The men who changes the world-VII

FTW - Money connections between Bush Republicans and Osama bin Laden go way back and the political and economic connections have remained unbroken for 20 years. And what appears to be a "new" alliance with Pakistan is merely a new manifestation of a decades-long partnership in the heroin trade.

Conveniently ignored in all of the press coverage since the tragic events of Sept. 11 is the fact that on May 17 Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a gift of $43 million to the Taliban as a purported reward for its eradication of Afghanistan's opium crop this February. That, in effect, made the U.S. the Taliban's largest financial benefactor according to syndicated columnist Robert Scheer writing in The Los Angeles times on May 22. But -- as we described in FTW's March 2001 issue -- the Taliban's destruction of that crop was apparently the single most important act of economic warfare against U.S. economic interests that the Taliban had ever committed. So why the gift?

Critics of the Gulf War well recall how, just prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, President Bush (Sr.) dispatched Ambassador April Glaspie to visit Saddam with a letter and a "wink and a nod" telling the Iraqi leader that it was OK to invade his smaller neighbor. The May gift from Uncle Sam could well have been sending the same kind of message, along with necessary funds to complete the attacks. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand.

Until February, Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of opium/heroin, claiming close to 70% of the world's total production. That opium, consumed largely in Western Europe and smuggled through the Balkans, was a direct source of cash deposits in Western financial institutions and markets.

I specifically commented on this at an economic crisis conference in Moscow, Russia on March 7. In my formal statement to the Russian conference I said,

"Just before coming to this conference I read in the Associated Press, Agence France Press and other reliable sources that the Taliban has recently eradicated most of its 3000 ton opium crop in Afghanistan. If true, I view this as a form of economic warfare against Russia [and the U.S.] because it would drive opium production more into Southeast Asia and Colombia. However, I now suspect that this will result in a shift of opium production to the Caucasus under the Kurds which will see an increase in smuggling through Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. I should note that both Vice President Richard Cheney and the designated Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage are members of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Such a move would have the effect of drastically shortening smuggling routes and costs into Western Europe and of bypassing unstable areas of the Balkans.

I have received additional reports that Uzbekistan is now awash in the opium poppy and, as in the US with the CIA, that Russian military and intelligence agencies facilitate the trade as a means of protecting access to hard currency. The point here is not that the US it totally evil or the only country doing these things. But the US is far and away the most advanced nation when it comes to the use of such methods to achieve superiority. As [Russian economist Michael] Khazin has noted, the US and Britain and Germany started the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 to stave off a collapse of western markets following the Asian collapse of 1997-8. Now Colombia is a last-ditch effort to protect the US markets and European opposition is jeopardizing that plan."

The Taliban's actions this year severed the ruling military junta in Pakistan from its primary source of foreign revenues and made bin Laden and the Taliban completely expendable in the eyes of the Pakistani government. It also cut off billions of dollars in revenues that had been previously laundered through western banks and Russian financial institutions connected to them.

Now as US military action will replace the Taliban government and fresh crops will be planted in Afghanistan, the slack in cash flow will assuredly be replaced by dramatically increased opium production in Colombia; the revenues from that effort being needed to maintain the revenue streams into Wall Street. Prior to the WTC attacks, credible sources, including the U.S. government, the IMF, Le Monde and the U.S. Senate placed the amount of drug cash flowing into Wall Street and U.S. banks at around $250-$300 billion a year.

In that context, the real history of Osama bin Laden, as America's useful terrorist-du-jour reveals a long and continuous history, interwoven with the drug trade and the Bush family, of supporting conflicts that have benefited U.S. military and economic interests.

bin Laden

There are direct historical links between Osama bin Laden's business interests and those of the Bush family. On September 15 I received the following message from FTW subscriber, Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University:

"We should revisit the history of BCCI, a bank used by the legendary Palestinian terrorist known as Abu Nidal. BCCI was closely tied to American and Pakistan intelligence. Its clients included the Afghan rebels, and the brother of Osama bin Laden, Salem. Salem bin Laden named Houston investment broker James R. Bath as his business representative in Texas, right after George W. BushÕs father became CIA director in 1976. By 1977, Bath invested $50,000 into juniorÕs first business, Arbusto Energy, while Osama bin Laden would soon become a CIA asset. George W. BushÕs FBI director Robert Mueller was part of the Justice DepartmentÕs questionable investigation of BCCI. (On BCCI, the bin Ladens, and the Bushes, see the books, The Outlaw Bank, A Full Service Bank, and Fortunate Son)." Further details of the business and financial relationships between the Bush and bin Laden family are found in Peter Brewton's 1992 book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush. BCCI, incidentally, was founded by a Pakistani.

Economics Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has just completed a detailed history of bin Laden's career detailing his secret funding and logistical support to terrorist organizations beginning from his early CIA-supported roots in the 1980s as a "freedom fighter" through to the present day. Chossudovsky's compelling and well documented article, Who Is Osama Bin Laden? dated Sept 12, 2001 can be found on the Internet at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.

Bin Laden's role has not just been as a practitioner of terrorist acts but as a trainer and supplier of terrorist organizations around the world. Included in bin Laden's coterie are terrorist groups linked to the Balkans, Albania, the KLA (a U.S. ally), and rebel groups leading the insurrection against Russia in Chechnya.

As FTW described in 1998, and as confirmed by Chossudovsky, the key to understanding U.S. support of bin Laden is to grasp that he has always been controlled by a cutout, the Pakistani government and its intelligence service the ISI. In this manner there has been virtually no direct contact between bin Laden and the CIA. This has served the dual purpose of maintaining his apparent "purity" with his followers and providing plausible deniability for the CIA. The whole underlying pretext for this relationship evaporated with the Taliban's destruction of the opium crop in February.

Chossudovsky writes:

"The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. In this regard [Professor] Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, 'the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 per sent of the U.S. demandÉ

"With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics -- reached a record high of 4600 metric tons. Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes.

"The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic "jihad" out of PakistanÉ"

"É The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the last few months there is evidence that Mujhideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of the KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into MacedoniaÉ

"É With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.

"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin."

The oil and drug connections were the subject of FTW's story, The Bush-Cheney drug Empire in October, 2000. That story is online at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html. Both Bush and Cheney are oil men.

George Bush, Sr. was Vice President and, by virtue of executive Order 12333, in charge of all U.S. intelligence and narcotics operations from 1981 through 1989. As President from 1989 through 1993, he continued and expanded his control in these areas. Thus, it was Bush (the elder) who directly nourished and nurtured bin Laden's evolution.

Dramatic Confirmation From Indian Government

The web site of the Indian Embassy in Washington contains dramatic confirmation for these positions. On September 4, 2000, B. Raman, Director of India's Institute for Topical Studies wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress entitled Pakistan's Noriega's. That eight-page article exposed the depth of Pakistani government involvement in the drug trade. It may be viewed at:

www.indianembassy.org/int_media/
saag_september_04_2000.html.

The letter said, in part:

"For more than a decade, the people of India have been living in a state of half-war and half-peace due to the depredations of a large number of terrorists, outrageously called jehadists, who have been trained, armed and funded and infiltrated into the State of Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India by Pakistan in order to make the people of India and its security forces bleed in the name of religion.

"More people belonging to different religions -- Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others -- have been killed in India by these mercenary-terrorists sponsored by the State of Pakistan than by any other terrorist groups anywhere else in the worldÉ"

"ÉMany other States have suffered and have been suffering due to the depredations of terrorists, made in and exported from Pakistan and the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan -- [these include] Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian Republics, the Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia, the Xinjiang province of China, Bangladesh, the Arakan area of Burma and the southern Philippines..."

"After his [1993] removal, [as official head of Pakistani intelligence, trusted advisor to Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf] Lt. Gen. Nasir traveled to Somalia, Chechnya, Dagestan, the Central Asian Republics, ÉChina, and the Southern Philippines as a preacherÉ and helped Islamic organizations, including the group which killed U.S. troopsÉ in Somalia."

"ÉIt was he, who, during his tenure as the DG [Director General] of the ISIÉ has entered into an agreement with the LTTE of Sri Lanka [which secured] LTTE's assistance in smuggling Afghanistan produced heroin in its ships to West Europe, the USA and CanadaÉ"

"ÉAnother reason for the ISI's helping the LTTE, despite its anti-Muslim policies, was to use it for smuggling heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. During Zia-ul-Haq's regime in the 1980s, heroin had become a major source of extra revenue not only for the State of Pakistan, especially the ISI and Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment, but also to many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, including [Musharraf et al]É"

"The way Mr. Sharif before October 1999 and Gen. Musharraf since then have been using the heroin money to prevent the Pakistani economy from collapsing has not received due attention in the U.S. ..."

"If one goes purely by economic indicators, Pakistan's must be in as bad a shape as that of Russia, or even worse, since Russia has been in receipt of Western and IMF assistanceÉ"

"Where does the money come from? From the smuggling of heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. Government might have stopped economic assistanceÉ from the taxpayers' money. But why should the Noriegas of Pakistan be worried when they get billions of dollars from the heroin sale in the U.S.?É "

Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comment that the CIA needs to get in bed with "unsavory characters" is a joke. That's a bed that the CIA has never left. And it's a marriage vow that President Bush has just reaffirmed for all the world to see.

The men who changes the world-VI

James Petras - Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University

-- There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: "Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States".

Over a decade then, between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds have been laundered by U.S. banks and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits. Senator Levin's statement however, only covers criminal proceeds, according to U.S. laws. It does not include illegal transfers and capital flows from corrupt political leaders, or tax evasion by overseas businesses. A leading U.S. scholar who is an expert on international finance associated with the prestigious Brookings Institute estimates "the flow of corrupt money out of developing (Third World) and transitional (ex-Communist) economies into Western coffers at $20 to $40 billion a year and the flow stemming from mis-priced trade at $80 billion a year or more. My lowest estimate is $100 billion per year by these two means by which we facilitated a trillion dollars in the decade, at least half to the United States. Including the other elements of illegal flight capital would produce much higher figures. The Brookings expert also did not include illegal shifts of real estate and securities titles, wire fraud, etc.

In other words, an incomplete figure of dirty money (laundered criminal and corrupt money) flowing into U.S. coffers during the 1990s amounted to $3-$5.5 trillion. This is not the complete picture but it gives us a basis to estimate the significance of the "dirty money factor" in evaluating the U.S. economy. In the first place, it is clear that the combined laundered and dirty money flows cover part of the U.S. deficit in its balance of merchandise trade which ranges in the hundreds of billions annually. As it stands, the U.S. trade deficit is close to $300 billion. Without the "dirty money" the U.S. economy external accounts would be totally unsustainable, living standards would plummet, the dollar would weaken, the available investment and loan capital would shrink and Washington would not be able to sustain its global empire. And the importance of laundered money is forecast to increase. Former private banker Antonio Geraldi, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee projects significant growth in U.S. bank laundering. "The forecasters also predict the amounts laundered in the trillions of dollars and growing disproportionately to legitimate funds." The $500 billion of criminal and dirty money flowing into and through the major U.S. banks far exceeds the net revenues of all the IT companies in the U.S., not to speak of their profits. These yearly inflows surpass all the net transfers by the major U.S. oil producers, military industries and airplane manufacturers. The biggest U.S. banks, particularly Citibank, derive a high percentage of their banking profits from serving these criminal and dirty money accounts. The big U.S. banks and key institutions sustain U.S. global power via their money laundering and managing of illegally obtained overseas funds.

U.S. Banks and The Dirty Money Empire

Washington and the mass media have portrayed the U.S. as being in the forefront of the struggle against narco trafficking, drug laundering and political corruption: the image is of clean white hands fighting dirty money. The truth is exactly the opposite. U.S. banks have developed a highly elaborate set of policies for transferring illicit funds to the U.S., investing those funds in legitimate businesses or U.S. government bonds and legitimating them. The U.S. Congress has held numerous hearings, provided detailed exposés of the illicit practices of the banks, passed several laws and called for stiffer enforcement by any number of public regulators and private bankers. Yet the biggest banks continue their practices, the sum of dirty money grows exponentially, because both the State and the banks have neither the will nor the interest to put an end to the practices that provide high profits and buttress an otherwise fragile empire.

First thing to note about the money laundering business, whether criminal or corrupt, is that it is carried out by the most important banks in the USA. Secondly, the practices of bank officials involved in money laundering have the backing and encouragement of the highest levels of the banking institutions - these are not isolated cases by loose cannons. This is clear in the case of Citibank's laundering of Raul Salinas (brother of Mexico's ex-President) $200 million account. When Salinas was arrested and his large scale theft of government funds was exposed, his private bank manager at Citibank, Amy Elliott told her colleagues that "this goes in the very, very top of the corporation, this was known...on the very top. We are little pawns in this whole thing" (p.35).

Citibank, the biggest money launderer, is the biggest bank in the U.S., with 180,000 employees world-wide operating in 100 countries, with $700 billion in known assets and over $100 billion in client assets in private bank (secret accounts) operating private banking offices in 30 countries, which is the largest global presence of any U.S. private bank. It is important to clarify what is meant by "private bank."

Private Banking is a sector of a bank which caters to extremely wealthy clients ($1 million deposits and up). The big banks charge customers a fee for managing their assets and for providing the specialized services of the private banks. Private Bank services go beyond the routine banking services and include investment guidance, estate planning, tax assistance, off-shore accounts, and complicated schemes designed to secure the confidentiality of financial transactions. The attractiveness of the "Private Banks" (PB) for money laundering is that they sell secrecy to the dirty money clients. There are two methods that big Banks use to launder money: via private banks and via correspondent banking. PB routinely use code names for accounts, concentration accounts (concentration accounts co-mingles bank funds with client funds which cut off paper trails for billions of dollars of wire transfers) that disguise the movement of client funds, and offshore private investment corporations (PIC) located in countries with strict secrecy laws (Cayman Island, Bahamas, etc.)

For example, in the case of Raul Salinas, PB personnel at Citibank helped Salinas transfer $90 to $100 million out of Mexico in a manner that effectively disguised the funds' sources and destination thus breaking the funds' paper trail. In routine fashion, Citibank set up a dummy offshore corporation, provided Salinas with a secret code name, provided an alias for a third party intermediary who deposited the money in a Citibank account in Mexico and transferred the money in a concentration account to New York where it was then moved to Switzerland and London.

The PICs are designed by the big banks for the purpose of holding and hiding a person's assets. The nominal officers, trustees and shareholder of these shell corporations are themselves shell corporations controlled by the PB. The PIC then becomes the holder of the various bank and investment accounts and the ownership of the private bank clients is buried in the records of so-called jurisdiction such as the Cayman Islands. Private bankers of the big banks like Citibank keep pre-packaged PICs on the shelf awaiting activation when a private bank client wants one. The system works like Russian Matryoshka dolls, shells within shells within shells, which in the end can be impenetrable to a legal process.

The complicity of the state in big bank money laundering is evident when one reviews the historic record. Big bank money laundering has been investigated, audited, criticized and subject to legislation; the banks have written procedures to comply. Yet banks like Citibank and the other big ten banks ignore the procedures and laws and the government ignores the non-compliance.

Over the last 20 years, big bank laundering of criminal funds and looted funds has increased geometrically, dwarfing in size and rates of profit the activities in the formal economy. Estimates by experts place the rate of return in the PB market between 20-25% annually. Congressional investigations revealed that Citibank provided "services" for 4 political swindlers moving $380 million: Raul Salinas - $80-$100 million, Asif Ali Zardari (husband of former Prime Minister of Pakistan) in excess of $40 million, El Hadj Omar Bongo (dictator of Gabon since 1967) in excess of $130 million, the Abacha sons of General Abacha ex-dictator of Nigeria - in excess of $110 million. In all cases Citibank violated all of its own procedures and government guidelines: there was no client profile (review of client background), determination of the source of the funds, nor of any violations of country laws from which the money accrued. On the contrary, the bank facilitated the outflow in its prepackaged format: shell corporations were established, code names were provided, funds were moved through concentration accounts, the funds were invested in legitimate businesses or in U.S. bonds, etc. In none of these cases - or thousands of others - was due diligence practiced by the banks (under due diligence a private bank is obligated by law to take steps to ensure that it does not facilitate money laundering). In none of these cases were the top banking officials brought to court and tried. Even after arrest of their clients, Citibank continued to provide services, including the movement of funds to secret accounts and the provision of loans.

Correspondent Banks: The Second Track

The second and related route which the big banks use to launder hundreds of billions of dirty money is through "correspondent banking" (CB). CB is the provision of banking services by one bank to another bank. It is a highly profitable and significant sector of big banking. It enables overseas banks to conduct business and provide services for their customers - including drug dealers and others engaged in criminal activity - in jurisdictions like the U.S. where the banks have no physical presence. A bank that is licensed in a foreign country and has no office in the United States for its customers attracts and retains wealthy criminal clients interested in laundering money in the U.S. Instead of exposing itself to U.S. controls and incurring the high costs of locating in the U.S., the bank will open a correspondent account with an existing U.S. bank. By establishing such a relationship, the foreign bank (called a respondent) and through it, its criminal customers, receive many or all of the services offered by the U.S. big banks called the correspondent.

Today, all the big U.S. banks have established multiple correspondent relationships throughout the world so they may engage in international financial transactions for themselves and their clients in places where they do have a physical presence. Many of the largest U.S. and European banks located in the financial centers of the world serve as correspondents for thousands of other banks. Most of the offshore banks laundering billions for criminal clients have accounts in the U.S. All the big banks specializing in international fund transfer are called money center banks, some of the biggest process up to $1 trillion in wire transfers a day. For the billionaire criminals an important feature of correspondent relationships is that they provide access to international transfer systems - that facilitate the rapid transfer of funds across international boundaries and within countries. The most recent estimates (1998) are that 60 offshore jurisdictions around the world licensed about 4,000 offshore banks which control approximately $5 trillion in assets.

One of the major sources of impoverishment and crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the other countries of the ex-U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, is the pillage of the economy and the hundreds of billions of dollars which are transferred out of the country via the corresponding banking system and the Private Banking system linked to the biggest banks in the U.S. and Europe. Russia alone has seen over $200 billion illegally transferred in the course of the 1990s. The massive shift of capital from these countries to the U.S. and European banks has generated mass impoverishment and economic instability and crises. This in turn has created increased vulnerability to pressure from the IMF and World Bank to liberalize their banking and financial systems leading to further flight and deregulation which spawns greater corruption and overseas transfers via private banks as the Senate reports demonstrate.

The increasing polarization of the world is embedded in this organized system of criminal and corrupt financial transactions. While speculation and foreign debt payments play a role in undermining living standards in the crisis regions, the multi-trillion dollar money laundering and bank servicing of corrupt officials is a much more significant factor, sustaining Western prosperity, U.S. empire building and financial stability. The scale, scope and time frame of transfers and money laundering, the centrality of the biggest banking enterprises and the complicity of the governments, strongly suggests that the dynamics of growth and stagnation, empire and re-colonization are intimately related to a new form of capitalism built around pillage, criminality, corruption and complicity.

"This Goes Straight to the Top"

-- James Petras is a Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. He is the author of 57 books. His latest, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the New Millenium

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/economy/053101_banks.html

The men who changes the world V

BLACKWATER USA

Blackwater USA is a private military company and security firm founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. It is based in the U.S. state of North Carolina, where it operates a tactical training facility that it claims is the world's largest. The company trains more than 40,000 people a year, from all the military services and a variety of other agencies. The company markets itself as being "The most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world". At least 90% of its revenue comes from government contracts, two-thirds of which are no-bid contracts.

Ownership status: Privately held
Number of employees worldwide: 10,000
Website: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/
Tel: 214-748-3647
Fax: 252-435-6388 Corporate accountability
Accountability overview:
Cofer Black, the company's current vice chairman, was the Bush administration's top counter terrorism official when 9/11 occurred. In 2002, he famously stated: "There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves come off." Blackwater has become home to a significant number of former senior CIA and Pentagon officials. Robert Richer became the firm's Vice President of Intelligence immediately after he resigned his position as Associate Deputy Director of Operations in fall 2005. He is formerly the head of the CIA's Near East Division.

Blackwater's training facility, located on 7,000 acres in North Carolina, comprises several ranges, indoor, outdoor, urban reproductions, a man-made lake, and a driving track in Camden and Currituck counties. It is one of the largest firearms training facilities in the world. Company literature claims that the company runs "the largest privately owned firearms training facility in the world."

In November 2006 Blackwater USA announced it recently acquired an 80-acre (30 ha) facility 150 miles (240 km) west of Chicago, in Mount Carroll, Illinois to be called Blackwater North. That facility has been operational since April, 2007 and serves law enforcement agencies throughout the midwest.

Blackwater is also trying to open a facility in California for military and law enforcement training, in Potrero, San Diego County.

In 2003, Blackwater landed its first truly high-profile contract: guarding civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer in Iraq, at the cost of $21 million for 11 months. Since June 2004, Blackwater has been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. In 2006, Blackwater won the remunerative contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Iraq, which is the largest American embassy in the world.

For work in Iraq, Blackwater has drawn contractors from their international pool of professionals, a database containing "21,000 former Special Forces troops, soldiers, and retired law enforcement agents," overall. For instance, Gary Jackson, the firm's president, has confirmed that Bosnians, Filipinos, and Chileans, "have been hired for tasks ranging from airport security to protecting Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority."

On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah attacked a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA who were conducting delivery for food caterers ESS. The four armed contractors Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were attacked and killed with grenades and small arms fire. Their bodies were hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates. In the fall of 2007, a congressional report found that Blackwater intentionally "delayed and impeded" investigations into the contractors' deaths.

Photos of the event were released to news agencies worldwide. The event led to a failed U.S. operation to occupy the city in the First Battle of Fallujah, and the later successful attempt seven months later in the Second Battle of Fallujah.

In April 2005 six Blackwater independent contractors were killed in Iraq when their Mi-8 helicopter was shot down. Also killed were three Bulgarian crewmembers and two Fijian gunners. Initial reports indicate the helicopter was shot down by rocket propelled grenades.

On January 23, 2007, five Blackwater contractors were killed in Iraq when their Hughes H-6 helicopter was shot down. The incident happened in Baghdad, Haifa Street. The crash site was secured by a Personal Security Detail Platoon, callsign "Jester" from 1/26 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. Three Iraqi insurgent groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, however, this has not been confirmed by the US. A US defense official has confirmed that four of the five killed were shot execution style in the back of the head, but did not know whether the four had survived the crash.

According to the State Department, on December 24, 2006, a Blackwater employee shot and killed a security guard working for the Iraqi vice-president. In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors, "opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days... and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos, U.S. and Iraqi officials said." And on May 30, 2007, Blackwater employees shot an Iraqi civilian deemed to have been "driving too close" to a State Department convoy being escorted by Blackwater contractors.

On September 17, 2007, a Blackwater team was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials.

According to an Iraqi investigation into the events at Nissor Square, as the convoy drew close to Nissor Square, a car, driving very slowly, on the wrong side of the road, ignored a police officer's whistle to clear a path for the convoy. Shortly after this, the security team fired warning shots, and then lethal fire. Sound bombs were also fired. Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the sound-bombs for explosions, opened fire at the Blackwater team, to which the Blackwater team responded.

On September 19, the United States suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone as a result of public outrage over the alleged killing of civilians by Blackwater employees. The order confines most Americans to a 3.5-square-mile area in the center of the city so that they are unable to visit other areas without travelling in a helicopter. The order did not say when the suspension would expire.

Unlike many deaths blamed on foreign contractors, this shooting took place in downtown Baghdad, an area with dozens of witnesses. "We see the security firms ... doing whatever they want in the streets. They beat citizens and scorn them," Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor claimed to AP Television News. He asked, "if such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it?" Hasan Jaber Salman, one of the wounded and an Iraqi lawyer, charged that "no one did anything to provoke Blackwater" and that "as we turned back they opened fire at all cars from behind" After a group of Iraqi ministers backed the Iraqi Interior Ministry's decision to shut down Blackwater USA's operations in Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the U.S. government to end its contract with Blackwater USA as well.

On September 21, CNN reported that Blackwater would resume normal operations the following day. The State Department has announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the use of private security contractors as a broader issue. The committee will be co-chaired by Abd al Qadir, the Iraqi Minister of Defense and Patricia A. Butenis, the Charge d'Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

On September 22, Iraqi investigators announded that they have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA contractors opening fire against civilians without provocation. Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said Iraqi authorities had completed their investigation into the shooting and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths. Khalaf said the report had been "sent to the judiciary". Under Iraqi law, an investigating judge decides whether there is enough evidence for a trial. Khalaf also said the ministry was looking into six other fatal shootings involving Blackwater.

On September 24, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced it would file criminal charges against the Blackwater staff involved in the shooting, although it is unclear how some of them will be brought to trial. “The murder of citizens in cold blood in al-Nissour area by the Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against the civilians just like any other terrorist operations,” a preliminary report of the findings says. A senior aide to al-Maliki said that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. The aide also said that the Iraqi government was pushing for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable." US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before Congress that the Pentagon has sufficient legal authority to control its contractors, but that commanders lack sufficient "means and resources" to exercise adequate oversight.



IRAQ: Ex-Blackwater Workers May Return to Iraq Jobs
by Rod Nordland, New York Times
April 3rd, 2009

Late last month Blackwater Worldwide lost its billion-dollar contract to protect American diplomats in Iraq, but by next month many of its private security guards will be back on the job here. The same individuals will just be wearing new uniforms, working for Triple Canopy, the firm that won the State Department’s new contract.

US: Plea by Blackwater Guard Helps Indict Others
by GINGER THOMPSON and JAMES RISEN, New York Times
December 9th, 2008

On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed its case against five Blackwater private security guards, built largely around testimony from a sixth guard about the 2007 shootings that left 17 unsuspecting Iraqi civilians dead at a busy Baghdad traffic circle.

Over the Counter Intelligence
by Philip Mattera
June 13th, 2008


GERMANY: German Arms Firm Ends Blackwater Deal After TV Report
by DW staff (ncy), Deutsche Welle
February 19th, 2008

Weapons manufacturer Heckler & Koch said it would end its relationship with Blackwater after German media reported that the controversial US-run military firm was using its guns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US: Limbo for U.S. Women Reporting Iraq Assaults
by JAMES RISEN, The New York Times
February 13th, 2008

Ms. Kineston is among a number of American women who have reported that they were sexually assaulted by co-workers while working as contractors in Iraq but now find themselves in legal limbo, unable to seek justice or even significant compensation.

US: CIA Likely Let Contractors Perform Waterboarding
by SIOBHAN GORMAN, The Wall Street Journal
February 8th, 2008

The CIA's secret interrogation program has made extensive use of outside contractors, whose role likely included the waterboarding of terrorist suspects, according to testimony yesterday from the CIA director and two other people familiar with the program.

US: Contractor Abuses Rarely Punished, Groups Say
by Ali Gharib, IPS
January 21st, 2008

Out of the dozens upon dozens of reports of abuses by private contractors as part of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only one prosecution of a contractor has taken place.

IRAQ: 2005 Use of Gas by Blackwater Leaves Questions
by JAMES RISEN, New York Times
January 10th, 2008

In 2005 Blackwater accidentally dropped teargas on US soldiers, which has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes.

US: Disputed in Iraq, Blackwater Now Splits California Town
by Salomon Moore, New York Times
December 11th, 2007

A small community in southern California is upset at the prospect of a Blackwater training camp moving into town.

US: Blackwater Probe Stifled by Conflicts
by Richard Lardner, Associated Press
November 26th, 2007

A Blackwater weapons probe continues to be bogged down after months of strained relations between Bush administration officials.

US: Blackwater Mounts a Defense With Top Talent
by John M. Broder and James Risen, NY Times
November 5th, 2007

lackwater Worldwide, its reputation in tatters and its lucrative government contracts in jeopardy, is mounting an aggressive legal, political and public relations counterstrike.

US: Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire
by Dana Hedgpeth, Washington Post
November 3rd, 2007

The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government.

US: Democrats Criticize Immunity Offers to Guards
by David Johnston, NY Times
October 30th, 2007

Prominent Democrats in Congress reacted angrily today to disclosures that State Department investigators made apparently unauthorized offers of immunity to Blackwater security guards.

US: Rice Says ‘Hole’ in U.S. Law Shields Contractors in Iraq
by John M. Broder, NY Times
October 26th, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded on Thursday that there was a “hole” in United States law that had allowed Blackwater USA employees and other armed contractors in Iraq to escape legal jeopardy for crimes possibly committed there.

US: Blackwater vies for jobs beyond security
by August Cole, Wall Street Journal
October 15th, 2007

Even as Blackwater USA works to recover from criticism of its private-security forces in Iraq, the company plans for an expansion into other areas.

IRAQ:2 Women Killed in Security Shooting Are Buried in Iraq
by Andrew E. Kramer and James Glanz, NY Times
October 11th, 2007

Two women killed Tuesday by a barrage of gunfire from private security guards in central Baghdad are buried there.

Outsourcing Fear
by Robert Young Pelton
October 2nd, 2007

Robert Young Pelton is the author of "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror " and the "Guide to the World's Most Dangerous Places." He is also co-founder of http://www.iraqslogger.com/ . This blog item is about his experiences attending the Congressional hearing into the Blackwater shootings in Iraq written on October 2nd, 2007.

US: Chief of Blackwater Defends His Employees
by John M. Broder, New York Times
October 2nd, 2007

Erik D. Prince, chief executive of Blackwater USA, told a Congressional committee on Tuesday that his company’s nearly 1,000 armed guards in Iraq were not trigger-happy mercenaries, but rather loyal Americans doing a necessary job in hostile territory.


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=210

The men who changes the world-IV

"Our company was founded in Chicago in 2003 by U.S. Army Special Forces veterans. We established operations in Iraq in 2004 following the first of multiple contract awards in the region. In 2005, our corporate headquarters relocated to Herndon, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. ..."

Two former employees of an American private military contracting firm have claimed in a Virginia court that they saw their supervisor deliberately shoot at Iraqi vehicles and civilians this summer, and that the firm fired them for reporting the incidents
No, that's not Blackwater. That's a November 2006 article about Triple Canopy. This comes after CNN's April announcement that the Triple Canopy would be taking over the Blackwater/Xe contracts, due to Iraq refusing to renew their operating license due to a September 2007 shooting incident involving five of their then-employees.

Triple Canopy CEO Ignacio "Iggy" Balderas

"Iggy has over two decades of experience in Special Forces units, including service with the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force). As Command Sergeant Major for Delta Force, Iggy was responsible to the National Command Authority for leadership, training, mentorship and implementation of policies and procedures for the U.S. military's most elite unit. He served as the subject matter expert on operational matters and command representative on military policy boards. He was responsible for hiring and firing every enlisted member in the unit. He conducted briefings for the U.S. President, Secretary of Defense and other four-stTriple Canopy Chief Operating Officer Kelvin Kai

Triple Canopy Chief Operating Officer Kelvin Kai

A U.S. Army veteran with over 20 years of service, Kelvin spent his entire career within the Special Operations Community assigned to the US Army Rangers, US Army Special Forces and 11 years assigned to the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force), where he acquired an exceptional level of expertise across the entire spectrum of special operation missions. Kelvin was awarded a Legion of Merit for his service.

Following his retirement, Kelvin served as the regional security manager in the Balkans for KBR and was a security advisor for Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold in Indonesia

Strategic Advisory Board

Dan Bannister (former Chairman and CEO of DynCorp)
David Binney (former Deputy Director of the FBI and former Director of Security for IBM)
BGEN Stephen A. Cheney, USMC (Ret.) (currently the Chief Operating Officer for Business Executives for National Security (BENS))
Catherine Lotrionte Yoran (former Assistant General Counsel with the Central Intelligence Agency and an Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Law Center)

... Triple Canopy Inc. Wins New Security Contract from State Department of US ; Expands Global Presence by Opening Offices in Abu Dhabi and Nigeria

04/1/2009 The State Department announced it has awarded a contract to Triple Canopy Inc. to protect US diplomats on the ground in Baghdad after dropping the controversial Blackwater Worldwide, renamed Xe. The department awarded the contract to Triple Canopy, which will start the transition immediately even if Xe will fill gaps until its contract ends in May. Triple Canopy said it has expanded its global presence by opening offices in Abu Dhabi and Nigeria.

Triple Canopy Inc. Wins $3,795,682.99 Federal Contract from the U.S. Army's Joint Contracting Command 01/10/2009 Triple Canopy Inc. announced that, it has won a $3,795,682.99 federal contract from the U.S. Army's Joint Contracting Command, Baghdad, Iraq, for personal security detail services.

Triple Canopy Inc. Wins $6.8 Million Contract 09/10/2007 Triple Canopy Inc. has won another contract to provide security services in Iraq. The new contract is for $6.8 million over the next year. ...

Sport shooting

Triple Canopy is currently the defendent in a lawsuit filed by three former employees who worked for Triple Canopy under a contract for KBR. Former Army Ranger Shane Schmidt and former Marine Charles L. Sheppard III claim in the lawsuit that on July 8, 2004, while en route to the Baghdad airport, their shift leader declared he was "going to kill someone today" and shortly afterwards stepped out of the vehicle and fired rounds of his M4 rifle through the windshield of a stopped truck.

The suit goes on to claim the shift leader said, "This didn't happen, understand?" Soon after, the shift leader stated he had "never shot anyone with my handgun before" and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver.

When Schmidt and Sheppard reported the incident, they were fired by Triple Canopy. The shift leader was sent back to the United States. Triple Canopy has not denied the incident occurred, rather they argue that no violation of Virginia law occurred and that Schmidt and Sheppard were "at-will" employees and could be fired for any reason. [5]

Recruitment

Recently, Triple Canopy has stopped recruiting from the Philippines and started in war-experienced rich El Salvador. Company spokesman, Joe Mayo, says, "They've got the right background for the type of work we are doing." After training in Jordan, the troops will head to Iraq for site security. --(inactive link)

Triple Canopy has been engaged in recruiting counter-insurgency military around Latin America, mostly from Peru, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador. --October 31, 2005.

It has been reported that Triple Canopy has contracted with the Peruvian Army to set up training exercises at the base in Huachipa. The Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported in October, 2005 that the Peruvian Army has trained a total of 678 soldiers for Triple Canopy already.

Triply Canopy has also been linked to training exercises in Honduras at facilities set up in the 1980s by the CIA. The Honduran government expelled 105 Chilean soldiers who had been recruited by a Triple Canopy subsidiary, Your Solutions. The Honduran newspaper, La Tribuna, reported that Your Solutions has shipped over a couple hundred soldiers from Honduras to Iraq. [6]

Growth

On June 15th, 2007, Triple Canopy announced their acquisition of Clayton Consultants, Inc., a crisis management security consultancy offering incident response services and security consulting for threats like kidnappings, ransoms and extortion against their clients. The addition of Clayton under the Triple Canopy umbrella will expand their range of available services.

http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2009/12/about-triple-canopy-from-triple-canopy.html
http://www.triplecanopy.com/

The men who changes the world-III

Jerry Keller recently retired after 36 years as a Spokane police officer. For 20 of those years, he was a detective in the sexual assault unit.

He interviewed hundreds of suspects and hundreds of their young victims. He has come to understand pedophilia as a form of evil. Yet Keller did not end his career a cynical man.

"He worked on the most horrifying cases, where you turned over a rock and thought you had one victim and you had generations of children," said Spokane District Court Judge Patti Walker, who worked with Keller when she was a deputy prosecutor. "He saved many children."

Keller said adults who abuse children fall into two categories: sex offenders and pedophiles.

Sex offenders are opportunists, coercing a child because it's easy; they usually don't have multiple victims. Pedophiles can have hundreds of victims and are nearly impossible to rehabilitate.

Keller explained: "Say it was against the law to be heterosexual. So you go 10 years to prison. You go through counseling. You are still going to be a heterosexual. Same thing with a pedophile. No matter how much counseling, children are still their choice."

Of the 900 registered sex offenders in the city of Spokane, about 30 qualify as pedophiles, Keller said. Their re-offense rate is about 90 percent, compared with 14 percent for sex offenders. But adults in both categories share similar excuses.

"I think there's a book that tells them if you're questioned by police, tell them. 'I was drunk. I was on drugs. She's the one who started it. I was a victim, too.' "

Pedophiles construct elaborate schemes. One man, who was eventually arrested in Spokane, posed as the Easter Bunny and walked though a California mall greeting children, naked beneath his costume. One childless predator built an elaborate train set in his backyard.

Many befriended lonely women with children.

One day, Keller checked up on a registered sex offender and found "two kids in the house, a Barbie Jeep and a heavyset mother. The woman told me: 'I found it funny he never had sex with me.' It was the little girl he was having sex with."

Others alter their appearance to look like child-friendly characters. Keller thinks most Santas are safe, but he's leery of men who purposely look like Santa year-round to attract children.




Only 2 percent of sexual predators are women, but they can be equally conniving. One sweet-looking 16-year-old girl walked door-to-door offering baby-sitting services, Keller said, and another women offered to hold babies on the bus.

"What causes pedophilia? I don't know if anyone knows," Keller said. "But molesting children is not normal. It has to be an evil."

Gregory McCrea told children to call him "Papa Smurf" - like the cheery animated character he purposefully resembled.

Of all the cases Keller worked on, the Papa Smurf case is the one that haunts him.

Six of McCrea's victims were Spokane girls, ages 6 to 11. Keller spent hours with them, listening to their horror. One drew a rose for him.

"It was a perfect rose," he said. "I hope she's an artist now."

Walker remembers the case, too. There were hours of sexually violent videotapes to review, and Keller needed help from others in law enforcement. The material was so disturbing that the others were able to watch for two hours, Walker remembers, and "then they were done."

In 1999, McCrea was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Carla Stamatoplos, who worked as an administrative assistant for the sexual assault unit for 10 years, said Keller put children at ease immediately.

"When the children came through, he would stop and show them the police dog (photos) on the wall."

Jim Nicks, the department's assistant chief, said Keller dedicated himself to educating people, in community meetings and at national trainings, about the true nature of sex crimes against children.

"He saw the victimization of children. It tugged at his heart. So he became an expert," Nicks said.

Keller ended his career in awe of the all the abused children he met.

"Most of them are a lot smarter than the predator gives them credit for," he said. "The kids are very intelligent, even if they come from bad backgrounds."

Many were manipulated into sexual contact, believing in the honesty of adults and unable to put dangerous requests in perspective because, as Keller noted with sadness, "some have only been on Earth six or seven years."

Keller handed in his badge, his cell phone, his uniform and his ID the same week the unit's sergeant, Jim Faddis, retired, too. Keller credits his sexual assault unit co-workers with keeping him sane because he could talk with them about things no one else could bear to hear.

Keller has been a police officer more than half his life. He's anticipating some "who am I now?" moments. But he has plans. He'll spend even more time with his two grown daughters and four grandchildren. He'll climb more mountains.

"The outdoors saved me," he said. "I've been with the Spokane Mountaineers since 2001. My ultimate goal is Denali, the highest spot in North America."

It might be harder to retire his vigilance.

"You see a child in a car who looks somewhat scared. You see a guy walking a 6-year-old girl and think, 'Is this OK?' Most people probably wouldn't think anything of it."

---

Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesman.com

The men who changes the world-II

"Since I was 8 or 9 years old, Mitch [Nihoul] would often enough take me with him and give me the assignment to hang around a certain customer. I liked doing that. I enjoyed seeing them shamble around, their efforts to stay out of my way unnoticed. I smiled when Mich asked me to stand next to a customer to make a picture, and how the customer reluctantly smiled and put a weak arm around my shoulder... The glances which were then exchanged between the one taking the picture and the customer were priceless. The customer knew he was trapped... In the night they had been the boss, now they were prey... Too bad that most of them, once they knew they had been trapped, went to experiment even more during the night..."

"In Brussels there was a villa in which a room was set up with built-in cameras. Even in the 1970s these cameras were so discrete that only the people who maintained them and the child- prostitutes knew where they were located... Why did I had to get those guys clearly in the picture, why was I supposed to get them to hit me and brutally rape me? Why was 'regular' sex often not enough?... Blackmail, the word that was never mentioned, I only started to really understand when I was thirteen, fourteen years old..."

"Contracts between the business milieu and the political world, contracts between businessmen amongst each other, fraud with subsidies or licenses, setting up fake firms, criminal contracts like arms trade... everything was possible. And it always ended with sex and children... Pictures were taken, in jest, to keep both parties to their contracts... The men were brought to ideas by child pornography movies that were played at parties... The pimps also had another tactic. They invited a person who could be useful to them. They went to dine with him, and took him - after he had been liquored up - to a 'party'. Men from the top layer of society are used to visiting or getting offered prostitutes. They usually knew that something like this would follow, and the prostitutes they would see upon entering would be slightly older girls, between 16 [sexually mature in Belgium] and 18 years old. More booze and cocaine would be supplied, for ambience. And only then the 'prey' would be taken to a room where a younger girl was waiting, like me, then."

"Most men probably realized only afterwards in what kind of hornet's nest they now found themselves, but by then it was far too late... Men were introduced to the network by colleagues, friends or family members. Carefully or slowly, or briskly after a party. Step by step customers, who first went to bed with me cautiously, were stimulated to rougher sex. I was forced to help them with that... They became complicit and at the same time their mutual connections became tighter. Not one of these people was still inclined to sign contracts with individuals outside the network. If that happened one could make them pay dearly for that..." (313
http://www.isgp.eu

Why these articles about politicians and other ppl

The men who changes the world makes sence in a lost children blog.
Drugs,weapons,human traffic and other crimes cross the so called resources fight.
All these crimes serve the "cause".

The men who changes the world -1

WILLIAM COLBY
Casey, William Sources: June 29, 1997, The Independence, 'Aitken dropped by the Right's secret club; Is it the ultimate dishonour' (named as once a regular)

Irish-American catholic from Queens, born in 1913. Graduated from the Jesuit Fordham University in New York in 1934 and St. John's University School of Law in 1937. Also attended the Catholic University of America. After law school, he joined the Research Institute of America in Washington. Chairman of the board of editors of the Research Institute of America 1938-1949. Joined the Navy in 1943. In 1943, William Donovan, founding head of the OSS, hired Casey to organize the OSS secretariat. After that, he was sent to London and was soon managing the infiltration of Allied agents into Nazi Germany from there. At one point he had 150 agents reporting directly to him from occupied Europe. These included Richard Helms, like Casey, a later director of the CIA; and John Singlaub, a later Army general deeply involved in anti-communist warfare. Allen Dulles, William Colby, James Jesus Angleton, and David Bruce were among his OSS colleagues during WWII. December 17, 1986, Chicago Sun-Times, '...perhaps, but secrecy is vital to foreign policy': ""Great secrecy was necessary," Winston Churchill told a cheering Parliament, as he revealed the first Nazi surrender at the close of World War II, capitulation in Italy. It followed months of top-secret talks between German commanders and Office of Strategic Services "spy master" Allen Dulles, later the celebrated director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Historians have suggested that Dulles' triumph, code-named Operation Sunrise, was diplomatically flawed, that excluding the Soviets from those meetings - for the sake of secrecy - triggered the initial distrust between Allies that led to the Cold War. But in [March] 1945, few Americans would have doubted that ending the fighting was worth a spat with "Uncle Joe" Stalin. Sunrise was a milestone in the annals of U.S. secret intelligence, marking the start of that postwar crypto-diplomacy twilight zone where secret agents often supplant striped-pants ambassadors. And William J. Casey was there, privy to the secret as one of the best and brightest of young OSS executives. Now, 40 years later, he is the latest of Dulles' unenviable successors as head of the CIA." After the war, Casey was offered senior jobs in U.S. intelligence, but turned them down because he thought he should establish his financial independence first. Developed his publishing business and thrived as a tax lawyer, making a personal fortune estimated at between $8 and $12 million, and earning a reputation as a corporate dealer willing to take almost any risk if the potential return was worth it. Published a series of about 20 books explaining the intricacies of complex legislation. Special counsel of the small business committee of the U.S. Senate 1947-1948. Associate general counsel at the European headquarters of the Marshall Plan 1948. Jean Monnet from France (and initial member of Le Cercle) was one of the key players here. Lecturer tax law New York University 1948-1962. Lecturer Practicing Law Institute of New York City 1950-1962. Co-founder of Capital Cities in 1954, together with Thomas E. Dewey, who went from crime fighter to crime backer (Lucky Luciano & Meyer Lansky). Another founder of Capital Cities was Lowell Thomas, who was a close friend and business contact of CIA director Allen Dulles. Thomas reportedly was also connected to Lansky's mafia. Capital Cities grew so powerful that it was able to buy the entire ABC TV network in 1985, which was ten times as big. Casey supposedly still had a significant interest in the company through a blind trust created when he became CIA director in 1981. Cap Cities/ABC was bought in 1996 by Walt Disney, who changed its name back to ABC. Partner in Hall, Casey, Dickler & Howley 1957-1971. Founded the National Strategy Information Center in 1962, with alleged CIA links, to push for increased military spending. Member General Advisory Committee on Arms Control 1970-1971. Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission 1971-1973. April 29, 1974, Time, 'Their Own Best Witnesses': "John Mitchell, 60, the former U.S. Attorney General, and Maurice Stans, 66, the former Secretary of Commerce, had in a measure won their gamble-though not necessarily their cases. They had indeed been their own best witnesses against the Government's charges that they had plotted to gain special favors in Washington for Financier Robert Vesco, 38, in exchange for the moneyman's secret $200,000 cash contribution to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign... It simply never occurred to him, insisted Mitchell, that Vesco had given the $200,000 in order to get help in his struggle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (which eventually charged Vesco and 41 associates with perpetrating a $224 million stock fraud)... Mitchell freely admitted, as the prosecution charged, that after Vesco's donation was received he set up a meeting between the financier's lawyer and William Casey, then head of the SEC." Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs 1973-1974. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations since the 1970s. Member of the Atlantic Council of the United States. President of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. 1974-1975. Member President Ford's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board 1974-1976. Member of the in 1976 revived Committee on Present Danger, a reactionary anti-communist think tank that included people like John F. Lehman, Clare Booth Luce, Paul H. Nitze, Richard Perle (friend of Brian Crozier, head of Le Cercle at that time), Richard Pipes, (a later associate of Crozier), Eugene Rostow, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (former Chief of Naval Operations), George Shultz, Richard Stilwell (Le Cercle), Richard Allen, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and David Packard. Co-founder of the Jamestown Foundation in 1984, together with the Cercle member Donald Jameson. The Jamestown Foundation's purpose was to protect and sponsor a group of high-level international defectors as they travelled the United States speaking out against the tyranny of communism. Today, the Jamestown Foundation has three program areas: China, Russia/Eurasia, and Terrorism, and counts the involvement of Glen Howard (SAIC; DoD; National Intelligence Council; Mid-East and Central-Asia oil consultant), James Woolsey, Zbigniew Brzezinski (attended at least one Le Cercle meeting), Dick Cheney, and Frank Carlucci. Counsel at Rogers & Wells 1976-1981, the law firm that represented Wackenhut. Outside legal advisor to Wackenhut during this time. Campaign manager of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Robert Keith Gray, chair of Hill & Knowlton, the all-powerful (described by critics as a "secret government") Washington-based lobbying firm, was deputy director of communications in Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. Gray reported directly to Casey. Sen. John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition, p.178-179: "Said to be Harold Anderson's [chair Larry King's Franklin Credit Union advisory board and part of Larry King's Nebraskan homosexual, pedophile, and ritual sacrifice ring] closest friend in Washington," Gray is also reportedly a specialist in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA. Gray's own sexual proclivities were the subject of an article in the July-August 1982 issue of the The Deep Backgrounder, entitled "Reagan Inaugural Co-Chairman Powerful 'Closet Homosexual'?" The Deep Backgrounder tabloid featured exposes of homosexual networks in Washington, D.C.; its contributing editor was former CIA official Victor Marchetti. During the Watergate era, Robert Keith Gray served on the board of Consultants International, founded CIA agent Edwin Wilson [of Shackley's secret team]. When Wilson and fellow agent Frank Terpil got caught running guns abroad, Gray tried to deny his connection with Wilson. "Yet ten years before," according to Peter Maas' book Manhunt, "in a top secret Navy review of Wilson's intelligence career, Gray described Wilson as a person of 'unqualified trust,' with whom he'd been in contact 'professionally two or three times a month' since 1963." Sen. John DeCamp goes on to quote from the book 'Secret Agenda' of Jim Hougan: "According to fugitive ex-CIA officer Frank Terpil, CIA-directed sexual blackmailing operations were intensive in Washington at about the time of the Watergate scandal. One of those operations, Terpil claims, was run by his former partner, Ed Wilson. Wilson's base of operations for arranging trysts for the politically powerful was, Terpil says, Korean agent Ton Sun Park’s George Town Club. In a letter to the author, Terpil explained that ‘Historically, one of Wilson’s Agency jobs was to subvert members of both houses [of Congress] by any means necessary... Certain people could be easily coerced by living out their sexual fantasies in the flesh... A remembrance of these occasions [was] permanently recorded via selected cameras... The technicians in charge of filming. . .[were] TSD [Technical Services Division of the CIA]... The unwitting porno stars advanced in their political careers, some of [whom] may still be in office." Besides Terpil, affidavits written and signed by Col. Edward P. Cutolo (assassinated) and special forces soldier William Tyree (in jail for murdering his wife. Cutolo - his boss -, and others, confirm Tyree was framed) confirm part of this story. Cutolo and Tyree talked about Operation Watch Tower, one of the many government-sanctioned drug-importing operations (from Escobar's Colombia to Noriega's Panama, over sea), and Operation Orwell, which was a specific program to spy on politicians and other important people to make sure A) that no outsiders were aware of Operation Watch Tower B) that the Army would have advance warning if anyone might want to expose the operation, and C) that some dirt could be gathered on those who might some day be in a position to expose Operation Watch Tower. Edwin Wilson was Cutolo's and Tyree's superior officer. Cutolo said something highly interesting in his affidavit: "I was notified by Edwin Wilson that the information forwarded to Wash. D.C., was disseminated to private corporations who were developing weapons for the Dept. of Defense. Those private corporations were encouraged to use the sensitive information gathered from surveillance on U.S. Senators and Representatives as leverage to manipulate those Congressmen into approving whatever costs the weapons systems incurred... As of the date of this affidavit, 8,400 police departments, 1,370 churches, and approx. 17,900 citizens have been monitored under Operation Orwell. The major churches targeted have been Catholic and Latter Day Saints [Mormons]... Per orders from Edwin Wilson, I did not discuss the implementation of Operation Orwell with my staff or others outside of the personnel assigned to surveillance. The only matter discussed with Operation Orwell personnel was what the SATs needed to know in order to carry out their mission. Certain information was collected on suspected members of the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group... Among those that information was collected on were Gerald Ford and President Jimmy Carter. Edwin Wilson indicated that additional surveillance was implemented against former CIA director George Bush, who Wilson named as a member of the Trilateral Commission. I do not have personal knowledge that Ford, Carter, or Bush were under surveillance." According to the affidavit, Wilson was involved in parallel operations with people like Thomas Clines, Robert Gates and William Casey. Col. Cutolo expressed his concerns to superiors that Wilson was talking too much. A few years later Wilson ended up in jail. Cutolo ended up dead. Ton Sun Park, the owner of the George Town Club where Wilson ran his sexual blackmail scheme, was an associate of radical cult leader Sun Myung Moon. October 31, 1978, a report printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations, 'Investigation of Korean-American Relations': "During 1976, the subcommittee also received information about an apparent attempt by Moon and his followers--along with Tong-sun Park--to buy a controlling interest in the Diplomat National Bank (DNB), which opened in Washington D.C., in December 1975. Neil Salonen, president of the UC of America, was called to testify concerning this and other allegations. Salonen said he had bought DNB stock at the suggestion of Pak Bo Hi, but denied the UC was in any way involved in financing the DNB stock purchases." Moon has been a major anti-communist activist and is connected to all the reactionary elements within this movement, most notably those involved with the World Anti-Communist League. These include Cercle members Count Hans Huyn and Otto von Habsburg in Bavaria, Germany, Paul Vanden Boeynants in Belgium, and Arnaud de Borchgrave, Rev. Jerry Falwell, George Bush, John Singlaub, and many others in the United States. Moon has also been tied to sexual blackmail rings. December 20, 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), 'The 'No Soul' Gang Behind Reverend Moon's Gnostic Sex Cult': "The sex is a specialty of Moon's own Gnostic "family" cult. Remember the Congressional Madam scandals of the 1970s, featuring Tong Sun Park and Suzy Park Thomson? That was just the tip of the iceberg of "The Reverend" Moon's sexual-favors operation. Military intelligence officers who investigated Unification Church operations in Washington in the 1970s and '80s, report that the recruitment device used on ranking, conservative political and military officials was to hold weekly orgies, arranged by Col. Bo Hi Pak, the Unification Church official who was a top officer of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The special treat at these affairs were the "Little Angels"—Korean schoolgirls brought over by Moon as a singing group. The photo files from these sessions are reported to be a powerful influence in certain circles to this very day." DeCamp again, p. 179-180: "Gray’s associate Wilson was apparently continuing the work of a reported collaborator of Gray from the 1950’s—McCarthy committee counsel Roy Cohn [of Permindex, according to EIR; and connections to Fascist International in Europe since the early 1950s], now dead of AIDS. According to the former head of the vice squad for one of America’s biggest cities, ‘Cohn’s job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.’ The first president of Tong Sun Park’s George Town Club, where Wilson’s sexual blackmail operations were reportedly run, was Robert Keith Gray. The first president of Tong Sun Park's George Town Club [in Washington], where Wilson's sexual blackmail operations were reportedly run, was Robert Keith Gray. Gray maintained his intelligence connections during the Reagan Administration, according to an affidavit filed... by Daniel Sheehan for the Christic Institute. The affidavit states that when CIA chief Casey, national security adviser Robert McFarlane, and NSC staff member Lt. Col. Oliver North were devising a method to circumvent a congressional ban on arming the Contras, they turned to Gray and Company. Gray employee Rob Owen set up a private group to solicit funds for the Contras. Owen was called before Congress, to testify on how he delivered bags of cash to the Contras [in return for the dope?]. In February 1989, Hill and Knowlton's Charles Perkins rushed to New York, for a fraction of the firm's usual fee, to help with public relations for Covenant House. The youth organization's director, Father Bruce Ritter, was alleged to have molested youth who took refuge with him." Larry King (not the one from CNN), the person who headed the Nebraskan pedophile, homosexual, and ritual sacrifice ring, greatly admired Casey. September 7, 1988, interview of the Metropolitan with Larry King (as quoted by Sen. John DeCamp in his book 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition, p.175): "I know some of the people I admire aren't very popular. Ed Meese. The late Bill Casey of the CIA. And I love former Chief Justice Burger [Pilgrims Society]. Those are the people I really like to talk to. Bill Casey... I just thought so very highly of him." On page 327 and 329, Sen. John DeCamp, who has claimed he is barred from discussion large portions of the Franklin Affair case, adds some more context: "Larry King, FBI agent Gerry Wahl, Alan Baer, Harold Andersen, and former Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman have all been reported as collaborators with this Satanic military-based ring. King reportedly told Paul's captors at Offutt, "He's young-but you trained him good." A member of Nebraska's Concerned Parents group reported hearing from two North Omaha witnesses that "King used to send limousines down to Offutt Air Base to pick up CIA agents for parties." Larry King reported his own adoring relationship to the late CIA Director William Casey in a Sept. 7, 1988, interview in the Omaha publication Metropolitan... Paul Bonacci reports the following "Monarch"-related activities, often involving his "Commander" at Offutt AFB, Bill Plemmons, and Lt. Col. Michael Aquino..."Although most people who attended Larry King's parties, were not aware of his pedophile network, Casey seems to awfully close involved with this person and some of the accused. In fact, his working partner George Bush Sr. (Julie Walters report, p.12; DeCamp adds "This was not the last time that the name of George Bush would surface in the Franklin affair") has been named as a member of the homosexual pedophile ring while Reagan's daughter was also close to King. DeCamp, p. 55: "It was the most impressive party I had ever witnesses... The attendance by top politicians was remarkable... At the center of the excitement was Larry King. Draped over him like a blanket throughout the evening was a heavyset woman, who I learned was Maureen Reagan, the president's daughter... I got to wondering... how does he do this supposedly on a salary of $16 thousand a year?" The Franklin Credit Union scandal (which laundered money for the CIA) broke in November 1988. Within a year, in June 1989, a new scandal broke with close ties to the Franklin Credit Union and Larry King's pedophile/homosexual/ritual sacrifice network. Craig J. Spence, who seemed to have had the same clandestine job as Larry King, albeit in Washington instead of Nebraska, was investigated for illegally having organized a midnight White House tour and for running a pedophile/homosexual extortion network. Casey is known to have attended parties of Spence. Also, later on, Spence would have remarked just before his death that "Casey's boys" were after him. June 30, 1989, Washington Times, 'Power broker served drugs, sex at parties bugged for blackmail': "Craig J. Spence, an enigmatic figure who threw glittery parties for key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, media stars and top military officers, bugged the gatherings to compromise guests, provided cocaine, blackmailed some associates and spent up to $20,000 a month on male prostitutes, according to friends, acquaintances and records... The man, a business associate of Mr. Spence who was on the White House tour [arranged by Spence and attended by two male prostitutes], said: "He was blackmailing people. He was taping people and blackmailing them."... After arriving in Washington in the late 1970s, Mr. Spence was hosting parties during the early Reagan years attended by, among others... former CIA Director William Casey [and] Gen. Alfred M. Gray [named by Kay Griggs as one of the top players in a network of criminal covert ops and sexual blackmail], the commandant of the Marine Corps... The businessman said this week that he did not know exactly what work Mr. Spence did, but that he often bragged about his contacts with Japanese businessmen and political leaders, particularly Mr. Nakasone. He described Mr. Spence as "strange," saying that he often boasted that he was working for the CIA... The businessman also said he attended a birthday bash for Roy Cohn at Mr. Spence's house. He said Mr. Casey was at the party." Roy Cohn, as an aide to Senator Joseph "reds under the bed" McCarthy, was accused in the early 1950s as an associate of the post-WWII Fascist underground of Skorzeny, Schacht, and Naumann while visiting Europe. Cohn, together with some members of the Fascist International, was later named by EIR as an initial director of Permindex, a corporation set up in 1958 which is suspected of having been a front organization in the planning of the John F. Kennedy assassination. As mentioned earlier, Cohn supposedly "ran the little boys". Arnaud de Borchgrave is also known to have attended a party at Spence's house. De Borchgrave, an intelligence-connected anti-communist radical and good friends with Sun Myung Moon, is a descendant of an obscure Belgian noble family. An unknown member of this family has coincidentally been named by one of the Belgian X-File witnesses, who came out in the aftermath of the Dutroux affair. Count Alexandre de Marenches, a good friend of Casey and Vernon Walters, is a cousin of the De Borchgrave family. November 13, 1989, Washington Times, 'In death, Spence stayed true to form': "Craig J. Spence, the once-powerful lobbyist who entertained and influenced Washington's elite, died Friday... On a mirror in Room 429 of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Mr. Spence on Friday left his final enigma in the form of a suicide note... During the past few weeks, Mr. Spence told several friends that the call-boy operation was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and other federal authorities as a possible CIA front. He told the friends that the CIA used the service to compromise other federal intelligence officials and foreign diplomats... One friend quoted him as saying, "Casey's boys are out to get me," an apparent reference to former CIA Director William Casey, now deceased. Mr. Casey and Mr. Spence were friends, and the former CIA director attended parties hosted by the former lobbyist... During a lengthy interview at a Manhattan apartment in August, Mr. Spence frequently alluded to deep mysteries. "All this stuff you've uncovered (involving call boys, bribery and the White House tours), to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I've done. But I'm not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on." February 2, 1990, Washington Times, 'Prostitutes corroborate Frank stories': "Penthouse magazine's anxiously awaited account of sexual adventuring by congressmen quotes a female prostitute as corroborating Steven L. Gobie's earlier story that Rep. Barney Frank knew Gobie was operating a bordello in the congressman's Capitol Hill apartment... The magazine [Penthouse] said Mr. Spence had agreed to "provide lurid details of Washington's bisexual wonderland." But before the interview could occur, Mr. Spence committed suicide in Boston on Nov. 10... According to Gobie, Mr. Spence told him, "Do you know what kind of power you can have over people if you've got something on them? . . . I need boys and girls for people in government and high-level businessmen for my parties, for individuals, for whatever comes up." The magazine quoted Gobie as saying Mr. Spence was "the most dangerous man I'd ever met. If he hadn't turned into such a crackhead, he could have blackmailed half this town. He used to say, 'Hey, foreign intelligence agencies are doing it.'" Casey is known to have visited Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay around 1980. Important adviser to Reagan 1981-1987. Director CIA 1981-1987. In the early 1980s, Casey was able to funnel almost $200,000 to Brian Crozier, the former head of Le Cercle who undermined the Labour government of Harold Wilson, for his 61 efforts. Crozier met with Casey, a member of Le Cercle, on several occasions during this time period. Casey and Oliver North supposedly never told Crozier about the Iran Contra affair, or drug imports for that matter. Spartacus Schoolnet: "On 16th March, 1984, William Francis Buckley, a diplomat attached to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was kidnapped by the Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shiite group with strong links to the Ruhollah Khomeini regime. Buckley was tortured and it was soon discovered that he was the CIA station chief in Beirut. Buckley had also worked closely with William Casey in the secret negotiations with the Iranians in 1980. Buckley had a lot to tell his captors. He eventually signed a 400 page statement detailing his activities in the CIA. He was also videotaped making this confession. Casey asked Ted Shackley for help in obtaining Buckley’s freedom... The following month, Ted Shackley traveled to Hamburg where he met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division at the Atlantic Hotel... At the meeting Shackley told Hashemi and Ghorbanifar that the United States was willing to discuss arms shipments in exchange for the four Americans kidnapped in Lebanon. The problem with the proposed deal was that William Francis Buckley was already dead (he had died of a heart-attack while being tortured). Ted Shackley recruited some of the former members of his CIA Secret Team to help him with these arm deals." Besides arms shipments in return for the hostages, the Republicans of the Reagan team, including Casey and Bush Sr., also arranged with the Iranians to have the hostages released after the US elections, as this would almost certainly guarantee that Jimmy Carter would lose. This scandal would be called the October Surprise. Rodney Stich, 'Those Ugly Americans: 20th and 21st Centuries', p. 108 & 137: "One of the key meetings [of Iran Contra and the October Surprise conspiracy] occurred at the PepsiCo International Headquarters building in Barcelona, Spain in late July 1980. One of my CIA sources was present with Casey at that meeting, arranging for procurement and shipment of the arms from various European locations to Iran via Israel. The final meeting occurred in Paris on the October 19, 1980, weekend... Salinger described his conversations with respected American journalist, David Andelman, who was the ghostwriter of the 1992 memoirs of Alexandre de Marenches, French spy chief [and friend of Gen. Vernon Walters; and like Casey and Walters, a member of SMOM; Arnaud de Borchgrave is related to one of De Mareches' Belgian cousins]. At Salinger’s request, Andelman asked Marenches about the alleged Paris meetings involving Casey and Bush. Salinger wrote in his book, “Andelman came back to me and said that Marenches had finally agreed [that] he organized the meeting, under the request of an old friend, William Casey.... Marenches and Casey had known each other well during the days of World War II. Marenches added that while he prepared the meeting, he did not attend it.” Andelman testified to this admission before the House October Surprise task force in December 1992, but as with other creditable witnesses, this testimony was ignored so as to deny the existence of this crime." Casey modeled himself on the likes of Allen Dulles and John McCone (Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay), who ran things in the 1950s and early 1960s before serious questions were raised about the morality of covert action on a global scale. He thought Walter Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles, John McCone, Richard Helms, and George Bush were all great CIA directors. Bobby Ray Inman (director ONI; director DIA; director NSA; director Wackenhut; director SAIC) was his deputy director at the CIA in 1981 and 1982. He resigned in 1982 after a heated dispute with Casey (and Sharon) about limiting Israel's access to satellite data from locations over 250 miles from Israel itself. Inman was afraid that Israel would set the Middle-East on fire and Caspar Weinberger (Pilgrims Society executive in late 1980s and 1990s) supported this notion. According to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, Casey gave Pope John Paul II unprecedented access to CIA intelligence, including spy satellites and agents. In a 2006 interview Inman claimed that Casey intensely disliked George Bush, Sr. In 1981, Casey was called upon to co-ordinate the Polish Crisis where the Solidarity movement had risen up against the Soviet regime. This movement was largely organized by Opus Dei and funded through Calvi's (and Pesenti's) Banco Ambrosiano (according to Calvi, to the tune of $1 billion over several years). As a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Casey immediately decided to fly to Rome, together with co-SMOM members general Alexander Haig (Pilgrims Society executive) and general Vernon Walters. Unfortunately for Casey, he was under investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and couldn't go. Instead, he send Vernon Walters who visited the Vatican about a dozen times in the next five months. Walters arranged for Reagan to meet the Pope in June 1982. During the same time, Alexander Haig and William Clark were conferring with Cardinal Casaroli (Pro-Opus Dei, if not a member; Vatican Secretariat of State during the 1980s; seen by Calvi as one of his enemies and Calvi supposedly had "compromising documents" on him; appointed the "three wisemen" in July 1982 to "investigate" the Vatican Bank's dealings with Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano. Among the three was former UBS chair and white collar criminal Philippe De Weck) and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini (under-secretary of Casaroli) in another part of the Vatican. Casey couldn't attend these meetings too, as Israel had just invaded Lebanon. On other occasions Casey would rarely visit Europe or the Middle-East without first stopping in Rome for a meeting with the Pope. Casey loved to take foreign policy advise from Cardinal John J. Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia; Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, the successor of Cardinal Francis Spellman and the Grand Protector and Spiritual Advisor of the Military Order of Malta; Archbishop (later Cardinal) Pio Laghi, former the Vatican's top man in Buenos Aires. All of these Cardinals were strong Opus Dei supporters. Casey, with support of the Vatican, harnessed radical Islam to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This way he hoped to contain the Soviets in the Hindu Kush mountains while the radical Muslims would be too busy to turn on some of the Middle-East dictators sponsored by the West. He convinced the Saudis to largely bankroll this operation. Under Casey the CIA supplied the Mujahedin with 30mm anti-tank guns, .50 caliber sniper rifles (provided with a self-destructive round if the gun was to be left behind), special forces Parapoint systems, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and training courses by ISA and Delta Force special forces. With the British MI6 and Pakistani ISI, the CIA agreed to mount guerilla actions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Afghan opposition leader with whom these operations were coordinated was Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. Casey also committed the CIA to support an ISI operation that recruited Muslims from all over the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. December 13, 2003, The Guardian, 'Smart money' (a combined review of Loretta Napoleoni's 'Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks' and Jeffrey Robinson's 'The Sink: Terror, Crime and Dirty Money in the Offshore World'): "William Casey, Reagan's CIA chief, used Pakistan and its BCCI bank as fronts to train Afghan rebels against the Soviets. Covert operations required a "black network" within the bank and its state equivalent, the notorious ISI. The bank financed and brokered covert arms deals, complete with full laundry service. The short and logical step from there was a BCCI/ISI/CIA move into drug smuggling to feed the needy, and leaky, money pipeline to the Mujahedin. The Pakistan-Afghan connection became the biggest single supplier of heroin to the US, meeting 60% of demand, with annual profits a stratospheric $100-$200 billion." The BCCI was set up by Agha Hasan Abedi of the obscure and elite 1001 Club, mainly tied to the financial interests in London. The shady MI6 operative, Privy Counsellor, and Cercle chairman Julian Amery was an advisor to the BCCI. His protege Jonathan Aitken, the follow-up chair of Le Cercle, has been accused of massive illegal arms with the Saudis. 2002 (third edition), John Cooley, 'Unholy Wars', p. 110-111: "With President Reagan and CIA Director William Casey, a new era began. On January 21, 1982, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which had largely avoided drug matters, was plunged squarely into them. Attorney-General William French Smith announced that the FBI, instead of the DEA, would henceforth control anti-drug campaigns inside the United States. This effectively ended hitherto secret cooperation between the two services. It moved the DEA, which was struggling to control drug trafficking both inside and from outside the United States, further away from the main power centers in the Afghanistan war: President Reagan’s National Security Council (NSC) and Casey’s CIA. Casey was now able secretly to engineer an exemption, sparing the CIA from a legal requirement to report on drug smuggling by CIA officers, agents or other “assets.” Attorney Smith granted exemption in a secret memorandum on February 11, 1982, two months after President Reagan had authorized covert CIA support for the Nicaraguan anti-Communist Contra army. Investigative work in Washington in the late 1990s has disclosed that Casey realized that the CIA would face a serious legal dilemma if federal law continued to require it to report drug smuggling by its agents. On March 2, 1982, Casey thanked Smith for the exemption which, Casey wrote, helped to protect intelligence sources and methods. After many details of CIA knowledge, if not control, of large-scale cocaine traffic from South America became public, President Clinton’s administration in 1995 quietly rescinded the CIA narcotics exemption. The Contra-cocaine issue arose again in 1996 with investigative articles by a reporter for a California newspaper. Despite CIA denials, the Agency’s inspector-general, Frederick P. Hitz, compiled a two-volume investigative report. He admitted that the CIA did indeed know about Contra drug trafficking and covered it up. The second volume reportedly was even more damning for the CIA, but at this writing it hasn’t been released." 2002 (third edition), John Cooley, 'Unholy Wars', p. 108-110: "All close observers of the war knew that the drug smugglers carried weapons into Afghanistan and took drugs back with them. Heroin laboratories began to spring up in the rear of the various Afghan battle­fronts... The Soviet account quotes the American Left-liberal magazine, Rolling Stone, reporting on a powerful narcobusiness network, including vast new fields of opium poppies on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, created during the jihad. It was “complete with well-planned routes and a whole network of dozens of factories” to process the opium into morphine base and heroin. “Western experts” [names and nationalities unspecified] supervised creation of the labs in camps of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s [very radical and an associate of Bin Laden] group. However -and here, interestingly, the Russian view of the wartime drug traffic diverges from the Western one — “the real ‘King of Heroin,’” said Shvedov’s Russian team, “is considered to be Gaylani who has far surpassed Hekmatyar in narcobusiness and controls the overwhelming majority of the operations of the opium mafia.” The CIA, the Russians added, was working closely with both Hekmatyar and Gaylani... Sayad Ahmed Gaylani, called “Effendi Juan” by compatriots, headed the NIF [National Islamic Front of Afghanistan]. He was a wealthy Afghan aristocrat, supporter of the exiled king, Zahir Shah. Gaylani had a strong bent for business. In 1952 he married a woman of the royal dynasty, the Durranis. He wisely invested profits from holding the sales franchise for Peugeot cars in Kabul. At the same time, he kept the religious prestige attached to his descent from the Qadiriya brotherhood, one of the mystic Sufi orders of South Asian Islam... The Soviet intelligence report on Gaylani’s NIF found that it “has significant financial resources. Besides the aid from various foundations in the USA, Western Europe and Arab countries, it makes profit on selling drugs and exacting taxes from the population."" Gailani is, an American-educated commander, is one of more than a dozen Mujahedin rebel groups in Afghanistan. He's a Pashtun royalist seeking the return of King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who is in exile in Rome. September 30, 2001, Star Tribune, 'Drug trade filled coffers of Taliban, Bin Laden group': "Alfred McCoy, a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin, said U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials sanctioned the rebels' drug trafficking because of their fierce opposition to the Soviets. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel leader who received $1 billion in covert CIA funds, was a major heroin trafficker, according to McCoy. Afghan opium production ballooned from 250 tons in 1982 to 2,000 tons in 1991." Earlier, it is known that the CIA, in collaboration with other US intelligence groups and special forces, was importing hundreds of tons of heroine in the US from the Golden Triangle in Shan Land, Burma. The money was largely laundered through the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia. Ted Shackley, Richard Armitage, and mafia boss Santos Trafficante were as those that handled the heroin coming from the Golden Triangle. William Colby, Casey, George Bush, and again Shackley were named in the Nugan Hand Bank affair. The far less well known follow-up of the Nugan Hand Bank was Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong (BBRDW). Rodney Stich, 'Those Ugly Americans: 20th and 21st Centuries', p. 342 & 343: "In March 1996, I acquired several boxes containing hundreds of CIA documents generated from the CIA’s secret operation in Hawaii, and within these boxes I found highly sensitive material, including notes that Rewald had made while the titular head of BBRDW. Certain notes and information provided to me by Rewald divulged CIA drug related activities, including drug money laundering. As I gathered from looking over the material and by talking with Rewald, he was unaware of much of the CIA activities originating out of BBRDW... Deeply imbedded in these documents was an envelope labeled “Lawyer- Client information.” The information was dynamite, divulging secret activities, including CIA drug trafficking, and CIA funding of secret overseas bank accounts for high U.S. officials. The information in this envelope included information from the “Green Book” that the CIA sought to get from Rewald while he was in the hospital recovering from the combination suicide and assassination attempt. The notes in the envelope listed high-level people with secret CIA-funded accounts. The names on the left side of the notes were the aliases Rewald used to identify the people on the right for which there were secret bank accounts opened and funded by the CIA through BBRDW.... Irwin M. Peach [=] George Bush... Mr. Bramble [=] George Bush... Mr. Branch [=] Richard Armitage... Mr. Denile [=] William Casey... Rewald‘s notes also indicated that fictitious names were used to hide money for B.K. Kim, Philippines’ President Ferdinand, and Imelda Marcos, among others." Rodney Stich, 'Those Ugly Americans: 20th and 21st Centuries', p. 340: "In November 1984, CIA Director William Casey complained to the Federal Communication Commission about the ABC television network for having aired a show featuring CIA agent Scott Barnes. In the television presentation Barnes said he was asked by two CIA agents in Honolulu to kill Ronald Rewald. This airing had the danger of revealing the CIA role in BBRDW and could expose an endless number of other covert CIA proprietaries and operations..." June 29, 1999, Michael Ruppert, 'Don't Blink!': "ABC's Peter Jennings, by the way, had been doing a series of investigative reports on the CIA drug bank (and successor to the Nugan Hand bank) Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong [BBRDW] when the buyout was initiated. Cap Cities (not surprisingly) secured SEC approval in record time and effectively and immediately silenced Peter Jennings who had previously refused to back down from Casey's threats. Thereafter ABC was referred to as "The CIA network." I have no doubt that the ABC "object lesson" was front and center for CNN founder Ted Turner and Time-Warner when Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and (CIA vet) John Singlaub put the pressure on in the wake of April Oliver's 1998 "dead bang accurate" Sarin gas stories connecting CIA to the killing of American defectors." Rodney Stich, 'Those Ugly Americans: 20th and 21st Centuries', p. 326: "Parker said that [Michael] Hand [of Nugan Hand Bank] and Vice President George Bush were in frequent contact after Bush became vice president, and while Australian authorities were searching for Hand. Parker stated that CIA Director William Casey frequently met with Hand in Panama in the early 1980s concerning arms sales and drug trafficking. Parker stated that he and Hand took over one of the drug trafficking operations for the CIA in Central and South America. He said that Hand’s experience in developing the Golden Triangle drug operations for the CIA made him useful in expanding the drug operations from Central and South America into the United States...." Casey, like his CIA predecessors, worked closely with drug smuggler Manuel Noriega (trained at the School of the Americas, a US-based assassination school) from Panama and the different cocaine/heroine cartels, like Medellin and Cali. The profits were used for all kinds of black ops. January 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega': "On Monday, November 14, 1983, Noriega's entourage took off for Washington... all expenses paid by the U.S. government. Almost two whole days, however, were set aside for the institutions that already had long-standing working relations with Noriega. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Noriega was swept off for a meeting with CIA Director William Casey. Back in Panama, Noriega would later boast about his four-hour lunch with Casey..." In 1988, Noriega fell out of favor in Washington after some disputes about drug and arms profits. Therefore the US invaded Panama and brought Noriega to trial on drug trafficking charges. Some important revelations were made during this trial. September 4, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Defense Team Vows to Detail Secret U.S. Deals': "More than 20 months after he was toppled by a U.S. invasion, Manuel Antonio Noriega will go to trial on drug trafficking charges in federal court Thursday, and his defense lawyers vow to disclose new details about the former Panamanian dictator's secret dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency and high-level U.S. government officials... Court papers filed here describe Noriega as the CIA's "man in Panama" whose activities were conducted with the full consent and knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community for more than two decades... No written records tie Noriega directly to drug trafficking, prosecution sources said. But 60 to 80 government witnesses -- many of them convicted drug traffickers, arms dealers and other felons -- are expected to testify that he took multimillion-dollar payoffs from the Medellin drug cartel to turn his country into a "safe haven" for shipment of cocaine from Colombia to the United States... But most importantly, the motion describes Noriega's pivotal role in assisting CIA efforts to arm Nicaraguan contra guerrillas. Without citing new evidence, it calls that effort a "guns-for-drugs" policy in which drug-sale proceeds were used to finance shipment of arms to the contras. In addition, the filings -- with heavy deletions from the security officer -- allude to two meetings with Bush in 1976 and 1983 and numerous others with such figures as the late CIA director William J. Casey and former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North." August 23, 1991, The Miami Herald, 'Noriega: CIA, DEA OKd Deals': "Manuel Noriega says he had good reasons for allowing drugs and guns to slip through Panama: The last seven CIA directors, including George Bush, asked him to help with the guns, while four directors of the Drug Enforcement Administration sought his help on the drugs... The weapons shipments were destined for Nicaragua and Honduras, the papers said. Besides Bush, the CIA directors who asked Noriega to allow them to travel through Panama included Richard Helms, William Colby, James Schlesinger, Stansfield Turner, William Casey and William Webster... The DEA directors who purportedly asked Noriega to allow drugs to pass through his country included Terrance Burk, Francis Mullen, Jack Lawn and John Ingersoll... Diane Cossin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the prosecution will present evidence that links Noriega's BCCI money and drugs." June 24, 1985, Miami Herald: "Also involved in the anti-Sandinista [Contra] effort are several of Reagan's millionaire friends including beer tycoon Joseph Coors and industrialist J. Peter Grace... Grace spokesman Fred Bona said his boss "may have" asked the Central American chapters of the 900-year-old Knights of Malta order to help distribute privately collected humanitarian aid among Nicaraguan refugees. Grace heads the group's U.S. chapter. Former Treasury secretary William Simon and CIA Director William Casey also belong to the Knights of Malta. Simon and Grace declined comment on whether they had ever discussed with Casey alternate ways to help the contras. Simon heads the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, a private aid group initially launched by the Unification Church-owned [Moonies] newspaper The Washington Times which received a letter from President Reagan dated May 30, 1985, expressing "wholehearted" support for its activity on behalf of the contras... While the contras get humanitarian aid from these groups, they rely mainly on retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub and his World Anti-Communist League for private military aid." Celerino Castillo, 'Powderburns - Cocaine, Contras, & the Drug War': "The American Public would quickly lose interest in the Iran Contra scandal... Had they discovered our government hired and protected a squad of drug traffickers, and they gave them free passes into the U.S., the story might have ended very differently... My informants were perfectly placed... They fed me the names of Contra pilots. Again and again, those names showed up in the DEA database as documented drug traffickers. When I pursued the case, my superiors quietly and firmly advised me to move on to other investigations... I'll never forget Corr's [U.S. ambassador to El Salvador] response. "It's a White House operation, Cele. Stay away from it."" Cele, a high level DEA agent, was assigned to represent the DEA in El Salvador at the height of the Contra war. It was there that he began to record intelligence on how known drug traffickers, with multiple DEA files, used hangars four and five at Ilopango airfield to ferry cocaine north and weapons and money south. Hangars four and five were owned and operated by the CIA and the National Security Council. He found out that the traffickers were also being given US visas by the CIA, in spite of their well known activities. Castillo also documented and spoke out about CIA and National Security Agency abuses in a manner utterly consistent with his heritage and the reats of his life. Then Cele discovered that the Contra flights were under the direct supervision of US Lt. Col. Oliver North and had the additional protection of Felix Rodriguez (a retired CIA agent) who ran hanger 4 at Ilopango. Castillo was repeatedly warned that the drug profits were being utilized to support the Reagan-Bush backed right-wing "Contras" in Nicaragua and surrounding countries and that he should stop his investigations. December 1998, Michael Ruppert, 'Only the Godfather': "... a lingering and persistent body of evidence persists which indicates that Jim Sabow was murdered because he caught the CIA flying drugs onto a base where he was Chief of Air Operations. Much of the evidence indicates that the cocaine arrived on the same C-130s which had been given to the Forest Service. In a 1993 segment of her news program Eye to Eye, Connie Chung covered the Sabow death in detail and showed evidence of the murder by introducing statements from Sabow's brother, a medical doctor, that Sabow had been unconscious and aspirating blood for minutes before a shotgun was rammed so far down his throat that it sheared off the uvula. In that same segment, veteran Air America and CIA pilot Tosh Plumley stated that he flew loads of cocaine as large as 2,000 kilos onto El Toro in the years and months prior to Sabow's death - for the CIA. Plumley stated clearly that he was flying C-130s operated by the Forest Service and their contractors. In later conversations with this writer Plumley admitted that he routinely flew loads as large as 2,500 kilos onto military installations in California and Arizona for the CIA." 1991, Bo Gritz (ISA commander and Delta Force), 'Called to Serve', p. 341: "I remembered the time in Panama in 1976, when I was commanding Special Forces in Latin America from headquarters at Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone. We had obtained information through our intelligence channels that Manuel Noriega was not only allied with the communists, but was also a drug smuggler. I recommended - and we had the means - to terminate Noriega "with extreme prejudice," since he was clearly hurting America and was behind the sabotage of our military facilities within the Canal Zone. Surprisingly enough, I was personally told to keep my hands off Noriega, that he was "of immense value at the highest levels of our government." July 23, 1998, Michael Ruppert, 'The POWs, CIA and Drugs': "The ISA, which ran Gritz's mission, was created by Army General Richard Stilwell. It has been repeatedly linked to drug smuggling by sources including the daughter of Col. Albert Carone who served as Oliver North's bagman and bill-payer during the eighties. Records left behind after Carone's death in 1990 and eyewitness statements clearly indicate that Carone handled both drugs and drug money for CIA, North and the NSC. Carone's personal phone book contains the home addresses and telephone numbers of William Casey [Le Cercle], Gambino crime boss Pauly Castellano and Stilwell [Le Cercle]." 2004, Michael Ruppert, 'Crossing the Rubicon', p. 164: "A retired NYPD Detective, also a “made” member of the Genovese crime family, Carone spent his entire working career as a CIA operative... For more than 25 years before his mysterious death in 1990, Al Carone served as a bagman and liaison between George Bush, CIA Director Bill Casey, Oliver North, Richard Nixon [Le Cercle] and many other prominent figures including Robert Vesco [1001 Club], Manuel Noriega and Ferdinand Marcos." Carone, a member of the Knights of Malta, was good friends with Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Vito Genovese, and William Casey. Casey used Carone as a "cut out" to pass sensitive insider information to Mob capo Pauley Castellano, says his daughter, Dee. Carone was the bagman for Casey and Oliver North in many of their drug trafficking exploits. Casey was deeply involved in the BCCI, the bank whose extreme money laundering practices were exposed in 1991. 1992, Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, part 11: "In the case of BCCI, former CIA officials, including former CIA director Richard Helms and the late William Casey; former and current foreign intelligence officials, including Kamal Adham and Abdul Raouf Khalil; and principal foreign agents of the U.S., such as Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar, float in and out of BCCI at critical times in its history, and participate simultaneously in the making of key episodes in U.S. foreign policy... On February 23, 1992, NBC News broadcast the allegation that former Director of Central Intelligence William Casey met secretly for three years with Abedi [1001 Club; head of the BCCI], that such meetings took place every few months at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C., and that they discussed matters relating to U.S. arms deals to Iran and the arming of Afghani rebels... The BCCI official explicitly described meetings between Casey and Abedi at the Madison Hotel in the mid-1980's... The late Cyrus Hashemi, an Iranian expatriate living in London, is a key figure in the "October Surprise" allegations charging that William Casey and other members of President Reagan's election team in 1980 engaged in negotiations with Iran, whereby Iran would delay the return of U.S. hostages held in Iran until after the November, 1980 election, in return for the U.S. providing Iran with needed arms for its war against Iraq." A legal case brought before the District Court of Washington, D.C. in 1983, 12 citizens of Nicaragua and 12 members of the U.S. Congress sued President Reagan, CIA Director William Casey, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Secretary of State George Shultz, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders, Vernon Walters, Caspar Weinberger, Nestor Sanchez, and John Negroponte for violations of the law respecting U.S. support of the Contras. After being dismissed, the case was appealed to the Court of Appeals. The judge who filed the opinion on Aug. 13, 1985 affirming the dismissal was then Circuit Court judge and now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (spoke at the Bohemian Grove). Casey is reported to have been a good friend of George Shultz, Vernon Walters, Alexandre de Marenches, and Ronald Reagan. In his book 'The Conspirators' Al Martin claims that CZX Productions, which supposedly stood for "Casey, (adm.) Zumwalt, X-Files", was an Office of Naval Intelligence cut-out and one of the blackest parts of the Iran Contra dope affair. True or not, doing a bit of background checking (only one reference has turned up), it turns out that Dietrich Reinhardt, a shady Iran-Contra operative now connected to the flight school of Rudi Dekkers (dope-trafficking terrorists), was a partner in that firm. Martin also claims CZX and Casey made Oliver North head of the "National Programs Office," whose existence still is not confirmed. The NPO supposedly controlled much of the dope trafficking operations, the building of the US "Civilian Inmate Labor Camps", and the operations to some day overthrow the US government. Admiral Zumwalt, an associate of Casey since the 1970s and a major anti-communist warhawk, is part of a secret ONI group called "Goal Oversight Development" (GOD), according to Martin. No proof or other rumors exist about this group, but according to Martin GOD has/had almost unlimited powers to intimidate and assassinate people. December 17, 1986, The Times Union, 'CIA chief listed stable': "Casey, 73, continued to undergo diagnostic tests designed to determine the cause of two minor cerebral seizures he suffered Monday, the hospital said. Casey had been scheduled to testify Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the arms sale to Iran and the diversion of proceeds to the Nicaraguan rebels... Earlier, CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson said agency officials who talked with Casey on Monday found him "lucid and pretty cheerful" and "joking with the nurses."... Casey remained mentally clear throughout the episodes, a hospital doctor said." December 30, 1986, San Jose Mercury News, 'Casey's condition is stable': "CIA Director William Casey continues to recover at Georgetown University Hospital where he underwent surgery Dec. 18 for the removal of a cancerous brain tumor, a spokeswoman said today... Hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Byers said Casey's condition remains stable and he is "fully conscious and sitting up periodically."" In January 1987 the operation was deemed successful, but it turned out he had other cancers that were spreading to other parts of his body (supposedly, he was already a year under treatment for prostate cancer). He died in May 1987 of pneumonia, a few weeks after Congress had begun looking into Casey mental health to determine if he could testify from his bed. In reaction to his death, Senator Patrick Leahy, the former vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "Casey probably knew more than anyone about the Iran-Contra affair, with the possible exception of fired White House aide Oliver North... And of course that we'll never know, because he didn't really tell us much about it before he died." July 11, 1987, San Jose Mercury News, 'Plan labeled 'Government within our government': "William Casey, the late CIA director, seized upon the Iran arms dealings as a way to create a secret contingency fund to finance a wide range of covert operations outside regular government channels, Lt. Col. Oliver North told Congress Friday. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, termed the scheme a "secret government within our government," and Sen. William Cohen, R- Maine, said the disclosure was "perhaps the most serious revelation" of the 2-month-old hearings into the Iran-Contra affair... North rejected the characterization of Senate committee chief counsel Arthur Liman that the operations were a "CIA outside of the CIA." But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Louis Stokes, D-Ohio, told reporters "that's what it amounted to," and charged that a main reason for the scheme was a desire to avoid any oversight by Congress." In 1996 the neocon Center for Security Policy (CSP) created a compartment named William J. Casey Institute. It was tasked with studying "the nexus between international financial, energy, trade and technology flows and traditional U.S. national security policy concerns." Just one week before Casey got his seizures (he was already dying of cancer) he allegedly wrote an affidavit, with Cercle member Nixon as his witness, that in part outlined the CIA's involvement in the drug trade to finance covert ops. He also gave his justifications for it (which basically constituted a big "fuck you" to Congress and everyone else who might not agree) and certainly didn't forget to mention Bill Clinton's role in it (while forgetting the role of all his political allies, or other groups within the government). The document was leaked to the daughter of Albert Carone and has since then been classified Top Secret. According to Mike Ruppert, the document is factually correct, but it could still be a fake.
http://www.isgp.eu/organisations/Le_Cercle_membership_list.htm