John Kerry vs. B.C.C.I.

[Karenina]

September 2004

Follow the Money
How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank.

By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html

[Sugarbleus]

1. Thanks for this post! Good find... eom

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Here's a link to the original report

The BCCI Affair
A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
by
Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown
December 1992
102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102-140


http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/index.html

[soothsayer]

3. I'm surprised they let him live! (Kerry). He must be a sworn enemy of

the BFEE. They're alllllll wrapped up with BCCI (I guess all top CIA folks are pretty entrenched in it.)

Remember what happened to poor Danny Casolaro when investigating this 'octopus.'

[blm]

5. Kerry has seen the classified documents. He tried to make them public.

Bush1 successfully had them classified as national security.

Robert Mueller, now Bush's FBI head, was the US Attorney on the case and covered BushInc every step of the way. He would not prosecute. Kerry took what cases he could to the state attorney in NYC to keep them out there. Morgenthau DID get some convictions.

Had the recommendations made by Kerry in the aftermath of BCCI been acted upon, the terrorist networks would have been monitored much more closely and their sources of funding receive greater scrutiny many YEARS before 9-11. The Republican global FINANCIERS (BFEE) fought against it. They are TRAITORS.

[blm]

6. Bin Laden's Bankers

This is an important area to pursue in this election. It also acts as a good rebuttal to those who enjoy SMEARING Kerry by accusing him of being a poll-driven political coward. They couldn't be MORE wrong.

>>>>>>
Bin Laden's bankers

Kerry's record in the BCCI affair, of course, contrasts sharply with Bush's. The current president's career as an oilman was always marked by the kind of insider cronyism that Kerry resisted. Even more startling, as a director of Texas-based Harken Energy, Bush himself did business with BCCI-connected institutions almost at the same time Kerry was fighting the bank. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991, there was a "mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding since George W. Bush came on board." In 1987, Bush secured a critical $25 million-loan from a bank the Kerry Commission would later reveal to be a BCCI joint venture. Certainly, Bush did not suspect BCCI had such questionable connections at the time. But still, the president's history suggests his attacks on Kerry's national-security credentials come from a position of little authority.

As the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, Kerry's BCCI experience is important for two reasons. First, it reveals Kerry's foresight in fighting terrorism that is critical for any president in this age of asymmetrical threats. As The Washington Post noted, "years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts...Kerry crusaded for controls on global money laundering in the name of national security."

Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today "is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI." As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, "BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations."

Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency--even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."

[Karenina]

33. John Kerry

has the goods on these parasites. They know it, he knows it, WE HAVE TO KNOW IT and support him even if he's not "perfect." ;-)

:kick:

[Karenina]

4. Kick!

For a REAL HERO! :D

[blm]

7. Karenina...some might think this is an old story. Repost as NEW srticle

from Washington Monthly. Bells, whistles, blockbuster. ;))))))))))))))))))))

[Karenina]

21. Too late...

Thanx for your quick thinking in GD! Geez, I go for a much-needed T.G.I.F. out, get back in the wee hours and this place is a raging river! How about another :kick: for a REAL hero!

[blm]

22. We need this story out for awhile

it HAS to catch on. It's way too important to the terror issues in the campaign.

[Jim Sagle]

8. Kerry has therefore done more to combat terrorism than Reagan,

both Bushes, and Clinton combined.

[blm]

12. EXCELLENT OBSERVATION!!!!!

Great talking point.

[kentuck]

9. Thanks for the post !

more....

<snip>

He would soon have a chance to turn his declarations into action. In early 1991, the Justice Department concluded its Tampa probe with a plea deal allowing BCCI officials to stay out of court. At the same time, news reports indicated that Washington elder statesman Clark Clifford might be indicted for defrauding bank regulators and helping BCCI maintain a shell in the United States.

Kerry pounced, demanding (and winning) authorization from the Foreign Relations Committee to open a broad investigation into the bank in May 1991. Almost immediately, the senator faced a new round of pressure to relent. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Democratic doyenne Pamela Harriman personally called Kerry to object, as did his fellow senators. "What are you doing to my friend Clark Clifford?," staffers recalled them asking, according to The Washington Post. BCCI itself hired an army of lawyers, PR specialists, and lobbyists, including former members of Congress, to thwart the investigation.

But Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry's subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda.

And BCCI went beyond merely offering financial assistance to dictators and terrorists: According to Time, the operation itself was an elaborate fraud, replete with a "global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad."

(edited to add different info that was not duplicated)

[starroute]

10. The story goes very deep and includes Pakistani nuclear proliferation

Kerry's war didn't end in the Mekong
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1266305,00.html

In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal foreign policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Kerry had the training and instincts of a prosecutor. As a district attorney in Massachusetts, he smashed the local mafia. Now, as senator, he has surrounded himself with tough investigators. ... Kerry won support from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee to launch an official investigation, in large part because of the drug aspect. (Concerned about heroin addiction among Vietnam veterans, Kerry had followed the geopolitics of drugs.)

<snip>

In October 1986, Kerry questioned the neoconservative assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Elliot Abrams, who brazenly lied about foreign funding for the contras. This testimony led, in time, to Abrams pleading guilty to a felony. (He was pardoned by Bush Snr and is now NSC chief for Middle East policy.)

A month later, the Iran-contra story broke in a Lebanese newspaper. However, Kerry was excluded from the congressional investigating committee for the sin of having been prematurely right. As consolation, he was given chairmanship of the subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations. After three years, he reported that "individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking; the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organisations; and elements of the contras received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the US government had information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter."

Kerry's work on the contra-drugs connection led him to discover a link to BCCI, an international banking operation that was a front for drug running, money laundering and terrorism. He launched an investigation that exposed its criminal "corporate spider web" in 1992. His report pointed to new areas that should be investigated, including "the extent to which BCCI and Pakistan were able to evade US and international nuclear non-proliferation regimes to acquire nuclear technologies".


Pakistan's Nuke Money Trail
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pakistan-04c.html

After dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq overthrew and later executed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, the Pakistani military took firm control of the nuclear program. Thanks to the Afghan jihad, Pakistan was by then swimming in cash, both due to direct aid from the United States as well as contributions from the Saudis.

However, despite ambitious goals, Pakistan lacked the scientific base necessary for the many thousands of sophisticated components needed for a nuclear weapons program. But by leveraging his European contacts, Khan set up a network, supervised by the Pakistan Army's Special Works Organization as well as the Inter Services Intelligence spy agency that could acquire virtually any desired item from Western European nations and many from the United States and Canada. During this time, failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International played a critical role in financing this Pakistani nuclear smuggling ring. In 1992, a report from a U.S. Congressional sub-committee headed by current Democratic presidential frontrunner, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, said that there was "good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear program."


Nuclear Bombshell: The Truth that John Kerry Knows
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/559873.cms

Given the close interaction of the CIA and the BCCI which handled the banking transactions relating to the Pakistani nuclear programme and the Iran-contra illegal arms deals, could the CIA have been totally ignorant at that stage about Pakistan-Iran nuclear proliferation?

Since Agha Hasan Abedi was close to the Pakistani ISI and leadership, information on the involvement of so many leading US personalities in the BCCI deals would have given the Pakistani leadership an extremely powerful leverage on the US establishment.

It is quite possible that cassettes containing A Q Khan’s account of his proliferation going back to 1987, and sent out through his daughter to the UK, may contain not only details of the involvement of Pakistani generals and leaders in the proliferation activities but also information regarding the involvement of the CIA and other leading American personalities with BCCI and its criminal activities and the US permissiveness on Pakistan-Iran nuclear transactions.]/b] No doubt this is only a speculation, but it is a highly plausible one.

The Kerry committee specifically referred to BCCI’s involvement in the sale of nuclear technologies. The committee also said that "It was not merely BCCI’s deception that permitted it to infiltrate the United States and its banking system. Also essential were BCCI’s use of political influence-peddling and the revolving door in Washington".


Cheney Covered Up Pakistan's Nuclear Proliferation when He Was Secretary of Defense
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/LEO403A.html

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.

<snip>

In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism.

<snip>

Cheney dismissed Barlow’s report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired.

<snip>

Cheney went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry. In a New Yorker article published on March 29, 1993, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities and threat had become so grave by the spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.

[blm]

13. Good. Let's spread this around.

And let people know that John Kerry did more to stop terrorism and its funding than Reagan and Bush who tried to stop Kerry instead.

[DrFunkenstein]

11. Sorry, Got Thrown Off By The "My Sirota" Music

But thank you for an excellent article.

[Karenina]

23. Dudu dudu dut dut

dut dut dut dut
dudu dudu dut dut MY SIROTA ;-)

[G_j]

14. fascinating article

I had a vague memory of this, but this was a great refresher.
Thanks!

[noamnety]

15. I wish they'd included this

This needs to be included in the talking points every time Iran Contra comes up, imo.

George W. Bush appointed John Poindexter as Director of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the man convicted in 1990 on five felony charges of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress and obstructing congressional inquiries.

George W. Bush appointed Elliott Abrams special White House assistant for democracy and human rights. Another former Iran-Contra defendant, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress, then was pardoned by the first President Bush.

George W. Bush appointed Otto Reich as the State Department's top official for Latin America. From 1983 to 1986, Reich led a State Department office accused of a covert domestic-propaganda effort against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government.

George W. Bush appointed Lee Hamilton to handle the 9-11 investigation. Hamiltion was chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair. Despite being shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, he did not probe their wrongdoing, explaining later on PBS 'Frontline,' that he did not think it would have been 'good for the country' to put the public through another impeachment trial.

Bush has also appointed at least four others involved in the Iran Contra scandal: Richard Armitage, John Negroponte, Mitch Daniels, and Rogelio Pardo-Maurer

[Octafish]

16. BCCI ties BUSH to TERROR & 9-11

For starters:

9/11: The BCCI Connection

by Chaim Kupferberg

EXCERPT...

In his landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg uses mostly mainstream sources to reconstruct the making of the Official 9/11 Legend.  Here, Kupferberg hypothesizes a covert global infrastructure behind the events of 9/11 - and lifts the veil to catch the lingering scent of BCCI.

With the above-stated hypothesis in mind, one should perhaps cast a discerning eye toward those manning the counter-terror posts in Los Angeles today - for an important element in John O'Neill's New York circle has recently relocated to the West Coast.  In particular, O'Neill's friend, John Miller, has left a lucrative job at ABC News in order to work under William Bratton in the Los Angeles counter-terror office.  Miller, some might recall, was one of the very few Americans to conduct a face-to-face interview with bin Laden before September 11.  Before he had come aboard as a correspondent for ABC News, Miller had worked under Bratton in the NYPD.  Bratton, through his acquaintance with O'Neill's friend Jerry Hauer, has also had intimate business dealings with Kroll Associates, the World Trade Center security firm which hired O'Neill.  

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector.  It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.  

Moreover, the top people in the private security sector have the authority, prestige, and, most importantly, the skill to carry out - successfully and below the radar - the kinds of domestic operations that have been pegged  as the province of shaggy al-Qaida operatives.  Who, after all, could best ensure that 19 terrorists would be able to make it aboard four separate flights without any real danger of detection?  And who, after all, would be best placed to ensure a complete and successful implosion of not just the two Twin Towers, but the neighboring building - 7 World Trade Center - which housed a bio-warfare "command and control bunker" under the direction of Jerry Hauer?  

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html

Background on how Kerry figured all this out:

BCCI, THE CIA AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

Introduction

Excerpt:

On May 14, 1991, Senator Kerry wrote CIA Director Webster to again request the briefing paper on BCCI prepared by the CIA, as well as information on the CIA's own use of the bank. No reply was received in response to this letter from the CIA for over two months, during which BCCI was closed globally following its seizure in the United Kingdom by the Bank of England on July 5, 1991.

In the meantime, cleared staff requested a formal briefing from CIA staff concerning the CIA's knowledge of BCCI's activities. The CIA provided an oral briefing at its offices in June, 1991 at the "secret" level, consisting of very general information concerning BCCI's use by drug traffickers, material which was by then already largely a matter of public record. The briefer provided by the CIA to Congressional staff was unfamiliar with other basic information about BCCI, such as the names of BCCI's shareholders, including former Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham, the key figure in BCCI's secret takeover of First American, and the CIA's former principal contact in the Arab Middle East. Further, the briefer also appeared to be ignorant of the principal analytic documents concerning BCCI previously prepared by the CIA and disseminated to Executive Branch agencies, which contained this and other more important information about BCCI.(4)

On July 23, 1991, CIA director Webster replied to Senator Kerry's May 14 request by letter, admitting to the existence of two documents concerning BCCI, which were described as "extremely sensitive" and therefore restricted to being held by the Senate intelligence committee.(5) On reviewing these memoranda, Senator Kerry recognized that the earlier of the two documents, created in early 1986, contained startling information -- that the First American Bank in Washington was secretly owned by BCCI. The distribution list attached to the memorandum indicated that the CIA had communicated this information at the time to the Treasury Department. These was no indication that either Treasury or the CIA had ever advised the Federal Reserve, the primary regulator of First American, of this critical information.

Senator Kerry asked Judge Webster to declassify immediately the fact that the CIA had known as of 1986 that BCCI owned First American, and to begin the process of declassifying the entirety of both memoranda. On July 31, 1991, the CIA advised Senator Kerry that he could reveal the information concerning BCCI's secret ownership of First American, but no other information from the memos. The CIA had not yet acknowledged its own use of BCCI to the Subcommittee, or provided access to any other materials prepared by the CIA concerning BCCI.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

[Octafish]

17. CIA: "The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International"

The greasy BFEE turd and former DCI Robert Gates, now presidunce of Texas A&M, coined the phrase...

"The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International"

EXCERPT...

From The Outlaw Bank, by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne:

BCCI is more than just a criminal bank. From interviews with sources close to BCCI, Time has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the Black Network, which functions as a global intelligence operation and a mafia-like enforcement squad.

Operating out of the bank's offices in Karachi, Pakistan, the 1,500-employee Black Network has used sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping and even, by some accounts, murder.

The Black Network ... stops at almost nothing to further the bank's aims the world over....

The strange and still murky ties between BCCI and the intelligence agencies of several countries are so pervasive that even the White House has become entangled. As Time reported earlier this month, the National Security Council has used BCCI to funnel money for the Iran-Contra deals, and the CIA maintained accounts in BCCI for covert operations.

Moreover, investigators have told Time that the Defense Intelligence Agency has maintained a slush-fund account with BCCI, apparently to pay for clandestine activities. . . .

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm

PS: C'mon DU! Spread this around. It's what WILL sink the BFEE.

[nolabels]

18. Yuck, the whole of the U.S. justice system is corrupt if you ask me.

The thing you don't find there in the courts is Justice, that is why she wears a blindfold


http://penguin.nutleyschools.org/~nhslib/areas/SS/slides/sld008.htm


This is what they say, but in practice it is just about opposite

On Edit I am getting the feeling that John Kerry really is the best man for the job. He is very measured, what an asset and contrast to the current repugnants

[starroute]

19. Lots of shady figures connected with First American

According to my notes, BCCI acquired First American at the suggestion of none other than Jackson Stephens, who was a director. That's the Jackson Stephens who was a fundraiser for Jimmy Carter (who had been his college roommate) and bankrolled Bill Clinton's early campaigns but then went over to Reagan in 1980. His wife managed Bush Sr.'s 1988 campaign in Arkansas. Daniel Hopsicker claims Stephens has been linked to everything from the drug-running at Mena, Arkansas to the theft of the PROMIS software and is also associated with Venice, FL.

His bank, Stephens, Inc., underwrote Harken's 1987 stock offering with a $25 million investment. The offering was placed with a London subsidiary of the Union Bank of Switzerland, which had connections with BCCI. The accord was signed by both Stephens and Saudi real estate magnate Abdullah Taha Bakhsh. (Bakhsh was partners with BCCI frontman Ghaith Pharaon and his banker was major BCCI shareholder Khalid bin Mahfouz.) The Union Bank didn't want to keep the Harken shares, so Bakhsh took them over, making him the holder of 17.6% of Harken stock.

Another BCCI frontman, Mohammed Hammoud, was a shareholder in CCAH, which was the holding company for First American. Hammoud made numerous investments in the US through the 1980's, being advised on these by his close friend, Charles Hostler, who was appointed ambassador to Bahrein in 1989. Hammoud supposedly died suddenly on May 3, 1990, just as the investigations into BCCI were heating up, but the corpse didn't match his description and the insurance companies refused to pay. The rumor was that he was about to reveal how deeply the Americans were involved in BCCI.

In October 1990, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed the investigation into First American.

[blm]

20. I think the only reason Clinton could compete with Poppy in 92 was BECAUSE

he found out about Mena and had some goods on the BFEE to protect his flank.

[Karenina]

24. YUP!

[UTUSN]

25. Well, KICK n/t

[PROGRESSIVE1]

26. .........

[genius]

27. Thank you John Kerry.

[bklyncowgirl]

28. BCCI and Iran Contra, reasons I've been a long time Kerry fan

John Kerry's been on the side of the angels for a long time. There are very few politicians who I think could really make a difference who could have an actual shot at the presidency but he's one of them.

[emad]

29. Reasonably fair comment but Kerry role has been vastly

exaggerated by this otherwise good piece.

The current class action in the UK High Court brings together nearly 25 years of UN Security Council evidence on BCCI and its ROOTS. The evidence of the UN Head of Military Intelligence is the key testimony that Bob Morgenthau used to close BCCI in NY in 1990/1 and the updated version of this testimony also forms part of the UK class action. This testimony also includes security/intelligence files that were repeatedly tombstoned by successive US presidents and UK prime ministers from 1979 to 2000 due to the potential party-political damage they could have caused at respective re-election times. The partisan deals done by the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations are all included: EG: not good news for MARC RICH who shamefully wormed an 1th hour presidential pardon out of Bill Clinton over his internal revenue problems...although some would say that pales into insignificance compared to the deals that Thatcher struck with Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush2 re the vast criminality of Robert Maxwell and his sons/daughters.

The bottom line of the UK class action evidence is that BCCI was a Mossad-run operation masterminded by the KGB via East German Stasi-head Marcus Wolf who dreamed up the whole thing with Henry Kissinger and George H Bush while he was CIA head.

Kerry was briefed in the late 1980s by UN Security Council personnel and played a key role in the US unravelling of the illicit operation. However, his imput after the Morgethau NY action has been minimal.

Give him his due, but keep your fet firmly on the ground.

Edit: as one of the approx. 60 expert witnesses who testified before Bob Morgenthau as well as in the current UK class action, I would say that Kerry's briefings on the BCCI evidence forms about 40% of the total available which is now due to be heard in the UK. Some very inflated egos and long-standing reputations (on both sides of the Atlantic) are due to be shattered when the defence closes its arguments in London later this year and the plaintiffs' evidence is heard in toto for the first time in public.

Good luck to Kerry in November 2004 but beefing up his role in the Morgenthau action feels a bit lame: he has many other attributes that should shine in a campaign that can only get rougher and nastier as November edges ever nearer.

As for the Republican diehards - Poppy, Kissinger, Cheney, Perle etc -some of the secret bi-partisan pacts they made over their own scalings of the slippery slopes to public office will not make comfortable reading to many. The Kennedy assasination is one very obvious example that immediately springs to mind.

Expect heavy casulaties on both sides of the political divide in the US and in all parties in the UK.

[blm]

31. It was out of his hands by then. An Independent Counsel was appointed for

IranContra and in our system, that office drives the investigation. I am sure Kerry would have preferred BCCI have an Independent Counsel, too.

Kerry kept every aspect of BCCI and IranContra alive that he could, without much assistance from other lawmakers. His role was still far beyond what any other lawmaker would pursue.

[rullery]

30. G.W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden both banked at BCCI!

Bush obtained loans to shore up his failed Harkin Oil Co., and Bin Laden put up the money? WOW! Move-On needs to get this information and come up with an ad that will tell the American people what a corrupt and traitorous SOB we have in the White House!

These rats must be shivering in their boots, at the thought that John Kerry will become president, and come after them! We better be sure the the Secret Service assigned to Kerry are on their toes, because somebody will likely try to assasinate him!

[Karenina]

32. Kick!

:kick: