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Conspiracy Nation Vol. 10 Num. 86
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 10 Num. 86
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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BCCI: NOT EXACTLY A BANK
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"You are never going to understand BCCI if you persist in
thinking of it as a bank."
-- John Moscow, Assistant D.A., Manhattan
(qtd. in *The Outlaw Bank* by Beaty & Gwynne)
In the late 1970s, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Countering
the Soviets, the CIA helped supply the Afghani resistance with
weapons. Interwoven with neighboring Pakistan's intelligence
agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, was BCCI, the Bank of Credit
and Commerce International. Inter-Services Intelligence
controlled supplies of weapons to the Afghan resistance. AGHA
HASAN ABEDI, founder of BCCI, dealt directly with CIA chief
William Casey. "Abedi was close to Bill Casey. They met many
times. BCCI financed operations. BCCI brokered weapons and
supplies, BCCI acted as paymaster." (Anonymous source, qtd. in
*The Outlaw Bank*.) The CIA/BCCI relationship grew, and BCCI
helped fund CIA and U.S. military covert operations.
In September of 1991, Time magazine carried an article describing
BCCI as "a vast, stateless, multinational corporation that
deploys its own intelligence agency, complete with a paramilitary
wing and enforcement units, known collectively as the Black
Network." BCCI's "Black Network" apparently is connected to at
least 16 suspicious deaths, including of 2 reporters: Anson Ng
of the Financial Times, and Danny Casolaro, a freelance reporter.
Both had been working on the BCCI story.
BCCI was aggressive in seeking clients. They did not limit
themselves to just rich people trying to hide their money. They
also sought out drug kingpins, weapons merchants, and smugglers
in general. Helping grease the wheels for secret operations were
"Letters of Credit" issued by the shady bank. BCCI's operation
was not unique among banks in general, but they were a caricature
of how things work in that they exceeded normal bank etiquette in
such matters. If you don't believe it, check on balance of
payments between nations. "By definition, the world must be in
balance with itself. Yet from an approximate balance in the
early 1970s, an inexplicable black hole -- a deficit of $20
billion -- had developed by 1978, and in 1982 the deficit hit
$110 billion." (*The Outlaw Bank*)
In Arkansas sits billionaire Jackson Stephens. In his classic
article, "The Name of Rose" (New Republic, 4/4/94), L.J. Davis
shows how the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock has handled the
affairs of Jackson Stephens. Jackson Stephens, according to
former Forbes senior editor James Norman, once owned a bank data
processing company called "Systematics," and, says Norman,
Systematics was itself, in effect, a sort of bank. Jackson
Stephens also reportedly served as a front man for BCCI. (CN
7.99)
In "The Money Trail," Sherman Skolnick goes even further.
According to that veteran investigator, "Vincent W. Foster, Jr.,
and Hillary Rodham Clinton, on behalf of the Rose Law Firm and
Jackson Stephens and Worthen Bank Group, arranged for BCCI to
penetrate the American market." Skolnick cites an article from
the New York Post, 2/8/92, as further reference (CN 6.04).
L.J. Davis, in his previously-mentioned article, agrees: the
Rose Law Firm has/does handle Stephens' affairs, and Davis even
connects BCCI with former Jimmy Carter honcho Bert Lance, Clark
Clifford, and Jackson Stephens. (Sara McClendon has stated that
Stephens and Carter have been close friends as far back as when
they both attended Annapolis.) In a radio interview broadcast on
local PBS radio outlet, WILL-AM, on Aug. 4, 1994, Davis described
what it was like in Little Rock: "I mean, after I'd been there
for awhile, considering the milieu and considering the strange
people that *did* show up there, I wouldn't have been surprised
if I encountered a fat man in a fez, Peter Lorre, and a Maltese
falcon!"
Another BCCI connection is to the December 1985 crash, in Gander,
Newfoundland, of a plane carrying 248 American soldiers.
Reportedly, a duffel bag stuffed with U.S. money was
surreptitiously spirited away from the crash site by apparent CIA
operatives. One of Beaty and Gwynnes sources states that the
money on the plane was from BCCI, provided to U.S. Intelligence
for covert operations. Investigator Gene Wheaton believes "that
Iranian terrorists blew up the plane out of anger after they
received a shipment of defective Hawk missile parts from the
United States." (*The Outlaw Bank*) But BCCI's main concern,
reportedly, was that their money might be stolen from them, as a
peripheral consequence of the plane crash.
Past issues of Conspiracy Nation have covered reports of a
possible "fuel-air explosive," a highly-sophisticated device,
being used in the tragic Oklahoma City bombing(s) of April 1995.
BCCI reportedly is connected to secret sales of something called
"Colombine Heads," apparently the triggering device for these
fuel-air bombs. As described in *The Outlaw Bank*, these
fuel-air bombs are also known as "the poor man's hydrogen bomb...
it worked by exploding a large cloud of vaporized gasoline. The
resulting explosion rivaled atomic blasts. It was almost
primitive technology, but it took an extremely sophisticated
triggering system to ignite the gas cloud."
BCCI, write Beaty and Gwynne, was a *big* story. Yet the mass
media mostly focussed only on the narrow aspect of Clark
Clifford's and Robert Altman's involvement. (Both were found
"not guilty" of any crimes.) The authors suggest that a great
deal of information on BCCI is being held "at the highest reaches
of the American government."
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
For related stories, visit:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
http://feustel.mixi.net
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