 
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 10  Num. 86
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                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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BCCI: NOT EXACTLY A BANK
========================

  "You are never going to  understand  BCCI if you persist in
  thinking of it as a bank."
                    -- John Moscow, Assistant D.A., Manhattan
                (qtd. in *The Outlaw Bank* by Beaty & Gwynne)

In the late 1970s, the Soviets invaded  Afghanistan.   Countering
the  Soviets,  the  CIA helped supply the Afghani resistance with
weapons.   Interwoven  with  neighboring  Pakistan's intelligence
agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, was BCCI, the Bank of Credit
and   Commerce   International.    Inter-Services    Intelligence
controlled  supplies  of  weapons to the Afghan resistance.  AGHA
HASAN ABEDI,  founder  of  BCCI,  dealt  directly  with CIA chief
William Casey.  "Abedi was close to Bill Casey.   They  met  many
times.   BCCI  financed  operations.   BCCI  brokered weapons and
supplies, BCCI acted as  paymaster."   (Anonymous source, qtd. in
*The Outlaw Bank*.)  The CIA/BCCI  relationship  grew,  and  BCCI
helped fund CIA and U.S. military covert operations.

In September of 1991, Time magazine carried an article describing
BCCI  as  "a  vast,  stateless,  multinational  corporation  that
deploys its own intelligence agency, complete with a paramilitary
wing  and  enforcement  units,  known  collectively  as the Black
Network."  BCCI's "Black Network"  apparently  is connected to at
least 16 suspicious deaths, including of 2 reporters:   Anson  Ng
of the Financial Times, and Danny Casolaro, a freelance reporter.
Both had been working on the BCCI story.

BCCI  was  aggressive  in  seeking  clients.   They did not limit
themselves to just rich people  trying to hide their money.  They
also sought out drug kingpins, weapons merchants,  and  smugglers
in general.  Helping grease the wheels for secret operations were
"Letters  of  Credit" issued by the shady bank.  BCCI's operation
was not unique among banks in general, but they were a caricature
of how things work in that they exceeded normal bank etiquette in
such matters.  If  you  don't  believe  it,  check  on balance of
payments between nations.  "By definition, the world must  be  in
balance  with  itself.   Yet  from  an approximate balance in the
early 1970s, an  inexplicable  black  hole  --  a  deficit of $20
billion -- had developed by 1978, and in  1982  the  deficit  hit
$110 billion." (*The Outlaw Bank*)

In  Arkansas  sits  billionaire Jackson Stephens.  In his classic
article, "The Name of  Rose"  (New  Republic, 4/4/94), L.J. Davis
shows how the Rose Law  Firm  of  Little  Rock  has  handled  the
affairs  of  Jackson  Stephens.   Jackson  Stephens, according to
former Forbes senior editor James  Norman, once owned a bank data
processing  company  called  "Systematics,"  and,  says   Norman,
Systematics was  itself,  in  effect,  a  sort  of bank.  Jackson
Stephens also reportedly served as a front  man  for  BCCI.   (CN
7.99)

In  "The  Money  Trail,"  Sherman  Skolnick  goes  even  further.
According to that veteran investigator, "Vincent W. Foster,  Jr.,
and  Hillary  Rodham  Clinton, on behalf of the Rose Law Firm and
Jackson Stephens and  Worthen  Bank  Group,  arranged for BCCI to
penetrate the American market."  Skolnick cites an  article  from
the New York Post, 2/8/92, as further reference (CN 6.04).

L.J. Davis, in his  previously-mentioned  article,  agrees:   the
Rose  Law  Firm has/does handle Stephens' affairs, and Davis even
connects BCCI with former  Jimmy  Carter honcho Bert Lance, Clark
Clifford, and Jackson Stephens.  (Sara McClendon has stated  that
Stephens  and  Carter have been close friends as far back as when
they both attended Annapolis.)  In a radio interview broadcast on
local PBS radio outlet, WILL-AM, on Aug. 4, 1994, Davis described
what it was like in Little  Rock:   "I mean, after I'd been there
for awhile, considering the milieu and  considering  the  strange
people  that  *did* show up there, I wouldn't have been surprised
if I encountered a fat man  in  a fez, Peter Lorre, and a Maltese
falcon!"

Another BCCI connection is to the December 1985 crash, in Gander,
Newfoundland,   of   a  plane  carrying  248  American  soldiers.
Reportedly,  a   duffel   bag   stuffed   with   U.S.  money  was
surreptitiously spirited away from the crash site by apparent CIA
operatives.  One of Beaty and Gwynnes  sources  states  that  the
money  on  the plane was from BCCI, provided to U.S. Intelligence
for covert operations.  Investigator  Gene Wheaton believes "that
Iranian terrorists blew up the plane  out  of  anger  after  they
received  a  shipment  of  defective  Hawk missile parts from the
United States."  (*The  Outlaw  Bank*)  But  BCCI's main concern,
reportedly, was that their money might be stolen from them, as  a
peripheral consequence of the plane crash.

Past  issues  of  Conspiracy  Nation  have  covered  reports of a
possible  "fuel-air  explosive,"  a  highly-sophisticated device,
being used in the tragic Oklahoma City bombing(s) of April  1995.
BCCI  reportedly is connected to secret sales of something called
"Colombine Heads,"  apparently  the  triggering  device for these
fuel-air  bombs.   As  described  in  *The  Outlaw  Bank*,  these
fuel-air bombs are also known as "the poor man's hydrogen bomb...
it worked by exploding a large cloud of vaporized gasoline.   The
resulting   explosion  rivaled  atomic  blasts.   It  was  almost
primitive technology,  but  it  took  an  extremely sophisticated
triggering system to ignite the gas cloud."

BCCI, write Beaty and Gwynne, was a *big* story.   Yet  the  mass
media  mostly  focussed  only  on  the  narrow  aspect  of  Clark
Clifford's  and  Robert  Altman's  involvement.  (Both were found
"not guilty" of any  crimes.)   The  authors suggest that a great
deal of information on BCCI is being held "at the highest reaches
of the American government."

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

For related stories, visit:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
http://feustel.mixi.net

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