Krugman at writers' gathering in NY brings up BCCI and Kerry's role.

[blm]

In another thread a poster wrote that Krugman said that Bushies will fight like hell because they know that all their dealings will be investigated and exposed when Kerry wins.

This gives us the perfect opporunity to attach BCCI and all the characters involved leading to 9-11 and to the thugs in the White House.

Krugman said that Kerry almost singlehandedly brought down BCCI, the terrorists' bank.

My observation is that while Kerry was working to shut down the terrorists' banks, GOP administrations and their operatives were working to STOP his investigations of the terrorists' banks and their links to the Bush's crony capitalists around the world.

[realFedUp]

1. Although the BCCI issue might be too detailed for voters

I think the campaign should simplify it
(hey, make it into a kid's book) and use
it. It shows the same moral fight that Kerry
had when he got back from Vietnam.

[blm]

3. Post 9-11, people can GET that terrorists were funnelling their money

through outlaw banks and that key powerful GOP figures and two GOP administrations worked AGAINST Kerry's efforts to expose them.

[Octafish]

4. How John Kerry Busted the Terrorists' Favorite Bank

Here's a decent summary of BCCI. Perhaps most Americans would benefit reading this.

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.

More than a decade later, Kerry is his party's nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who's weak on fighting terrorism. "After 19 years in the Senate, he's had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements," President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that's been echoed by Bush's surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: "How can John Kerry win a war if he doesn't know the enemy?"

If that line of attack has been effective, it's partly because Kerry does not have a record like the chamber's dealmakers such as Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) or Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Though Kerry has been a key backer of bills on housing reform, immigration, and the environment, there are indeed few pieces of landmark legislation that owe their passage to Kerry.

CONTINUED...

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

[blm]

6. This is how Kerry's BCCI work relates to THIS election....

>>>>>>>>>
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."

[Bunny]

7. Some tin-foil hat stuff about BCCI, Kerry, and Senator John Heinz:

http://www.rense.com/general48/over46.htm
>snip<
Two U.S. Senators knew too much themselves about the murder of President Kennedy; about treason committed by Ronald Reagan and the Elder Bush in the Iran-Contra Affair; about how the American CIA and various foreign intelligence agencies used BCCI to launder funds for political assassinations, committed within the U.S. and overseas.

One such Senator was John Tower (R., Texas). He headed up what became known as the Tower Commission which whitewashed the criminality of Reagan and Daddy Bush as to Iran-Contra. The other one was Senator John Heinz (R., Penn.) Heinz knew too much about fellow U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R., Penn.) Specter had previously been on the staff of the infamous Warren Commission. Specter formulated the big lie that a single pristine bullet, marked Warren Commission Exhibit 399, somehow wounded John Connally in the limousine with JFK, and blew out Kennedy's brains. Cynics contend the bullet still circles the planet and no doubt, under Specter's big lie, also killed Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, and a host of other assassination victims.

In the spring of 1991, just as we were verifying the bribery list, Senators Tower and Heinz were both assassinated, a few days apart. Both, in separate sabotaged plane crashes. By October, 1991, our exclusive story about the bribery list ran in a populist newspaper, "Spotlight" (later defunct after publishing continuously for 25 years). They had from us the bribery list and ran the complete story, but at the last minute, deleted the list from my story.
>snip<

[Eloriel]

8. I have always felt --

well, since I found out a little about Sen. Heinz and his death -- that he belongs on the "Bush Crime Family Body Count List."

[Bunny]

9. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? n/t

[blm]

11. We definitely agree on that.

I think Mrs. Heinz-Kerry has learned a thing or two about the REAL Republican party now.

[Octafish]

10. Didn't know that much about Sen. Heinz until now. Thanks!

Unfortunately, I did know a lot about the BFEE turd Specter. Here's a photo of the Magic Bullet (far left) and a few similar bullets -- the next two were fired into water; the next into cotton wadding; and the one on the far right into the wrist of a corpse.



Gee. This shows Warren Commission junior counsel Arlen Specter is a big liar who got a big government promotion for his big lie. How utterly NAZI.

[Kolesar]

2. Krugman is a very well read professor of economics

[DinahMoeHum]

5. sorry. . .no message here.

n/t

[A_Possum]

12. Here's the simplified Kerry-BCCI meme

"Bush did business with Bin Laden's bankers while Kerry was fighting to shut it down to terrorist and drug connections."

"Long before September 11, 2001, George W. Bush got a 25 million dollar loan from the same bankers that dealt with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while John Kerry was fighting to stop this bank's global laundering of money for drug lords and terrorists. John Kerry shut it down. He's been fighting terrorism at its roots since before George Bush ran for office."

Use it, spread it around!



LOL, Blm, we'll keep on tryin'! ;-)

[blm]

13. heheh...waiting for more internet strategists to pick up the clue phone.

.

[A_Possum]

14. Exactly n/t

[blm]

15. Ring...Ring...RINNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.