's a new article from the Guardian-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1115267,00.html
BCCI returns to haunt Bank of England
A court case looking at events in the 1980s could set a precedent for suing regulators
Simon Bowers
Saturday January 3, 2004
The Guardian
...The central allegation facing the Bank (of England) is that it deliberately perpetuated the charade of BCCI as an overseas bank, allowing it to operate outside Bank of England full regulatory control throughout the 1980s.
...As early as February 1979 Frank Hall, a senior lawyer at the Bank, wrote an internal memo to colleagues concerning the imminent Banking Act. In it he said: "I should be grateful if you could let me know whether ... there are any companies which are not registered in the UK but which have their principal place of business or place of central management or control here ... but which we should not want to recognise."

Copies of the memo, which was circulated among senior department officials, show several hand-written annotations. "I can't think of any, can you?" says one, to which another official replies: "No."

A string of other internal memos make clear the Bank's state of panic. In 1982 BCCI was described as "on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic!".

The following year yet another Bank analyst wrote a report on BCCI entitled "Why action is now urgently required". It suggested the Bank was left with "two basic choices": to close BCCI down or to insist it be redesignated a UK bank, under full Bank of England supervision.

[Stephanie]

29. This scandal is so complex. I would love a sort of summary.

Reading through all of the links is intriguing but daunting. If anyone could summarize the story so far it would be very helpful.

[cthrumatrix]

31. me too...and the implications of this must be incredible...thus no media

THIS would be the trial of the century ...instead or LIBERAL media feeds us MJ.

Let's see "fair and balanced" Fox tackle this one.

[blm]

38. That's what some of us have been saying for years.

It's said that Clinton couldn't pursue BCCI because the revelations could have collapsed the world economy just as he was working to fix the US's financial state.

This is also the BIGGEST reason the BFEE needed Kerry to be struck fown in the primary so this issue would NOT get play in the general election. If the widespread electorate ever focused on Kerry and became familiar with BCCI again, the post 9-11 sensibilities would cast the scandal as BEYOND HUGE.

[cthrumatrix]

39. IF Kerry dicussed this...and he did bring down these thugs...he would have

alot more votes...once people knew. Staying in the dark gets him less respect ...but maybe it is "safer for him".

Maybe Paula Zahn and he can have a one hour discussion on this topic and they can accept callers to see how they feel?

[blm]

44. Zahn is one of the whores who will never let it happen.

She's pure BFEE sympathizer.

This issue is DIFFICULT to grasp, but post 9-11 makes it easier for people to grasp.

FOCUS their attention on one person explaining it and we'll have BushInc. nailed.

Time and focus, which is something you'll NEVER get in a soundbite primary. The media has EVERY reason to keep Dean propped up and ignore Kerry and this issue.

[cthrumatrix]

45. I was being sarcastic...CNN anchors would never go here....

[blm]

53. sorry...my mistake...

I take BCCI info very seriously and sometimes miss the sarcasm.

[RainDog]

32. Start with the Senate Report

that's post #7.

it breaks the subject down into chapters, and provides an overview at the beginning.

I do not understand all of the implications of this, and continue to read to try to learn more.

[RainDog]

33. here's an exerpt from the "executive summary" portion

...which mentions a bit about the US and the Bank of England and BCCI...

also of note-- the executive summary talks at length about obstruction of the justice dept in investigating BCCI before 1991.

and in fact, justice dept. people went to work for BCCI to help them try to cover up their illegal activities.


5. NEW YORK DISTRICT ATTORNEY MORGENTHAU NOT ONLY BROKE THE CASE ON BCCI, BUT INDIRECTLY BROUGHT ABOUT BCCI'S GLOBAL CLOSURE.

Acting on information provided him by the Subcommittee, New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau began an investigation in 1989 of BCCI which materially contributed to the chain of events that resulted in BCCI's closure.

Questions asked by the District Attorney intensified the review of BCCI's activities by its auditors, Price Waterhouse, inEngland, and gave life to a moribund Federal Reserve investigation of BCCI's secret ownership of First American.

The District Attorney's criminal investigation was critical to stopping an intended reorganization of BCCI worked out through an agreement among the Bank of England, the government of Abu Dhabi, BCCI's auditors, Price Waterhouse, and BCCI itself, in which the nature and extent of BCCI's criminality would be suppressed, while Abu Dhabi would commit its financial resources to keep the bank going during a restructuring. By the late spring of 1991, the key obstacle to a successful restructuring of BCCI bankrolled up Abu Dhabi was the possibility that the District Attorney of New York would indict. Such an indictment would have inevitably caused a swift and thoroughly justified an international run on BCCI by depositors all over the world. Instead, it was a substantial factor in the decision of the Bank of England to take the information it had received from Price Waterhouse and rely on it to close BCCI.

[RainDog]

35. More on The Bank of England and BCCI

...which pertains to the current lawsuit in Great Britain, since it is the bank of England which is being sued.

...but it seems I read a while back that one of the groups sueing was the same govt, Abu Dahbi, which was involved in the fraud??

9. THE BANK OF ENGLAND'S REGULATION OF BCCI WAS WHOLLY INADEQUATE TO PROTECT BCCI'S DEPOSITORS AND CREDITORS, AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND WITHHELD INFORMATION ABOUT BCCI'S FRAUDS FROM PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE FOR FIFTEEN MONTHS BEFORE CLOSING THE BANK.

The Bank of England had deep concerns about BCCI from the late 1970s on, and undertook several steps to slow BCCI's expansion in the United Kingdom.

In 1988 and 1989, the Bank of England learned of BCCI's involvement in the financing of terrorism and in drug money laundering, and undertook additional, but limited supervision of BCCI in response to receiving this information.

In the spring of 1990, Price Waterhouse advised the Bank of England that there were substantial loan losses at BCCI, numerous poor banking practices, and evidence of fraud, which together had created a massive hole in BCCI's books. The Bank of England's response to the information was not to close BCCI down, but to find ways to prop up BCCI and prevent its collapse. This meant, among other things, keeping secret the very serious nature of BCCI's problems from its creditors and one million depositors.

In April, 1990, the Bank of England reached an agreement with BCCI, Abu Dhabi, and Price Waterhouse to keep BCCI from collapsing. Under the agreement, Abu Dhabi agreed to guarantee BCCI's losses and Price Waterhouse agreed to certify BCCI's books. As a consequence, innocent depositors and creditors who did business with BCCI following that date were deceived into believing that BCCI's financial problems were not as serious as each of these parties already knew them to be.

From April, 1990, the Bank of England relied on British bank secrecy and confidentiality laws to reduce the risk of BCCI's collapse if word of its improprieties leaked out. As a consequence, innocent depositors and creditors who did business with BCCI following that date were denied vital information, in the possession of the regulators, auditors, officers, and shareholders of BCCI, that could have protected them against their losses.

In order to prevent risk to its restructuring plan for BCCI and a possible run on BCCI, the Bank of England withheld important information from the Federal Reserve in the spring of 1990 about the size and scope of BCCI's lending on CCAH/First American shares, despite the Federal Reserve's requests for such information. This action by the Bank of England delayed the opening of a full investigation by the Federal Reserve for approximately eight months.

Despite its knowledge of some of BCCI's past frauds, and its own understanding that consolidation into a single entity isessential for regulating a bank, in late 1990 and early 1991 the Bank of England tentatively agreed with BCCI and its Abu Dhabi owners to permit BCCI to restructure as three "separate" institutions, based in London, Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong. This tentative decision demonstrated extraordinarily poor judgment on the part of the Bank of England. This decision was reversed abruptly when the Bank of England suddenly decided to close BCCI instead in late June, 1991.

The decision by the Bank of England in April 1990 to permit BCCI to move its headquarters, officers, and records out of British jurisdiction to Abu Dhabi has had profound negative consequences for investigations of BCCI around the world. As a result of this decision, essential records and witnesses regarding what took place were removed from the control of the British government, and placed under the control of the government of Abu Dhabi, which has to date withheld them from criminal investigators in the U.S. and U.K. This decision constituted a costly, and likely irretrievable, error on the part of the Bank of England.

[bobthedrummer]

36. BCCI was the kind of bank that did business with sex slavers, druglords,

and provided cover for black operations of all types worldwide for the worst of human enterprise.

The CIA's bank as well as old Nazis and modern day Saudi Princes.
BCCI.

[cthrumatrix]

37. Didn't shrub mention "sex slave trade" in the SOTU...? I guess he

would be all behind bring down all the criminals within the BCCI scandal?

Maybe CNN and others can start asking him about supporting the BCCI inquiry on a daily basis?

Better yet...let's see this trial every day (7x24) on MSNBC and others.

[RainDog]

40. He was saying Hi to his brother, Neil

The man who didn't think it was odd that women would show up at his hotel room door to have sex with him when he was in Thailand...

And of course, Neil is part of the huge Savings and Loan scandal, which his daddy, as president, interferred with the investigation of, and for this should be behind bars.

...only one of many reasons...

the S&L scandal was basically a scam run by the rich which resulted in the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich since...since Jr. has been president, I guess.

700 million dollars in taxpayer money. think about that.

the S&L scandal is also tied into BCCI, and far too little attention was paid to it.

[blm]

77. Ha...quite likely. I'd say I was ROTF, but, this is TOO sad

really, isn't it?

[bobthedrummer]

41. Dyn Corp comes to mind with sex slave owning employees

http://truthout.com/02.24C.DynCorp.Disgrace.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ROB108A.html

But of course Dyn Corp., like Halliburton, is a big part of Iraq plans now.
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=6328

[SpiralHawk]

43. Sex Slaves? Is that related to Neil Bush in Thailand with

underage hookers "magically" appearing in his hotel room?

Or am I getting confused with Marvin Bush. So many Bushes.

Maybe it was Noelle Bush? No, that can't be right. She's just into drugs.

You really need a program to keep the crimes matched with the right family member,

[Octafish]

55. Here's the old college try...

The way I put: BCCI was a bank funded by a man who wanted to spread Pakistan's influence around the world. As such, he was tied to Pakistani Intelligence and helped that country fund its nuclear weapons build-up. BCCI was backed by Big Oil money from the Persian Gulf monarchies. In the United States, it tainted politicians of both major parties, from Bert Lance, Clark Clifford and Jimmy Carter to Poppy Bush, Orin Hatch, and George W Bush (Dim Son). As a financial institution it was used to launder drug money, move billions for the CIA and KGB, financed terrorists of the right and left, such as Abu Nidhal and Ollie North, as well as paid the Israelis, Iraqis and Iranians for the various arms transactions instituted by the Perma-War Party. When it collapsed, the big money players had secreted their loot to numbered Swiss bank accounts. The little depositors were left holding the bag, as usual in Bush Organized Crime Family Ops.

Going back to the language that's most familiar to scholars ... plagiarism. From one of the financial reporter's perspectives:

Background:
Investigating BCCI and Savings and Loan Fraud

EXCERPT...

Although the scandal surrounding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) is perhaps the biggest banking scandal in history, it received limited media coverage. BCCI was a Pakistani-managed, Middle East-financed international bank with branches in 70 countries. Peter Truell, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has written some of the most significant stories on BCCI, described the essence of the scandal:

It is a story about stealing very large amounts of money and using it for a multitude of illegal purposes, perverting governments, corrupting politicians, corrupting regu-lators, corrupting bank regulators.

In assessing the implications of the scandal, Truell pointed to "an erosion of trust in public institutions." Although the BCCI scandal may impose a financial burden on taxpayers, its greatest cost to the public is the loss of trust in government.


SNIP...

The BCCI story is important not just because a lot of people stole billions of dollars but because they got away with it right under the noses of the authorities and none of these watchdogs barked.... This is a story of the breakdown of our institutions.

Larry Gurwin
Senior Investigator
The Investigative Group, Inc.

http://www.annenberg.nwu.edu/pubs/news/news03.htm

[supernova]

42. I commend you all

on your incredible research efforts on the BCCI issue. :thumbsup: clapping wildly.

I'm glad this MFker of a case is finally coming to court. It's going to ba a nasty bloodletting. My ex almost accepted a job with them right out of collge, I'm glad he didn't. One of the few things he got right. He said in the interview they started asking him about doing things he considered unethical.

I have read the BCCI threads before but it's just so huge to get my mind around. :crazy:

Someday, we ought to make a flow chart of this stuff.

[Must_B_Free]

48. "ties to" is very weak

Don't get me wrong, i'm not knocking the research in that regard, but hope to strengthen the quality of the product through onstructive criticism.

What we have here is seen in a better light is plausible explanation threory.

All of these things - religious philosophy, conspiracy theory, crime solving, theorem to theory in math, all disciplines have some edge of fring thinking that required building of suppositions - theoretical models for examination to test their meddle. In the area of politics, one has an extremely negative association attached to it as to automatically discredit it.

To look at this from another perspective I like to look at patterns of nature and lifecycle. we know from hostory that the world is led by pinnacle topping powers. Is it pausible that as the structure of the world changes that these players witht he most at stake would seek to hold onto those positions.

Clearly we know that their are power strugglers at the higlest levels battling for control in a "free market" of world control. The playing field is global.

Why would anyone look at recent history of Germany last century and Russia, for example and think that the US is any different that those countries and why would they not recognize the propaganda tat we are being fed daily.

This whole notion of Bush "conspiracy throry" is to the point where the whole thing has a detailed virtual model created by the minds online and from that model we are now projecting that as a context onto all news news out of the bush people - and ALL SEEMS TO FOLLOW SUIT! THEY ARE UNDENIABLY BEHAVING IN A WAY THAT FITS THE CONSPIRACY MODEL! 9-11 STONEWALLING!

At whay point does something stink enough before you can say "Yes this stinks" and, "yes, it is, in fact, shit."?

It's kind of like we, as a country have shit our pants, and the news is blaring at us telling us not to believe it, "don't worry, ignore that smell."

We're not going to permanently change our identity to shit-pants, like the extreme right wants... At some point the shit's got to go.

[Karenina]

49. It is HUGE.

And it's SO OUT THERE that when you manage to wrap your brain around even a part of it smoke comes out of your ears. :crazy: THEN you're left trying to explain what you just GOT to folks who don't even know what BCCI is!!! :silly:

[blm]

50. Yes..and how it relates to EVERYTHING else that is going on today.

That's why this Dem primary has been SO important to the BFEE.

[Octafish]

56. Players from Dallas in 1963 to Palm Beach County in 2000...

... to 9-11 in 2001 to BBV. It's no shock to see how little press this all gets. What bugs me is that so few DUers seem to care.

People: THIS IS WHY I'M FOR JOHN KERRY. HE WILL BUST THE BFEE.

[blm]

60. I think they don't UNDERSTAND it for the most part.

If they did most would agree with you. The media, Octafish. They cover for BushInc. as well as they can.

[Octafish]

65. That's the prob. The media BRAINWASH.

Just turning the darn TV on does the trick, putting many in the room into a trance. Cut in with that high-pitched hum and more are lost. Throw in enough beer commercials and we as a society are doomed.

BTW: Some research shows the brain is more active when dreaming than when watching TV.

http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id1149/pg1/

Who'da thunk it?

[Unknown Known]

57. Thanks emad for keeping us aware of the trial

And thanks to all who contribute to this. THIS is the information we must all know because without it, you have no perspective. You cannot possibly understand what is happening today.

But to know the BFEE for what they are, what they have done going back a century now, you can see they have been playing the same games for decades with the same cast of characters.

BTW, the pic of Bieber is awesome - looks like a cross between Jeb and Marvin!!

Thanks to seemslikeadream for posting about Mark Lombardi - everyone must take a look at his work. Another truth-seeker hero suicided for the glory of the BFEE. Mark continued on the work of Mae Brussels into the next stratosphere!

Thanks to RainDog for bringing up Gunther Russbacher - I have been talking about him for years, and have been met only with odd looks. He is the Ashcroft connection - it was John Ashcroft who imprisoned Russbacher in Missouri. God knows what has happened to him.

And thanks, Minstrel Boy for explaining the BFEE in three sentences which can only be understood if you read their history -

They are, in effect, stateless. Their fortunes are not tied to the fate of a nation. And in fact, their fortunes may rise as the US economy enters steep decline.

Thanks again to all here who have contributed. Every stroke of your keyboard in exposing these criminals brings the world closer to justice! I salute you all!

[blm]

58. Yes...they've been doing it for decades

and that is why they would NEVER allow Kerry to get close again to exposing them.

Just think what they would do to make sure that he was NOT the Dem nominee. We know how much they needed BCCI to stay a mystery.

[Serenity-NOW]

61. My sis was telling me about BCCI years ago

People told her she was nuts. Then came Neil Bush...

[Octafish]

63. Good on her!

You've got a most well-informed and brave sibling there, Serenity-NOW! Fewer still will put their names on the line in the fight against the Bush Organized Crime Family in public. Wish there were more like her.

BTW: A hearty welcome to DU, Serenity-NOW!

[Serenity-NOW]

68. Wish there were more like her...

...me too. Sadly it took me a long time for me to realize how exceptional she is. She took a stab at local politics in her small town and I supported her fully. Then when the council rotation called for her to be mayor they changed the rules and for the first time ever a four-year council member was denied the mayorship. The cops and businessmen were not pleased with her outspoken nature or the fact that she did her homework and she did her homework with zeal. Ultimately she left the town, and state, to find a place she's happier in- Alaska. I miss seeing her regularly. So now I'm gearing up for local politics myself and she supports, and warns, me.

[RainDog]

67. Where's JohnHorne?

He had a sad link to a 1999 story Daniel Pearl wrote for the Wall Street Journal about the former employees trying to get jobs, and they claimed they couldn't find other jobs.

Also of note: Cheri Blair was one of the lawyers defending them.

http://www.geocities.com/spyjaguar/1399.html

FROM THE ARCHIVES: March 1, 1999

Ex-BCCI Bankers Say Working At the Bank Ruined Their Careers

By DANIEL PEARL

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL LONDON

...The workers are breaking new ground in employee law in England, and possibly
beyond. The House of Lords overturned an 88-year-old legal precedent to
allow the case to go to trial, saying a business could be forced to pay
damages for breaking its implicit contract with employees to operate
honestly.

How much in damages, though, nobody knows: Even Ms. Booth has
acknowledged that it is "nebulous" to try to tally damages for the lost
income of thousands of jobs the workers may or may not have won if they
didn't have the BCCI "badge of uncertainty." The case also is an example of
why it is taking so much time and money to finally close the books on BCCI.


As of early 1998, the English liquidation, led by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, had recovered $2.8 billion, mostly through settlements
with BCCI's Middle Eastern backers. But the effort has also run up $604.5
million in costs over six years.

...Courts
will also hear a separate claim that BCCI misled workers about its financial
condition, and an appeal of the December dismissal of 130 additional
"stigma" claims from workers who had signed no-sue agreements with BCCI at
the time they were laid off.

[Karenina]

69. Back to One!

:kick:

[blm]

127. Good question, RainDog.

I always thought Pearl's death was not what it appeared. I don't think it was a coincidence that Pearl worked on BCCI and Enron stories.

[rman]

70. where are all the conspiracy debunkers now? n/t

-

[cthrumatrix]

71. excellent point ..... his would make a nice 60 Minutes show...whole hour

Now that would get ratings...lol.

[Must_B_Free]

89. Maybe ABC will debunk this finally.

and the Calvi murder - why is all this stuf making a comeback currently? Are the patriots left across the pnd going at it throuigh legalistic means to stop the totalitarian monster?

[Minstrel Boy]

72. important: "The Dark Face of International Finance"

Excellent overview here by David Guyatt. BCCI isn't the only institution where spooks, crooks and terrorists gathered to launder their money. The patterns repeat, and the players resurface:

Nugan Hand Bank, for instance:

"One of the earliest scandals was the Nugan Hand Bank affair. Michael Hand, an ex CIA operative from the Bronx joined up with Australian playboy and inheritor of a Mafia fortune, Frank Nugan, in 1973 and incorporated the Nugan Hand Bank. The bank sported an interesting and exclusive board of directors. President of the bank was Rear Admiral (ret'd) Earl Yates; former chief of the Navy's strategic planning. Legal counsel was the CIA's William Colby, and Walter McDonald, former deputy director of the spook agency was listed as a consultant. An in-house commodity trader on the bank's payroll was also a leading heroin importer, while Richard Secord, later to be implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, was said to have a business connection.

"Seven years later the bank collapsed following the discovery of Frank Nugan's body slumped in his Mercedes. Clutching a gun in one hand and sporting a hole through the head, Nugan was also holding a bible that contained an embarrassing list of names including William Colby, DCI of the CIA, and Bob Wilson, the House Armed Services Committee's ranking Republican. Others names listed had a variety of backgrounds, ranging from known narcotics traffickers, politicians and businessmen to personalities from sport and the media. Beside each name was listed amounts running into five and six numbers. Following public outrage the US Senate held an investigation into Nugan Hand's operations. Amongst other things it discovered that the bank operated a branch at Chiang Mai, Thailand, heart of Triad country. The branch was dedicated to laundering the Golden Triangle's heroin revenue. Connected to the bank's office by an interconnecting door was the DEA's local office, a premises that was also shared by the CIA."

Italy's P-2 lodge, and America's S&L "failures":

"The P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano scandal broke when Calvi was found 'suicided' on 17 June 1982. With his hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck, he had been suspended from London's Blackfriars Bridge, in what some saw as a ritual killing. Calvi was P2's banker and had been involved in embezzling massive sums of money out of his bank and into secretive offshore companies in Lichenstein and elsewhere; a number of which were linked to the Vatican Bank. P2 was responsible for a number of CIA backed political atrocities at the time, including the bombing of Bologna railway station in August 1980, where 85 innocents were slaughtered - and mischievously attributed to left-wing terrorists.

...

"The 'connections' that had been forged and which lay behind Italy's greatest yet banking debacle were to be re-enacted years later in America. By far the greatest banking rip-off of all time, the Savings & Loan scam sees the same cast of players at work. 'Something very significant happened during our country's savings-and-loan crisis, the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression. It happened quietly, secretly, without any fanfare and attention. It happened before our very eyes and we knew it not. What we missed was the massive transfer of wealth from the American taxpayer to a select group of extremely rich, powerful people.' These ominous words opened the introduction to Pete Brewton's massively researched book The Mafia CIA & George Bush - the untold story of America's greatest financial debacle. Brewton, an award-winning investigative journalist, spent years tracing the subterranean web of inter-connections that sat at the heart of this affair that looted the American tax-payer of close to $1 trillion. However, there was more to the S&L affair than these words portrayed."

Much, much more, including of course BCCI:
http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/the_money_fountain.htm

[Minstrel Boy]

84. Bush Sr, the P2 Lodge and Italian fascists

There's much talk of the Bush's Nazi links, but perhaps even more relevant today are their links to Italian fascism. It goes all the way back to Project Paperclip.

Here's a little bit of the story:

In February 2000, according to The Guardian, Bush may be called to give evidence in a terrorism trial, amid claims that the "CIA knew of a rightwing bombing campaign in Italy 30 years ago". Four neo-fascist suspects are accused of planting a bomb in Milan on December 12th 1969, killing 16 people. It is widely accepted that this bombing, and subsequent attacks (like the Bologna railway massacre in 1980), were part of a "strategy of tension" to destabilse the country and "reduce electoral support for the Communist party". One of the suspects, Carlo Digilio is alleged, like his father, to have been a CIA informant. An investigating judge, Guido Salvini said that:

American agents were responsible for promoting the strategy of tension, even though they did not intervene directly but through orgainsations whose actions could not be traced to them.
Apparently, a key issue in the trial is whether US agents were aware of preparations for the bombing and "did nothing", or worse, as the newspaper noted, "they promoted it". Thus, the court is to decide whether to call all the CIA heads from 1960 to the present, including Bush, to testify. According to Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy by Philip Willan (Constable, London, 1993), Bush is alleged to had a close relationship with Lucio Gelli, the infamous head of the P2 masonic lodge. Gelli said in an interview, in which he was careful to claim that he had only met Bush in 1981, not when he was CIA director in 1976, that he once spent a whole week with George Bush at the time of his inauguration as Vice President in 1981. Willan wonders:

"What could the two men, who had only just met, have discussed for an entire week?"

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/bush_war_criminal.htm

Okay, now about Gelli:

LICIO GELLI; Head of a 2400 member secret Masonic Lodge, P2, a neo-fascist organization, in Italy that catered to only the elite, Gelli had high connections in the Vatican, even though he was not a Catholic. P2's membership is totally secret and not even available to its Mother Lodge in England. Gelli was responsible for providing Argentina with the Exocet missile. He was a double agent for the CIA and the KGB. He assisted many former Nazi high officials in their escape from Europe to Central America. He had close ties with the Italian Mafia. Gelli was a close associate of Benito Mussolini. He was also closely affiliated with Roberto Calvi, head of the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank. Calvi was murdered. Gelli's secret lodge consisted of extremely important people, including armed forces commanders, secret service chiefs, head of Italy's financial police, 30 generals, eight admirals, newspaper editors, television and top business executives and key bankers - including Calvi. Licio Gelli and others in P2 were behind the assasination of Pope John Paul 1.

The central figure in Europe and South America that linked the CIA, Masonic Lodge, Vatican, ex-Nazis and several South American governments, the Italian government and several international banks was Licio Gelli. He, with Klaus Barbie and Heinrich Rupp, met with Ronald R. Rewald in Uruguay to arrange for the Argentine purchase of the French-made Exocet missile, used in the Falkland Island attack to kill british soldiers.

...

Gelli was well connected with the Vatican from the days of the Rat Line and he worked for American intelligence, as well. Gelli formed the P-2 Masonic Lodge-which did not follow the direction of any Grand Lodge-and it was supplied with a sum of $10 million a month by the CIA. Its membership was a Who's Who in the intelligence, military and Italian community. So prominent was Gelli's influence, that he was even a guest of honor at the 1981 inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.

...

Gelli and his P-2 lodge had staggering connections to banking, intelligence and diplomatic passports. The CIA poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Italy in the form of secret subsidies for political parties, labor unions and communications businesses. At the same time the Agency continued its relationship with far- right and violent elements as a back-up should a coup be needed to oust a possible Communist government. This covert financing was exposed by the Prime Minister of Italy in a speech to Parliament. He indicates that more than 600 people in Italy still remain on the payroll of the CIA. Licio Gelli was an ardent Nazi and a perfect asset of the CIA. As part of Reinhard Gehlen's intelligence team, he had excellent contacts. Licio was the go between for the CIA and the Vatican through his P2 Lodge.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Operation_Paperclip_file.html

[Minstrel Boy]

90. Silvio Berlusconi, member of neo-fascist P2 lodge

P2 is the common name for the Italian masonic lodge, Propaganda Due.

It became the target of considerable attention in the wake of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano (one of Milan's principal banks) and the 1982 murder of its president Roberto Calvi, quite certainly killed in London (despite a dissimulated suicide).

Calvi's connections with the Grand Master Licio Gelli became a particular focus of press and police attention, and caused the lodge (then secret) to be discovered. A list of adherents was found in Gelli's house in Arezzo, containing a thousand of names among which very important state officers, a few politicians and a number of military officers, many of them enrolled in the Italian secret services. Notably, the current Italian prime minister On. Silvio Berlusconi was in the list, but at the time he was not already in politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2

[bobthedrummer]

112. Ratlines link

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/ratlines.htm

Heirs to The Holocaust link
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ROG309A.html

Bush 9/11 complicity link
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm

The Ghost of Adolph Hitler: Nazi Influence in America
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STA310A.html

CRYSTAL NIGHT
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERcrystal.htm

All of this secret society stuff on top of everything else gets my attention as the Third Reich inner Party membership was into occult arts big time so are Republicans IMHO.

[Minstrel Boy]

113. George HW Bush, honorary member of the P2 lodge

From Barbara Honegger's book October Surprise, page 240:

"According to Informant 'Y,' who claims his source to be Licio Gelli's top associate Francesco Pazienza, George Bush himself was made an 'honorary' member of P-2 in 1976, the year that he became director of the Central Intelligence Agency.... According to 'Y,' shortly before the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Licio Gelli sent a message to former Republican National Committee advisor and alleged 'honorary' P2 member Philip Guarino assuring him that 'the Swedish tree will be felled' and to 'tell our good friend Bush.'"

Another informant "confirmed that there had been a pre-election meeting and agreement between the Reagan-Bush campaign and Iran, and that George Bush's code name for the secret Iran operation was 'White Rose.' The reader will recall that in 1973, when police uncovered the P2 control cell responsible for terrorism in Italy, they learned that its code name was 'The Rose of Twenty.' Grandmaster Gelli apparently had a fondness for the flower."

"The White Rose" was also the name of a far right Cuban exile group active during the Bay of Pigs, in which Bush is reputed to have been involved.

And it could mean nothing at all, but in 1988, on the 25th anniversary of JFK's murder, Ted Kennedy marked the occasion in Runnymede England by placing, at the foot of his brother's memorial, a "single white rose."

[RainDog]

73. Henry Kissinger- Jackson Stephens, BCCI

permission to reprint this article in its entirety has been given by the author at the bottom of the page.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/22.htm

Why Quit, Henry? Is It Acxiom?
By Jim Rarey
Deember 18, 2002

When Dr. K (Kissinger) withdrew as co-chairman of the commission to investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks after refusing to make his client list public, he bitterly asserted his consulting business represented no foreign companies or governments that would constitute a conflict of interest with his duties on the commission.

Although there is no particular reason we should believe anything Kissinger says, for purposes of this article, let’s take that assertion at face value. That would mean if there is a conflict, it must be with one or more of his domestic (U.S.) clients.

Kissinger’s two consulting firms (Kissinger & Associates and Kissinger-McLarty & Associates) advise a large number of U.S. companies. Yes, it is that McLarty, Mack McLarty who was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and is now vice-chairman of the first firm and partner in the second.

The client lists of the two firms are closely guarded. However, from time to time some information leaks out. Although Dr. K has his own share of skeletons in his closet, (e.g. his involvement in the overthrow of an elected government in Chile and the resulting thousands of deaths that have branded both Kissinger and Pinochet as war criminals), some of his domestic clients have their own scandals with which he may not want to be associated.

One that is, or has been, a Kissinger client is J.P. Morgan Chase, implicated in the Enron frauds as well as money laundering along with other New York investment banks. (But that’s only drug money and U.S. taxpayers’ dollars recycled through the Russian KGB/Mafia, not known to relate to terrorism.) Kissinger sits on the Morgan/Chase International Advisory Board.

Other examples could be cited, but in this writer’s opinion, the association Dr. K is most afraid might be made public is with the little known company Acxiom.

Hardly a household name (we will try to change that), Acxiom has been selected the lead company to provide software and pull together the network to furnish the information to DARPA’s “Information Awareness Office” (IAO) where John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy will prepare individual dossiers on every American citizen and the millions of aliens (legal and illegal) in the country.

The plan calls for the collection of information from a staggering number of sources, such as banks, credit unions, health care organizations, the IRS and Social Security agencies, the INS, the FBI, grocery chains and any number of other companies and government agencies (federal, state and local) that have records of individual transactions.

But even this association might be covered up in these days of managed news. No, what scares Kissinger the most is the control and history of Acxiom itself. The company may be more than just a client. Mack McLarty sits on its Board of Directors, which implies some kind of investment to protect.

While the name of the company means nothing to almost all Americans, perhaps a couple of the names under which it operated earlier will generate a spark of recognition. Before it morphed into Acxiom, the company was named Alltel. Still nothing? Then how about its original name, Systematics? Now memories come flooding back of the PROMIS software scandal and those associated with it.

The powerful PROMIS software was developed by Bill Hamilton’s company Inslaw. It was virtually stolen by the U.S. Treasury Department. It was then combined with software from Systematics and farmed out to the CIA for final modification (installation of a backdoor feature).

When Treasury forced Inslaw into bankruptcy (by withholding payments due Inslaw) ownership of the software wound up with a CIA cutout named the Hadron Corp. Hadron peddled the software to governments and financial institutions around the world, thus giving the CIA backdoor access to the secret information of a number of governments and banks.

But it doesn’t stop there. The person who controls Acxiom/Alltel/Systematics is Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens. Stephens, and those working with him, have been involved in myriad shady operations too numerous to cite here. We can only hit some of the highlights.

At Systematics, one of the lawyers Stephens hired to represent the company was a bright young attorney named Hillary Rodham. After she joined the Rose law firm (then Hillary Rodham Clinton), Stephens employed the firm (mainly its partners Hillary, Vince Foster and Webster Hubbell) in several of his ventures.

Stephens was a financial angel to both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He gave final impetus to Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign with a large “loan” from his Worthen bank. Stephens (along with the Harvard University endowment) rescued one of Dubya’s companies from bankruptcy with sizeable investments.

Another scandal suppressed by the “watchdogs of the press” was the cocaine smuggling aspects of the Iran/Contra affair. In return for arms smuggled to the Contras in Nicaragua, cocaine was being brought back to the U.S. and dropped off at a small airport at Mena, Arkansas. Pilot Barry Seal, a CIA asset and drug runner, was also dropping bales of cash in Mena. The drug money was laundered (among other channels) through Stephen’s Worthen bank and an Arkansas state agency set up by Governor Bill Clinton (the Arkansas Development Finance Authority). Overseer of the Iran/Contra operation was then Vice-President George H.W. Bush, as later proved with a memo from Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

A partner with Stephens in the Worthen bank was Mochtar Riady, one of the principals in the Indonesian Lippo Group. The Lippo Group was heavily involved in the campaign financing scandals of the second Clinton presidential campaign, with links to the Chinese military.

Our final example is perhaps the most important unfinished investigation of the last 40 years. The Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) was started by a Pakistani banker ostensibly to service Arab clients in the Middle East. It quickly became a money laundering mechanism for various terrorist organizations in the area. It then branched out to London and other locations and became a repository and laundering channel for a broad spectrum of organizations, including the terrorists as well as Mossad and the CIA.
BCCI established a branch in Florida and took over the largest bank in Washington, D.C. (First American) with the assistance of Stephen’s Worthen bank and the Rose law firm (Hillary, Foster and Hubbell). When the Florida branch was exposed, it was shut down, but the investigation was limited to Florida.

Later, Assistant District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in New York launched a comprehensive investigation into BCCI until it was shut down by Robert Mueller in the Department of Justice (now FBI Director) and Mary Jo White, Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York. White was held over by George W. Bush long enough to deep six the investigation of Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich. She also closed the investigation of Terry McAuliffe (who was on the verge of being indicted) in the Teamster/Democratic National Committee campaign money swap conspiracy.

Yes Henry, it is understandable why you ducked and ran when it looked like you might have to disclose your relationship with Acxiom/Alltel/Systematics and Jackson Stephens

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please contact us at [email protected]. Although not necessary, we would appreciate an indication of the city and/or state or country (If outside the USA) in which you are located to give us an idea as to where our articles are being received.
Visit Medium Rare Archives







JUST HOW BLIND AND STUPID ARE WE “AMERICANS”?

[Octafish]

78. BCCI corruption is BI-PARTISAN.

That's why Jackson Stephens invests in both Republicans like the Bushes and Democrats like Bill Clinton. Seems these people understand there's lots of money to be made off war and drugs and oil and favors....

DU: READ AND LEARN WHO WE'RE DEALING WITH. THE BFEE ISN'T JUST BUSH.

[RainDog]

80. that's why we need a Roosevelt -- a Teddy/FDR combo

to bring this nation back from the brink on which we now perch.

If the Bush junta wins, or if they keep their claws in the dem candidate, (which honestly makes me wonder about Clark, since Stephens has money on that horse).

We need the Teddy-style trust busting to bring corporations down to democracy size. otherwise we will lose democracy in its entirety and will descend into a fascist feudalism which has already begun.

We need a president who will repeal the Bush transfer of wealth from the richest of the rich, who will dethrone the aristocracy wanna-bes of the inheritance tax entitled.

We need a Teddy to make the environment an issue...not as a commodity, but as a sacred trust which, even tho Teddy didn't do right by the indigenous people of this country, his spiritual heir needs to make good on Native American knowledge of our interdependency with the earth which sustains us.

We need an FDR to re-invest in America and to create a 21st century technology which is based upon renewable energy and the creation of a strong middle class, which Bush is trying to destroy.

We need an FDR to fight the J.P. Morgan's of the world who operate in the U.S. -- and we need to be aware that, like Gen Smedley Butler told in FDR's time-- these American fascists will resort to assassination attempts and coup attempts to win, just as they have done in the recent past.

[Octafish]

81. Great post, RainDog...

Well-reasoned, well-written and most convincing. We need a Teddy/FDR hybrid. A lesser candidate cannot overcome the GOP Judiciary, Congress, Executive, Corporate McMedia and GOP-destroyed public education system.

I'm sad to report, my horse seems to have a difficult time using TV to come across as caring. John Kerry does care, though,\. And, more importantly, Kerry has the brains, experience, and vision a successful Presidency requires.

Several DEMs do a better job of conveying the "I care" message. Unfortunately, none have a better grasp of what the BFEE is about or how to beat them — fair and squre or at their own game; let alone have the capacity to govern wisely in the coming, critical four years.

As you so indicated, RD: Would that we could combine several to create a super-candidate. Barring that, whoever does become our nominee will need all the help we can muster to beat the BFEE. Whoever he or she is will get 100-percent of my support.

So, we need to BUILD a candidate that combines the needed traits of the Teddy/FDR hybrid. that's what the primary process is supposed to be about. Getting the message out to the general public is where a good PR campaign comes in...

[RainDog]

85. What people also have to recognize

is that the Roosevelt's were patrician...a moneyed family.

Yet, they knew what was right for democracy and they had the guts to take on those who would undermine it.

So anyone who makes noises about this or that candidate because of his wealthy background needs to look deeper at their legislative record.

...and, yes, we need some pr soundbites which will properly label Bush as the entitled cheerleader in cowboy boots that he is.

what's so striking to me is how similar Bush and bin Laden's backgrounds are.

Both have risen to power via their family connections. (And those families also have interconnected financial ties which go back for decades.)

Both claim radical fundamentalist versions of their religions as excuses for all their policies and actions.

Both hide out and make appearances only in front of captured audiences to spout their progaganda.

Both seem to believe in war without end, and have no qualms about the amount of innocent humans they are willing to kill to achieve their narrowminded goals.

Both claim to represent something bigger than themselves, when both consistently engage in self-aggrandizement and fund raising from the faithful like any other snake-oil salesmen con artist preachers.

Both will face ruin when the truth is known about their corruption and when illegal financial systems are exposed.

[blm]

87. Funny you'd say that. McCain is becoming more anticorporate

and Teddy Roosevelt is supposed to be his role model.

I have the feeling that if given the freedom to pull the rug out from under some of the more corrupt ones that he would do so with gusto.

[dutchdemocrat]

82. Bush, bin Laden, BCCI and the 9/11 Commission

Floyd has some interesting insight into this mess as well. He's scathing. I love his writing.
---------------

Kean Insight
Bush, bin Laden, BCCI and the 9/11 Commission
by CHRIS FLOYD (Moscow Times)

When George W. Bush's first choice to head an "independent" probe into the Sept. 11 attacks--suspected war criminal Henry Kissinger--went down like a bad pretzel, he quickly plucked another warm body from the stagnant pool of Establishment worthies who are periodically called upon to roll out the whitewash when the big boys screw up.

Kissinger's replacement, retired New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was a "safe pair of hands," we were assured by the professional assurers in the mainstream media. The fact that he'd been out of public life for years--and that he hadn't collaborated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Cambodians, Chileans and East Timorese--certainly made him less controversial than his predecessor, although to be fair, Kissinger's expertise in mass murder surely would have given the panel some unique insights into the terrorist atrocity.

But now it seems that Kean might possess some unique insights of his own. Fortune Magazine reports this week that both Kean and Bush share an unusually well-placed business partner: one Khalid bin Mahfouz -- perhaps better known as "Osama bin Laden's bagman" or even "Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law."

Kean, like so many worthies, followed the revolving door out of public service into lucrative sweetheart deals and well-wadded sinecures on corporate boards. One of these, of course, is an oil company--pretty much a requirement for White House work these days. (Or as the sign says on the Oval Office door: "If your rigs ain't rockin', don't come a-knockin'!") Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, an oil giant married up to Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil in a venture to pump black gold in Azerbaijan. (The partnership is incorporated in a secretive offshore "tax haven," natch. You can't expect a worthy like Kean to pay taxes like some grubby wage slave.)

One of Delta's biggest backers is the aforesaid Mahfouz, a Saudi wheeler-dealer who has bankrolled some of most dubious players on the world scene: Abu Nidal, Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Mahfouz was also a front for the bin Laden family, funneling their vast wealth through American cut-outs in a bid to gain power and influence in the United States.

One of those cut-outs was Mahfouz factotum James Bath, a partner in George W.'s early oil venture, Arbusto. Bath has admitted serving as a pass-through for secret Saudi money. Years later, when Bush's maladroit business skills were about to sink another of his companies, Harken Energy, the firm was saved by a $25 million investment from a Swiss bank--a subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BBCI), partly owned by the beneficent Mahfouz.

What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then.

BCCI's bipartisan corruption first permeated the Carter Administration, then came to full flower in the Reagan-Bush years. The CIA uncovered the bank's criminal activities in 1981--no great feat, considering how many of its own foreign "associates" were involved, including the head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of King Faisal. But instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the agency decided to join them, using BCCI's secret channels to finance "black ops" all over the world.

When a few prosecutors finally began targeting BCCI's operations in the late Eighties, President George Herbert Walker Bush boldly moved in with a federal probe directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably "botched"--witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost," all sorts of bad luck. Lower-ranking prosecutors told of heavy pressure from on high to "lay off." Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or, like Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions. Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in July 2001--by George W. Bush.

In the late 1990s, U.S. authorities identified Mahfouz as a major financier of his brother-in-law's extracurricular activities. He denied it, but the spooked Saudis put him on ice, charging him with, of all things, bank fraud. He's now under "house arrest"--or rather, "palatial mansion arrest"--but still wheeling and dealing with Kean and Delta and other worthies. Indeed, one of Mahfouz's hirelings--the director of a Pakistani bank he owns--sits on the advisory board of our old friend the Carlyle Group, cheek by jowl with the firm's most celebrated shill: George Herbert Walker Bush.

Somehow we doubt that worthy Kean will poke very hard at the nexus of intersections between his own business partner, Mahfouz, and the bin Ladens, the Bushes, the Saudi royals, Saddam, the CIA and BCCI. We've only scratched the surface here, but even this cursory glance makes the current world crisis look less like some grand geopolitical "clash of civilizations" and more like a nasty falling out among thieves, with rival mafias--who sometimes collude, sometimes collide--now duking it out for turf, cloaking their murderous criminality with pious rhetoric about freedom, security, jihad and God.

<SNIP>


More...

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd01312003.html

[RainDog]

76. Danny Casolaro's book, Octopus, has been re-issued

Feral House has re-issued the book Octopus, which is about Danny Casolaro's investigation into the govt. theft of promis software from Inslaw.

ask you local independent bookseller to order a copy for you today!!

a few interesting notes about the players in that book-

http://www.steamshovelpress.com/fromeditor24.html


Example one: shortly after the Afghanistan war stories began circulating that Osama Bin Laden was using the PROMIS extrapolation function to avoid capture. According to these stories, it was given to him via a circuitous route from the Russians who got it from the famed turncoat spy Robert Hanssen.

    Example two: the June resignation of Paul Redmond, Assistant Secretary of Information Analysis for the US Homeland Security department. Described by some as a "legendary spy catcher" - he had a role in the capture of CIA traitor Aldrich Ames - Redmond officially resigned for "health reasons." Most took that as polite cover for Redmond's frustration with under-funding of the department, but others connected into to a rumored secret investigation Redmond was conducting of long-standing common interests between the Bush and bin Laden families and was forced to resign. Among the connections: PROMIS, also had been given to Saddam Hussein by the senior Bush in the early 1990s, and he too now uses it to avoid capture. Danny Casolaro had reported that Iraq was among the countries that originallypurchased the software illegally.

    Example three: Casolaro had also written about John Poindexter, one of the few people convicted in the Iran-contra scandal, a trading-with-the-enemy affair that grew out of the October Surprise. An appeals court overturned his five 1990 felony convicitions, however, and more recently Poindexter was appointed head of a new information technology unit of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that developed the internet. This new DARPA unit was called Total Information Awareness. Symbolized on its website and on a wall decoration in Poindexter's office by an eye over a pyramid - a tip of the hat that he worked for secret masters -- it's purpose was to further develop PROMIS-like software that could track every detail of every American citizen's life.

    In July, Poindexter was forced to resign from the administration when it was discovered that DARPA's TOI also was developing a futures trading market based on the prediction of terrorist events. Of course, a short-selling spree on the real market made a fortune for someone just after the destruction of the World Trade Towers, so someone was already pretty good at predicting terrorist events.

    Examples four and five: the central conspiracy that concerns even the major media now is the role of the Saudis in the 9/11 disasters. Casolaro had written about the al-Yamama aerospace contract umbrella that keeps US and British money flowing into Saudi Arabia. He focused on the career of arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, who helped develop the contracts, and his partner, Manucher Ghorbanifar. Back in March, because of meetings Khashoggi set up with Bush defense adviser Richard Perle to privately profiteer from the still pending war in Iraq, Perle was also forced to resign. This month it has been reported that Pentagon underlings for the Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, have been meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar, unauthorized by Dubya, of course.

[Beaker]

83. speaking of Parmalat...

It appears that Enronitis has spread.

Parmalat's missing billions

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0401030170jan03,1,4529827.story

Published January 3, 2004

There's nothing sexy or sizzling "new economy" about Italy's dairy giant, Parmalat. It sells billions of dollars worth of long-life milk, yogurt, juice and the like around the world. You don't get more basic old economy than that.

Now it turns out that at least $8.7 billion--perhaps as much as $11 billion--has gone missing from Parmalat or was never there in the first place. Executives may have invented assets to offset staggering losses.

It looks like the kind of accounting fraud and hidden losses that have brought down Enron and other American companies. There are common ingredients to these high-profile corporate scandals: complex finances coupled with a board made up of family members or cronies, plus lax regulation. In English or Italian, that's a recipe for disaster.

Faced with a cash crunch and mounting allegations of financial irregularities and outright fraud, the Italian dairy giant filed for bankruptcy protection last week...

[Unknown Known]

86. Enter the Royal Canadian Mounted Police!

To understand Promis is important because IMO, this is the backdoor software I believe Diebold is using in their voting machines. As Promis has been used to siphon money out of bank accounts without a trace, so could it be used to siphon votes.

Around 2000, the Canadian govt, specifically through the firm, Geomatics, which is at the heart of the Canadian space program, suspected that it's version of Promis was compromised. The covert investigation by the RCMP centered on whether the Promis software that was sold to Geomatics was equipped with backdoor capabilities.

Geomatics is involved in satellite imagery - specifically, "used to develop geographic information systems, global positioning systems and remote sensing from space that can actually determine the locations of natural resources such as oil, precious metals and other commodities."

Anyone with backdoor capability (like a peep-hole) could gain access to this info. Ruppert has done a great background to this story. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html

The investigation also led to allegations that US and Israelis were the software to infiltrate Canada's secret service http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/896601.stm

The last story I've seen on this was in 2001 which has lots more infohttp://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/4_17/72275448/p6/article.jhtml?term=

The Canadian investigation was virtually shut down right before 9/11.

[Minstrel Boy]

88. Mae Brussell's "Missing Money Chart"

Twenty years out of date, so no BCCI, but you'll get the idea how these things work.

"SOME TIPS OF THE ICEBERGS SHOWING.

All of these stories, making headlines today, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, etc. have a common meeting place. They go back to OSS, CIC, CIA, Reinhard Gehlen, Fritz Kraemer, Henry Kissinger, Allen Dulles, William Donovan, Vatican and U.S. Intelligence."

View the chart here:

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/mbtape611,8,22,83.htm

[Karenina]

91. Wrapping one's brain

around at least SOME of the information contained in this thread is BASIC to an understanding of the death dealing, sorry mess we find ourselves in today.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. It works every time.

[blm]

93. Even some of the smart folks here at DU have trouble understanding BCCI

and how it relates to just about EVERYTHING that is going on.

People want to know WHY Kerry doesn't use this info NOW, but, there is no way this issue can be discussed in dribs and drabs.


Heck, if Kerry tries to gain traction on it, he'd have the Dean camp accusing him of manufacturing an issue that isn't relevant out of desperation and that would do MORE damage to the credibilty of the issue.

[Unknown Known]

92. Will the Canadians reveal their Promis investigation at the BCCI trial?

From Cheryl Seymour's book, "The Last Circle" regarding Danny Casolaro's death...

"Danny had appeard exhuberant to most of his friends before his death, noting that he was about to "wrap up" his investigation of The Octopus. Casolaro was trying to prove that the alleged theft of the Inslaw computer program, PROMISE, was related to the October Surprise scandal, the IranContra affair and the collapse of BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International)."

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/5.htm

It was through Seymour's book posting on the web that led the RCMP to her door, specifically agents, Sean McDade and Randy Buffam.

According to Seymour, "McDade said that the details of his findings in Canada could conceivably cause a major scandal in both Canada and the United States.... He said if his investigation is successful it could cause the entire Republican Party to be dismantled -- that it would cease to exist in the U.S." Hyperbole, perhaps, but bizarre stuff from a professional lawman.

"Then," continues Seymour, "he said something that was just really out there. He stood in my dining room with a straight face and told us that ... more than one presidential administration will be exposed for their knowledge of the PROMIS software transactions. He said that high-ranking Canadian government officials may have unlawfully purchased the PROMIS software from high-ranking U.S. government officials in the Reagan/Bush administration, and he further stated that the RCMP has located numerous banks around the world that have been used by these U.S. officials to launder the money from the sale of the PROMIS software."

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/4_17/72275448/p4/article.jhtml?term=

[seemslikeadream]

94. Do you remember that guy that was in jail in Canada

saying he knew about 9/11 before hand. I think he was speaking about the PROMIS software.

Delmart Edward Vreeland was his name. His grandfather was big time U.S. Naval person I believe.

here's a link From The Wilderness Publications
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index-vreeland.html

[Unknown Known]

97. Vreeland is ONI

He became privy to the 9/11 attacks during an assignment to meet with a Canadian, Marc Bastien. His mission was to copy designs of the US SSST specifically satellites equipped with EMP missiles which can target other satellites and wipe out communication systems.

Among these documents he copied was a communication to Putin from K. Hussein. Here's the interview...

1. What part of the U.S. government did you work for? Was it the CIA?

I worked for U.S. Naval intelligence. What the CIA directs us to do is their business, so we have no way of knowing whether we're working for them or not.

2. Was your assignment primarily connected to terrorism/oil?
Yes, on both issues, in part.

3. Why were you in Moscow and Russia in the latter part of 2000?

I was sent there by the U.S. government and the ONI . I got my orders between Sept. 4 and Sept. 7, 2000.

Marc Bastien departed for Russia on Sept. 7, 2000. I had orders to meet him. Bastien was going to work at the Canadian embassy regarding diagrams and blueprints of a weapons defense system. The U.S. government had a direct influence on his mission. The name of the defense system is SSST . There are five different individual and unique defensive and strike capabilities of the system. The only portion that I have publicly spoken on is one frame regarding actual current orbiting satellites, which are not at this time owned by the US government. On advice of counsel I cannot discuss the other components.

This one component is a satellite system. Within the confines of the system there are multiple, deployable space/orbital EMP missiles that are not aimed at the ground. They are targeted at everyone else's satellites. These would kill worldwide communications. The satellites of some countries that are shielded with titanium are protected from these weapons. The protected countries are Russia and China, but U.S. satellites are vulnerable and Putin has told Bush that the U.S. missile defense system doesn't work, and that Bush knows it.

The reason why I went to Russia was because I needed to meet with Bastien and another individual from the Russian Ministry of Defense named Oleg. The purpose was to get the Canadian diplomat who had made contact with Oleg to get the book of designs out of the ministry's R&D. That was done. We copied the entire book. Then we took certain documents, and we changed serious portions of the defense design so the program wouldn't work. They know this now.



6. When did you first learn details of the attacks that were to happen on Sept. 11?

In the first week of December 2000.

7. How did you learn of the details?

One document was written in English by a U.S. agent, who had picked up a copy of a document that had been sent to V. Putin by K. Hussein, Saddam Hussein's son. This is what the translation of the doc indicates. The Iraqis knew in June 2000 that I was coming. I didn't get my orders until August. The letter said that Bastien and Vreeland would be dealt with "in a manner suitable to us." The letter specifically stated on page two, "Our American official guarantees this."

8. Who put the information on the attacks into the pouch, and what would have been their motive for doing so?

I am not allowed to answer that. It would jeopardize the lives of active agents, and it would violate the National Security Act of 1947.

Bastien was later found murdered not long after their meeting - Vreeland had already been arrested in Canada. Canada has since dropped all charges against him, and last heard he lives in a safe house somewhere in Canada.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_vree_intervw.html

[seemslikeadream]

98. Toronto Star Post 9-11, this doesn't seem all that weird

Dec. 5,2003

Thomas Walkom

On the face of it, Rocco Galati's claim that U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies want to kill him sounds too weird for words. His evidence is scanty. All that the 44-year-old constitutional lawyer produced for reporters yesterday in his crowded College St. office was a recorded telephone voice-mail message.

In that message, an unidentified man chides Galati for aiding "punk terrorist" Abdurahman Khadr, the 20-year-old Canadian imprisoned by the United States without charge in Cuba, who just made it back to Canada this week.

Galati said only that he had heard the man's voice twice before, from similar recorded telephone threats uttered against a former client who subsequently disappeared.

And yet....and yet...
http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1070579408676%20%20

[Karenina]

99. This needs to stay kicked

just a bit longer for the Monday back-to-work crowd! :-)

[RainDog]

100. WHOA!!

I remember that guy. I thought he had been "discredited" -- that's the last I heard about him--- Vreeland.

This is incredible.

The apparent collapse of the Fonseca case also had the effect of destroying any credibility Vreeland may have had with regard to his more intriguing allegations about Sept. 11 and the death of Bastien, the Moscow embassy worker.

Until January, 2002. That's when Quebec coroner Line Duchesne concluded that Bastien, described as an information systems handler, had indeed been poisoned — probably by someone who slipped a concentrated anti-schizophrenic drug into his drink in a Moscow bar.

Vreeland's credibility suddenly shot up.

But eight months later, while out on bail awaiting an extradition hearing, he just disappeared.

At the time, Slansky told the court he had gone to Vreeland's apartment to pick him up but found it ransacked, with key evidence related to his client's 9/11 claims missing.

[Minstrel Boy]

102. Vreeland's lawyer Paul Slansky

is my oldest friend, and I've never known a man with more integrity. My first inkling that the official story had holes big enough to fly a 767 through came from him.

If I'd only known Vreeland's story third hand I might have dismissed it. But I heard it from Paul. And in the summer of 2001 he was trying like mad to get authorities to take seriously Vreeland's warning.

Paul witnessed the sealing of the note in August. Paul called the Pentagon in open court, and confirmed Vreeland's rank. (He had yet to be purged from the back-up computer system they'd reverted to after 9/11.) How did the prosecution explain that? Vreeland must have hacked into the Pentagon database from prison. :eyes: And Vreeland has been proven right again: Marc Bastien was murdered.

Vreeland's certainly no angel, and even Paul knew he wasn't being fully truthful with him. But angels, I imagine, are rare in that line of work.

[RainDog]

103. Please tell your friend to be careful

Again, the best thing that could happen to this country would be if we could have the truth, in the open, let the people of this nation know what has been done "in their name."

The FTW article speculated that Vreeland was in a "safehouse."

I hope that's what happened to him.

[RainDog]

104. His is a strange case, no doubt.

in the article from your link, Vreeland, like the Bush administration, was trying to blame 9-11 on Iraq.

Now, we know fairly well that this is a lie.

So, Vreeland was fed this lie, with the idea that he would "leak" it after he was arrested?

Did you ever read the book, or see the movie, Little Drummer Girl, from John Le Carre? --it was a fascinating look at the way a woman was manipulated into thinking she was helping one person, when she was doing something else entirely.

That's the feeling I get when I read about this guy, Vreeland.

So, he was supposed to have information about foreknowledge of 9-11 because of communication between Putin and Saddam's son?

And in his attempts to deny that Osama led the attack, he cites the fact that Osama is (present tense) a CIA operative?

Why would the guy named Marc be assassinated, anyway?

[Minstrel Boy]

105. Yes, I think it could be something like that.

There's something very patsy-like about Vreeland. My suspicion is he was unwittingly used to sew disinformation to implicate Russia and Iraq: to plant an officially-approved "conspiracy theory" that could challenge the official story, misdirect researchers away from the true culprits and lay the blame at Saddam's door. If that was the case, it didn't work. Maybe because that kind of stunt has been seen before.

Something similar happened, of course, with Oswald. Official story was he was a "lone nut," but there was also an "official" conspiracy theory that he may have acted on behalf of Cuba and/or the Soviet Union. LBJ used this prospect to twist Earl Warren's arm to head the commission, and to ensure he would find that Oswald acted alone, because the consequences of the involvement of a foreign power could mean nuclear war.

[Unknown Known]

106. Yes, why did they want to shut him up if he gave them their reason

This is what bushies wanted - a direct link between Hussein and 9/11. Vreeland apparently was set up to give them that link - but what went wrong? Why did they pull the plug on this guy?

Funny that Sander Hicks' book on Vreeland is titled "Wild Card".

Here's another interesting incite from that book regarding Vreeland, Cheney and Marc Rich.

In early June of 1993, Leo Wanta was appointed the Somali ambassador to Canada and Switzerland, in what he says was an effort to help make Somalia a safe launching ground for the U.S. military. According to reports from Wanta, Henry, and Vreeland, Wanta traveled to Switzerland with notorious financier Marc Rich between June 30 and July 3, 1993.

Apparently, Wanta was trying to negotiate funding for "UN Contract 4" "which tried to secure various sources of international capital to buy peace in the Middle East. Each side of the Rabin/PLO Agreement would get $5 billion." However, this did not pan out.

Back in 1993, in Switzerland, Wanta says he had orders to arrest Rich, and if that failed, to assassinate him. According to the story from both Vreeland and Wanta, the ONI had snipers nearby, when Wanta and Rich were on a ferry to a casino in France, traveling across Lake Geneva from Lausanne. The sniper from ONI was told to stand down, when he couldn't get a clear shot off. According to their story, that sniper was Delmart Vreeland.

Three weeks later Vince Foster is found dead.

Wanta is arrested in Wisconsin for tax evasion. Wanta claimed he lost over $200 billion in Prime Bank Guarantees. He hired Vreeland to help him get it back.

In a late night, 3-way conversation between this reporter, Vreeland and Wanta, Vreeland blurted out to Wanta, "Who has controlled me in the last eight months?"
Wanta gruffly stated, "ONI."

"Where would they get orders from?"
"Cheney."

In July, 2002 Wanda was re-arrested along with his attorney, Tom Henry for carrying large sums of money. Henry later found out that the police had been give a "tip". From the traced area code, the finally concluded the "tip" was from a Linda Fanton, a die-hard Vreeland supporter, using info provided by Vreeland.

Why did you set up your old allies?
"I switched sides," Vreeland told me in Canada.

Who are you working for right now?
"Nobody"

If you are no longer attempting to recover the Wanta funds for Wanta, who are you doing this recovery for?
"Technically, the U.S. Treasury. I have the ability to recover funds, but not spend them. I can, however, spend my pay order. One percent of anything I recover."

How can Vreeland "recover" funds" and we're talking about billions of dollars? Promis?

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/092602_vreeland_gnn.html

[Minstrel Boy]

107. Thanks for bringing up Leo Wanta.

Those who are quick to sneer that there's nothing to Vreeland likely either don't know that he backs up Vreeland or have never heard of him.

"Who Is Leo Wanta?"

Meet Leo Emil Wanta. At one point Wanta had bank accounts at Metishe Bank in Moscow, Avenue Bank on the Champs-Elysee in Paris, Credito Italiano in Milan, Anker Bank in Geneva, Swiss Bank Corporation in Geneva, the Algemeine Spaar in Brussels, the Zentralsparkasse und Kommerzialbank in Vienna, Creditanstalt Bankverein in Vienna, and--the perennial favorite of money launderers--Citibank in Milan, New York, and Los Angeles.

Meet Leo Emil Wanta, a man accused of, or praised for, crashing the Russian ruble over 1990-1. There is no doubt that he was a currency trader, placing orders for 100 billion rubles at a time. Then there is the matter of gold--Russian gold.

...

Leo Wanta was appointed Ambassador of Somalia for Switzerland and Canada in March 1993. In July, Wanta had been in Switzerland to make $250,000,000 available for the Children's Defense Fund at the request of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Children's Defense Fund? Whose idea was that? What was going on there?

...

Wanta used to visit FBI Director William Sessions at his office through a secret entry known as the "back of stage". There he would nearly always meet with a Mr.Gonzalez and a Mr. Jim Moody, who were the FBI enforcers for RICO and organized crime issues. Moody was the head of the FBI's organized crime section.
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/wanta.htm

It's practically impossible to follow this stuff. If ever we needed the conspiracy art of Marc Lombardi, it's now.

[RainDog]

101. One can only hope...

He said if his investigation is successful it could cause the entire Republican Party to be dismantled -- that it would cease to exist in the U.S."

--if you ask me, that's the best thing that could happen to this country.

Let Grover drown that in his bathtub.

[seemslikeadream]

109. Why is it that software for our voting machines

is produced by Russians and Czechs in Canada?
Why is it that the hardware for our voting machines is made by

Vikant Corp., a Chicago area company owned by Alex Kantarovich of Minsk, Belorussia, supplied the control cards to ES&S. When The Spotlight inquired where Vikant cards are produced, Knatarovich said, "I cannot disclose where the cards are made," but admitted that they are not made in America.

Kantarovich told The Spotlight that he has been in America for 11 years but declined to discuss his employment prior to running Vikant Corp., saying, "I don't want to disclose that information."

Kantarovich said he had obtained his degree in the Soviet Union and initially refused to answer questions about how his product was chosen for the ES&S voting equipment.

It is "inside information that I cannot disclose, "he added. Kantarvich said later that his firm was chosen over larger firms like IBM and Panasonic because Vikant was able to meet the specific requirements of ES&S and provide the cards on short notice. He added, however, that there had been "some problems" with the cards from other suppliers.
http://www.voxpolitics.com/weblog/archives/000186.html

[Minstrel Boy]

108. Bush, the bin Ladens and BCCI

From "Questionable Ties: Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas", by Wayne Madsen:

In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.


In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in what has been called the “largest bank fraud in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.

When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.

...

Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had “no idea” BCCI was involved in Harken’s financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml

[Unknown Known]

110. Of Jackson Stephens, Jimmy Carter, BCCI & the Bushes

Introducing the US to BCCI was none other than Jackson Stephens of Stephens Inc. one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street. This Arkansas entrepreneur became moneyman to Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. He was also the former Naval Academy roommate of Jimmy Carter and classmate of former CIA head, Stansfield Turner. Stephens roots lay deep within NSA.

In 1975, Stephens introduces Pakistani financier, Agha Hasan Abedi, original owner of BCCI, http://www.subliminal.org/mugbook/money/abedi.html

to Bert Lance, Jimmy Carter’s banker.

In 1978, Stephens tries to broker a deal to sell Indonesian businessman, Mochtar Riady, stock in the National Bank of Georgia. The deal falls through and Lance fronts BCCI with Saudi businessman, Ghaith Pharaon..

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm

Pharaon was also working with Khalid bin Mahfouz and James Bath in the Main Bank of Houston. James Bath’s connections to the bin Laden’s and Bushes is well known. Bath is also an Annapolis graduate and Naval fighter pilot.

The Stephens – Bath/Bush – Mahfouz - bin Laden connection is now in place.

James Bath and Jackson Stephens were the two largest infusers of money into Harken energy helping George W stay afloat.

“When Harken needed an infusion of cash, Bush turned to family friend and investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, AK. The firm of Stephens Inc. was at the time one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street. (The Stephens family were also active in Republican circles: Jackson Stephens would later contribute at least $200,000 to the Bush for President campaign, and his wife would become the Arkansas campaign chair.)”

Jackson Stephens was identified by the Kerry committee as possibly "BCCI's Principal U.S. Broker," having facilitated BCCI's first acquisitions of U.S. banking concerns National Bank of Georgia and its former parent, Financial General Bankshares.

http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/home.html

[blm]

111. And THIS is why the primaries are so important to these thugs.

They needed Kerry OFF the national stage and discredited BEFORE this story heats up again.

Shame on all who are enabling thie BFEE.

[Nihil]

114. Kick

Guess who's trying not to be in London on or around that date.

Nihil

[Minstrel Boy]

115. the Florida connection

"Is it just a coincidence that many of the same players that are in 9/11 and everything from the Bay of Pigs to Operation Northwoods to LBJ to the Miami 5 to JFK's assassination to the Venezuelan Coup to Jeb Bush and the election fraud to Florida Flight Schools to Iran-Contra to BCCI all have Florida connections?"

A whole bunch of links here:

http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1036&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[Unknown Known]

116. Also Jackson Stephens connections to the Venice Airport, FL

Where Rudi Dekkers trained 9/11 terrorists, including Mohammed Atta

Jackson Stephens, a name often linked with America’s super-secret National Security Agency, has been an influential presence for several decades in the tiny town which served as port of entry into U.S. flight and even military training for the terrorist cadre implicated in the Sept 11 attack.

http://www.madcowprod.com/index8.html

Kudos to Dennis Hopsicker - he has been staying on the Venice story since 9/11 and in his focus on that one area, has found out many interesting things.

[Minstrel Boy]

117. "The White House "Big Brother" Data Base & How Jackson Stephens

Precipitated a Banking Crisis" by J. Orlin Grabbe

Score another coup for Jackson Stephens' Systematics (Alltel Information Services). It provided the software for the White House's "Big Brother" data base system, and now the White House is in a panic that there may be secret methods of accessing its computer.

The existence of the White House computer system and data base--known as WHODB, White House Office Data Base, and containing as many as 200,000 names--was revealed by Paul Rodriguez in the Washington Times. Some of the information was developed by Insight's Anthony Kimery, soon to be managing editor of the electronic publication SOURCES eJournal. Kimery is a writer whose articles in The American Banker and Wired were among the first to report U.S. government spying on domestic banking transactions. (Kimery was also fired from one magazine for looking into the death of Vince Foster.)

Now things have come full circle. The chief government effort to spy on U.S. domestic banking transactions was directed by the electronic spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), working in connection with the Little Rock software firm Systematics. Systematics, half-owned by billionaire Jackson Stephens (of Stephens Inc. fame), has been a major supplier of software for back office clearing and wire transfers. It was Stephens' attempt to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington-D.C. bank First American that led to the BCCI takeover of that institution. Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor, and later Foster became an overseer of the NSA project with respect to Systematics.
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/bigbro.htm

[Minstrel Boy]

118. The Bush clan and Jackson Stephens

The Bush Family’s Dirty Little Secret
Rick Wiles, July 4, 2002

George W. Bush, however, worked wonders for Harken Energy Corp. before the stock collapsed. Using the Bush family name, he managed to bring much-needed capital investment to the struggling firm. George W. Bush traveled to Little Rock, AR, to attend a meeting with Jackson Stephens – a powerful Arkansas tycoon who helped bankroll the state campaigns of young Bill Clinton. He first gained political prominence as a fund-raiser for President Jimmy Carter. Stephens was also deeply involved in the BCCI scandal by helping the corrupt bank take control of First American Bank in Washington, DC.

Jack Stephens didn’t need an introduction to young George W. Bush. Mary Anne Stephens, his wife, managed Vice President George Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign in Arkansas. Stephens Inc., the well connected brokerage firm owned by Jack Stephens, donated $100,000 to a Bush campaign fundraising dinner in 1991. When George W. Bush won the contested Florida election in 2000, Jack Stephens made a substantial contribution to the Bush inauguration. Recently, former President Bush played golf on April 11, 2001, with Jack Stephens at the Jack Stephens Youth Golf Academy in Little Rock. The former president told Stephens, “Jack, we love you and we are very, very grateful for what you have done.”

Perhaps the former president was thanking him for the money Stephens provided young George W. Bush. Stephens arranged for a $25 million investment from the Union des Banques Suisses. The Swiss Bank held the minority interest in the Banque de Commerce et de Placements, a Geneva-based subsidiary of BCCI.

Both Stephens and Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, a wealthy and well-connected Saudi real estate investor, signed the financial transaction. The Geneva transaction was paid through a joint venture between the Union Bank of Switzerland and its Geneva branch of BCCI.
http://www.guerrillafunk.com/thoughts/doc544.html

[Karenina]

119. Not ready to let this drop just yet.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

[cthrumatrix]

120. starts a week from now....let's do our best to share what the trial shares

[RainDog]

121. Odds and ends

Ghaith Pharon's father, like Khasshoggi's, was a physician for the royal family.

Mohammed Mahmoud Hammoud, an important figure in BCCI, links up with Bush via Charles Hostler starting in the 1950s. Hostler, a major campaign donor to Poppy, was Bush's ambassador to Bahrain when that nation awarded the shocking oil concession to Harken, Jr.'s oil company.

The award was shocking because Harken had never drilled outside of the United States, and the Bahrain contract was one of the most coveted in the world.

****The Bahrain contract was signed on January 30, 1990, only TWO WEEKS after a BCCI plea bargain was announced (over drug money).

People connected to Harken and the Bahrain oil deal who are tied to BCCI-

1. Jackson Stephens (Stephens, Inc.) Harken's investment banker--arranged financing from Union Bank of Switzerland, BCCI's Swiss banking partner.

2. Sheik Khalifa bin-Salman al-Khalifa, Bahrain's prime minister and BCCI stockholder.

3. Sheikh Abdullah Taha Baksh, shareholder in Harken, investment partner of Ghaith Pharon, BCCI's most important front man. Th Sheikh's principal banker is Khalid bin Mahfouz.

4. Charles Hostler, long-time associate of BCCI front man Mohammed Hammoud. (edited to add...Hostler was connected to both the CIA and its predecessor, the OSS.)

About this moment, Poppy's White House spokeman, Marlin Fitzwater, said, "There is no conflict of interest, or even the appearance of a conflict of interest, in these business arrangements."

...no doubt that is true for the Bush's...but what about America?

From False Profits, various pp, including 370.

[RainDog]

123. Hammoud's death

Hammoud either died or he didn't when two doctors insisted on doing an endoscopy (inserting a rubber tube down his throat--which Hammoud didn't want, and which the doctors insisted on doing. The doctors also prevented his wife from helping him while he was choking, she claimed--- images of Marathon Man just ran through my mind....)

anyway, hours before his death, Hammoud reportedly told a friend (US intel was intercepting his conversations at this time, btw) that "If anybody knew how dirty the Americans are in this BCCI business, they'd be surprised --- they're dirtier than the Pakistanis."

Insurers wouldn't pay out on his life insurance, though, because they claimed the body was four inches or so shorter than Hammoud was at his last medical examination.

However, a federal investigator in America thinks that he is dead, and that he was killed because he knew too much. Several investigators in the US think that Hammoud was a bag man for BCCI, supplying money and favors to powerful people.

Again from False Profits, pp 380-81

Hammoud had a very close relationship with fellow Mormon Orrin Hatch, btw.

[blm]

130. ugh.....the Pakistanis have been coming up lately...alot.

.

[Minstrel Boy]

122. Interesting, isn't it? The silence, I mean,

from the coincidence theorists.

Nguyen Hand Bank, the P-2 lodge and Banco Ambrosiano, BCCI, the S&L "failures" and more: the thread through all the scandals is the hand-in-glove financial relationship of Intelligence Agencies, organized crime and terrorist proxies. As one financial corruption is exposed, another begins, and the players remain the same, as do the crimes: money-laundering, drug-smuggling, assassination and staged terrorist acts.

The rot is deep and longstanding. Follow the money, and you don't find "coincidence."

[RainDog]

124. Because it's not conspiracy theory, it's conspiracy FACT

we may not, and I'm sure do not, understand all the various factors, players, and importance of various issues.

however, when BCCI broke, it was a chance to also break the vast and deeply corrupted offices of our government and the powerful corporate figures who fund them.

Politicians who are still in office conspired to impede, slow, and deflect the investigation into BCCI and American politicians and businessmen.

One of the principal beneficiaries of BCCI corruption now illegally occupies the White House.

One of his family's close business partners and a (former?) CIA operative has committed acts of terrorism on American citizens with money which was also obtained through fraudulent BCCI practices.

The man who is charged with investigating 9-11 was in business with bin Laden's brother-in-law and chief BCCI financier of terrorism until three weeks before his appointment.

The woman, Theresa LaPore, who was responsible for insuring that Jeb delivered the state of Florida for his brother in Palm Beach, was a former Khashoggi stewardess, and past and now present republican.

It makes you want to join a Fight Club....except they probably wouldn't accept femmes, so I guess I'd have to join a "be bitchy" club... :)

[Octafish]

125. Don't get mad. Get even.

You and the rest of the good DUers on this thread know Who's Who and What's What when it comes to the effing BFEE. The best way to fight these bed-wetters is by spreading the Truth.

BTW: My horse has brought up BCCI several times in the "Candidates' Forums" and in public over tha last 18 months. John Kerry has gotten exactly ZERO coverage of the same. What free press?

[blm]

128. That's why people find the horserace of politics more fun and interesting.

The REALITY of it is too daunting and one can't easily wrap your mind around all it means.

[RainDog]

126. bookmark bump n/t

[Karenina]

129. Errraaaa...

Diana WHO? :kick: