WORMSCAN: FOSTER0 [PART 6]
Concerning the demise of Vincent Foster, Jr. Some dare call it suicide.
NOTES: I made a few corrections to spellings and grammar.
If you missed previous parts to this part of the WORMSCAN series, you can find it here.
Date: Thu Oct 05, 1995 8:41 pm CST
From: snet l
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: snet-l@world.std.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: part 28: Allegations re Vince Foster, the NSA, and bank spying
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Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking Transactions Spying, Part XXVIII
by J. Orlin Grabbe
Dear Vince,
So you wanna be a nuclear spy? You say your Swiss account is running low, and you need some pointers where to find those little intel tidbits to be sold for salvage? You know, depending on what's hot in the market?
Well, okey dokey. I'll tell you what little I know. Maybe help you out a little. On account of you're such a good friend and all.
Let's start with SIOP. That's Single Integrated Operational Plan. It ties together all military nuclear weapons and all the different regional plans — you know, the different nuke options of the military commands in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and Europe. Britain even has a part. Well, SIOP is ESI: Extremely Sensitive Information. Translation: BIG BUCKS if you can get a hold of a piece of it.
Now, Vince, let me explain the problem, so you'll know what's going on, and where to go to get the good stuff. Okay? You think you have headaches keeping track of money. Well, let me tell you, the military's like the three, or six, or sixteen different faces of Eve, and they'll all be at war with each other if they're not careful. Hell, we might be engaged with China and they send the signal to the wrong set of missiles, and nuke Tehran. Or say there's a launch off the Pacific coast, but the early warning system is down and no one knows what's coming. Or they see it coming but they can't get hold of the President who is out whitewater rafting. Or the helicopter arrives at the White House from Quantico to whisk the Prez to Andrews Air Force Base, where the flying command post awaits, and the Secret Service shots the chopper down (which they almost did in an exercise). Or the Prez gives the authorization to RE-TAL-I-ATE, but he can't communicate with his forces to set anything in motion.
See, we got us an ORGANIZATIONAL problem here. Suppose'n we go to war. You got the White House Situation Room, down underground, below the Oval Office. You got the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon, third floor. You got the alternative NMCC buried in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania (8 miles from Camp David), in case the first one's f**ked up (more than normal, I mean). You got the SAC underground command post at Offutt Air Force base near Omaha, Nebraska. You got the NORAD underground command post inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Talk about moles! These here outfits have gotta TALK and gotta SEE! See what I mean?
Then you got your airborne commands. They gotta talk, see, and EVADE no matter WHERE they are. There's "Nightwatch". That's the National Emergency Airborne Command — a flying nest for the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Commander of the Strategic Air Command (with room for a few hookers to relieve the tension) to give orders and preside over the end of civilization as we know it. (They can fire the land-based missiles using the Airborne Launch Control System.) Then you got "Cover All", or whatever they call it now, the flying command post of the Strategic Air Command with the Post Attack Command and Control System (PACCS) (and we hope SAC number two still takes orders from number one, who is flying around with the Prez). Then you got your little sub units: "Blue Eagle" Pacific Command, "Scope Light" Atlantic Command, "Silk Purse" European Command. The names and details may change from time to time (hint: more bucks).
Then you got all your side shows, like JEEP, the Joint Emergency Action Plan. That's a plan for evacuating a select number of government and military people, the chosen few, the ELECT, who get RAPTURED AWAY to a place of safety in case of nuclear war, some to Raven Rock, others to the "Special Facility" at Mt. Weather in Virginia. That's so they'll be around to populate a post-nuke nation. It'll be a millennial golden age of LAWYERS and GENERALS. You remember me telling you about Hasan-i Sabbāh, the "old man of the mountains", the leader of the assassins? How he used to indoctrinate his followers, showing them a vision of Paradise, where he would get them blissed out on hashish, and they would wake up in a garden with fruit trees, and flowing brooks, and whores attending to their every need (I think they spelled it "horis" back then)? And then they would be willing to die to get back to Paradise? Well, here in the old U. S. of A. some of the chosen few get to spend some time each year in the BOHEMIAN GROVE!
Just a little aside. A friend of mine used to have a job inspecting the stored food down in one of those FEMA hideaway places — the "National Warning Center" down in Olney, Maryland. You know, FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency? She told me they had cans of powdered instant SPINACH OMELET. And the johns were on SPRINGS, so a person sitting on the toilet at the time of a direct nuclear hit wouldn't bust their buns! (I guess there was an anticipation some of the people they would stick in these FEMA hidey holes were full of shit.) But we are getting off topic...
Okay. So you got a little COMMUNICATION problem. A little CO-ORDINATION problem. That's where *C3I* comes in. You say that "SEE cubed EYE". That stands for COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATION, and INTELLIGENCE. C3I is the thread that patches the SIOP together. It's the glue that keep the nuclear pasties where they oughta be! (C4I adds Counter-measures to the list.) Very important: lotssa stuff to steal here. This is about computers, satellites, phones, and radios. (The Mitre Corp's big in this area. You may know about them, since they're also getting into electronic cash these days.) C3I basically started with David Packard who saw that military communications weren't worth beans. He also initiated those flying Presidential command posts, using modified Boeing planes.
Well, he departed in 1971. Five years later, after the ever idiotic Pentagon had gone out and bought a $100 million worth of Honeywell computers that weren't even intended to operate in on-line mode (on-line's important for a communication system, don't you think?), an official in the Defense Communication Agency reported that the system was crashing on average once every 35 minutes. ("Sorry, Mr. President, we would like to send that 1 megaton baby on its way to Moscow, but the damned system's down. Anyone call Federal Express yet?")
Wimex (that the Worldwide Military Command and Control System) didn't go online at NORAD until Sept 1979. And they did a mobilization simulation ("Proud Spirit") the next year, and Wimex fell on its ass, leaving military commanders in the dark about the readiness of their units for 12 hours. So you see, Vincey boy, that national security's all about computers and communications and co-ordination. They had military transports landing at military bases where the troops supposed to get on them hadn't even got the word to march. We could have lost the war because we had stupid computers and stupid programmers. Those Minutemans with megaton bombs ain't too scary on 64k of RAM.
Another example: in the older missiles on the Navy's Poseidon submarine the missile targets would be recorded on 8-inch magnetic disks. The order to fire would come from an EAM, an Emergency Action Message. This would be in code and would be compared to the version of the same thing sitting in the submarine's Red Box. If they were the same, the message would be considered authentic and the firing procedure would commence. (The subs present interesting communication problems, by the way, and besides the communication stations around the world, you've got the TACAMO planes flying around, relaying communications to the subs. You could also use ELF, extremely low frequency, broadcasts, but that would require antennas hundreds of miles long.)
Well, now the Defense Communication Agency (DCA) keeps the President or his successors (and in the National Command Authority control system which executes the SIOP, it's the VP, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in that order — not the VP, the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, etc. — nope, Haig wasn't in charge after all) in touch with his nuclear forces around the world. DCA has hubs at the White House and at Camp David, which is tied right into Raven Rock.
But anyway, computer-wise, let me tell you about three money-making organizations you want to pay special attention to. There's NRO, the National Reconnaissance Organization; NSA, the National Security Agency; and DMA, the Defense Mapping Agency. They tell us what's coming (NRO), let us launch a response (NSA), and help us locate the goddamn target (DMA). Okay?
NRO is currently much of the nation's eyes and ears — a 24-hour a day operation. They're the ones in charge of the spy satellites. The Air Force does the actual operation, but NRO is in charge. NRO's run by a committee, the National Reconnaissance Executive Committee, chaired by the CIA director. That's so the satellite PRETTY PICTURES get shared by everyone, not just the fly-boys. Since 1992 NRO's been functionally organized (hint, hint, get specs) but before that there was an Air Force part, based out in El Segundo, California, that worked on Air Force reconnaissance satellites and made deals with contractors, a CIA part (they developed the KH-11 and RHYOLITE satellites), and a Navy part, responsible for the Navy's ocean surveillance satellites.
The signals those satellites pick up are processed by the NSA, that big sprawling place out at Fort George C. Meade, Maryland. They got regional SIGINT center for the satellite data at Menwith Hill Station in England; Bad Aibling Station, Germany; Kunia, Oahu, Hawaii; Lackland Air Force Base Training Annex, San Antonio, TX; Buckley Air National Guard Field, Aurora, CO; and Fort Gordon, Georgia.
They also got a big South American listening post in Panama. Remember those Panama Canal negotiations, which your pal Jackson Stephens had a financial interest in? We were listening in on the Panama private chat. Well, remember old pineapple face, Noriega? He was spying on our spying.
Paid those NSA boys a regular fee to bring him tapes and computer printouts.
(Your modern DIC-TA-TOR-SHIP ain't what it used to be. Castro's got a big computer room in the Palace of the Revolution. I tell you, there's more to controlling a country than just the occasional photography session cuttin' down sugar cane with a machete in the hot sun.)
Anyway, NSA develops secure voice and data transmission links on the Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS) and the Satellite Data System (SDS). They are also responsible for communications security with respect to strategic weapons systems such as the Minuteman missile. That's to prevent UN-AUTHOR-IZED access or interference or jamming. (There's a special message category called a NUCFLASH, which is notification of the unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons. Wonder why they have it?) Targets can be changed by inputting a new set of numbers in the missile's memory.
Virtual bugs can be serious. A few years ago a hacker kid got into Pentagon computers, and came pretty close to causing a nuclear EVENT, and they bumped his old man's ass right out of there. And back in November 1979, a computer technician accidentally fed a training tape that simulated a missile raid against the U.S. into the live NORAD early warning system.
Now get this: the NSA develops the codes by which the President must identify himself to authorize a nuclear strike. You know the *Football*? That's the black briefcase carried by the military Presidential shadow. It contains the Gold Codes (the Presidential instructions to authorize the release of nuclear weapons), the SIOP attack options, and a decision book. The Gold Codes are changed daily, one set going to the White House for the Football, and simultaneously to nuclear command posts around the world. The attack options are just subsets of potential targets. For example, SIOP-5D, which came out in 1980, identified 40,000 potential targets, and gave the President Limited Attack Options, Selected Attack Options, Major Attack Options, and Regional Nuclear Options. There were also two special categories: a pre-emptive strike against the Russkies, and LOW (Launch on Warning) or LAU (Launch Under Attack).
Wonder who is on the list now? If you're looking to find out, watch out for the two-man rule: no one person is supposed to have access to nuclear weapons and release codes and such, so you may need an accomplice, depending on what you're fixin' to do. Hell, the President can't even open the Football — only the Director of the Military Office, the warrant officers, and the military aides have the combo.
The NSA put out the *National COMSEC Plan for Space Systems and Nuclear Weapons Systems* back in 1982. This has been updated, I guarantee you, and you can get good cash for the latest version.
Now, under W Group in the NSA's Directorate of Operations is the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC). That's a joint DIA-NSA operation, which is the principal body of men and women who keep minute-by-minute track of threats to the U. S. of A. from missiles, aircraft, and other types of overt military activity. Anything you can get on them might give your enterprising enemy nation good ideas how to muck up their operation. (What do you care? You got one of them JEEP-1 cards, don'tcha?) Their stuff goes everywhere: CIA, White House Situation Room, whatnot.
Remember when Russians weren't even allowed to visit Dallas, Texas, on account of all the surrounding defense electronics? Well, one of the reasons has to do with E-Systems, which does a lot of NSA's computer software and hardware. (They developed that little *Herf gun*, you know, the one that can take out a plane's guidance and control system? The pilot finds himself pulling levers and pushing buttons, and nothing responds. Deadly mother. Good for causing plane crashes.) You already probably know a lot about them, because of their relationship to Systematics. The NSA's got some new computers coming on. Try to get the operating system or anything like that.
The Defense Mapping Agency gets things contoured out so as the missiles can find the target. Once upon a time SIOP was just a set of black lines, all converging at Moscow, on the big map of the Soviet Union that Curtis LeMay used to have. To get there, each SAC plane would carry the best maps of their target, most of them pre-WW2 jobs not worth shit. Hell, back in 1941 RAF bombers had problems getting their bombs to within a five mile radius of the target. Not very PRE-CISE. (Bombs made one of them Poisson distributions around target: read *Gravity's Rainbow*.)
Well, we still got that same precision problem. You saw that video they played over and over in the Gulf War? That bomb dropping down the smokestack of a factory? Don't you believe the BS for a minute. Seventy-five percent of those bombs went astray. As for enemy terrain, we didn't know diddly-squat about the Soviet Union until the CIA got the word to do a high-altitude plane, and they got Lockheed to turn out the U-2 in record time. It could fly at 70,000 feet. But tough on the pilot: two hours of pure oxygen so he wouldn't get the bends, and a diet of steak and eggs because there weren't any toilet facilities. Later the Joint Chiefs acquired control of the spy planes like SR-71 and RC-135, and signals were processed by the NSA and photos by the CIA.
But satellites, not spy planes, map most of it now, and the contours of the target terrain are stored in the missile's computer so it will know when it has reached target. You know, like a GIF file with all the naughty bits, where the computer matches pixel against pixel until it knows it's arrived on target and there's a great nuclear orgasm. (No way to avoid digital because a few high altitude nukes will send out an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, that will wipe out the Global Positioning System.)
Now, never forget, Vincey boy, there's always a ready market for plutonium. You know, the stuff they put in the bombs to make them go BOOM? Well, now, all the nuclear facilities are guarded by a little outfit called the Wackenhut Corporation. Ed Meese came in and said, “How my friends gonna make any money if the Marines do the job?” Hell, we all know each Marine comes with two PR agents, so we'll let one Wacky Hutterite do the job of three. So it was, and now we're all getting rich, because those Wacky Hutterites are as entrepreneurial as hell.
Or similar products. Remember how in the early 80s just when you were getting into the laundry business, they decided it was important to keep both Iran and Iraq equally armed, so no one would win the war? Well, Iraq was about to get its ass kicked, so we made a crash program to help the Iraqis. (In the Iran-Contra hearings even Ollie North said the cover-up was itself a cover-up. Because it wasn't Iran we were mostly dealing with, it was Iraq.)
Now you know Ihsan Barbouti, the Iraqi architect who has that engineering firm in Frankfurt and who came over here with a contract to build Iraqi airfields? Well he invested in TK-7 of Oklahoma City, Pipeline Recovery Systems of Dallas, and Product Ingredient Technology of Boca Raton. Want to know why? TK-7 makes a fuel additive that can extend the range of SCUD missiles and jet aircraft. Pipeline Recovery coats pipes so they're usable in nuclear reactors and chemical-weapons plants. And Product Ingredient Technology makes cherry flavoring. (Gotcha there, didn't I?) Ferric ferrocyanide is a by-product of cherry flavoring, and can be used to make hydrogen cyanide, a nice poison gas for the Kurds and whey.
Well, guess who got the contract to covertly deliver all this stuff to Iraq? Wackenhut, naturally. (Those boys are famous out here in Nevada, on account of guarding Area 51 and such like research facilities. It's a weird scene out here. Between Reno and Las Vegas off highway 95 they got the *Naval Undersea Warfare Center*. In the middle of the desert! It's a nuclear bunker for nuclear-armed torpedoes and such. If that mother ever goes up, it'll leave the nearby town of Hawthorne flat as a Dow Corning breast implant. They'll be breathing Hawthorne molecules from here to Tonopah.)
If you find all this nuclear stuff too confusing, you might try stealing a copy of the *President's Daily Brief* which covers the most significant information from the previous day, including info from the nation's most sensitive sources. I'm sure your better-financed enemy nation will pay top dollar for a copy passed along daily.
Whatever you do, don't get any legal advice from the NSA.
Your friend,
Har Meggido
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Date: Thu Oct 05, 1995 9:48 pm CST
From: snet l
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: snet-l@world.std.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: (fwd) FosterGate and More... from "Intelligence" #271 (fwd)
INTELLIGENCE Online, Electronic Edition
#271, 11 September 1995
Copyright ADI 1995, reproduction in any form forbidden without explicit authorization from the ADI. A one year subscription (23 issues) is US $280.
USA: FOSTER CASE RUNS INTO PROMIS, BCCI & COVERT OPS
Conspiracy theorists were already having a heyday with mysteries surrounding the 20 July 1993 death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster. Now, recent Washington press reports are slowly forcing the issue on the mainstream media and calling for a serious investigation of the ties Foster may have had with major, even strategic, U.S. secret operations. The day before his death, Foster and his wife met with Webb Hubbell and his wife. At the time, Hubbell was number three man at the Justice Department. Foster was dead the next day, but had a personal meeting scheduled the following day with his long time close friend, President Bill Clinton. Immediately after Foster's death, his associates began talking about suicide before they had even checked out his office or done routine examinations for evidence.
The sensitivity of the subject can be measured by the fact that four established Washington reporters "have been fired or threatened with firing, or worse, in the last few days for writing about Foster", according to Sarah McClendon in her 31 July 1995 "Washington Report". Those reporters are McClendon herself who had her newsletter dropped from a lucrative AT&T-controlled electronic news service, Paul Rodriguez of "Insight" who was told by a Pentagon official to "lay off this story", Anthony Kimery who was summarily fired as editor of a Thomson company financial publication, and, above all, Jim Norman, a senior editor of "Forbes" who was sacked after the Foster article he prepared for "Forbes", which was spiked, finally appeared in "Media Bypass". Norman attributes the spiking of his Forbes article to Reagan administration defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who is Forbes' publisher emeritus and possibly privy to several intelligence operations that the Foster case threatens to unveil.
It was Norman who first discovered that Foster was under investigation for spying for Israel and had one or more Swiss bank accounts involved with financing American covert operations. According to Norman, Foster worked as a legal adviser and go-between for the Arkansas computer company Systematics (now Alltel Information Services) and the American intelligence community. In that capacity, Foster developed ties with the NSA and the CIA. Systematics, founded by Jackson Stephens, had become involved in selling, installing and supporting customized banking and management software, and, according to Norman, bugged copies of PROMIS programs, reportedly stolen by the Reagan administration Justice Department from the Inslaw company, were among its products. If this is true, it would mean Systematics, and therefore Foster, was involved in a major strategic NSA-CIA operation to penetrate major banks and foreign intelligence services by having bugged versions of PROMIS installed by credible computer experts. Indeed, in an interview, Norman called Foster "an interface person between the NSA and Systematics (...) He was one of Jackson Stephens' trusted 'deal guys'" at the Rose Law Firm for which Foster officially worked. His name never appeared as an employee of Systematics, according to Norman.
In 1979, Stephens, originally an investment banker, served as the front man for a group of Arab backers of the BCCI when it wanted to buy ownership of a major Washington-based bank, Financial General Bankshares. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) carried out an investigation and blocked the takeover. This attempt confirmed, for Norman, intelligence community rumors that Systematics was "shuffling covert money" among the many small American banks from which it had obtained computer service contracts. Such a network was used to finance the Reagan administration's Irangate-Contragate operations and may well be tied to the sudden and strange failure a few years ago of many small Savings & Loan banks in the United States.
COMMENT — Foster was known to have made one-day trips to Switzerland, likely to service secret bank accounts associated with his intelligence community-Systematics activities. According to Norman, these accounts were "raided and deleted" by a secret CIA team of computer specialists called the "Fifth Column" not long after this team had managed to supposedly penetrate the data bases of Israeli Mossad foreign intelligence and found the name of Foster among those of Israeli agents. This part of Norman's story is not only farfetched, but impossible: no modern intelligence service has the names of its agents on a computer physically connected to an outside network. It also seems extremely unlikely that Swiss banks would permit a "sensitive" account to be deleted electronically without direct confirmation by the account owner. However, these weaknesses in Norman's story should not discredit the story or to justify a refusal to investigate Norman's other allegations concerning Foster's activities.
*
U.S.A. — Waco, U.S. Army & British SAS.
When Congressional hearings into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BTF) and FBI's 1993 siege and assault of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, began in July, there was immediate confrontation regarding possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act which forbids the military from pursuing civilians. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Low-Intensity Conflict, H. Allen Holmes, made an explosive statement by saying two members of the British SAS were present at Waco. The Pentagon has officially replied that SAS members were not at Waco "as a result of any association with the Department of Defense", a statement which tends to confirm that SAS members were at Waco on the behalf of Justice. The Department of Justice has not responded to these accusations.
*
USA: — So FAST You Haven't Heard About Them.
Everyone has heard about the U.S. Navy SEALs and their exploits. But there is one company working with the Navy that's so quick and efficient that they don't make the news: the 330-man Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team (FAST). Officially based at Norfolk, Virginia, it is part of the 3,600-man Marine Security Forces commanded by Colonel William Parrish. Captain Frank Donovan commands this company of "most deadly multi-weapon small-arms marksmen in the Marine Corps" who are on 48-hour deployment notice. The Forces were ambushed five times in Somalia but there were no wounded and no killed. Earlier this year, Cuban refugees rioted in Panama. The Forces, with FAST members, arrived and moved the Cubans back to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without much notice or disturbance. The Forces have five known bases abroad: Keflavik, Iceland; London, England; Naples, Italy; Rota, Spain; and Souda Bay, Greece. The FAST company can be flown rapidly into any of these bases or on to any aircraft carrier which usually has its own Forces groups.
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Date: Thu Oct 12, 1995 2:17 pm CST
From: snet l
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: snet-l@world.std.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: part 29: vince foster
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Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking Transactions Spying, Part XXIX
by J. Orlin Grabbe
1. The difference between Chris Ruddy and Mike Wallace is that Chris Ruddy is a hard-working reporter who wants to get at the facts, while Mike Wallace is a geriatric hatchet-man who apparently didn't recall that Ft. Marcy Park had been closed for weeks in an on-going investigation into the death of Vince Foster.
2. CBS implied the carpet fibers on Foster's clothes were the result of Foster's new carpet. Are we to also infer that the semen stains were the result of Foster's new girlfriend?
3. Meanwhile there is another conspiracy theory going around: Critics of the Clinton administration are inspired by *Satan*. Perhaps we'll have a national witch-hunt with Mike Wallace playing the role of Grand Inquisitor.
4. One of the functions served by the largely irrelevant debates regarding the evidential discrepancies at Ft. Marcy Park is to prevent the asking of questions with respect to the larger picture; namely, What was Vince Foster involved in that lead to his death? Who killed him? and Why? No, it is much, much safer that we spend countless days focused on the burning issue of whether Vince Foster was left- or right-handed.
5. One of these omitted larger questions concerns the relationship of Vince Foster to Clinton's financial backer Jackson Stephens, and to the latter's role in money-laundering and drugs-for-arms deals. Jackson Stephens is the Little Rock billionaire who has held substantial interest in Worthen National Bank as well as in Stephens Inc., one of the largest privately owned investment banks outside Wall Street. Worthen gave the Clinton campaign a $3.5 million dollar line of credit.
6. Crucial parts of the Arkansas laundry were created when Stephens married his political connections in Panama and Washington to his Little Rock financial institutions and his Little Rock software firm Systematics.
7. It began when Stephens helped bring BCCI (the Bank of Credit and Commerce International) to America. The details of this story are important, because it represents the beginnings of a cozy relationship between Jackson Stephens, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell, Bert Lance, Systematics, Vince Foster, and BCCI.
Stephens, a 1946 Naval Academy graduate, had joined with William Middendorf II (Secretary of the Navy under Nixon and Ford) in April 1977 to acquire Financial General, a Washington D.C.-based bank with headquarters a block from the White House.
"Some people might think it is important to know about the outstanding loans and balances of Government officials," a Washington banking executive noted at the time.
Stephens then sent salesmen from Systematics to talk to Middendorf about providing banking software for Financial General. When these salesmen were firmly rejected, Stephens decided to wrest control of the bank from Middendorf. To do so he solicited the help of Bert Lance, Jimmy Carter's Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Lance knew the executives at Financial General, because they had sold him controlling interest in the National Bank of Georgia in 1975.
Stephens himself had met Lance through President Carter, his old roommate from Naval Academy days.
In November 1977, Stephens introduced Lance to BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi, and Abedi in turn introduced Lance to investor Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon, acting on behalf of Abedi, proceeded to acquire the stock of Bert Lance's National Bank of Georgia, a deal consummated on January 5, 1978, a day after Lance's $3.4 million loan from the First National Bank of Chicago was repaid by BCCI London.
Lance then joined with Jackson Stephens to help BCCI take over Financial General. A Financial General lawsuit filed on February 17 named "Bert Lance, Bank of Credit & Commerce International, Agha Hasan Abedi, Eugene J. Metzger, Jackson Stephens, Stephens Inc., Systematics Inc. and John Does numbers 1 through 25."
8. In that law-suit, Systematics was represented by C.J. Giroir, Webster Hubbell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the Rose Law Firm. Vince Foster would later tell the *American Lawyer* that Hillary Clinton did all the intellectual property work for Systematics.
Part of this "intellectual property" would involve a banking-transaction software system based on the stolen PROMIS software. A telecommunications back-door to the PROMIS software was introduced by Michael Riconosciuto, now in prison, but then Director of Research for a Wackenhut Corp.-Cabazon Indian Reservation joint venture. In an affidavit, Riconosciuto says the copy of the PROMIS software he received was given to Wackenhut by Justice Dept. official Peter Videnieks. Earl Brian, acting through Wackenhut, then gave it to Riconosciuto.
Earl Brian, who later sold the same software to Iraq using the arms dealer Carlos Cardoen as an intermediary, will undoubtedly have something to say about all this, as he has been indicted in California for fraudulent lease transactions undertaken while he was head of Financial News Network, United Press International, and Infotechnology.
9. In the same Financial General lawsuit, Bert Lance's attorney was Robert Altman, who later became President of the bank when it was finally taken over. Altman's mentor Clark Clifford (the former Defense Secretary under Lyndon Johnson) who also acted as BCCI's attorney became the bank's Chairman.
10. The Financial General takeover attempt did not succeed right away. In another lawsuit, one filed March 18, 1978, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Bert Lance with violations of federal security laws, and BCCI's application to purchase Financial General Bankshares was denied.
Abedi then formed a new takeover vehicle called Credit and Commerce American Holdings (CCAH), based in the Netherlands Antilles. The largest investor in CCAH was Kamal Adham (the former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence), who put up $13 million of his own money On October 19, 1978, CCAH filed for approval with the Federal Reserve to purchase Financial General. This application was dismissed on February 16, 1979, due to opposition from Financial General's Maryland subsidiary, but a new application was submitted later.
The Federal Reserve finally approved the purchase in on April 19, 1982, and BCCI renamed the bank "First American" three months later. The head of Bank Supervision at the Federal Reserve when BCCI's purchase was approved was Jack Ryan, who later became head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, in which role he would deny Rep. Leach's requests for documents related to Madison Guaranty, the Whitewater thrift.
11. BCCI was the center of a global laundry and a conduit for transactions involving arms, drugs, and nuclear technology.
Firstly, BCCI had the motive. BCCI founder Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. (BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto. Etc.)
Secondly, BCCI had the right political connections. BCCI-founder Abedi got Jimmy Carter to publicize BCCI to heads of state around the world. Abedi made his personal 727 jet available to Carter, and accompanied the former President to Thailand, Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Soviet Union, among other places. Carter introduced Abedi to many heads of state, from Deng Xiaoping in China to James Callahan in the U.K. Abedi donated a half million dollars to establish the Carter presidential library, and a public policy institute at Emory university.
Thirdly, BCCI had the right intelligence connections. Kamal Adham, who became the lead frontman in BCCI's takeover of First American, had also been the CIA's principal liaison for the entire Middle East from the mid-1960's through 1979. The CIA utilized BCCI for its own payments. For example, Manuel Noriega, who was recruited by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959, who went on the CIA payroll in 1967, and who became head of Panamanian military intelligence in 1968, was paid through the Panamanian branch of BCCI. The CIA also used BCCI branches in Pakistan to launder payments to the Afghan rebels, and Pakistani officials used the same bank to launder heroin profits.
Fourthly, BCCI had the right U.S. financial connections. Jackson Stephens would later capitalize on the $100,000 donations he made to the 1988 campaign of George Bush (thereby becoming a member of Bush's "Team 100"), as well as his friendship with George Bush, Jr., to get BCCI involved in funding a lucrative Harken Energy offshore project in Bahrain. The money apparently came through the Swiss BCCI subsidiary.
12. Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to the global laundry — not only First American, but those in Little Rock also. To avoid the type of SEC scrutiny involved in the Financial General takeover, Webster Hubbell, who had represented Stephens' software company Systematics, was employed to draw up the charter for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). The structure for the laundry was then in place.
One form of Stephens' laundry worked through front companies set up by bond broker Don Lasater. These companies would deposit cash in banks such as Stephens' Worthen Bank, which would not fill out reporting forms. In return for this service, the companies would be obligated to buy bonds issued by the ADFA, and underwritten by Stephens' investment bank Stephens Inc. Stephens would thus be compensated for the laundering service in the form of an investment banking fee.
The money from the bond issue, meanwhile, would go back to the same front companies. That is, in effect the companies bought their own bonds and paid Stephens a fee for the service.
The participation of the ADFA, a state government institution, eliminated SEC scrutiny. ADFA formally issued and "guaranteed" the bonds, and thus collected a fee in the process. Some of these fees were translated into "loans" to the political friends of the Governor of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, now President of the United States.
At other times ADFA was itself the core of the laundry. At the end of December 1988, for example, the ADFA deposited $50 million in Fuji Bank in the Cayman Islands. Fuji Bank subsequently purchased the industrial development loan of POM, Inc., a parking meter and arms production company owned by Seth Ward, Webster Hubbell's father-in-law. Hubbell was also POM's corporate attorney.
13. Jackson Stephens had political connections in Panama, which was then becoming the banking center for the Colombian cocaine business. One of these connections was Gabriel Lewis, the Panamanian Ambassador to Washington who had negotiated the Panama Canal Treaty. Another was Manuel Noriega, the head of G-2 (Panamanian military intelligence) who made a deal with the Medellin cocaine cartel.
Stephens was the banker for Gabriel Lewis, who had gotten very rich after he created corrugated banana boxes. Gabriel Lewis' seaside home on Contadora Island, which Lewis then owned, was the site where Canal negotiator Ellsworth Bunker was told in August 1974 that Panama would re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Later the exiled Shah of Iran stayed at Lewis' home from December 1979 to March 1980, while Manuel Noriega provided for the Shah's security. (In his book *Crisis*, Hamilton Jordan tells how he tried to use Gabriel Lewis to help establish contact with the Iranians in the Iran-hostage crisis.)
Contadora Island would later become a conduit for drug shipments. One of Noriega's pilots, Cesar Rodriquez, became manager of Contadora Island's airline, and would appear at his club atop the Bank of Boston building with suitcases full of $100 bills. Rodriquez told marijuana smuggler Steven Michael Kalish, who wanted to bring $100 million in cash to Panama (whose currency is the U.S. dollar), to use the services of the Panamanian branch of BCCI, which handled both Rodriquez's and Noriega's accounts.
In 1982 Noriega had helped negotiate a truce between the Castro-backed M-19 in Columbia and the beginnings of the Medellin cartel. In subsequent coke shipments through Panama, another Noriega pilot Floyd Carlton Caceres would receive $400 per kilo, while Noriega would receive $100,000 to $200,000 per flight. But Noriega kept raising the transshipment price charged to the cartel under Pablo Escobar.
The feud escalated until in May 1984, Noriega let Escobar's new cocaine processing plant at Darien be destroyed (which also won him points with the Americans). Noriega, hiding out in Paris, then sent his political strategist Jose Blandon to talk to Castro, who mediated a settlement between Medellin and Noriega.
Subsequently Noriega closed a Panamanian bank for money laundering, because it was owned by a member of the Cali cartel — a Medellin competitor. Noriega also helped out the Medellin cartel by arresting or informing on Cali drug dealers to the DEA (whom effectively served as Noriega's private enforcer). The DEA publicly praised Noriega for helping shut down the Roberto Suarez Bolivian operation — another Medellin competitor.
14. The drug-arms-money laundering connection between Panama and Arkansas was apparently first cemented in the "Iran"-Contra dealings. Both Panama and Arkansas were used by Oliver North as transshipment points for money and arms to the Contras.
(The word "Iran" is in quotes since it was Iraq, not Iran, that the U.S. was mostly dealing with. Even Ollie North said "the coverup is itself a coverup", because the focus of the later Walsh investigation into the minor dealings with Iran obscured the major dealings with Iraq. The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 caused great intelligence concern after the Reagan administration took office, because Iraq appeared in danger of losing the war. It became U.S. policy to assist Iraq. Those who sold arms and also nuclear technology to Iraq found the business very lucrative, and would continue the process after U.S. official policy changed.)
By 1983, two years after the death of Omar Torrijos, Manuel Noriega had outmaneuvered three higher ranking Colonels to became head of the National Guard, which he renamed the Panamanian Defense Forces at the suggestion of Israeli Michael Harari. Hararai, formerly high in the Mossad, had been demoted for assassinating the wrong "terrorist". He showed up in Panama and grew close to Torrijos by mediating between him and his Jewish father-in-law. Harari assisted Noreiga's G-2 in developing sophisticated electronic surveillance techniques. After Noriega's older brother and closest advisor Luis Carlos died in early 1984, Noriega began to call Harari his "mentor".
Harari's participation ensured that Israel got a piece of Ollie North's action. By December 1983 the Israelis had begun using a Panamanian CIA front company, IFMA Management Company, to funnel support to the Contras. Harari would later boast of his friendship with Donald Gregg, George Bush's national security advisor.
In October 1984 the Boland amendment was extended to say no U.S. intelligence organization could spend money to support the Contras. Bill Casey and Oliver North decided the White House was exempt, and North through Richard Secord set up a secret Contra account in Credit Suisse, Geneva, called Lake Resources. Similarly, Noriega's Geneva lawyer and business associate, Juan Bautista Castillero, set up a Contra aid front company called Udall Research Company. (Noriega and his political advisor Jose Blandon advised North that the Nicaraguan "Southern Front" are really "cafe guerillas", more interested in doing business and sleeping with prostitutes than in fighting, but North ignored their advice.)
15. According to what *Money Laundering Bulletin* calls "The Greatest Story Never Told", an "archive of more than 2000 documents. . . allege that western Arkansas was a centre of international drug smuggling in the early 1980s — perhaps even the headquarters of the biggest drug trafficking operation of all time" (March 1995).
The degree of Bill Clinton's knowledge of, and participation in, this operation is not always clear. Certainly CIA secrecy is not in itself sufficient to defend a supposed lack of knowledge on Clinton's part. Clinton was recruited into the CIA by Cord Meyer while Clinton was a student in London. This itself gave him a somewhat symbiotic relationship with George Bush, both while Bush was CIA director and later while Bush was Vice President.
According to R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., (in the October 1995 *American Spectator*), Arkansas state trooper L.D. Brown, after taking a return flight with Barry Seal carrying cocaine and money from Central America to Mena, reported the details to Governor Clinton, who said, "That's Lasater's deal, that's Lasater's deal, and your buddy [or "hero"] Bush knows about it."
One CIA source who was watching Clinton's closely in the early 80's is ambiguous as to how much Bill Clinton knew about the details of the Mena operation, but is somewhat more certain as to Hillary's knowledge (although Hillary was not a CIA agent, she had reliable information through the Rose Law Firm, and her own informants among the State Police), and confirms that Vince Foster was helping launder money at the time. He denies, however, that Foster was then involved in espionage. "That came later," he says.
16. Another thing that came later was the BCCI-financed arming of Iraq. What began as a simple U.S. strategy to maintain a balance of power between Iran and Iraq, turned into a vast money-making enterprise involving the sale of U.S. nuclear technology and nuclear secrets to both Iraq and Israel. In particular, the participation of Jackson Stephens and Hillary Clinton in the Pittsburgh-based nuclear network, along with the entrepreneurial (and deadly) activities of the Wackenhut Corporation, would eventually result in the untimely death of Vince Foster.
[to be continued]
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