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FROM THE WILDERNESS
A
Nonpartisan, Non-sectarian, MAP from the Here That Is,
into the Tomorrow of Our Own Making
Vol. IV, No. 7 --------------------------------
October 15, 2001
[C] Copyright 2001, Michael
C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com.
All Rights Reserved. Please visit web site for Reprint Policy]
It's A Lie
- Insider Trading Evidence Leads Into
Heart of CIA
- The Lies About Taliban Heroin - Russia
And Oil The CIA Objective
- Bush/Bin Laden profiteering - The Carlyle
Group - Three Generations of Bushes Arm Hitler, Saddam
Hussein and Bin Laden, Records Show
- This War Was Planned for Years
- Bush Cabinet Seeks "Infinite War"
- Iraq On The Target Menu - Will Israel
Join Attacks?
- Prison Stocks Soar, More Americans Going
To Jail
- Civil Liberties Disappearing
- Official Recount Complete - Gore Won
Florida
From The Wilderness
Michael C. Ruppert
Publisher/Editor
Contributing Editor ------------------
Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.
Research ------------------------------------------"The
Goddess
Web Master------------------------------------Andrea
Shepherd
From The Wilderness
is published eleven times annually.
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From The Wilderness
Publications
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Unless otherwise indicated,
all articles are
written by Michael C. Ruppert.
Intellectual Triage
Picking Stories Wisely
This is a crisis of unimaginable
proportions. There is an avalanche of information and opinion
that threatens to overload us all. That what we are seeing
is a deliberate, pre-planned war, justified by attacks that
the U.S. government was aware of and did nothing to stop,
has changed the paradigm of history, and of FTW's
reporting.
Few are yet able to look
ahead and see that the Bush Administration has unleashed
political, economic and military forces that cannot be recalled
or stopped, short of their complete implementation, without
setting off a backlash within this country or unleashing
a global holocaust. The power grab that has begun has placed
the globalist interests behind the U.S. and British governments
in an absolute do or die situation.
Time is short. As deconstruction
of the lies behind the government's position on the attacks
and its agenda blazes across the Internet, noise interferes
with effective journalism. Make no mistake. The battle lines
are drawn now between fascism, global destruction and liberty.
Therefore, my obligation is to pick and chose those stories
that have a hope of derailing a plan that was - as you will
see in this issue - in the works long before the September
11 attacks.
I also have an obligation
to you, my readers, to give you useful information.
What is useful information?
- Information that breaks down the government's
credibility by proving that its stated positions are lies.
This information does not need to explain what happened.
It only needs to prove, through documented sources, that
what you are being told is either untrue or misleading.
This is information that needs the widest possible distribution
and I encourage all FTW subscribers to disseminate
it as widely as possible.
- Information that provides you with a
better map of how to evaluate your personal situation.
- Information that quickly establishes
a fact rather than opinion (e.g. - It is not possible
that the Taliban could flood this country with heroin;
The Bush family has current business dealings with the
bin Laden family; The CIA and Administration knew of the
attacks and did nothing to stop them).
What is not useful information?
- Information that supports a non-provable
opinion, (e.g. - Were explosives placed in the WTC towers?
- Were the hijacked planes remotely controlled?). I will
not waste a minute of your or my time on issues that cannot
be easily proven to legal standards. Do not waste your
mental energies on such issues. Did hearings on Waco,
the OKC bombing or Iran-Contra drugs produce any changes?
Insanity is repeating the same actions over again, expecting
different results.
- Information that requires stages of
additional investigation which none of us may have time
to ever get to.
What information must wait?
- Information that is not immediately
essential to stopping this race to destruction. Very relevant
and important issues such as who will pay for the billions
of dollars in pork subsidies for the military, Wall Street
and the inevitable looting of Social Security are based
on the assumption that we will have a government and society
remotely resembling what we think we have today. I am
not at all certain of that now.
Denial is running rampant
in part of the population while the long prayed for awakening
is occurring rapidly in another.
With Colin Powell's son
Michael in charge of the FCC and with Kevin Close, a CIA
operative who has headed the CIA radio networks Voice of
America and Radio Free Europe now the CEO of National Public
Radio; with the Pacifica network lost in a takeover which
has gutted it's heart and soul, there are precious few voices
left to speak the truth. But we are experiencing power and
influence we had never expected for the simple reason that
we are telling the truth.
Nothing is more important
than choosing our stories wisely and giving you the information
that will help you remember that you are responsible for
determining your fate, the fate of this nation, and perhaps
of the human race.
Final Florida Recount
Establishes That Al Gore Won The Election
On October 9th,
the Miami Herald published the results of the final, and
universally recognized as the most accurate, recount of
Florida votes in the 2000 election. The BDO Seidman manual
recount established that Al Gore won the state of Florida
by 662 votes.
Do not waste a second asking
if things would have been different under a Gore Administration.
Ask yourself instead if the now illegitimate Bush Administration
can afford not to complete its seizure of power.
A Time For Fear
Glimpsing The Reality
of the New World That Has Been Planned For Some Time
Evidence - For Those
Who Want It
This is a very good time
to be afraid. Fear is an entirely appropriate and healthy
response in an animal that wants to survive. It is the how
and what of fear that is critical in deciding whether or
not the animal will survive. Panic, denial and hysteria
are not survival traits. They are not adaptive behaviors.
Fear is. It is my intent to scare you, so that we might
survive together. When all is said and done, provided that
there is someone left to speak, they will say that the Bush
Administration, in sheer incompetent arrogance, embarked
on an aggressive, fascist plan to control the world's economy
in September 2001. But what they failed, or were even unable
- for lack of intellectual ability - to grasp was the latent
animosity of most of the world's population towards the
U.S. or the impact of their stamping out of civil liberties
inside that once great nation, or the inherent weaknesses
- so like the Roman Empire - of their military strategies.
In the January issue
of FTW, entitled Empire, I wrote, "Now
that we have become an empire, President Bush is making
our foreign policy stance clear. The Vice President, Dick
Cheney, is a former Secretary of Defense, The Secretary
of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is a former Secretary of Defense.
The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is the former Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Deputy Secretary of State-designate,
Richard Armitage, is a career intelligence operative, graduate
of Annapolis, Vietnam veteran and legendary covert warrior.
The New Chairman of the FCC is Colin Powell's son. The Bush
Administration's foreign policy is all stick and no carrot
as a 'War Cabinet' takes control."
Noting the indiscreet
arrogance of Wall Street in engaging in criminal behavior,
I wrote in May's issue, after Citigroup's brazen acquisition
of Mexico's drug money-laundering bank, Banamex, "It
doesn't matter anymore whether the American public chooses
to notice. The fait accompli is that drug money and criminal
money are now out of the closet as the most important determinants
of economic success for the US financial system. The careless
arrogance of these moves only reveals the utter confidence
in Washington, on Wall Street and in the banking system
that no voices from the wilderness can stop it. "
There is reason to be afraid
now. The arrogance and stupidity of "Empire" gave
us the First World War. As I have quoted so often, former
Assistant HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts says, "Those
who win in a rigged game get stupid."
Few events in the history
of mankind are so apparently manufactured or pre-arranged
as what we have seen from September 11 through today. Even
a cursory look by an unbiased mind will find hundreds of
holes in the U.S. government's position big enough to fly
an airplane through - intact. And when you acknowledge just
one of the holes, the lies, the distortions, you create
a matching hole in your consciousness, a rend in the fabric
of your desire for a cozy belief that everything is going
to be all right. It will not. Indeed, it cannot.
What we are experiencing
can be nothing other than a long-planned scenario, so foolishly
conceived and executed, that a global holocaust has now
become likely.
Provoking The Taliban
The British newspaper,
The Guardian wrote on September 26, "These
are the troubling questions raised by the Guardian's disclosure
at the weekend that the Taliban received a specific warning
- passed during secret diplomacy in Berlin in July - that
the Bush team had prepared a new plan to topple the entire
Afghan regime militarily unless they handed bin Laden over...
"And then [President]
Clinton himself disclosed what limited - and equally unsuccessful
- action he had been prepared to attempt by secret executive
order. He said on Saturday: "I authorized the arrest
and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden and we
actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do
it....
"A US department
of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan
in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established
that US Rangers were also training special troops inside
Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and
Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana..."
"Reliable western
military sources say a US contingency plan existed on paper
by the end of summer to attack Afghanistan from the north..."
"And a couple
of weeks later, another group gathered in a Berlin hotel.
There, former state department official Lee Coldren passed
[to the Taliban] on a message he had got from Bush officials:
'I think there was some discussion of the fact that the
United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they
might be considering some military action.'"
Those who seek comfort
in denial by suggesting, "Gee, the government knew
something was up and was trying to get ready," are
lemmings headed straight for the cliff. They miss the fact
that our actions were the pressure that forced bin Laden
to act and that the Administration could have prevented
the WTC attacks but did not. It has happened before in history
as the Roosevelt Administration repeatedly denied the Japanese
access to oil in the 1930s. Those who hope in vain that
this will all go away forget that that historical
precedent led to the most destructive war in human history.
And oil is perhaps the biggest hidden card in this deck.
Pre-Planning For September
11th
Like all of the major wars
of the last century, this one too has had a hidden but very
real and undeniable phase of preparation. International
Law Professor Francis A. Boyle, of the University of Illinois
wrote on October 12, "Obviously, the war against
Afghanistan was planned for quite some time. We know for
a fact that it had been war-gamed by the Pentagon going
back to 1997. Right around September 11, two US Aircraft
carrier task forces conveniently arrived in the Persian
Gulf right at the same time on "rotation." Obviously, preplanned.
Just before September 11, the UK had put together what was
billed as the "largest armada since the Falklands War" and
had it steaming towards Oman, where now 23,000 UK troops
are on maneuvers. This had been planned for at least 3 years.
Also, the US "Bright Star" operation is currently going
on in Egypt. 23,000 US troops plus an additional 17,000
from NATO and its associates. This had been planned at least
two years ago. Finally, NATO just landed 12,000 troops into
Turkey. This had been planned for at least two years. It
is obvious that we are seeing an operational War Plan being
executed here that had been in the works for at least the
past four years. September 11 is either a pretext or a trigger
or both."
In light of the known
available intelligence information that we have previously
presented in these pages, and the hard data on insider trading
that we present in this issue, there can be no doubt that
the Bush Administration awaited the attacks as a pretext
for the massive military operations that we see occurring
now. In the words of retired Army Special Forces Master
Sergeant Stan Goff - who taught military science at West
Point - "I can't help but conclude that the actions
we are seeing put into motion now are part of a pre-September
11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of that, in
fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale,
that are now taking shape, would take many months. And we
are seeing them take shape in mere weeks."
Oil
In the early 1990s Unocal,
in a joint venture with Saudi companies and other US oil
firms, developed a major plan for an oil pipeline running
from the vast oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, straight
through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean where
the American oil companies would reap huge profits from
sales to China and Japan. Testifying before the House International
Relations Committee on Asia and the Pacific in 1998, Unocal
Vice President, John Maresca said, "In spite of
this, a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best
option with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest
route to the sea and has relatively favorable terrain for
a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is the one that
would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and
thus would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the
oil."
Although Unocal ostensibly
abandoned the project the next year, things have changed
since September 11th. An October 10 story from
the Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post, opened with:
"The US ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain
paid a courtesy call on the Federal Minister for Petroleum
and Natural resources, Usman Aminuddin here Tuesday and
discussed with him matters pertaining to Pak-US cooperation
in the oil and gas sector."
In a later paragraph the
story said, "Usman Aminuddin also briefed the Ambassador
on the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline
project and said that this project opens up new avenues
of multi dimensional regional cooperation particularly in
view of the recent geo-political developments in the region."
It appears that the military weren't the only ones prepared
for September 11th.
Exposing The Lie Is
Easy
As a demonstration of the
Administration's arrogance, let's look at just three of
the biggest flaws in the official version.
First, let's look at the
timing of the hijackings. Stan Goff, the covert warrior
who taught at West point writes, " Four planes get
hijacked and deviate from their flight plans, all the while
on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and
8:10 Am Eastern Daylight Time.
"Who is notified?
"This is an event
already that is unprecedented. But the President is not
notified...
"By around 8:15
AM, it should be very apparent that something is terribly
wrong. The President is glad-handing teachers.
"By 8:45, when
American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the World trade
Center, Bush is sitting with children... and still no one
notifies the nominal Commander in Chief.
"No one has apparently
scrambled any Air Force interceptors either.
"At 9:03, United
Flight 175 crashes into the remaining World Trade Center
building. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the Presidential Chief of
Staff whispers to George W. Bush...
"He resumes listening
to second graders read... this banality continues even as
American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point
turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington,
D.C. Has he instructed Card to scramble the Air Force? No.
"An excruciating
25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement...
"There's a hijacked
plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been
scrambled to defend anything yet? No.
"At 9:30, when
he makes his announcement, American flight 77 is still ten
minutes from the Pentagon.
"At 9:35, this
plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the Pentagon,
all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is
not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the
Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC."
Another easy and non-debatable
hole is with the passenger lists and the hijackers. Gary
North, Ph.D. - a history professor - has done a detailed,
line-by-line analysis of the passenger lists of the four
airliners hijacked on September 11. He relied on lists published
by CNN and notes two major discrepancies on all four flights.
First, by comparing the number of reported fatalities on
each flight - as reported by CNN and AP, he discovers that
the list of passenger names - on every one of the flights
- between six and twelve names are missing. The total number
of all missing names for all four flights is 35. Official
reports state that there were only 19 hijackers. Second,
none of listed passenger names are Arabic, Muslim or even
close. The government needs to provide an explanation for
this glaring discrepancy.
The significance of this
is that it flies in the face of two very obvious airline
safety procedures. First, every passenger must show a photo
ID, matching a reservation, in order to board. An Arabic-looking
passenger, not on the manifest and lacking a photo ID would
never have been allowed to board. Second, prior to take
off, flight attendants do a head count. It is mandatory,
both to match meals to passengers and to make sure there
are no stowaways. Are we to assume that the planes just
took off with a bunch of extra unticketed middle-eastern
passengers on board? To assume that the hijackers had control
of the aircraft before take off is ludicrous. At least one
of the pilots would have refused to take off and notified
FAA of a hijack.
To obtain a full copy of
North's scientific analysis, send an email to puzzle@kbot.com.
Then there's the flight
training issue. Journalist Dan Hopsicker, www.madcowprod.com,
has been meticulously pulling apart the stories about the
suicide pilots' flight training before the attacks. Aside
from uncovering huge holes he has noted a huge problem for
the government. "It said Mohamed Atta had attended
International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base
in Montgomery, Ala. In addition Abdulaziz Alomari had attended
Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas,
they reported, and Saeed Alghamadihas had been to the Defense
Language Institute in Monterrey, California."
Someone please explain
how these known or suspected terrorists were given clearances
to attend military and intelligence related facilities inside
the US?
Operation Infinite War
Reporting on what Pentagon
insiders are referring to as a plan for "Operation
Infinite War," the British paper, The Observer, on
September 30 told of a chilling spilt in Bush's Cabinet.
It disclosed the deeper thinking that we have seen behind
the full-throttle rhetoric of the President since September
11. "The Observer has learnt that two detailed proposals
for warfare without limit were presented to the President
this week by his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both
of which were temporarily put aside but remain on hold.
"They were drawn
up by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - a highly intellectual
right-winger who rose through the State department and Pentagon
ranks under Ronald Reagan..."
"The plans put
before the President during the past few days involve expanding
the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions
by special ops forces - followed by air strikes by the bombers
they would guide - into Iraq, Syria and the Beqaa Valley
area of Lebanon, where the Syrian-backed Hizbollah (Party
of God) fighters that harass Israel are based..."
"...If action in
Lebanon led to an Israeli reinvasion of the southern part
of the country, it would be supported by the US...."
"Special US units
could be deployed in conjunction with domestic troops against
cells in allied Western countries, notably Britain, France
and Spain."
Indications that this concept
is dominating are clear as we go to press. New stories are
indicating that the anthrax used in recent attacks likely
originated in Iraq. At the same time FTW is
receiving information about troop deployments indicating
preparations for air and airborne assaults in that country.
News From The Other
Side
Three very chilling stories
tell us of the psychology impacting the Muslim world. These
are but a clue of the hostility and tensions being unleashed
and fanned to fever pitch.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, in
a September 26 UPI story writes, "The Sept 11, terrorist
attacks on the United States were perpetrated by renegade
U.S. Air Force elements working in conjunction with Mossad,
the Israeli intelligence service, according to the retired
Pakistani general who is closest to the Taliban and Osama
bin Laden..."
"... Now [Gen. Hameed]
Gul had added a new disinformation wrinkle to the plot.
And what Gul says or writes is taken at face value by religious
leaders and is repeated in thousands of mosques at Friday
prayers."
"Asked why Israel
would benefit, Gul replied, "Israel knows it has a
short shelf-life before it is overwhelmed by demographics
(and it) has now handed the (Bush administration) the opportunity
it has been waiting for to consolidate America's imperial
grip on the Gulf and acquire control of the Caspian basin
by extending its military presence in Central Asia."
A story totally ignored
by American media from the British paper The Telegraph,
dated October 4, reports that "The largest outbreak
in history of a highly contagious disease that causes patients
to bleed to death from every orifice was confirmed yesterday
on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan." The Ebola-like
virus had killed 75 people as of the date of this report
and appeared to be spreading. Although no further stories
have appeared to follow-up on this highly significant event,
FTW has received information that the Muslim
world is believing that the U.S. has unleashed biological
warfare. This is not at all surprising since the U.S. is
the world's primary developer of Ebola-like weapons of mass
destruction.
Finally, from the Arabic
news web site, www.arabicnews.com
comes an October 12 story that simply says that an Israeli
Defense Ministry spokesperson has announced that American
will provide Israel with advance notice of attacks on Iraq
and that, "the Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin
Bin Aliazer announced Israel's readiness to take part in
the fighting the U.S. will launch against Iraq."
If you are not afraid,
you should be. I am.
SUPPRESED DETAILS
OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's
HIGHEST RANKS
CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
"BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT"
OPTIONS ON UAL
FTW,
October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream
U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a
number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific
(criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of
at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million
prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put
options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998,
managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive
Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until
1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of
the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired
by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part
of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown,
one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this
year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's
last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private
client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on
relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world
in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been
identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as
being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the
CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He
was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush
in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank
in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in
Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several
key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN
INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further
into these relationships it is necessary to look at the
insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters,
The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented
that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time
- as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic
moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW
have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software
to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand
only two key financial terms to understand the significance
of these trades, "selling short" and "put
options".
"Selling Short"
is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market
prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock
for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the
short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the
contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen
and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These
contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
"Put Options,"
are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks
at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example,
$1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares.
If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling
selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the
contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it
might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American
Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option
is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed.
If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures,
the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50
and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where
the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of
a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that
the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by
the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for
Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's
Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following
trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- - "Between September 6 and 7,
the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744
put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options...
Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people
with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these
"insiders" would have profited by almost $5
million.
- - "On September 10, 4,516 put
options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago
exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was
no news at that point to justify this imbalance;... Again,
assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent
"insiders," they would represent a gain of about
$4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased
above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- - "No similar trading in
other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the
days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- - "Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
& Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade
Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought
in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares
to an average of 27 contracts per day before September
6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50
in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of
these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge
of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have
profited by at least $1.2 million.
- - "Merrill Lynch & Co.,
with headquarters near the WTC Towers, saw 12,215 October
$45 put options bought in the four trading days before
the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares
had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!].
When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88
to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were
bought by "insiders," their profit would have
been about $5.5 million.
- - "European regulators are examining
trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re,
and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure
to the Black Tuesday disaster." [FTW
Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines
stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for
them.]
On September 29, 2001 -
in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media
- the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors
have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they
made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before
the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar
with the trades and market data.
"The uncollected
money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities
and nationalities have not been made public - had advance
knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show
up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the
attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim
the prize before investigators started looking.
"... October series
options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes
three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total
outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts,
each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This
represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling
at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put"
options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing
231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse
Corp."
"...The source
familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank
Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German
giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase
at least some of these options..." This was the operation
managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news
stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading
activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND
THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships
between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical
to grasping the already frightening implications of the
above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall
Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players
in CIA's history.
Clark Clifford -
The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford,
a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense,
and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s,
as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental
in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate
on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and
banker.
John Foster and Allen
Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the
CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations
during WW II. Allen Dulles was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland
where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after
U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become
Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went
on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later
fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful
- to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey - Ronald
Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief
wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President
Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty -
The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange
for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker
Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served
as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid
consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest
defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint
investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. "Buzzy"
Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment
bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust.
John Deutch - This
retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently
sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest
bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in
the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's
2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money,
Banamex.
Nora Slatkin - This
retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.
Maurice "Hank"
Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the
third largest capital investment pool in the world, was
floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW
exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug
trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that
was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11.
AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks.
To read that story, please go to
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/
ciadrugs/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning
evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable
proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them.
Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing,
it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people,
especially those who died on September 11.
The Lies About Taliban
Heroin
Russia and Oil the
Real Objectives, With Heroin As A Weapon of War
A Replay of CIA's
Vietnam-era Drug Dealing
FTW Revises
Its Map On Economic Impacts
FTW,
October 10, 2001 - The governments of the United States
and Britain - along with a lap-dog mainstream media all
too willing to regurgitate falsehoods - are feeding us a
line of demonstrably inaccurate lies about the Taliban and
opium. We are being warned of a "new flood" of
al-Q'aeda opium as the war expands. As British Prime Minister
Tony Blair boasts, "We will bomb their poppy fields,"
he neglects to mention that there aren't any poppy fields
in Taliban controlled areas to bomb. This outrageous deception
of the public, in an effort to stir up support for the war
effort, is further evidence that most of the rest of the
government's line following the attacks of September 11,
is simply not credible.
A simple side-by-side comparison
of reports from the UN and the U.S. government, along with
major media stories from before and after the Sept. 11 attacks
exposes the lie.
Even the U.S. State Department
(www.state.gov/www/regions/
sa/facts_taliban_drugs.html.) acknowledges that in July
2000, Mullah Omar of the Taliban ordered a ban on poppy
cultivation in all Taliban controlled regions of Afghanistan.
That State Department Fact Sheet, published after Jan 1,
2000, however, expresses U.S. disbelief in the ban's effectiveness.
This position is, however, flatly contradicted by some very
credible sources, including Secretary of State Colin Powell.
He gave the Taliban $43 million this May to replace the
income lost to Afghani farmers as a result of the ban. Their
wheat crops had failed due to the drought and they had no
money from opium harvests to buy food. The middlemen who
had stockpiled the opium had income. But the farmers, who
had harvested in the summer of 2000, had already been paid.
In February 2000 citing
reports from Agence France-Presse, the AP, and UPI, FTW
published a story describing the Taliban's successful destruction
of their poppy crop. We viewed this at the time - possibly
incorrectly - as a move by the Taliban to take $90 billion
in drug cash out of the western banking system. That sales
remained stable, however, is reflected in the fact that
heroin prices fell only slightly in 2000. Had Afghanistan
stopped selling altogether, then Western Europe, which gets
its opium from Afghanistan, would have seen a steep increase
in prices. It did not. So why then did Powell give Afghanistan
the $43 million? I wish I knew.
Now, based upon new evidence,
we know that in 1999 Afghanistan produced a bumper crop
of 4,600 metric tons of opium and that this has been verified
by a number of sources including the United Nations Drug
Control Program (UNDCP) as well as in a multitude of press
stories. The 2000 harvest was close to 3,300 metric tons.
The result, as Colombia expanded poppy cultivation in the
late 1990s, and as the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia
showed only a minor drop in output, was a glut. Therefore
the Taliban's ban on production would have had the impact
of creating a price support by reducing supplies. How successful
was the ban and destruction of crops? Well, aside from the
above reports, which all indicated that inspections confirming
the ban had taken place, consider the following:
- On January 3, 2001 an
ABC News story, posted on their web site stated, "Pakistan's
Foreign Secretary Inam ul-Haq's claim to have eliminated
all opium plantations in Taliban controlled territories
- reported by Agence France-Presse -- seems to have been
confirmed by a UN survey.
"This development
could have several important ramifications for both the
geopolitical situation in the region and the world drug
trade...
"The center of
world drug production will shift from Afghanistan, which
accounted for 75 percent of world opium production last
year, to Colombia and the Golden Triangle on the border
between Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand.
- A February 16, 2001 AP
story by Kathy Gannon was headlined, "Taliban virtually
wipes out opium production in Afghanistan." It
opened with these lines:
"U.N. drug control
officers said the Taliban religious militia has virtually
wiped out opium production in Afghanistan - once the world's
largest producer - since banning poppy cultivation in July.
"A 12-member team
from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching
most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found
so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come
out of Afghanistan this year.
"'We are not just
guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields,' said Bernard
Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of
land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same
fields taken a year earlier - a sea of blood red poppies.
- On May 24, 2001 Barry
Berak of the New York Times wrote a story entitled, "Taliban
Ban on Drug Crops Is Working, U.S. Concludes."
Here are the lead paragraphs:
"ELMAND PROVINCE,
Afghanistan, May 20 - This has been heroin's great heartland,
where the narcotic came to life as an opium resin taken
from fragile buds of red and white poppies. Last year, 75
per cent of the world's opium crop was grown in Afghanistan,
with the biggest yield sprouting from here in the fertile
plains of the country's south, sustained by the meander
of the Helmand River.
"But something
astonishing has become evident with this spring's harvest.
Behind the narrow dikes of packed earth, the fields are
empty of their most profitable plant. Poor farmers, scythes
in hand, stoop among brown stems.
"Mile after mile,
there is only a dry stubble of wheat to cut from the lumpy
soil...
"But American narcotics
officials who visited the country confirmed earlier United
Nations reports that the Taliban had, in one growing season,
managed a rare triumph in the long and losing war on drugs..."
Before looking at what
the press is saying since the WTC attacks, take three facts
and lock them firmly in your brain. First, the opium-growing
season in the region, according to the UN and other drug
monitoring agencies, is a planting in October and November
with a harvest in May and June. There have been no crops
planted or harvested in Afghanistan or Pakistan since the
summer of 2000. The Taliban and farmers have been sustaining
themselves by selling stockpiles, with the prices fairly
stable since the ban.
Second, Afghanistan, for
the last four years, has been suffering under one of the
worst droughts in its history. The last year has been the
worst.
Third, Central Asian
expert, Vladimir Davlatov, writing for "1 world media,"
from the Tajikistan capital of Dushnabe, interviewed a General
[Rustam Nazarov] in command of Tajik border guards charged
with intercepting heroin supplies smuggled out of Afghanistan.
The August 31 story (Issue No. 67) quoted the General as
saying, "The quality of Afghan heroin has recently
deteriorate[d]."
The Propaganda
"The West
At War: Drugs Wipeout - We'll Bomb Poppy Fields - Blair
Targets Terror Profits - Poppy fields which supply the Taliban's
multi-billion pound drugs trade are to be a key target of
military strikes in Afghanistan"
read the headline of a September 30, 2000 story in the British
paper, The Sunday Mirror. The story said:
"A senior Downing
street aide said: 'We have reliable information that the
Taliban are planning to use money from drugs to finance
military action, and that bin Laden has ordered farmers
to step up production..." How can they step up production?
It takes six months to grow a crop and they have to plant
one first. The planting doesn't start until November. Meantime
we're bombing the region to smithereens. Is this a new form
of plowing the soil?
"There is an estimated
3,000 tonnes of opium stockpiled inside Afghanistan
..." OK, what have they been selling for the last year,
wheat? Mushrooms?
"Flood of Cheap
Afghan Heroin," blazed the headline of a story
in the Times of London dated September 25, 2001. The lead
sentences of that story read:
"AFGHAN farmers
are ready to swamp world markets with heroin amid signs
that the Taleban has dropped its ban on opium growing.
"The ban was imposed
by Mullah Muhammad Omar last year, leaving many farmers
ruined. But the sudden halving of the price of raw opium
to $250 a kg suggests the decree has been reversed."
So whose heroin is flooding the markets?
The Los Angeles Times,
The New York Times and the Washington Post, along with every
network, have all reported that the Taliban's response to
U.S. attacks will be to increase heroin production. Strange
for a country that is now militarily sealed off and has
no remaining operable airfields and whose land borders are
now sealed by the U.S. military. That gives a whole new
meaning to the term "Thunder Road."
On September 30 The Chicago
Tribune published a story entitled "Panicked Opium
Traders Unload Huge Stocks. Implying that it was the Taliban
doing so, the story opened with the lead:
"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
- Just as the Dow Jones industrial average fell precipitously
in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the U.S., so did
the main economic marker in the ramshackle street bazaars
of Pakistan's North West Frontier province.
"Traders from Peshawar
reported that the price of opium had plunged from $700 a
kilo to $90 since September 11..."
There is no mention in
the story of the fact that Pakistan itself grows the opium
poppy or that the Pakistani government of Musharraf Pervez
- our erstwhile ally - has been dependent upon drug money
to sustain itself for at least ten years. How come the story
doesn't look to the Pakistani issue?
The Ananova press agency
reported on September 29th, "...A Downing
Street spokesman says there is evidence of a sudden movement
of opium out of neighboring Pakistan where it was being
stockpiled." Now let me get this straight. The
stockpiles are in Pakistan so we're going to bomb Afghanistan
for it. That makes real good sense!
In the most outrageous
propaganda of all, the Indian news service PTI in New Delhi,
published a story on October 4, headlined, "Laden
Planned to Wreak Havoc in U.S. Through Super Heroin."
It's lead paragraph reads:
"The most wanted
terrorist Osama bin Laden had planned to develop a 'super
heroin' drug and export the same to United States and West
Europe to wreak havoc there much before the deadly September
11 attacks. 'The terror network headed by Osama bin Laden
has tried to develop a high-strength form of heroin that
it planned to export to United States and Western Europe,"
a major American daily said today quoting intelligence reports."
This is the most patent
b.s. I have ever read. I specialized in heroin at LAPD.
I was also trained by the DEA in 1976. There is no such
thing as super heroin. Heroin is a chemical, diacetyl morphine.
Its purest form is 100%. It is usually "cut" at
least four times - each time by 50% - to 6.25% purity or
less before it is sold on the streets. There is no way to
make it stronger unless you just cut it less, which automatically
cuts the profits to street vendors. And it is the middlemen
and retailers who do the cutting, not the manufacturer.
It is easier to smuggle one kilo of pure heroin from Afghanistan
to Uzbekistan or Pakistan or Turkey than it is to smuggle
eight kilos at 6.25%. It would take eight times as many
airplanes and trucks.
Each time a middleman cuts
the heroin he has twice as much to sell.
This lie of a story implies
that Osama bin Laden controls street-level drug dealing
in the United States from the black ghettos of New York
and L.A to the white suburbs of San Francisco and Chicago.
That's the only way it is possible to get a higher-strength
heroin on the streets of America.
And what about the fact
that the U.S. receives - according to the DEA and the Department
of Justice - more than 60 per cent of its heroin from Colombia.
Does bin Laden control Colombia too?
"Oh Yeah, We
Forgot To Tell You"
Only belatedly have major
outlets like the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 2), The Associated
Press (Oct. 5), and the Washington Post (Oct. 5) begun to
acknowledge, in stories placed well back in the paper, and
with much less emphasis, that the Northern Alliance - our
allies against the Taliban - are now in real control of
the heroin trade. Smuggling routes have shifted from south
through Pakistan northward through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
and Turkmenistan. They acknowledge the obvious - that the
Taliban is no longer the primary supplier of heroin. How
could they be?
The Real Story
In March 2001 FTW reported
from Moscow that Uzbekistan was "awash" in a sea
of poppies. Since September 11 we have seen Uzbekistan not
surprisingly become the hub for all U.S. military operations
going into Afghanistan. It was, in fact, the very first
place that U.S. military and "special operations"
forces deployed - within days of the attacks. Unmentioned
in press stories is the fact that firms like Southern Air,
Evergreen and other CIA proprietary or contract operations
have been establishing a presence in the Uzbek capital of
Tashkent for more than a year. And Tashkent is a surprisingly
modern city. It even has an Intercontinental Hotel. This
is undoubtedly due in part to increased oil exploration,
but it hauntingly parallels our experience from another
era - Vietnam.
Now, as we are hearing
the first reports that the Uzbeki government, fighting its
own battle against a Muslim insurgency, will permit offensive
operations from its military bases, FTW has
had two reports that CIA operative Richard Secord has recently
traveled to Tashkent. Secord's documented history of involvement
in heroin smuggling, from Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in
the 1960's and his criminal involvement in illegal operations,
including drug smuggling during the Iran-Contra years, tells
us exactly what is happening. These same intelligence sources
have also reported that many other CIA veterans of Iran-Contra
and Vietnam - despite their age - are converging on Tashkent
like bees to a field of flowers - poppy flowers.
In the 1960's and 70's,
as the Vietnam War raged, the CIA fostered and maintained
a series of covert wars in Laos and Cambodia. They did this
by funding their operations with heroin, refined from opium
grown by indigenous tribesmen including the Hmong in Laos.
The Hmong, in turn became surrogate U.S. armies and the
money from the trade supported the CIA and its allies as
the region became totally unstable. In the years since,
the only difference is that drug money has become a $500-600
billion a year cash flow that is now an essential part of
the world banking and financial system because it provides
the liquid cash necessary to make the "minimum monthly
payments" on huge stock and derivative and investment
bubbles in the U.S. and Britain. These bubbles were already
bursting in the weeks prior to the September 11 attacks.
Now, as the CIA moves to
control the drug trade in the region you can be sure of
several things. First, when the world sees an explosion
of heroin from the region it won't be the Taliban's doing.
Second, the cash flows from the smuggling will now be directed
through U.S. banks and stocks. That is what the CIA does.
Third, those cash flows - as direct air operations from
Tashkent to the U.S. become commonplace - will be taken
away from Russia, the Balkans, Turkey and Eastern Europe.
Fourth, the result of that will be de-stabilization of the
entire region. Fifth, destabilization in the region will
Balkanize Russia. Sixth, the increasing U.S. military and
economic presence will consolidate U.S. control over the
vast oil and gas reserves in the region. A revived Unocal-Saudi
pipeline project, which will begin construction soon after
the U.S. establishes control, will take the oil and gas
from Central Asia, through Afghanistan, and down to the
Pakistani coast where it will then be sold to China and
Japan. The profits from those sales will come back into
Wall Street. This will be a further drain on Russian influence
in the region and greatly increase global instability.
Throughout the 1990s the
United States - under an exclusive arrangement coordinated
by the Harvard Endowment, Goldman Sachs and the U.S Treasury
- looted some $300 billion from Russia. During the period
from 1989-2001 the population of that country shrank from
165 to 145 million people. As infrastructure collapsed,
as services disappeared, as unemployment skyrocketed, as
the Ruble collapsed, the life expectancy for a Russian male
dropped from 68 to 48 years.
Make no mistake. Russia
is the target here just as much as is the propping up of
a feeble U.S. economy with drug money. And remember that
Russia still has most of its nuclear arsenal intact.
The Best Enemies Money
Can Buy
From Hitler To Saddam
Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the
Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman
- BNL- and the Carlyle Group
FTW,
Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the
increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun
to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long
history of arming and financing America's attackers in the
months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories
in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC
News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called
alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on
the Bush family's profit-making role in creating and arming
our enemies.
The following is a more
comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships
that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the
press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with
biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical
weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many
countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the
Bush Administration is following predictable strategies
in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human
survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both
the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships
and to take appropriate action. Moreover - and I am not
the first to say this - if a national security priority
is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists,
then perhaps we should start right here at home.
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including
U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous
news stories from the New York Times and other papers is
presented in the 1992 book entitled, "George Bush,
The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley &
Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence
Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm.
The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this
essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not
always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence
Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found
a single flaw in any of their factual research. History
is history, no matter who presents it. And this history
is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush's grandfather,
Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment
bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the
1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell
Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts,
the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding
arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to power
starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS
and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott
Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship
line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard
Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon
Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the
Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money
to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The
profits from those investments came back to Bush allies
on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having
been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union
Bank Corporation.
Early support for Hitler
came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship
line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large
sums of money and weapons to Hitler's storm troopers in
the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and
Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime
was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for
the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The
Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate
of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from
Hitler Germany to the United States."
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S.
government investigative report that surfaced during 1945
Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott
Bush on the board, was an "interlocking concern"
with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
- 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
- 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
- 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
- 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
- 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
- 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
- 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives
The business relationships
established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war
started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant
seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the
Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, "Under
the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over
Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director.
The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s
stock shares...
"... all of which
shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen
family, [and] is property of nationals... of a designated
enemy country."
"On October 28,
the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations
run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading
Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation."
"Nazi interests
in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott
Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized
under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942..."
These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number
of American papers including The New York Times and The
Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to
become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut
who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President
Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster
and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under
Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President
in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker
Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series
of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
but also provided him with technology that assisted in his
development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological
weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the
elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left
the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new
balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies,
including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro
(BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating
the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker,
in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review
(CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate
that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline
opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop 'It
is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel,
'that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout
the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing,
intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq
into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately
had to destroy...
"Why, then, have
some of our top papers provided so little coverage?"
Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers
who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile
imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert
Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story
of the Banca Nacional del Lavoro, which apparently served
as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became
a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging,
mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis
to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear
to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam
received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called
dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored
ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential
civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned
that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and
abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until
August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned
that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank,
Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed
loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some
government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural
purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger
stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department
memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently
took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions.
U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks
like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"... In fact, we
now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick
Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S.
investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue
the case...
"... As New York
Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, 'Iraqgate
is uniquely horre |