War Without End

sharkman

Department of Homeland Insecurity

June 8, 2002
By FRANK RICH

When it comes to striking terror in a White House waging a
war on terrorism, Osama bin Laden has nothing on a
forthright American woman spilling her guts on daytime
television.

This week began, you may distantly recall, with George W.
Bush telling Americans that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. were now
in "close communication" - even as they seemed to be mainly
in close communication with the press, with each agency
rabidly planting leaks to scapegoat the other for
pre-Sept.-11 incompetence. As further reassurance, Mr. Bush
added that he had "seen no evidence to date that said this
country could have prevented the attack" - even though less
than a week earlier his own F.B.I. director, Robert
Mueller, had said his agency might have been sitting on
just such evidence.

Mr. Bush presented this rosy picture on Tuesday. On
Wednesday Arlen Specter, a Republican, told CBS that the
government possessed not just unconnected dots before Sept.
11 but a "veritable blueprint" for impending terrorist
acts. On Thursday morning, just hours before the F.B.I.
agent Coleen Rowley began to testify about why that
blueprint was ignored, the administration announced the
creation of yet another new scheme to fix everything the
White House had previously claimed to be already on the
mend.

Is the new Department of Homeland Security an antidote to a
broken system? Or is it merely a hastily contrived antidote
to Ms. Rowley's TV debut, knocking her out of the
evening-news lead lest she wreak damage on this Bush
administration akin to what Anita Hill, appearing before
the same committee, inflicted on the first? It's not Ari
Fleischer but Al Qaeda that will ultimately provide the
answer.

What is clear is that the White House has lost control of a
hagiographic story line that, as codified everywhere from
Annie Leibovitz's triumphalist photos in Vanity Fair to a
multipart series co-written by Bob Woodward at The
Washington Post, portrayed it as a steely, no-nonsense team
of razor-sharp executives running government like a crack
Fortune 500 corporation. When it comes to domestic
security, the administration turns out to mirror America's
C.E.O. culture all right - but not that of Thomas Watson's
I.B.M. or Jack Welch's General Electric so much as that
laid bare by the dot-com crash. It's a slipshod business
culture in which arrogant C.E.O.'s, held accountable by no
one (including their own boards), cash out just before
their own bad deals take their companies south. It's the
culture that has wrecked Americans' trust in the market and
that this week prompted Henry M. Paulson Jr., the chief of
Goldman Sachs, to speak out, chastising "the activities and
behavior of some C.E.O.'s" and concluding, "I cannot think
of a time when business over all has been held in less
repute."

Mr. Paulson, whose firm's clients include Global Crossing
and Tyco, didn't name names. I'll name one: Dick Cheney,
who from 1995 to 2000 ran Halliburton, the energy services
company whose stock collapsed after he went to Washington.
Halliburton has suffered not because of Mr. Cheney's
departure but because of the damage he inflicted while
there. It was his disastrous decision to merge with Dresser
Industries, a company whose huge asbestos liabilities were
somehow minimized during the due diligence that was his
responsibility. It was also on his watch that Halliburton
allegedly pulled a cute, Enron-like accounting trick, now
under S.E.C. investigation, that allowed it to inflate
revenues.

"C.E.O.'s are the ones who know what's going on in their
companies," said Paul O'Neill, the Treasury secretary, in a
blistering February speech. "There's no excuse for them not
to know." But this tough talk doesn't apply to Mr.
O'Neill's own peers in the administration. We are asked to
believe that Mr. Cheney didn't know what was happening at
his own company - he was a "hands-off" manager, says one
Halliburton crony - much as Ken Lay, in the words of his
wife, Linda, "wasn't told" about what was going down at
Enron.

For those of us without a stake in Halliburton, it's not
our problem. What is everyone's problem is the extent to
which Mr. Cheney brought his management style into the
White House. No one seems to remember anymore that
President Bush put Mr. Cheney in charge of not one but two
task forces last year. The first, of course, was the energy
task force, whose secret deliberations have landed the vice
president in court. But even more intriguing is the second.
On May 8, 2001, the president charged Mr. Cheney with
overseeing a "national effort" to coordinate all federal
programs for responding to domestic attacks in league with
a new Office of National Preparedness at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.

That day the vice president went on CNN to explain his
duty. After noting that "one of our biggest threats as a
nation" may include "a terrorist organization overseas,"
Mr. Cheney said: "We need to look at this whole area,
oftentimes referred to as homeland defense. The president's
asked me to take on the responsibility of overseeing all of
that, reviewing the plans that are out there today."

Did Mr. Cheney take on that responsibility with the same
urgency with which he met with Enron executives to develop
energy policy? A FEMA spokesman this week said that the
Office of National Preparedness was up and running by early
last summer; Tom Ridge said on the "Today" show yesterday
that the new Homeland Security Department would "continue
the work the vice president started back in May of 2001."
But when Ari Fleischer was asked to list the vice
president's policy portfolio at a press briefing on June
29, 2001, he made no mention of such work, according to the
White House transcript. When a reporter then specifically
asked him if he could recall what task force Mr. Cheney had
been appointed to head "after energy," Mr. Fleischer
answered, "No." After Sept. 11, Barton Gellman of The
Washington Post reported flatly that the government-wide
review that Mr. Bush had entrusted to Mr. Cheney had never
taken place. Even if it did, history will deem it about as
successful as the Halliburton-Dresser merger.

Were the vice president to be quizzed about his
pre-Sept.-11 efforts at preparedness, he'd likely either
invoke secrecy or impugn the questioner's patriotism. But
he's not the only one who avoids accountability for past
inaction. After Mr. Mueller told the Judiciary Committee on
Thursday of the F.B.I.'s primitive DOS-era computer
capabilities, Charles Schumer, the Democrat from New York,
indignantly asked, "But how was it we were so far behind
the curve that it was almost laughable?"

One answer is that the Judiciary Committee, in charge of
F.B.I. oversight, was itself asleep. As Ronald Kessler, the
author of "The Bureau," points out, it was no secret that
the technophobic director of the Clinton years, Louis
Freeh, refused even to use e-mail himself, let alone make
it viable for his agents to do so.

The cure Mr. Bush now proposes for such ailments - a big
new federal bureaucracy with 169,000 employees that stands
apart from the F.B.I. and C.I.A. bureaucracies - is still
another avoidance of accountability and still another
repudiation of the efficient, lean-government corporate
Republicanism that he supposedly champions. (No wonder
Democratic leaders are falling over each other to take
credit for thinking of it first.)

This Rube Goldberg contraption will take months to pass in
some form and may not be in action before Google arrives at
the F.B.I. It allegedly requires no new funds (a feat to be
achieved only by Enron off-balance-sheet bookkeeping) and
reshuffles the same deck of lightweights we have now. That
includes the irrepressible John Ashcroft, who this week
announced a plan to have the I.N.S. fingerprint 100,000
Middle Eastern visa holders. The day after he did so, his
own department's inspector general testified before
Congress that the I.N.S. and F.B.I. were still "years away"
from integrating the fingerprint files already in their
possession.

Instead of creating a new organizational chart, Mr. Bush
might have enlisted one man to hose down our security
bureaucracy: Rudolph Giuliani. Instead of speechifying that
"only the United States Congress can create a new
department of government," he might have followed the
suggestion of Stansfield Turner, the former C.I.A. chief
who, like others, has called for the president, "with a
stroke of the pen," to give the director of central
intelligence the authority to coordinate the 14 entities in
our intelligence apparatus. Rather than take such old-time
C.E.O.-style action, the president wrapped himself in the
mantle of Harry Truman. These days that's a sure sign that
the buck-passing will never stop.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/08/opinion/08RICH.html?ex=1024536632&ei=1&en=34b895af7aa69b9a

Anglo Thug · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2002 5:23 pm Post subject:

This issue doesn't seem to be gathering the pace it deserves. I wonder why that is? I suppose when it does finally break cover the Americans will be treated to another Hans Christian Ashcroft tale of dark deeds and dirty bombs.

msteffan1 · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 8:44 pm Post subject:

Georgies been playing same sort of game..But the USA are not alone..Mandelson over here amongst others all get into trouble with loan sharks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52488-2002Jul10.html

Bush Took Oil Firm's Loans as Director

By Mike Allen

As a Texas businessman, President Bush took two low-interest loans from
an oil company where he was a member of the board of directors, engaging in
a practice he condemned this week in his plan to stem corporate abuse and
accounting fraud.

Guest · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 9:24 pm Post subject: cheney the shill!

Subj: Cheney the shill!
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 3:30:26 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Robert E. Nordlander" <nord@famvid.com>
)

You have been sent this message from SIEGFRIED33@HOTMAIL.COM as a courtesy
of the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com

Our veep shilled for the corporate crooks!

RN

To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55320-2002Jul11.html

Coming Attractions of the Fall Campaign

By Terry M. NealWith both major parties parrying for the upper hand in
Washington this week in the ever-widening corporate scandal, campaign
operatives and consultants are busy preparing ads and talking points. Both
are declaring that their response to the scandal will lead them to victory
in November elections. 
Much is at stake here, given the slight majorities in both chambers.
Republicans are holding out hope that their candidates can ride the
coattails of a president with a seemingly unshakable 70-percent-plus
approval rating. Democrats are praying that one of the more enduring
occurrences in electoral politics the first-term president's party
losing seats in Congress in midterm elections-holds.

At a briefing for reporters on Wednesday, Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee executive director Howard Wolfson flatly declared that
the party had found its magic bullet. The way Wolfson sees it, every single
Republican up for election will be on the defensive this November on the
issue of corporate responsibility, while "I can't think of a single
Democratic candidate who would be vulnerable on this issue."

Wolfson's aides passed out a stack of paperwork to reporters entering
the briefing room clips from House races around the country that
show Democratic candidates already taking the corporate responsibility
debate to their GOP opponents and a backgrounder on corporate
responsibility legislation that Republicans have torpedoed in recent
months. The DCCC also unveiled on Wednesday a new Web site

http://www.investorsbillofrights.com/

"which highlights the ways in which Democratic Members of Congress and
Democratic candidates for Congress are leading the way in the fight for
corporate accountability," according to a blurb on the home page

Wolfson argued that right-wingers in the House have already rejected
some of the same provisions President Bush endorsed in his speech on Wall
Street on Tuesday.

"We are on the side of investors; they are on the side of corporate
malfeasance," he said. "[The House Republicans] are on the record as
opposing those initiatives proposed by the president yesterday-as tepid as
they were."

It also bears mentioning that a new videotape has, shall we say, emerged
of Vice President Cheney, back in his Halliburton days, praising company
auditor Arthur Andersen. (You can view the video on the BBC's Web site. Hint, the Cheney portion is near the end).

Cheney is seen saying, "I get good advice, if you will, from their people,
based upon how we are doing business and how we are operating, over and
above the normal, by-the-books auditing arrangement."
Don't be surprised if Democrats try to make voters very familiar with this
tape soon. Arthur Andersen was convicted recently of obstruction of justice
for shredding documents in the Enron investigation.

"I have heard talk among some Democrats &; Democratic groups;
of taking this and using it as an ad for the fall," one senior Democratic
official in Washington said today.
Meanwhile, a liberal advocacy group called American Family Voices, began
running an ad on New York and Washington area cable systems on Tuesday,
with the following script:

"Remember the saying about foxes guarding the henhouse…well guess what's
happening in Washington.
President Bush says he's getting tough on corporate fraud. But look at
the record.
Bush played a key role at Harken Energy they used Enron style
accounting to hide losses
Bush sold out early.
The Bush team?
Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton …more Enron style accounting.
And Harvey Pitt the accounting industry's top lawyer. 
Bush thinks tough talk can hide the record…that's sly like a
ox.

American Family Values is run by Michael Lux, who formerly worked in the
Clinton White House's Public Liaison Office. He has also worked for the
liberal advocacy group People For the American Way

The Republicans: Uh, We Don't Think So

Republicans reply that the old Democrat-labor/Republican-big business
paradigm is outdated and simplistic. Wolfson himself worked for a
candidate, Hillary Clinton for Senate in 2000, who had to answer questions
about her own magnificently profitable experience on Wall Street. And you
better believe the GOP has a thick file on Democratic National Committee
Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who made millions by cashing out on his Global
Crossing stock shortly before the company tanked.

"The question is: Where does their moral authority come from on this
issue?" asked Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for the RNC, in an interview on
Wednesday. "The hypocrisy is pretty thick when you've got people like Terry
McAuliffe spouting off all that rhetoric like that." Sheridan blamed a
desperate, agenda-less Democratic party full of leaders (think Gephardt,
Daschle) exploiting bad news as a gimmick to bolster their presidential
aspirations.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) echoed the same sentiment at a press
conference the other day, suggestion that Democrats were just playing
politics and proclaiming in that thick southern drawl that he just wished
they'd stop it.

Politics? No!

Was it a) politics? or b) just plain coincidence? that the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce and the Business Roundtable just happened to come out one day
before the president's big speech on Wall Street backing big reform for big
business.

If you answered "just plain coincidence," consider this: the Chamber's
PAC gave nearly nine times as much money $366,483 to $41,500 
to individual GOP congressional candidates in the current and previous
election cycle than to Democrats, according to the non-partisan <a
href="http://www.opensecrets.org/.">Center for Responsive
Politics

Linda Rozett, a Chamber spokeswoman, said that there was no coordination
with the White House and that the organization simply went through the list
of proposals from both sides, picked the ones it liked and timed its
announcement according to the news cycle.

The Center's Web site also details giving by such corporate giants as
WorldCom, which has been quite generous to both political parties. Under
the WorldCom section, the site notes an interesting comment House Minority
Leader Richard Gephardt made to reporters on June 26: "All you have to do
is follow the money. It leads right to the Republican party." But do a
little more web surfing on the site and you'll get to a list that shows
Gephardt snagging $3,000 from WorldCom this election cycle.

One school of thought says you can't hold it against a politician for
taking contributions from a company that later turns out to be a scofflaw.
But isn't that the point of Gephardt's quote? The Democrats can't have it
both ways.

Vulnerable Democrats

The good people at http://cookpolitical.com/

The CookPolitical Report don't think the Democrats have a slam dunk on this
issue, nor do they agree with Wolfson's assessment that no Democratic
candidate could be put on the defensive by it. 

Take the Colorado Senate race where Republican Wayne Allard is talking up
the fact that Democratic opponent Tom Strickland worked as a lobbyist for
Global Crossing in the late 1990s. Or consider the potential vulnerability
of Erskine Bowles, President Clinton's former chief of staff, who worked
for New York finance firm Forstmann Little (owner of XO Communications, a
huge telecom that just filed for bankruptcy) and has raised hundreds of
thousands of dollars on Wall Street for his likely match-up with Elizabeth
Dole in the North Carolina Senate race.

The Democrats, Charlie Cook said, should focus on their historical
advantage with voters on questions of keeping big business in check rather
than on the specifics of scandal, which could come back to bite them.

"They need to be saying, 'Who do you trust more to go after the rogue
elements and keep it on that theme," Cook said.

The President: Let the Games Begin
Whether the public is paying any attention to this or is just enjoying
the balmy summer, the fun has begun for America's political writers. Forced
for so long to play the equivalent of basketball's sixth man, they are
finally getting their turn in the spotlight.

It started on Monday when the White House called a rare press
conference, only to have the president look unprepared for the predictable
onslaught of questions about his business dealings as a director of the
Harken Energy Corporation more than a decade ago.

Asked to explain questions that have resurfaced about an SEC
investigation of Harken more than a decade ago, the president answered: "In
the corporate world, some things aren't exactly black and white when it
comes to accounting procedures." He called the SEC investigation into his
late reporting of his sale of Harken stock, "an honest disagreement of
accounting procedures." One could imagine fallen WorldCom stars
Bernard J. Ebbers and Scott Sullivan might have made the same point had
they not been down the street taking the Fifth before a Senate committee
that same day.

Asked if he'd allow the SEC to release the all investigatory documents
investigation, Bush asserted that reporters had seen all of the "relevant"
data. Relevant, of course, is a subjective term. Thus reporters will never
know unless the documents are released.

And grappling with a question about the White House's shifting
explanations of why he disclosed the sale of more than $800,000 stock 34
weeks late, Bush said, "I still haven't figured it out completely."

Well, Mr. President, neither have we.

Guest

Subj: Andersen video puts Cheney on spot
Date: 7/10/02 1:07:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: nord@famvid.com

Wednesday, 10 July, 2002, 14:49 GMT 15:49 UK
Andersen video puts Cheney on spot
Cheney ran Halliburton oil company for five years
It has emerged in the United States that Vice-President Dick Cheney took
part in a promotional video for the disgraced accounting firm Andersen.

The news came just before an anti-corruption pressure group filed a lawsuit
against Mr Cheney, alleging fraudulent accounting practices.

In the video Mr Cheney - then Chief Executive of the oil company
Halliburton - describes how Andersen gave advice "over and above" what
would normally be expected from auditors.

Last month, the firm was convicted of obstructing justice by shredding
documents relating to the failed US energy giant Enron.

On Tuesday President George W Bush tried to distance himself from corporate
fraud, proposing tougher penalties as a way of restoring confidence in the
wake of recent business scandals that have shaken the US.

'Good advice'

The Andersen video, obtained by the Wall St Journal newspaper, is a further
embarrassment for President Bush's administration.

To look the other way for the vice-president would be to set a precedent
that the Washington elite are above the law

Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch chairman

Correspondents say its business connections are fast becoming a serious
liability.

The video was recorded in 1996.

"I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're
doing business and how we're operating over and above the just sort of
normal by-the-book auditing arrangement," Mr Cheney says in a short section
of the video.

Andersen's reputation has been destroyed in recent weeks after it emerged
that it had destroyed documents for the Enron energy giant.

Enron has admitted to grossly exaggerating its profits to attract investors.

'Share overvaluation'

In a separate development, pressure group Judicial Watch, says Mr Cheney
deceived investors while he was a director of the Halliburton oil company
in the 1990s.

In its lawsuit, filed in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday, the organisation
alleges Mr Cheney and Halliburton engaged in practices which led to the
overvaluation of the company's shares.

Bush has faced questions over his business past

"Halliburton overstated profits that many American citizens relied upon,"
Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch told reporters.

"That's fraudulent security practices and it resulted in those Americans
suffering huge losses."

In Washington White House spokesman Ari Fleischer appeared dismissive of
the case.

He said officials in Mr Cheney's "believe the suit is without merit, and
that's where it stands," he said.

Earlier, a Halliburton spokeswoman also said the case had no substance.

Harsher punishments

In a speech in New York's financial district on Tuesday, President Bush
said he wanted to tighten measures against corporate fraud.

He announced a doubling - to 10 years - of the maximum prison sentence, and
the formation of a special investigative task force.

But Judicial Watch said that Mr Bush's rush to crack down on corporate
fraud seemed intended to deflect attention away from his and Mr Cheney's
own business practices.

Mr Bush has already faced questions about his work as a director of
Texas-based Harken Energy Corp a decade ago, when the firm faced an inquiry
for masking huge losses.

Anglo Thug · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 10:17 am Post subject: Le Monde Backgrounder

CRIME, THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FREE ENTERPRISE
Thick as thieves

By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other, globalisation and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial market. Indeed the engine of capitalist expansion is now oiled by the profits of serious crime. From time to time something is done to give the impression of waging war on the rapidly expanding banking and tax havens. If governments really wanted to, they could right this overnight. But though there are calls for zero tolerance of petty crime and unemployment, nothing is being done about the big money crimes.
by CHRISTIAN de BRIE*

Financial crime is becoming less visible, periodically coming to light in one country or another in the guise of scandals involving companies, banks, political parties, leaders, cartels, mafias. This flood of illicit transactions - offences under national law or international agreements - has come to be portrayed just as accidental malfunctions of free market economics and democracy that can be put right by something called "good governance". But the reality is quite different. It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments, transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand.

Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organised crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of the regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand or crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning.

Three factors have combined to improve the workings of capitalism. The end of the 1980s saw the complete liberalisation of capital movements, taking them beyond national or international control. Then the revolution in communications technology accelerated the expansion of financial transactions. Finally, tax havens, that planetary archipelago of centres specialising in the tolerance of financial crime, became more "reliable".

Revolution, said Mao Zedong, is not a dinner party. Neither is competition. It has little to do with the tournaments of gallant knights celebrated by the troubadours of the free market, where by the grace of God the best always wins - the best product or the best service at the best price. As in feudal combat, if you want to win the economic war, anything goes - and the dirtier the better. The arsenal is well supplied with weapons: restrictive practices, cartels, abuse of dominant position, dumping, forced sales, insider dealing and speculation, takeovers and dismembering of competitors, fraudulent balance sheets, rigging of accounts and transfer prices, the use of offshore subsidiaries and shell companies to avoid and evade tax, embezzlement of public funds, bogus contracts, corruption and backhanders, unjust enrichment and abuse of corporate assets, surveillance and spying, blackmail and betrayal, disregard for regulations on employment rights and trade union freedoms, health and safety, social security, pollution and the environment (1). Not to mention what goes on in the world's growing number of free zones, including those in Europe and in France, where the ordinary rule of law does not apply, especially in social, tax and financial matters (2).

Such goings on can be found in all major sectors and on all markets: arms, oil, public works, civil aviation, air, rail and sea transport, telecommunications, banking and insurance, chemicals and food, to name but a few. They result in massive misappropriations of funds which disappear from the transnationals' bona fide accounts only to resurface in some tax haven. An incredible plunder, the full extent of which will never be known.

All this would be impossible without the power of the state and international and regional organisations, especially their ability to keep restrictive regulations to a minimum, to abolish or override such rules as do exist, to paralyse inquiries and investigations or put them off indefinitely, and to reduce or grant amnesty from any penalties. In exchange, they offer to "fund democracy" by financing parties' election campaigns, promoting the most promising political personalities and senior officials; they have them followed and closely watched by armies of lobbyists who can be found close to every decision-making authority and whose brief is to help them "make the right choices", to corrupt them (3).

On occasion they have no compunction about using the services of professional organised crime. In most of their subsidiaries and offshore suppliers in the southern hemisphere, workers have to contend with thugs hired by the bosses, blackleg trade unions, strike-breakers, private police and death squads. In Japan, recalcitrant shareholders are watched by yakusas at general meetings. Or they take out "contracts" on intermediaries that have become too much of a nuisance or on over-inquisitive investigators: numerous businessmen, bankers, politicians, judges, lawyers and journalists have "committed suicide" drinking a cyanide-laced cappuccino, hanged themselves or fallen from a tenth floor window with their hands tied behind their backs, shot themselves twice in the head, drowned fully clothed in a puddle or in the bath, slipped under a bus or into a vat of concrete or acid, fallen naked from their yachts into the sea under their bodyguard's very eyes, disappeared on a flight or car journey.

More than anything else, banks and big business are keen to get their hands on the proceeds - laundered - of organised crime. Apart from the traditional activities of drugs, racketeering, kidnappings, gambling, procuring (women and children), smuggling (alcohol, tobacco, medicines), armed robbery, counterfeiting and bogus invoicing, tax evasion and misappropriation of public funds, new markets are also flourishing. These include smuggling illegal labour and refugees, computer piracy, trafficking in works of art and antiquities, in stolen cars and parts, in protected species and human organs, forgery, trafficking in arms, toxic waste and nuclear products, etc.

Every country has its criminal underworld. The biggest organisations and the ones that have been active the longest can be found in the hubs of capitalism: the United States (Cosa Nostra), Europe (the Sicilian mafia) and Asia (the Chinese triads and Japanese yakusas). Others have also emerged over the last few decades, such as the Colombian cartels in Latin America and the Russian mafias. Hundreds of rival groups share the national and international crime markets. They enter into alliances and subcontracting agreements, tending to break up into small, flexible, mobile units specialising in a market sector or a profitable niche.

The annual profits from drug trafficking (cannabis, cocaine, heroin) are estimated at $300-500bn (not to mention the rapidly mushrooming synthetic drugs), that is 8% to 10% of world trade (4). Computer piracy has a turnover in excess of $200bn, counterfeit goods $100bn, European Community budget fraud $10-15bn, animal smuggling $20bn, etc. In all, and counting only activities with a transnational dimension, including the white slave trade, the world's gross criminal product totals far above $1,000bn a year, nearly 20% of world trade.

Even allowing for overheads (production and suppliers, intermediaries and corruption, investment expenditure, management costs, losses from seizures and crackdowns) amounting to roughly 50% of turnover, that still leaves annual profits of $500bn. Over ten years that makes $5,000bn, more than three times the foreign currency reserves of all the central banks (5), one quarter of the capitalisation of the world's top five stock markets and ten times that of Paris (6).

All that remains is for this fantastic wealth to be managed, impossible as it is to dispose of in small denomination notes (7). It is enough to set the world's financial brains spinning. But these are the people whose help the criminal organisations need if they are to launder all this money and recycle it through legal channels. They are willing to pay the price, and they do. The cost is about one third, $150bn shared between banking networks and intermediaries: lawyers, brokers and trust managers. The upshot is that over $350bn are laundered and reinvested annually, that is $1bn a day.

No sector of activity comes anywhere near these figures and none can match that capacity, representing as it does between one half and two thirds of direct foreign investment (DFI) [8]. Close watchers of the markets and of globalisation which they understand perfectly, the multinational criminal organisations have no time for savings banks. They go for the highest gains: hedge funds, inflating the bubble of financial speculation, emerging markets, property, new technologies. At the same time, they secure for themselves a solid return from the finest of industry and commerce. In permanent partnership with the transnationals in which they invest and the banks that manage their investments, they are the oil in the wheels of the extraordinary expansion of modern capitalism. And they still have enough money left over to maintain their lifestyle and help to fund and corrupt the political parties and leaders that are best placed to preserve the system that serves them so well.

That is precisely the service that the third partner, political power and bureaucracy, renders in exchange for the financial assistance that allows it to stay in place, to recover from every setback and to get richer in the process. It gives the illusion of a permanent struggle, constantly stepped up and internationally coordinated, by governments, police and judiciary against financial crime (bribery, trafficking, laundering) while not affecting the system's operation. Changing everything so that everything stays the same. The failure of over 30 years of international war against drug trafficking is testimony to the formula's "success". The same fate awaits the fight against money laundering and corruption, ostentatiously relaunched by the G7 at the Arch Summit, Paris, in 1989 and, in addition to the member countries, involving the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the European Union.

Specialist organisations have been set up (9) and international conventions signed and ratified for the prevention of corruption on international markets (10) and for police cooperation and mutual judicial assistance (11), while conferences and studies, commissions of inquiry and reports have multiplied. All this has been accompanied by the most strongly worded declarations and promises from those in authority, but the system of financial crime has not been the least bit shaken. It is poised to win by attrition the battle that the best are bent on waging against it; the weariness overtaking police and judges engaged on the exemplary Operation Clean Hands in Italy is evidence of this. So is the lack of response to the alarm (the "Geneva Appeal") sounded by seven specialist European judges at the end of 1996 (12).

There is no question of doing away with tax havens, those places of refuge for financial crime, only of encouraging them to adopt codes of good conduct. This would be as effective as asking the mafia to provide security vans, with a moral obligation to submit its vehicles to a MOT. Nor is there any question of setting up any form of permanent international cooperation, or even a European judicial area, only of considering discussing it. Yet it takes 18 months for a request for judicial assistance to make the round trip between Paris and Geneva.

Better still, under the aegis of international financial crime's number one partner, the US, we are seeing a rationalisation, or rather, Americanisation, of corruption techniques, seeking to replace the somewhat archaic practices of palm-greasing and secret (or open) "commission" payments by lobbying, which is more effective and presentable. It is a service industry in which the Americans have a considerable lead over their competitors, not only in know-how, but also in the vast financial and logistical resources they are able to make available to their multinationals; these include the secret services of the world's most powerful state apparatus, which, with the cold war over, have moved into economic warfare.

This is evidenced by the media success of the publication of an annual league table of bribe paying and taking countries drawn up by Transparency International, a lobbying association and CIA correspondent funded by governments and corporations, especially American ones, that are experts in the matter. These include Lockheed, Boeing, IBM, General Motors, Exxon, General Electric and Texaco (13). The only objective of the anti-corruption campaigns taken up by international organisations (World Bank, IMF, OECD) is the "good governance" of a financial crime that is now an integral part of market globalisation under the leadership of the American democracy, the most corrupt on the planet.

The headlong rush for profits and capital accumulation by any means is reflected in the widespread robbery of the fruits of men's labour and of common wealth and the moral corruption of the ruling classes. The robber barons are giving way to the pillaging princes.

Globalisation Observatory

(1) Znet Commentary, a Canadian site, offers a ranking of the top 100 criminal firms. - http://www.corporatepredators.org/top100.html

(2) On free zones, see Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 1998.

(3) Over 40,000 lobbyists in Washington, thousands in Brussels, hundreds at the WTO.

(4) $5,250bn in 1998.

(5) The central banks' official reserves totalled $1,636bn at the end of 1998 (source: 1999 Report of the Bank for International Settlements).

(6) New York (New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq), Tokyo, Chicago and London total $20,000bn (source: International Federation of Stock Exchanges).

(7) $1bn in $100 bills stacked up would be 1,000m high.

[8] $650bn in 1998, $450bn in 1997 (source: 1998 Report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development - Unctad).

(9) In particular the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which works with banks to prevent financial crime and has been churning out recommendations for ten years.

(10) The most recent concerns the OECD convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials.

(11) The European Council meeting in Tempere, Finland, in October 1999 decided to strengthen Europol's powers and to create Eurojust as a test bed for a future European public prosecutor's office.

(12) See Denis Robert, La Justice ou le Chaos, Stock, Paris, 1996.

(13) Le Canard enchaîné, 3 November 1999.

Translated by Malcolm Greenwood

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2002 Le Monde diplomatique
Reproduced here for fair use purposes only.

Anglo Thug · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 10:25 am Post subject: Overlooked but not Forgotten

THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE

[Lead story in the October 24, 2000 issue of "From The Wilderness"]

by
Michael C. Ruppert

© Copyright 2000, Michael C. Ruppert and "From The Wilderness" Publications, P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, 818-788-8791, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - Permission to reprint for non-profit only is hereby granted as long as proper sourcing appears. For all other permissions contact mruppert@copvcia.com.

-----------------------------------

FTW October 24, 2000 - The success of Bush Vice Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion "pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.

This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this "poster child" of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown and Root's successes continue.

Of all American companies dealing directly with the U.S. military and providing cover for CIA operations few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown and Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies. One key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate web page, it proudly announces that it has received the contract to dismantle aging Russian nuclear tipped ICBMs in their silos.

Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the Bushes themselves suggest that under a George "W" administration the Bush family and its allies may well be able, using Brown and Root as the operational interface, to control the drug trade all the way from Medellin to Moscow.

Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown and Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbors and tunnels, Brown and Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It prospered as a result, making billions on U.S. Government contracts during the Vietnam War. The "Austin Chronicle" in an August 28 Op-ed piece entitled "The Candidate From Brown and Root" labels Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown and Root's largesse. According to political campaign records, during Cheney's five year tenure at Halliburton the company's political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly, most of that money went to Republican candidates.

Independent news service "newsmakingnews.com," also describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman, Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries. This made Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into the family fold the company that had once sent a plane - also in 1948 - to fetch the new Yale Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the Texas oil business. Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a Managing Director for the firm that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers Harriman.

It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.

Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in Colombia also suggest Bush preparations for a war inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia." This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian-American investment partnership called Corfinsura for the financing of major construction projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June, 00). And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why, in a 2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing of the Brown and Root Energy Services Group, the only other places where the company maintains warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S. (38,000) square feet.

According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency Brown and Root had no presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown and Root, which, according to the AP has made more than $2 billion supporting and supplying U.S. troops, know about Colombia that the U.S. public does not? Why the need for almost a million square feet of warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown and Root operation (energy) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?

DRUGS

As described by the Associated Press, during "Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.

As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.

In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Sadam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Sadam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.

A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got some payback against the folks that used to help them move their drugs." He openly acknowledged that Brown and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or non-official cover for CIA officers. But I already knew that.

From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where, according to "The Christian Science Monitor" and "Jane's Intelligence Review," the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin entering Western Europe, Cheney's Brown and Root made billions of dollars supplying U.S. troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.

Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect. The August Center for Public Integrity report brought them even closer. It would be factually correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown and Root facilities - often in remote and hazardous regions - between every drug producing region and every drug consuming region in the world. These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.

A DIRECT DRUG LINK

The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers.

One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe."

These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand.

After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising documentation.'

"Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels.

"The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies.

"… He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering of… Latin American drug cartels."

It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."

The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has operations all along this route.

This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily established, as described by FTW in previous issues, after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its "economic development" in 1989. The obstacle then to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe was a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian government controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also, there was no other way, using heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them.

It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Just last November, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage, played the role of Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are also both members. Speculation that the scandal plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, is W's first choice for Secretary of Defense next year is widespread.

The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for heroin with the 1998 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to Western Europe and Brown and Root was right in the middle of that too. The Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations was described in detail in the May issue of FTW in a story entitled "The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline." That article has since been reprinted in three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling both cocaine and heroin from Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or even eliminated. This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated competition.

FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America. Lehder was known during the eighties as "The genius of transportation." I can well imagine a Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W and saying, "Look, I know how we can make it even better." One thing is for certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President noted that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof."

THE DARK PAST

In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police officer struggled to make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a relationship with my fiancée, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy), a CIA contract agent, I had traveled to find her in New Orleans. On a hastily arranged vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding Officer, Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own, unofficially, to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).

Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted me to join her operations from within the ranks of LAPD. I had refused to get involved with drugs in any way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was always moving out of the country. The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush.

Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been unofficially loaned to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly disappeared. She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information about her and what I knew of her activities. It was information I could not give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs I set out alone into eight days of Dantean revelations that have determined the course of my life from that day to this.

Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiqués delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel.

The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root. The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days. Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off.

Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fiancée and my government smuggling drugs, I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA I made a clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen, including the connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice, the CIA and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy.

According to a 1981 two-part news story in the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner" it was revealed that The FBI had taken Teddy into custody and then released her before classifying their investigation without further action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible after his thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime operations.

To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains classified and exempt from release pursuant to Executive Order of the President in the interests of national security and because it would reveal the identities of CIA agents.

On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, I reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush from 1981 to 1985.

In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber, filled in many of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department consultant to the Carter administration. Paul explained that, after a 1975 treaty between the Shah of Iran and Sadam Hussein the Shah had cut off all overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Sadam from the north of Iraq. In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat al-Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a long-term valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown and Root, which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it.

In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations.

----------

If one is courageous enough to seek an "operating system" that theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look no further than a fabulous two-part article in "Le Monde Diplomatique" in April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing heavily on drug capital are titled "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise." The brilliant and penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation than anything that I have ever read.

De Brie writes, "By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other, globalization and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial market…

"It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments, transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand.

"Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organized crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning."

After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November 15, 1996 I was interviewed by the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate Intelligence which I submitted although I was never called to testify. In every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and in every lecture since that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I will tell it again at the USC School of International Relations on December the 8th, 2000 - regardless of who wins the election.

Michael C. Ruppert

www.copvcia.com

Sources:

- The Center for Public Integrity, "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough", Knut Royce & Nathaniel Heller,
http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.htm

-"Le Monde - Diplomatique", April 2000.

- The U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce

-The Aspen Institute, www.aspeninst.org

-"The Austin Chronicle", August 28, 2000

-The Associated Press, "Study: US Could Save Cost in Balkans" - 10/10/00

-The Associated Press, "Cheney, North Relationship Probed" - 8/11/00

-"The New York Times" Index

-The Council on Foreign Relations

-"The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush" - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin

-"CIA Base" © 1992, Ralph McGehee

-CIA Inspector General Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Volume II: The Contra Story - Report 96-0143-IG.

-newsmakingnews.com, 27 August 2000, "The Dick Cheney Data Dump"

- Securities and Exchange Commission - "Edgar" Data base.

-Halliburton/Brown and Root - www.Halliburton.com/brs

-The Vinnell Corporation - www.Vinnell.com

-"The New York Press," 8/1/00

-"The Los Angeles Times," March 23, 1991.

-"The Los Angeles Herald Examiner:, Oct. 11 & 18, 1981

-"The Christian Science Monitor" - Oct. 20, 1994

-"Jane's Intelligence Review" - February 1, 1995.

-Written testimony of Michael C. Ruppert for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence dated 10/1/97 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ssci.htm

-"From The Wilderness" (4/99, 4/00, 6/00)

© Copyright 2000, Michael C. Ruppert and "From The Wilderness" Publications, P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, 818-788-8791, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - Permission to reprint for non-profit only is hereby granted as long as proper sourcing appears. For all other permissions contact mruppert@copvcia.com.
Reproduced here for fair use purposes only.

Anglo Thug · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 10:47 am Post subject: What Can I Do?

The Haliburton scandal is simply another demonstration of the intimate links between organised crime and 'legitimate' business that constitutes the standard yet hidden way of conducting trade in our 'sophisticated' global economy. Without the compliant media, such information would be widely known and would undoubtedly cause major complaint from a public overloaded with useless and misleading news.

Watching the current situation within the centres for financial fraud, more commonly termed as the stock markets, it is difficult not to experience a degree of admiration for the manner by which the well heeled criminals go about their daily business. We all watch the markets tumble and shake our heads at the 'isolated' scandals that have caused this lack of confidence. We don't see the carefully orchestrated plans as they unfold and come to fruition and we never question the champions at the top of the tree who assure us of their best intentions to set things right, by golly.

As usual, it is our jobs and our homes on the line - the cost of this game - and in some cases the lives of men, women and children in the third world. But still we watch the business reports on the heavily diluted and corporate owned 'news' stations and wait for the words of wisdom from men who have presided over these disasters in the first place. If a driver kept crashing the school bus would you go hire him for the kids' day out? Apparently so when it comes to finance.

Even recognising the corruption which is in plain view it is understandable when people shake their head and ask, 'Well what can I do about it?' I have an answer.

Every time you need to say Nike, take the extra effort to say, 'Nike, the child slavers.' Every time you need to mention a bank say, 'Barclays, the money launderers.' For the US government shout, 'Our government, the drug dealers' and for the European Union, 'The EU, human rights abusers.' And so on and so on - there are a lot of companies to cover I admit.

This won't change corporate practices in the short term but what it will do is raise awareness. People will have to ask why you are referring to a company, that has a bright and shiny advert of TV, as a crack cocaine dealer. Interest, the mental rather than financial kind, will surely be perked. When enough people start telling it like it is maybe the PR companies glued to these giant businesses will be forced to re-think their current strategies. Presently they plan on the basis that, 'Hey, the public is pretty dumb.' We need to change that perception.

Anglo Thug · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 11:03 pm Post subject:

Volatile Stocks Marked the '30s

Most investors know that the Dow Jones Industrial Average did miserably during the Depression of the 1930s. It began the decade at 248.48, down from a high of 381.17 before the crash of 1929. By July 1932, the depths of the Depression, the industrial average was crawling at 41.22. It ended 1939 at 150.24.

What many investors don't know is that the 1930s were also the most volatile decade on record for stock prices. Investors, their nerves rubbed raw by the Depression, were prone to fits of euphoria and despair.

Thus, the industrial average plunged 52.7% in 1931 and 32.8% in 1937, but it rose 66.7% in 1933 and 38.5% in 1935. Daily volatility was also intense. Strange as it may seem, seven of the 10 biggest up days in history, on a percentage basis, occurred during the 1930s.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, instituted social programs and put people to work building roads and public buildings. The history of his administration could serve as a political Rorschach test. Peering at the inky lines, some see Demon Roosevelt, others Savior Roosevelt.

The stock market generally seemed to like FDR's measures. The Dow industrials rose 39 points in 1933, 6 points in 1934, 40 points in 1935 and 36 points in 1936.

Richard J. Stillman, professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, said in an interview in 1996 that the launch of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Social Security helped turn the Dow around.

However, the late Robert Sobel, a professor of business history at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island, disagreed. The market was rebounding anyway, and the New Deal provided a psychological, not an economic, boost, he argued.

By 1938 the Dow had fallen below 100 again. Mr. Sobel blamed Mr. Roosevelt, for raising taxes. Mr. Stillman said overseas demand for U.S. goods was weak, as other countries were embroiled in their own miseries. The two historians agreed that World War II was the spark that finally ended the agony. Said Mr. Sobel: ''The war took the country out of the Depression, not Roosevelt.''

(C)Dow. Reproduced for fair use.

Anglo Thug · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 11:06 pm Post subject:

Hitler and the Panic of 1940

During World War II, The Dow Jones Industrial Average took two strong hits that kept it in a slump through most of the war.

The first was in early 1940, when Adolf Hitler's armies were on the march. The alarm caused by his aggression sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into one of the steepest tailspins in its history as it fell more than 23% in just two weeks.

From a monthly high of 148.17 on May 9, the average fell to 113.94 on May 24. The market, which had been strong, turned nervous after the Nazi army invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940, several months after Germany had overwhelmed Poland. The Wall Street Journal noted that ''the current stock market is well-charged with psychological dynamite.''

On May 9, the Journal wrote that an invasion of Holland ''would awaken fears that England was about to be attacked.'' The next day Hitler's armies swarmed into the Low Countries of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, and were on their way to a quick victory in France.

In the middle of the decline, The Journal's Abreast of the Market column reported that ''while numerous practical-minded individuals in Wall Street take the view that more intense warfare will be stimulating to our industries . . . they recognize the dangers inherent in a swift German victory.''

By June 11, after the German invasion of France was under way and the British had been forced to abandon their defense of northwestern France and Belgium at historic Dunkirk, the Dow changed course and stayed largely on an upward trend for the remainder of the year.

''Once the intial shock of the fall of the Maginot Line was over, you had a recovery,'' said the late Robert Sobel, a historian at Hofstra University. Economic historian Richard Sylla of New York University added that as the battle of Britain was waged, it became clearer that the Royal Air Force would be able to defend Britain, so American investors felt ''they weren't going to wake up the next day and find that Britain had fallen.''

However, more than one year later the war took on a far more personal tone and sent the stock market on a long-term descent.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, dragging the U.S. into World War II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it ''a date which will live in infamy,'' and the stock market certainly agreed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.5% on Dec. 8, to a 112.52 close from 116.60, and stayed on a downward trend for five months.

Until Pearl Harbor, many Americans hoped the U.S. would avoid direct military involvement in World War II. But the Japanese attack made that impossible.

The attack, which took U.S. forces by surprise, also took the stock market by surprise. Here's how The Wall Street Journal's Abreast of the Market column described the situation: ''The outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the United States came after the close of a week in which stocks had scored the most vigorous advances witnessed in several months. While tension existed in U.S.-Japanese relations, the Street had felt that negotiations between Tokyo and Washington were likely to proceed for some time before the matter came to a head.''

One of the market's big worries was how the war would be financed. It was obvious that the Roosevelt administration would have to raise taxes, borrow heavily or both. This unpleasant situation was described in the Journal as a ''shadow . . . overhanging the landscape.''

On the plus side, however, the U.S. entrance into the war meant ''reshaping the productive machine to assure maximum output for the enemy's defeat,'' as the Journal put it in a front-page article. Some economists believe it was the war effort that finally pulled the U.S. out of the economic doldrums that began in the early 1930s.

The industrial average continued to drift down until it hit bottom in late April 1942 at 92.92. Then it began to recover and chug upward. By year-end 1942 it was at 119.40, and by the end of 1945, the year the war ended, it stood at 192.91. Over the years, that pattern-an initial drop, followed by a rebound-has been the typical pattern when the U.S. gets involved in military conflicts.

(C)Dow - Reproduced for fair use only.

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