Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking Tra

[admin]

Part 20: Genealogy--mine and the Mellons.

One of the myths of America is the myth of the "melting pot." In some cases it's accurate. The Scottish and Scotts-Irish immigrants to Kentucky and Tennessee, for example, often freely intermarried with the local Indian tribes.

So it happened that my grandmother's great-grandmother was a full-bloodied American Indian named--believe it or not--Pocahantas. As a child my mother and her siblings use to play, pretending that their ancestor was THE Pocahantas. But, clearly, if you add up the time involved for the generations, these were not the same person, for most woman do not give birth at the age of seventy.

My mother's family migrated first to East Texas, then to West Texas. Thus I emerged 1/32 American Indian, and proud of it. One of my brothers and I used to drive our father crazy by insisting on riding horses bareback--Indian-fashion--which wasn't the cowboy way of doing things. But he understood the sentiment behind this behavior.

A friend of mine who lives in the East Village of Manhattan comes from a family that, during the 1800s in Kansas, split off into two branches. One branch became--to all practical purposes--entirely White and the other branch became entirely Black. So my friend, who is black, has distant cousins who, he tells me, are "about as Redneck as you can get." My friend is greatly amused by this whole family saga, and wants to do a movie about it.

Not everyone holds this point of view. Take the Mellon family, who--from the beginning--have been pulling the strings on the Vince Foster affair. The Pittsburgh Brahmins are like the Boston Brahmins when it comes to genealogy. Perhaps that is why the line of black Mellons-- William Mellon, Jr., married into a black family by the name of King--are carefully avoided in polite conversation at the all-white organizations to which Richard Mellon Scaife belongs. This is simple hypocrisy and perhaps not terribly important.

What is important, however, is the Mellon involvement in the same crimes of which they accuse the Clintons. Not that the Clintons aren't guilty of about everything (excepting the actual death of Vince Foster) of which the Mellons have accused them.

But it is clearly a case where the pot is calling the kettle black. The crimes of the pot will begin to emerge in the RICO-suit against Mellon Bank for money laundering that starts Monday, August 28, in Pittsburgh.

[admin]

Part 21: The Meadors hearing and the problems of Mellon bank.

I went to Pittsburgh to visit the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Orphans' Court Division.

There was a hearing involving Mary Meadows Allen versus Mellon Bank, concerning the alleged trust of James Meadors, W.R. Meadors, and Joshua William King. A certain group of people were claiming they had been cheated out of their inheritance, and that Mellon Bank was hiding the money.

Mellon Bank had gotten the idea something was up on Tuesday, August 8, when Mellon computers displayed the message: "You've been had."

[This was four days after a virus percolated through NSA computers, beginning in Ames, Iowa, or thereabouts. Julie Franklin out of Maryland fired off several missives:

"We Have Had a 'virus' on our system. DO NOT ACCEPT any Wire transfers from this location till furthers NOTICE" one said.

"We have tentative ID. the virus that hit our DEC system, At this point the virus has taken 92.0% of the CPU cycles. It is a GOVERNMENT BLACK CYCLE. DISCONNECT FROM ALL TELEPHONE LINES NOW" read another.]

Before the Pittsburgh hearing, Richard Mellon Scaife had called up the investigator for Mary Allen and asked him, "What do you want to settle this thing?"

"I want the whole United States with a white picket fence around it--and not one board yellow," came the reply. Scaife didn't seem to think this was a reasonable request.

Later, talking to some of the Mellon people, the investigator explained his court goal thusly: "Just pay the electric bill, and hand me the keys to Mellon Bank."

At the hearing on Monday, August 28, I was privileged to watch a vice-president of Mellon Bank, Michael Mullaugh, perjure himself with respect to some records he said he couldn't find, and some assets he said he didn't have.

As far as I could tell the hearing served two purposes, one of them being the previously mentioned perjury charge against Mellon Bank. The other involved the separation of Mary Allen's case from that of a certain Ann Helmon, who claimed to represent some of the hidden-money heirs.

Mellon's attorney, Gregory Jordan, seemed oblivious to what was happening, and went out of his way to also jump on Ann Helmon himself. He had prepared his case based on some checks with missing check numbers which were marked "Property of Ann Helmon." Helmon said she had gotten these checks from a mysterious man named "Frank".

Mary Allen's attorney had copies of some of the same checks--but with check numbers and Federal Reserve markings included. Mellon's attorney didn't seem to notice these little differences.

After the hearing, Ann Helmon's attorney was seen--curiously enough--making a visit to Mellon Bank.

All in all, neither Mellon Bank nor Ann Helmon appeared to emerge in good shape.

By the end of the week, on Thursday and Friday, a few large customers had begun to pull their deposits out of Mellon Bank. This included the CIA, which had placements through some Latin American companies. Does the CIA know something?

Also, on the day of the hearing, a purchase of Pittsburgh's Integra Financial Corp. by National City Corp. of Cleveland was announced. The latter institution is said to be controlled by the Cleveland Mafia. Is the Mellon stranglehold on Pittsburgh slipping?

Mellon problems have emerged elsewhere. A grand jury subpoena-- issued by the assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, Julie Brown Apperson, pursuant to a U.S. Postal Service investigation-- dated August 3, 1995, asks Mellon Bank to provide "Any and all records regarding (1) Spindletop Oil & Gas Co., W.R. Medders Escrow Account No. 51-202901 and (2) United Gas Pipe Line Company, Account no. 043301601."

To add to the festivities, one of Mellon's goons loosened the transmission plug, drained the brake fluid, and partially cut one of the brake lines in one of the cars I was privileged to ride around in.

Well, Mr. Scaife, as Jack Kerouac noted in Dr. Sax, "The universe consumes its own evil." And you, Sir, are about to fall into a black hole.

[admin]

Part 22: James Hamilton doesn't get a chance to deny the $286,000 wire transfer by Sheila Anthony.

Question: What do you call six lawyers up to their necks in sand?
Answer: Not enough sand.

Take the case of James Hamilton, Attorney-at-Law and Prevaricator-for-Hire. Here is a letter he wrote to a friend of mine.

James Hamilton
Attorney-at-Law
Swidler & Berlin
(202) 424-7826
August 15, 1995

BY TELECOPIER

Mr. James R. Norman
Senior Editor
Forbes, Inc.
Forbes Building
60 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10011

Dear Mr. Norman:

This concerns your August 12, 1995 letter on Forbes letterhead to Margaret Kirsch Cohen of the Mellon Bank, which is attached. Please know that the allegations contained in the first paragraph of that letter are completely false [Jim noted, as did I in Part 17, that it appeared that Sheila Foster Anthony effected a wire transfer of about $286,000 from a branch of Mellon Bank to her sister-in-law Lisa Foster four days prior to Vince Foster's death]. Indeed, Mrs. Anthony, whose former government position you misdescribe [Jim referred to her as "Assistant U.S. Attorney" instead of "Assistant Attorney General"], never has maintained an account at a branch or affiliate of Mellon Bank and never has made a wire transfer of any amount to Lisa Foster.

Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Anthony are astonished and incensed that you would communicate such allegations to three prominent Congressmen without even giving me the opportunity to deny them, which I would have done most emphatically. What legitimate journalistic purpose did this serve? You and your magazine run a serious risk of litigation by publicizing untrue allegations about the Foster family.

Sincerely,

James Hamilton
Counsel for the Foster Family

JH/cmb
Attachment

cc: The Honorable Newt Gingrich
The Honorable James Leach
The Honorable William F. Clinger
Mr. Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr.
President and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes
Mr. James W. Michaels, Editor, Forbes
Ms. Margaret Kirsh Cohen
(all by telecopier)

Well, gee, Mr. Hamilton, I can't speak for Jim, but I didn't give you an opportunity to deny this wire transfer prior to posting news of it on the Internet because, frankly, I wanted to spare myself the embarrassment of watching your nose grow. Consider it an aesthetic choice.

For your information, I believe the evidence on this wire transfer is in the hands of Mr. Kenneth Starr, not to mention some of the politicians on your cc list.

You might want to find out what Lisa Foster did with that $286,000 (and change). You know--so you can get your denials ready.

By the way, Mr. Hamilton, were you aware that Sheila's husband Beryl Anthony, former Arkansas congressman who is now with the Washington office of the law firm of Winston & Strawn, has as a client Alltel Information Services (formerly Systematics)? In Part 2 of this series we saw that another lawyer, Charles O. Morgan, denied any connection between Vince Foster and Systematics.

So, Mr. Hamilton, why don't you go stand in the corner with Charles O. Morgan.

The dump truck with the sand will be along shortly.

[admin]

Part 23: Bush spies on Perot. The blonde hairs found on Foster's body.

1. Did George Bush, while President, set up a Plumbers Unit that reported directly to him?

2. Was this unit assigned to spy on the Ross Perot campaign?

3. Did one member of this unit, a former DIA banking software expert named Jim Cofield, spread some sexual information concerning Perot's daughter for political purposes?

4. Did Jim Cofield get his banking software experience through Earl "Cash" Brian--the Meese crony who marketed the stolen PROMIS software all over the world; who was recently seen in Switzerland; and who was indicted on Tuesday, September 5, in California, and charged with conspiracy, bank fraud, securities fraud, and making false statements to the SEC while an officer of Financial News Network (FNN) and United Press International (UPI)?

5. Did another member of the Bush Plumber's Unit named Robert Goetzman (a purveyor of bugged computer hardware) claim the day of Foster's death that "we killed Foster. We did him somewhere else, but we dumped him in a queer park to send Clinton and his queer wife a message"?

6. Did Dee Dee Myers give Vince Foster a blowjob the afternoon he died?

[admin]

Part 24: The Foster hit appears unprofessional, and to have taken the White House by surprise.

The question of who killed Vince Foster is less problematical than the question of who approved the hit. A good bit of evidence says it wasn't Bill Clinton who gave the order.

A good bit of evidence says the hit took place under emergency conditions--a spontaneous, last-minute solution when Vince Foster failed to react in expected fashion to a $286,000 attempted bribe.

A good bit of evidence says the hit was not an authorized, legally-approved government action--one that would protect the assassins under an umbrella of national security.

A good bit of evidence says the hit was done in an unprofessional fashion by people who talked too much and drank too much.

The Bush Plumbers Unit that was assigned to spy on the Perot campaign continued in existence after the election of William Jefferson Clinton to the Presidency. The Unit at various times included Robert Goetzman (FBI), Jim Cofield (DIA), "Gary" Tomlinson (CIA), Peter Stanley (FBI), Wes Thomas (my sources say CIA; Thomas denies this), Dale Helm (CIA), and Debra von Trapp (Trapp Technologies).

According to Debra von Trapp, Bob Goetzman appeared drunk on both alcohol and adrenaline when he called her in California from Washington DC., around 11 p.m. EST on the evening of July 20, 1993.

"We did him! We did him!"

"Did who?"

"Vince Foster."

"What do you mean?"

"We did him!"

"Well, where did you do him?"

"Well, we did him somewhere else, but we dumped him in a queer park to send Clinton and his queer wife a message!"

The confusion and lack of preparation on the part of the White House seems evident. Two days later, on Thursday afternoon, July 22, at a press conference, Dee Dee Myers--who was in a good position to know that Foster had not committed suicide--said Park Police had been there that morning looking for a suicide note. Apparently no one had thought to prepare one in advance of the hit.

Sarah McClendon has reported that Vince Foster was scheduled to meet with Bill Clinton on Wednesday, July 21. But the President's schedule is made by others, and apparently Vince Foster was led to believe such a meeting was planned, but Bill Clinton was not aware of it. Apparently Foster was being suckered by other members of the White House.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, July 20, Foster was set up for the kill via a sexual liaison with a "blonde" whose hairs were found on Foster's clothing after his demise.

Goetzman explained to Von Trapp that Foster had "gotten entrepreneurial" in selling NSA codes to the Israelis. The use of the word "entrepreneurial" implies selling information on an unapproved basis. Goetzman himself, meanwhile, was selling in- formation to the Japanese, apparently on an approved basis.

Who authorized Goetzman to make the hit? Was George Bush involved? Was Hillary Clinton involved? Were both involved? Such a coalition is not unthinkable.

It is certainly not any more improbable than the list of dinner guests at Al Gore's during the 1995 Labor Day weekend: Bill Bradley (uncertain political affiliation), Harry Reid (D-NV), Pat Schroeder (D-CO), Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and Janet Reno (Attorney General).

What do you suppose the topic of conversation was?

[admin]

Part 25: The global money laundering operation.

What ties together cocaine in Arkansas, an assassinated Vince Foster, Systematics banking software, NSA codes diverted to the Israelis, hidden accounts at Pittsburgh's Mellon Bank, Iraq-bound technology from Westinghouse and Kennametal (perhaps smuggled or escorted by Wackenhut security), and bipartisan political payola?

One common thread concerns a global money-laundering operation run out of Lima, Peru.

Just as two banks will not be sufficient to form an efficient foreign exchange market, neither can a couple of isolated institutions effectively launder money. Therefore anyone with large amounts of "dirty" money to process must ultimately intersect with the global market for the flow of laundered cash. A principal reason has to do with layering.

Classical money laundering involves three stages: placement, layering, and integration. Placement is getting cash into the system. This usually involves a friendly banker who doesn't fill out reporting forms. Layering is a chain of transactions (these are often interbank transactions) at least one of which needs to be invisible in order to effectively break the monetary trail. Integration is getting the "clean" money back to the original owner. This may take many forms, including offshore "loans" which are never repaid.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of some of the money-laundering inter- connections among the various subjects of discussion that have arisen in this series of Internet posts.

1. Cocaine smuggled through Mena, Arkansas and elsewhere (including, currently, the cross-border flow from Canada and Mexico) generates huge cash profits which must be laundered.

I first learned of the Arkansas drug-related laundry around 1983, about three years after it had gone into operation. Nicolas Ardito- Barletta was then a World Bank economist, but one who would shortly become President of Panama (prior to General Noriega). Nicolas' brother took my class on international financial markets at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and afterward wrote his advanced study project paper on Panama as an international banking center under my supervision. The paper focused on the economic incentives offered by the Panamanian banking system. But privately we discussed the obvious demand for banking services generated by the intercontinental cocaine trade. The Arkansas laundry was well-known to Panamanian bankers.

2. Prohibitions on the export of weapons or advanced technology similarly creates a profit opportunity for those willing to subvert that prohibition. So another source of demand for laundering services comes from smuggled nuclear technology, nuclear fuel, and arms shipments.

Pittsburgh--whose environs encompass Kennametal, parts of Westinghouse, and Mellon Bank--was a focal point for the latter operation. Kennametal machine tools and Westinghouse nose cones were shipped up the St. Lawrence to Montreal for forwarding to Iraq. (Parts of the story of the arming of Iraq may be found in Alan Friedman's Spider's Web; other parts may be found in Time, "A Matter of Honor", June 21, 1993. There is still much more untold.)

Has Westinghouse just been indicted for price-fixing? What about Kennametal? Does some of the evidence involve the Mellon Bank money-laundering operation? Has the money-laundering operation formerly run through Mellon Bank now been moved to New York?

In the event the exchange involves arms for oil, the oil must be brokered, sold, and the cash transferred to the relevant party. The commodity divisions of investment banks are often involved in this part of the transaction (a number of examples along this line involve the defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert, one of my former software clients).

3. Prohibitions on the sharing of "classified" information create a profit opportunity for those willing to sell restricted information. This is commonly known as "espionage", and those who commit it--like Jonathan Pollard, Aldrich Ames, and Vince Foster--often end up in prison or dead or both.

In this case the amount of money involved is often small. Concealment is important, nevertheless, so the payoff--if not in cash--often occurs through channels otherwise used for the laundry.

Foster received deposits in offshore accounts for selling nuclear codes. He was paid via covert channels. So also--one suspects-- were the hit men who took him out.

(The fact that Robert Goetzman used the royal "we" in "we did Foster" on the day of Foster's death--in Debra von Trapp's account--does not prove to me that he was actually involved in the hit, even if the conversation occurred exactly as related. After all, there are probably many people who would like to enhance their prestige by claiming credit for the Foster assassination. But the timing of the conversation would indicate Goetzman knew about it at approximately the time it occurred. Did he have advance knowledge of the hit? Does he even now know the identity of the contract agents involved?)

4. The Cabazon Indian nation comes into the story because, being a sovereign nation, it was a way to avoid export restrictions and to develop new weapons technology. It was also one of the sites where Michael Riconosciuto helped create a backdoor version of the PROMIS software. Even those sources who tell me that Riconosciuto "lies a lot" confirm that he worked on the PROMIS software to develop a mechanism for covert telecommunications access.

The PROMIS software enters the story in three ways: it is a mechanism for tracking people, a mechanism for tracking money, and a useful tool for managing a global laundry.

5. The early 1980s mandate to track terrorists (a "terrorist" being defined as anyone who does things normally reserved for government agencies) involved tracking the money and tracking the people. PROMIS was designed to track people. It was especially useful in tracking spies and other outsiders, the natural users of the parallel monetary system, the global laundry. Sales of the PROMIS software to security organization around the world were made by Earl Brian, recently indicted in California and, reportedly, also Canada (along with the noted alleged con artist, Ari Ben-Menasche).

6. The PROMIS software was modified to track money, and sold to bank back-offices across the country and around the world by a Little Rock company called Systematics (now Alltel Information Services). The telecommunications backdoor in the software was intended by the NSA to be used to spy on bank transactions in real time. But there were also other possibilities, soon apparent to enterprising souls.

If you run the back offices of banks, then you are in a position to make--and keep track of--covert transfers through the "backdoor" mechanism of PROMIS. That is, such transfers could take place in such a way that one would not leave an audit trail, and in such a way that the funds would never show up in the ordinary accounting reports. That is, the same software was an excellent way to manage the global laundry.

7. Despite the distributed nature of the software-controlled back-office operation, the laundry in the U.S. has been mostly concentrated in a couple of dozen financial institutions.

How could this escape the scrutiny of the Federal Reserve? The answer is: Through complicity at a very high level. What does Alan Greenspan have to say about all this? (Did you get the letter?)

8. But the back-door created a massive security hole in the operation of banking cash-management and wire-transfer services. Banks had gone out and purchased a software vault with a massive steel door on the front, but a secret entrance and exit to be used by enterprising thieves.

Did Alltel Information Services recently hire four more law firms to represent it in the inevitable lawsuits to come?

Is this why Ross Perot is getting into the banking software business?

Swiss Bank Corp. recently acquired a 24.9 percent stake in Perot Systems Corp., which will form a new division called Perot Systems Global Financial Services to run the bank's computer operations. Perot Systems in turn is taking a 40 percent stake in Systor, a Swiss Bank Corp. subsidiary that provides banking software.

Meanwhile, a 28-year-old Vladimir "Vova" Levin of St. Peterburg, Russia, was recently reported to have, in connection with some others, penetrated Citicorp's cash management services in New York, and transferred more than $10 million to banks in six other countries (including Switzerland and Israel). Although the hackers were caught, due to excessive greed, a hefty $400,000 was not recovered.

How were they able to bypass Citibank's security procedures? "Is there a mole in Citibank?" a Wall Street Journal headline recently asked. A more perceptive headline would have asked, "Is there a hole in Citibank software?" Some people think the hackers utilized the PROMIS system backdoor (the "Greek" method).

Some people who are totally devoid of expertise in banking tech- nology have questioned the ability of a group of (possibly CIA) "Fifth Column" hackers to clean out accounts in Switzerland using a computer, whether Cray or otherwise. Well, duuuuuh, let's see, a Russian graduate student with modest equipment accomplished the same thing from St. Petersburg using the Russian phone system. Just think of what he might have been able to do if he had had some advantages . . .

Others wonder why Swiss banks haven't been publicly screaming about a missing billion or two. Well, their computers thought the transfers were duly authorized. Do you really expect the banks to worry about making restitution? (We are not dealing with pissant ATM theft here.) Secondly, Switzerland houses much of the world's flight capital. Wonder what would happen to a lot of it, if Swiss banks admitted to a hacker vulnerability?

But not to worry. Anyone can get his money back by identifying the amount, the account number, and signing a sworn statement that the account in question belongs to him . . .

Finally, others question the ability of anyone to saunter through the Mossad's files. Why? You might not even need a computer. If you think much of the U.S. government is for sale, you should take a good look at Israel's. And, at any rate, the Mossad is currently a third-rate intelligence organization in chaos. Hardly a fortress on a hill.

[admin]

Part 26: Abner Mikva resigns. Did Foster have knowledge of too many felonies?

1. Part I of this series reported that a copy of Jim Norman's letter to the White House--a prelude to his Fostergate article--was leaked by White House counsel to Mark H. Tuohey III, head of the Washington office of the Starr investigation into events related to Whitewater, prior to the time that White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry responded to the letter.

The individual responsible for the leak was Abner Mikva.

2. "[W]as the letter leaked to Mark Tuohey by the White House because Tuohey is the White House point man for spin control with respect to any evidence 'uncovered' by the [Whitewater] investigation?" Part I asked.

Since then Mark Tuohey has resigned to join a law firm representing the Rose law firm, whose chief litigators once included Vince Foster, Hillary Clinton, and Webster Hubbell. According to the Washington Post, Tuohey was leaving to join the law firm of Vinson & Elkins. Kenneth Starr's ethics officer, Sam Dash, ruled there was no conflict of interest. Thus one can assume, then, that Tuohey was representing the Rose law firm all along.

3. Now White House counsel Abner Mikva is also said to be resigning. According to an AP report, Mikva said: "I'm running out of gas. I feel good, but this is a grueling job."

Mikva's departure (he will be with us until Halloween) has the appearance of a rat abandoning a sinking ship.

4. Mikva will be replaced by Jack Quinn, currently chief of staff for Vice-President Al Gore. Part 24 reported on Al Gore's curious dinner party over Labor Day weekend. Some time after the dinner party there was a confrontation between Clinton and Gore, in which Gore apparently laid down some conditions for his again serving as Clinton's running mate. According to one source, the argument was over Clinton's knowledge of drug running at Mena. According to another source, the argument concerned the continuing influence of Bush appointees in the Clinton administration.

Both sources agreed the discussion was intense.

5. "Bill Clinton had to know what was happening at Mena," I said to one source. "He had his own intelligence service, the State Police. Nothing could happen he wouldn't know about."

"Some of the troopers who were supposed to be reporting to Bill were really reporting to Hillary," the source retorted. "They had a big fight about it."


suppose it's possible. Which may help explain why in some ways the White House later appeared to operate in the disjointed fashion of right-brain, left-brain with a severed corpus callosum.

6. As the cover-up of the circumstances of Vince Foster's demise unravels, the enthusiasm of many of the original sharks has waned. The Mellon-inspired media wanted to get Clinton, while ensuring the story didn't bleed back to the nuclear network based in Pittsburgh, and the associated story of the arming of Iraq.

Perhaps they are also worried about the missing quantities of plutonium from facilities allegedly guarded by the Wackenhut Corporation?

7. Whitewater investigators, including perhaps the Starr investigation at first, also appeared determined to see that the financial shenanigans of Whitewater didn't reveal any financial information related to the Mena arms-for-drugs deal.

This will turn out to be increasingly difficult since a common money-laundering operation ties all these together.

Meanwhile, no one has explained what Hillary Clinton was doing on the board of directors of a cement company.

7. According to William O. Douglas, a person is defined by the checks he writes. Foster's handling the financial affairs of important individuals perhaps burdened him with the knowledge of too many felonies. Some of these may have related to payments out of Bahrain.

Clinton-backer Jackson Stephens reportedly capitalized on the $100,000 donation he made to the 1988 campaign of George Bush, as well as his friendship with George Bush, Jr., to get BCCI funding of a Harken Energy offshore project in Bahrain. (See Common Cause Magazine, April-June, 1992.)

Was Hillary Clinton later a recipient of funds from this project?

8. If Hillary Clinton goes back into private law practice, will she again represent Systematics (Alltel Information Services), the Little Rock software firm?

According to The American Lawyer, July 1992: "[Hillary] Clinton also was attracted to intellectual property litigation. 'We did not have any intellectual property expertise when she joined us,' says [Vince] Foster, who adds that Clinton got involved in this area through her work for the firm client, Systematics Inc., a company based in Little Rock that provided computer systems for financial institutions. 'She became sort of self-taught in all of this,' explains Foster. 'And you don't find a lot of intellectual property subspecialists in Arkansas. Quite frankly, the rest of us here thought of it as a foreign language.'"

9. A rumor says the White House is considering releasing the story that Foster killed himself in a private "safe house" set up so White House staffers could "let their hair down". Foster's body was then removed to Ft. Marcy Park to spare the feelings of his family, but the President wasn't aware of any of this.

This story would perhaps help explain the discrepancies at Ft. Marcy Park, as well as the blonde or brownish hairs, the carpet fibers, and the semen stains on Foster's clothes. I have not been able to confirm that the White House is actually considering releasing this story, but at any rate it won't wash (or even dry clean). At best it redefines coitus interruptus.

10. Any way you slice it, some people are in trouble. Isn't knowledge of an alleged felony on the part of a law enforcement official or body, which knowledge is not investigated, a felony in itself?

Consider the House Banking Committee. Assistant Staff Director Gregory Wierzynski is, like Steve Forbes (who killed Jim Norman's story on Fostergate--in apparent training to make firm, Presidential decisions), a former head of Radio Free Europe. He is also the chief investigator for Jim Leach's probe into money laundering--a probe that apparently has only one purpose: get Bill Clinton and cover up the involvement of everyone else. But the facts don't stop with Bill Clinton.

Wierzynski has been presented with knowledge of money laundering felonies by Mellon Bank. What are he, and Jim Leach, going to do about it?

11. Personally I don't approve of the money-laundering legislation which represents an invasion of personal privacy. But the reason for the increasing stringent legislation (money laundering was made illegal in the U.S. in 1986, and the definition of "laundering" was been expanded every two years since, in 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994) is the people who promote it and enforce it don't expect to abide by it. This includes the U.S. Treasury (FinCEN) and the Federal Reserve. A cynic might conclude the legislation is just a way of eliminating the competition.

12. The same goes for the War on (Some) Drugs, which drove up the price of illegal drugs, drove up the profit margins available to those who deal in prohibited drugs, and created a criminal subclass who profit from the prohibition. Billions of dollar in cocaine and heroin profits has created widespread political corruption. The architects of this legislation have been left with plenty of cash to diversify into other things--such as the construction of prison facilities to hold a legion of minor drug offenders, like marijuana smokers.

Perhaps if the movers and shakers in this story--which include the chief money launderers and the chief drug dealers--are treated to a long sojourn in the crowbar motel, it will help focus their attention on the insanities of the system they have helped create.

[admin]

Part 27: Earl Brian, who sold the PROMIS software around the world, is under indictment in California.

Ross Perot made many of his millions by selling computer services to the government. In 1969 his company EDS contracted with the California State Physicians Service, the state medicaid processing agent, to take over some of their computer processing responsibilities.

The contract needed the approval of Earl Brian, a combat physician who served in a unit providing air support for Operation Phoenix and who then became health and welfare secretary in the cabinet of California Governor Ronald Reagan, in which capacity Brian later authored a couple of papers (Position paper on Department of Health reorganization and related health boards and commissions, Sacramento, 1973; California's Med-Cal copayment experiment, with Stephen F. Gibbons, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1974).

After leaving this post to run for the Senate against Alan Cranston, and losing, Brian became President of a high-tech company called Xonics, which was accused by the SEC of fraud and manipulating the price of its stock. Brian left Xonics in October 1977 without being charged with any wrongdoing, or--unlike four other Xonics officers--being required to sign an SEC consent decree. A number of former Xonics officers went on to form a company called Hadron.

In 1980 Brian formed a company called Biotech Capital Corp (renamed Infotechnology in 1987), one of whose investors was Ed Meese's wife Ursula, who got a loan to buy Biotech stock from Meese advisor Edwin Thomas. Brian also acquired control of a Canadian company called Clinical Sciences.

Brian at some point worked on projects with Michael Riconosciuto and Robert Booth Nichols at the Cabazon Indian Reservation, projects administered "jointly" by the Wackenhut Corporation. On September 10, 1981, for example, Brian was seen by the Riverside Sheriff's Department at a weapons demonstration at Lake Cauchilla gun range at Indio, CA.

After the Reagan administration took office, Brian was given a White House post related to health-care issues under Ed Meese. Brian is alleged to have said to Meese, "I'm going to be the Ross Perot of the Reagan administration, and you can be the Earl Brian." If this conversation actually took place, it apparently meant that Brian intended to make money by selling software to the U.S. government--purchases which Ed Meese would be in a position to approve.

One of the ways Brian apparently fulfilled this dream was by marketing the PROMIS software, created and modified by contract between the U.S. Department of Justice and Inslaw, Inc.--a Washington, D.C. based software firm. At the time, Brian's company Biotech Capital Corp (later renamed Infotechnology) controlled Hadron, which attempted a buyout of Inslaw. When Brian was not able to obtain property rights to the software this way, Inslaw was driven into bankruptcy and the software stolen by "trickery, deceit, and fraud", according to federal bankruptcy Judge George Bason.

Brian had perhaps seen the potential for intelligence agency use of this type of software from his days in Vietnam in connection with Operation Phoenix. Operation Phoenix (run by the CIA's William Colby) used computers to track political enemies, many of which were targeted for assassination.

At first Brian marketed the PROMIS software to intelligence organizations, including Israel and Iraq (the latter deal facilitated by arms dealer Carlos Cardoen). In February 1983 Brian sent Rafi Eitan over to the Inslaw offices for a demonstration of the PROMIS software. Rafi Eitan was to later head up LAKAM, Israel's scientific and technological espionage agency which oversaw the Jonathan Pollard spying operation.

Later, in Brazil, Brian acquired the nickname "Cash", allegedly based on a perception of his mercenary approach to life. In offering to sell the software to the Brazilian government, Brian wasn't entirely freelancing. During an official meeting Brian placed a phone call to the U.S. to obtain the approval of Ed Meese. More information on the Brazilian sale may be found in a redacted part of the Bua report. An affidavit on the matter was even signed by Figueiredo, the Brazilian president.

Judge Bua in his report ignored Justice Department complicity in the theft of the PROMIS software and accepted Brian's testimony at face value, saying he found him a trustworthy fellow. Brian is now under indictment in California, while the allegedly corrupt Judge Bua is plea bargaining with prosecutors.

The California indictment of Earl W. Brian was announced in September 1995. The indictment concerns ten of millions of dollars of fraudulent lease transactions, while Earl Brian was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of three separate companies: Infotechology, Financial News Network (FNN), and United Press International (UPI).

The indictment claims that Brian and his co-conspirators engaged in some trick financing (worthy of Billy Sol Estes). In 1988 FNN (now CNBC) was losing money, so to hide that fact from its lending banks and from the investing public, Brian generated some extra "income" through false charges.

First FNN charged UPI $29 million to use a technology called the "vertical blanking interval". Next FNN charged another Infotechnology- related company called Institutional Research Network (IRN) millions of dollars (above actual costs) for a news product called FNN:PRO. Payments for these charges topped up FNN's income nicely.

But since neither UPI nor IRN had money to pay for these charges, the money had to come from somewhere else. The money came from leasing and finance companies, who bought broadcast and communications equipment from two affiliates of FNN, Telecommunications Industries and Micro Research Industries. (The equipment either did not exist or was sold to more than one leasing company at the same time, or was previously sold to customers of the FNN subsidiary Data Broadcasting Company.) The purchase price of the non- existent equipment was paid to FNN, who then made lease payments to the leasing and finance companies.

The indictment says that Brian also siphoned off $300,000 of the lease money to himself, by submitting a "bill" to FNN from another company he controlled, called Alton, Inc.

If you steal from a thief, can he holler 'Cop!'? The indictment says one of the co-conspirators, a fellow named Bolen, caused a fraudulent $1 million to be paid to the offshore bank account of a company called Centerpoint, Inc., as a payment to himself.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Earl Brian indictment is the date: June 1994. The indictment was sat on for more than a year, while an incredibly corrupt Justice Department prepared its own rebuttal to Inslaw's Rebuttal to the Bua Report.

The Justice Department is never in any rush when it's preoccupied with covering up its own crimes.

[admin]

Part 28: SIOP: the Single Integrated Operational Plan for Nuclear War.

Note added February 1999: This part, Part 28, continues a theme introducted in Part 7 of this series. I was trying to give an intuitive explanation of what command and control was all about. As I told someone at the time, "This post is incomplete and out-of-date, but I just want to give people an idea without giving them too good an idea." I relied strictly on public information, some of which was obsolete. (For example, Andrews Air Force Base no longer played the role mentioned in this post, because it had been deemed too close to the East coast and hence an easy target for enemy submarines.)

See the note added to the end of Part 7 for a comment on Chris Davis' Death by Fire.

The motivating reason for writing Part 28 was educational: what is command and control? Thirty days after a new E-Systems (read: NSA) computer dedicated to command and control had come on-line, the CIA determined that a copy of the operating code was in the hands of the Israelis. In the attempt to determine how the leak had occurred, it was discovered that--through E-Systems' relationships with Systematics (Alltel Information Services)-- both Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton, Rose Law Firm lawyers for Systematics, had some access to the purloined code. That's why Vince Foster was under counter-intelligence investigation when he was murdered. Vince Foster also had a blue notebook giving options for nuclear war, which he kept in Bernie Nussbaum's safe. No one seemed to grasp the relevance of all this, so Parts 7 and 28 were an attempt to explain what the issues were, in an easy-to-absorb manner.

After reading Part 28, be sure to visit Tim Tyler's recently created Web site on the Alternate Joint Communication Center (AJCC) at Raven Rock Mountain, located at http://www.mich.com/~ttyler/C3I/Bunkers ... ite-R.html.

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 Senstive 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 Teheran. 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 Hassan i-Sabah, 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 whoreys 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 on line 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 scarey 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 Reconnaisance 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 reconnaisance satellites and made deals with contracters, 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 machette 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 (Lauch 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 the in 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 coverup was itself a coverup. 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 torpedos 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

[admin]

Part 29: How Jackson Stephens brought the Global Laundry to America.

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 led 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 some- thing 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 donation 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 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 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.