If the CIA routinely lies to the American people, maybe that's because its got so much to lie about, like killing millions of innocent human beings around the world. As far back as December, 1968, the CIA's own Covert Operations Study Group gave a secret report to president-elect Richard Nixon that conceded, “The impression of many Americans, especially in the intellectual community and among the youth, that the United States is engaging in 'dirty tricks' tends to alienate them from their government.” According to Time Weiner's book “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor), the report went on to say, “Our credibility and our effectiveness in this role is necessarily damaged to the extent that it becomes known that we are secretly intervening in what may be (or appear to be) the internal affairs of others.”

President Bill Clinton, who first gave the CIA the green light to launch its illegal “renditions” (kidnappings,) told the nation on the occasion of the Agency's 50th birthday (1997), “By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage.” (Courage? For 22 agents to grab one Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan, Italy, and ship him abroad to be tortured?) Anyway, presidents who authorize criminal acts by the CIA, as virtually all have done since its founding in 1947, don't want the truth out, either, lest knowledge of those “dirty tricks” sicken and revolt the American people when they find out what crimes the Agency is perpetrating with their tax dollars. As former CIA agent Philip Agee once put it, “The CIA is the President's secret army.” This point was underscored at a luncheon by President Gerald Ford himself, which he hosted for New York Times top editors on Jan. 16, 1975. According to Weiner, Ford told them the reputation of every President since Truman could be ruined if the secrets became public. Asked by an editor, like what? Ford replied “like assassinations.”

One reason the Agency seeks to hide its operations is that it sadly is often guilty as charged. For example, take its complicity in the murders of American missionaries in Peru. As Reuters reported Nov. 21, 2008:

“The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries in Peru in 2001, the agency's inspector general(IG) has concluded. The (IG's) report said a CIA-backed program in Peru targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down by Peruvian air force jets without proper checks being made first.” A small plane carrying Veronica Bowers, her husband Jim, their son Cory and infant daughter Charity was shot down by a Peruvian jet on April 20, 2001, after it was tracked by a CIA surveillance plane that suspected it was carrying drugs. Veronica and Charity Bowers were killed, while their pilot, Kevin Donaldson, who crash-landed the bullet-riddled plane into the Amazon River, was badly injured. The IG's report said that in the aftermath of the 2001 incident the CIA sought to characterize it as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. "In fact this was not the case. The routine disregard of the required intercept procedures ... led to the rapid shooting down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life," the report from the Agency's own IG said. (One might ask why the CIA didn't wait for the plane to land to interrogate the passengers?)

The kicker in the Reuters account is “The IG said the CIA found 'sustained and significant' violations of procedure in its own internal investigation but had denied Congress, the National Security Council and the Justice Department access to its findings.” This raises the question of whether the CIA has become so powerful it can withhold findings even from the Justice Department and Congress? The answer is that it can, has, and likely continues to do so, because it is indeed both powerful and influential. After all, with the exception of President Clinton, who abetted the CIA's crimes, presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush Jr., and Barrack Obama all have been directly on the CIA payroll as employees at one time or another. Bush Sr., of course, headed the Agency during 1976-77. Bush Jr. worked for a CIA front in Alaska, and President Obama worked for CIA front Business International Corporation after he got out of college.

The CIA's influence is such that it can successfully forbid other agencies of government to conceal its crimes if they find out about them. Example: “The Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) knew about and helped cover up the CIA's involvement in Guatemala's drug war murders, a former DEA agent said,” the AP reported on July 23, 1996. Although the DEA denied the allegations, Celerino Castillo, who was a special DEA agent assigned to Guatemala, said he and other DEA agents there “were aware of specific murders committed by the Guatemala military with CIA involvement and were ordered to lie to keep the crimes secret.” AP said the Intelligence Oversight Board issued a report stating CIA agents in Guatemala “were credibly alleged” to have ordered, planned or participated in human rights violations such as murder, torture and kidnapping.” (I.e., Castillo's charges were true.) So it has long since gotten to the point that officials of other U.S. agents cannot report the CIA's crimes either, as if they were under a Mafia oath of secrecy.

CIA employees themselves are forbidden by secrecy agreements (under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed under President Ronald Reagan) to write anything about the Agency without first clearing it with a CIA publications review board. Accordingly, the CIA recently cracked down on a former officer who wrote under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones.” His “crime” was to publish two years ago “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” The Associated Press quotes Jones as saying, “CIA censors attack this book because it exposes the CIA as a place to get rich, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted or stolen in espionage programs that produce nothing.” Denying the truth, however, is a long established CIA practice. John Stockwell, for 13 years a CIA station chief in Angola or a top man in Viet Nam, said in a lecture, “What I ran into...was a corruption in the CIA and the intelligence business...what I found was that the CIA, us, the case officers, were not permitted to report about the corruption in the South Vietnamese army.”

Whether the Agency's John Stockwell, Ishmael Jones or DEA's Celerino Castillo, we note that many of the CIA's critics are former American intelligence officers who have seen too much, men apparently with a conscience and respect for human rights. Stockwell, a former Marine who held high posts in the field for the CIA was in a position to know when he charged that over the years the CIA has killed “millions” of innocents. He says the victims were largely “people of the Third World...that have the misfortune of being born in the Metumba mountains of the Congo, in the jungles of Southeast Asia...in the hills of northern Nicaragua...most of (whom) couldn't give you an intelligent definition of communism or of capitalism.” Stockwell estimated the CIA has perpetrated “10 to 20 thousand covert actions” between 1961, about the time of its Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco, and 1987.

Stockwell concludes “We are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis to people of the world...we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these (covert) programs in our name and we pretend like we don't know it's going on...And we're just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we've slaughtered and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was of the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide.”

Is it? The Obama administration apparently has no plans to expose and bring to trial past CIA killers and torturers, much less those who obstructed justice by destroying tapes of their torture or lying to Congress about it. This is the same country---which is now waging war in three Middle East nations and has been responsible for the violent and bloody overthrow of dozens of foreign governments---that keeps a quarter of a million pot smokers in prison who have never hurt another person in their lives. Pardon me if I ask whether my native land has not, in fact, become a lunatic asylum run by the criminally insane? #

Sherwood Ross is director of the Anti-War News Service. He formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. To contribute to his news service or comment, reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com  

The Ugly Truth: Video Of Libyan Rebel Beheading Gadhaffi Soldier And Other Nato War Crimes

The Intel Hub
By Susan Lindauer, former CIA Asset covering Libya
June 23rd, 2011

NATO has been pumping propaganda out of Libya to justify its “humanitarian war” against the government of Moammar Gadhaffi. Until now, NATO has succeeded in large part because ordinary citizens around the world have no access to direct intelligence on which to base their own opinions.

As the former CIA Asset who covered Libya at the United Nations from 1995 to 2003 during negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial, I am compelled to break past that propaganda to examine actual evidence.

Responding to numerous requests, I am sharing primary evidence that I receive daily from sources inside Tripoli.  Video documentation comes from Libyan refugees, collected by a fact finding commission called “Global Civilians for Peace in Libya.”

The fact-finding team includes Europeans, Africans, Americans and international human rights attorneys, who are preparing allegations of War Crimes against NATO. Judging from these videos, financial damages that NATO will be required to pay Libya should be stupendous, indeed.

Above all, it’s clear that NATO grossly misrepresented its arguments at the United Nations, in order to justify military action. Britain and France trusted bad intelligence from unreliable sources, trying to gain power from the conflict.

A more careful investigation shows that it is the NATO backed Rebels who are guilty of atrocities—not Gadhaffi’s soldiers at all. Sanctions should be thrown out, and NATO should shift its military forces to back Gadhaffi in defending the Libyan people.

Never play truth or dare with a spy.

The videos portray horrific atrocities. There are two important reasons why NATO Rebels would commit these acts. First, in committing war crimes, NATO Rebels have deployed a strategy for provoking panic and confusion at the street level, where they must control the people.

They have frightened their opposition into silent submission. Ordinary Libyans can see with their own eyes that Libyan Rebels are all powerful, with NATO enforcers watching their back, and pro-Gadhaffi loyalists had better shut their mouths or face terrible consequences.

At the same time, Libyan Rebels have discovered a way to punch NATO’s buttons, and fire up the engines for the “Humanitarian War–” For some reason, the world is supposed to believe that Gadhaffi’s government—which has no history of attacking its own people in 41 years of rule—is suddenly guilty of the most hideous offenses.

Those of us who have studied Libya closely have opposite expectations. Historically, Gadhaffi has been so tenacious and protective of his people that he refused to hand over two Libyan men for the Lockerbie trial, despite years of U.N. sanctions.

Gadhaffi knew the men were innocent, and would not get a fair shake in Court. Simply put, Lockerbie was a false flag operation to cover up rogue CIA involvement in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, during the Terry Anderson hostage crisis.

A joint team of CIA, FBI and Defense Intelligence investigators were flying on Pan Am 103 that day, heading for Washington to expose the corruption, when the plane exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Libya got tagged as the fall guy, but like 9/11, the truth refused to die. And Gadhaffi refused to back down. He stood by his people, despite punishing international pressures.

Gadhaffi’s guess proved correct, by the way. In one of the most shameful episodes of corruption ever at the International Courts, the U.S. bribed two witnesses at the Lockerbie Trial with $4 million pay offs.

After both witnesses recanted and confessed to the payments, the only Libyan convicted in the Pan Am 103 bombing, Abdelbasset Megrahi, won a “compassionate release” from Scottish prison in August, 2009, ostensibly so he could go home to die of cancer.

Gadhaffi’s actions reveal a great deal about his character. As a leader, does he throw his people to the wolves? Or abandon them for convenience? Notoriously not. He claims the Libyan people as his own. He protects them no matter the cost to himself.

These videos are the reality check. Ironically, by claiming Gadhaffi’s forces have been responsible for rape crimes specifically, NATO has made a glaring admission that War Crimes are in fact occurring inside Libya.

Headlines that Gadhaffi issued Viagra to fuel rape binges by his soldiers played very well on CNN. However former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has determined that the only major purchaser of Viagra bound for Libya was the U.S. Government itself, which handed out Little Blue Pills to older Rebel soldiers to energize them for battle.

Judging from rape testimonials coming out of Libya, the U.S. strategy succeeded in the most tragic ways.

The Bad Guys

These videos look awfully like Al Qaeda to me. But don’t take my word for it.  Look at the evidence and decide for yourself.

A warning: these videos are graphic and horrific. They’re posted at FederalJack.com, because it’s got hefty security around its site and rock solid courage to speak truth to power.

FederalJack will not back down, and will update the videos on obamalibya.com as new footage arrives.

• The first video shows a Libyan rebel beheading a Libyan soldier. If it looks like Iraq, well golly, the highest percentage of foreign fighters in Iraq (and Chechnya and Afghanistan) came from Eastern Libya. Unhappily for NATO, there’s no avoiding that this video was shot in Libya: The men are speaking a Libyan Arab dialect with its own distinct accent.
• The second video shows gruesome footage of a Libyan rebel cutting up the rotted flesh of a dead soldier and forcing it into the hands of Libyan Prisoners of War, who are lined up in a row so they must eat it.
• Another video shows a group of Rebels sodomizing a civilian with a pistol.
• Another  shows a crowd of Rebels hanging and beheading a Libyan soldier.
• Another video shows CIA operatives working side by side Rebel forces, driving around in trucks— proof that U.S. forces are already on the ground and active participants in the atrocities.
• Another video shows several dead Libyan soldiers with their throats cut, lying in the back of a truck. The killings violate the Geneva Conventions of War, which protect enemy soldiers after capture. In the excitement, NATO Rebels encouraged a frightened on-looker to video the butchery and claim that Gadhaffi’s forces were responsible. Afterward, the man with the video grabbed his family and fled the Rebel stronghold. That’s how the video reached the fact-finding group in Tripoli.

ALL VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED HERE

 

Intel Hub Note – These videos, especially the beheading, are very hard to watch and make a lasting impression on those that do. I would advise MOST people to NOT watch the beheading video.

It’s so barbaric that it defies understanding how NATO could have envisioned these Rebels as holding any leadership potential at all.

Rape As a Weapon of War

Worst than you thought, right? Most notoriously up to this point, it has become evident that Rebels are using rape as a war-time punishment of pro-Gadhaffi or “neutral” families that don’t automatically embrace the Rebel cause.

In Islamic culture, the whole family suffers stigmas after rape, a sort of communal punishment.

Right now a team of female human rights attorneys are interviewing rape victims. Two rape testimonials and other eye witness reports are provided here.

However these are not the most graphic stories. The problem is traveling hundreds of miles through checkpoints and bombs. By explanation, as of June 22, non-governmental fact finders are traveling 200 miles to video a boy who got castrated and both eyes gouged out by NATO Rebels as punishment for refusing to join their paramilitary unit.

Other video getting collected comes from a father, who describes the kidnapping of his virgin daughter from a pro-Gadhaffi family. After dragging her out of the house at gun-point and taking her to a rape party for a brutal night gang rape, NATO rebels cut off her breasts with a knife, and she bled to death.

Human rights investigators are waiting to interview a Libyan Woman from Zawia who survived a brutal gang rape that cut off her breasts. Horrified on-lookers  saved her from bleeding to death, when the excited Rebels ran off, firing their guns in the air.

She’s been hospitalized, but she’s still too physically and mentally damaged to handle the interview. International human rights attorney are standing by.

We urgently seek an American sponsor so this Libyan woman can undergo reconstructive surgery in the United States or Europe. On June 19, Gadhaffi soldiers fighting for Misurata rescued another rape survivor.

The young woman had been kidnapped and held hostage for 20 days. Rebel forces gang raped her every single day, round the clock, until Gadhaffi’s forces broke through their lines and saved her life.

So much for NATO’s humanitarian mission. Clearly NATO has been grossly deceived, and should cease at once from protecting these Rebels.  U.S. tax dollars are training a New Taliban to intimidate the Libyan people into submission, while the West plunders Libya’s wealth.

But NATO failed to take into account the spirit of the Libyan people. Libya has a powerful history and traditions of resilience in defending its sovereignty from foreign invaders. Libyan families and Tribal Leaders are determined to seek financial damages from every NATO and Arab country that supports the rebels.

So long as NATO provides training, uniforms, military assault rifles, jeeps and transportation, ground advisers and air power—-NATO will be forced to take responsibility for these crimes. Financial damages will come out of funding for NATO’s own citizens—out of education, health care, government pensions, universities, roads, bridges, you name it.

Patrick Haseldine, a British expert on Libya’s conflict with NATO, has calculated current British financial damages at $2.8 billion.

All of it begs the question why NATO governments should want to support these Rebels in the first place? Indeed, all of us should ask some important questions.

Should President Obama spend hard-earned U.S. tax dollars from the Middle Class to finance this War?  Should America assume the role of training Al Qaeda forces and function as Al Qaeda enforcers? While our great nation bleeds red ink? While Americans struggle to find jobs and fight off foreclosures? Knowing that our soldiers are exhausted from two other failed Wars—fighting these same Al Qaeda Rebels in Iraq and Afghanistan?

And why exactly should America prop up NATO, so that the British and French can relive their glory days of Empire?  Is it worth risking our Empire and prosperity? Really?

These videos reveal a whole different truth. The CIA will probably get mad that I have released them. But good Intelligence Assets are supposed to deliver brutal honesty. We’re not supposed to hide ugly truths. We’re supposed to get information that leaders—and communities— urgently need to make the most informed choices in policymaking. It happens to be very, very ugly intelligence. But it would be wrong for me to spare you.

In my opinion as a former U.S. Asset, the United States should break ties with the Libyan rebels and cut off financing immediately.

You can decide for yourself.

#####

Susan Lindauer worked in anti-terrorism covering Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Malaysia at the United Nations. Her team gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack. She is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Prejudice-Terrifying-Story-Patriot/dp/1453642757

Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal

Internet article

 

The savings and loan scandal of the 1980s has been depicted in a myriad of ways. To some, it is "the greatest ... scandal in American history" (Thomas, 1991: 30). To others it is the single greatest case of fraud in the history of crime (Seattle Times, June 11, 1991). Some analysts see it as the natural result of the ethos of greed promulgated by the Reagan administration (Simon and Eitzen, 1993: 50). And to some it was a premeditated conspiracy to move covert funds out of the country for use by the U.S. Intelligence Agency (Bainerman, 1992: 275). All of these depictions of the S & L scandal contain elements of truth. But to a large degree, the savings and loan scandal was simply business as usual. What was unusual about it was not that it happened, or who was involved, but that it was so blatant and coarse a criminal act that exposure became inevitable. But with its exposure, three basic but usually ignored "truths" about organized crime were once again demonstrated with startlingly clarity:

There is precious little difference between those people who society designates as respectable and law abiding and those people society castigates as hoodlums and thugs.

The world of corporate finance and corporate capital is as criminogenic and probably more criminogenic than any poverty-wracked slum neighborhood.

The distinctions drawn between business, politics, and organized crime are at best artificial and in reality irrelevant. Rather than being dysfunctions, corporate crime, white-collar crime, organized crime, and political corruption are mainstays of American political-economic life.

It is not our intent to discuss the unethical and even illegal business practices of the failed savings and loans and their governmental collaborators. The outlandish salaries paid by S & L executives to themselves, the subsidies to the thrifts from Congress which rewarded incompetence and fraud, the land "flips" which resulted in real estate being sold back and forth in an endless "kiting" scheme, and the political manipulation designed to delay the scandal until after the 1988 presidential elections are all immensely interesting and important. But they are subjects for others' inquiries. Our interest is in the savings and loans as living, breathing organisms that fused criminal corporations, organized crime, and the CIA into a single entity that served the interests of the political and economic elite in America. Let us begin by quickly summarizing the most blatant examples of collaboration between financial institutions, the mob, and the intelligence community.

First National Bank of Maryland: For two years, 1983-1985, the First National Bank of Maryland was used by Associated Traders, a CIA proprietary company, to make payments for covert operations. Associated traders used its accounts at First National to supply $23 million in arms for covert operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, and Nicaragua (Bainerman, 1992; 276-277; Covert Action 35, 1990).

The links between the First National Bank of Maryland and the CIA were exposed in a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court by Robert Maxwell, a high-ranking bank officer. Maxwell charged in that suit that he had been asked to commit crimes on behalf of the CIA. Specifically, he charged that he was asked to conceal Associated Traders' business activities, which by law he was required to specify on all letters of credit. Maxwell alleged that he had been physically threatened and forced to leave his job after asking that his superiors supply him with a letter stating that the activities he was being asked to engage in were legal. In responding to Maxwell's lawsuit, attorneys for the bank state that "a relationship between First National and the CIA and Associated Traders was classified information which could neither be confirmed nor denied (Bainerman, 1992: 276-277; Washington Business Journal, February 5, 1990).

Palmer National Bank: The Washington, D.C.-based Palmer National Bank was founded in 1983 on the basis of a $2.8 million loan from Herman K. Beebe to Harvey D. McLean, Jr. McLean was a Shreveport Louisiana businessman who owned Paris (Texas) Savings and Loan. Herman Beebe played a key role in the savings and loan scandal. Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton linked Beebe to a dozen failed S & L's, and Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo, in their investigation of the S & L fiasco, called Beebe's banks "potentially the most powerful and corrupt banking network ever seen in the U.S." Altogether, Herman Beebe controlled, directly or indirectly, at least 55 banks and 29 S & L's in eight states. What is particularly interesting about Beebe's participation in these banks and savings and loans is his unique background. Herman Beebe had served nine months in federal prison for bank fraud and had impeccable credentials as a financier for New Orleans-based organized crime figures, including Vincent and Carlos Marcello (Bainerman, 1992: 277-278; Brewton, 1993: 170- 179).

Harvey McLean's partner in the Palmer National Bank was Stefan Halper. Halper had served as George Bush's foreign policy director during the 1980 presidential primaries. During the general election campaign, Halper was in charge of a highly secretive operations center, consisting of Halper and several ex- CIA operatives who kept close tabs on Jimmy Carter's foreign policy activities, particularly Carter's attempt to free U.S. hostages in Iran. Halper was later linked both to the "Debategate" scandal, in which it is alleged that Carter's briefing papers for his debates with Ronald Reagan were stolen, and with "The October Surprise," in which it is alleged that representatives of the Reagan campaign tried to thwart U.S. efforts to free the Iranian hostages until after the presidential election. Halper also set up a legal defense fund for Oliver North.

During the Iran-Contra Affair, Palmer National was the bank of record for the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, a front group run by Oliver North and Carl "Spitz" Channell, which was used to send money and weapons to the contras.

Indian Springs Bank: Another bank with clear connections to the CIA was the Indian Springs Bank of Kansas City, Kansas (Bainerman, 1992: 279-280; Brewton, 1993: 197-200). The fourth largest stockholder in Indian Springs was Iranian expatriate Farhad Azima, who was also the owner of an air charter company called Global International Air. The Indian Springs bank had made several unsecured loans to Global International Air, totaling $600,000 in violation of the bank's $349,00 borrower limit. In 1983 Global International filed for bankruptcy, and Indian Springs followed suit in 1984. The president of Indiana Springs was killed in 1983 in a car fire that started in the vehicle's back seat and was regarded by law enforcement officials as of suspicious origins.

Global International Air was part of Oliver North's logistical network which shipped arms for the U.S. government on several occasions, including a shipment of 23 tons of TOW missiles to Iran by Race Aviation, another company owned by Azima. Pete Brewton, in his investigation of the Indian Springs bank collapse was told that FBI had not followed up on Indian Springs because the CIA informed them that Azima was "off limits" (Houston Post, February 8, 1990). Similarly the assistant U.S. Attorney handling the Indian Springs investigation was told to "back off from a key figure in the collapse because he had ties to the CIA."

Azima did indeed have ties to the CIA. His relationship with the agency goes back to the late 1970s when he supplied air and logistical support to EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Services Corporation), a company owned by former CIA agents Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, and Richard Secord. EATSCO was prominently involved in the activities of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson, who shipped arms illegally to Libya. Azima was also closely tied to the Republican party. He had contributed $81,000 to the Reagan campaign.

Global International also had other unsavory connections. In 1981, Global International made a payment to organized crime figure Anthony Russo, a convicted felon with a record that included conspiracy, bribery, and prostitution charges. Russo was the lawyer of Kansas City organized crime figures, an employee of Indian Springs, and a member of the board of Global International. Russo later explained that the money had been used to escort Liberian dictator Samuel Doe on a "goodwill trip" to the U.S.

Global International's planes based in Miami were maintained by Southern Air Transport, another CIA proprietary company. According to Franck Van Geyso, an employee of Global International, pilots for Global International ferried arms into South and Central America and returned to Florida with drugs. Indian Springs also made a loan of $400,000 to Morris Shenker, owner of the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, former attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, and close associate of Nick Civella and other Kansas City organized crime figures. At the time the loan to Shenker was made, he, Civella, and other Kansas City mobsters were under indictment for skimming $280,000 from Las Vegas' Tropicana Casino.

Vision Banc Savings: In March, 1986, Robert L. Corson purchased the Kleberg County Savings and Loan of Kingsville, Texas, for $6 million, and changed its name to Vision Banc Savings (Bainerman, 1992: 280-281; Brewton, 1993: 333-351). Harris County, Texas, judge Jon Lindsey vouched for Corson's character in order to gain permission from state regulators for the bank purchase. Lindsey was the chairman of the Bush campaign in 1988 in Harris County and later received a $10,000 campaign contribution and a free trip to Las Vegas from Corson (Houston Post, February 11, 1990).

Corson was well-known to federal law enforcement agents as a "known money launderer" and a "mule for the agency," meaning that he moved large amounts of cash from country to country. When Corson purchased Vision Banc, it had assets in excess of $70 million. Within four months it was bankrupt. Vision Banc engaged in a number of questionable deals under Corson leadership, but none more so that its $20 million loan to Miami Lawyer Lawrence Freeman to finance a real estate deal (Houston Post, February 4, 1990). Freeman was a convicted money launderer who had cleaned dirty money for Jack Devoe's Bahamas-to-Florida cocaine smuggling syndicate and for Santo Trafficante's Florida- based organized crime syndicate. Freeman was a law partner of CIA-operative and Bay of Pigs paymaster Paul Helliwell. Corson, in a separate Florida real estate venture costing $200 million, was indicted on a series of charges.

Hill Financial Savings: Vision Banc was not the only financial institution involved in Freeman's Florida land deals. Hill Financial Savings of Red Hill, Pennsylvania, put in an additional $80 million (Brewton, 1993: 346-348) . The Florida land deals were only one of a series of bad investments by Hill Financial which led to collapse. The failure of Hill Financial, alone, cost the U.S. treasury $1.9 billion.

Sunshine State Bank: The cast of characters surrounding the Sunshine State Bank of Miami also included spies, White House operatives, and organized criminals (Bainermann, 1992: 281; Brewton, 1993: 310- 312, 320-323). The owner of the Sunshine State Bank, Ray Corona, was convicted in 1987 of racketeering, conspiracy, and mail fraud. Corona purchased Sunshine in 1978 with $1.1 million in drug trafficking profits supplied by Jose Antonio "Tony" Fernandez, who was subsequently indicted on charges of smuggling 1.5 million pounds of marijuana into the U.S.

Among Corona's customers and business associates were Leonard Pelullo, Steve Samos, and Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya. Pelullo was a well-known associate of organized crime figures in Philadelphia, who had attempted to use S & L money to broker a major purchase of an Atlantic City Casino as a mob frontman. Pelullo was charged with fraud for his activities at American Savings in California. Steve Samos was a convicted drug trafficker who helped Corona to set up Sunshine State Bank as a drug money laundry. Samos also helped set up front companies that funneled money and weapons to the Contras. Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya was a veteran CIA operative who had played a key role in the Bay of Pigs of invasion. He also had a long career as a money launderer in the Caribbean and in Texas on behalf of both the CIA and major drug trafficking syndicates.

Mario Renda, Lender to the Mob: Mario Renda was a Long Island money broker who brokered deposits to various savings and loans in return for their agreement to loan money to phony companies (Brewton, 1993: 45-47; 188-190; Pizzo et al. 1989: 466-471). Renda and his associates received finders fees of 2 to 6 percent on the loans, most of which went to individuals with strong organized crime connections who subsequently defaulted on them. Renda brokered deals to 160 Savings and Loans throughout the country, 104 of which eventually failed. Renda was convicted of $16 million from an S & L and for tax fraud.

Renda also served CIA and National Security Council interests as a money broker helping arrange for the laundering of drug money through various savings and loans on behalf of the CIA. He then obtained loans from the same S & L's, which were funneled to the Contras. An organized crime-related stockbroker, a drug pilot, and Renda were all convicted in the drug money laundering case.

Full-Service Banking: All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L's can be tied to joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime figures (Glassman, 1990: 16-21; Farnham, 1990: 90-108; Weinberg, 1990: 33; Pizzo, et al., 1989: 466-471). If the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity from law enforcement and prosecution. Chambliss' study of organized crime in Seattle exposed a syndicate that involved participation by a former governor of the state, the county prosecutor, the police chief, the sheriff, at least 50 law enforcement officers, leading business people, including contractors, realtors, banks, and corporation executives, and, of course, a supporting cast of drug pushers, pimps, gamblers, and racketeers (Chambliss, 1978). The Chambliss study is not the exception but the rule. Other sociological inquires in Detroit, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York have all revealed similar patterns (Albini, 1971; Block, 1984; Block and Chambliss, 1981; Block and Scarpitti,1985; Jenkins and Potter, 1989; 1986; Potter and Jenkins, 1985; Potter, 1994). As Chambliss comments:

In the everyday language of the police, the press, and popular opinion, "organized crime" refers to a tightly knit group of people, usually alien and often Italian, that run a crime business structured along the lines of feudal relationships. This conception bears little relationship to the reality of organized crime today. Nonetheless, criminologists have discovered the existence of organizations whose activities focus on the smuggling of illegal commodities into and out of countries (cocaine out of Colombia and into the United States and guns and arms out of the United States and into the Middle East, for example); other organizations, sometimes employing some of the same people, are organized to provide services such as gambling, prostitution, illegal dumping of toxic wastes, arson, usury, and occasionally murder. These organizations typically cut across ethnic and cultural lines, are run like businesses, and consist of networks of people including police, politicians, and ordinary citizens investing in illegal enterprises for a high return on their money.

Gary W. Potter Eastern Kentucky University padpotte@acs.eku.edu

 

secrets of the CIA

Secrets of the CIA reveals the truth about the CIA and how this organization is behind numerous terrorist plots throughout history. Many ex-CIA agents speak out about their experiences as agents and what they were required to do.

Some of these missions even included killing of children. Most of them are now spreading the word about the crimes of the CIA and how the organization needs to be extinguished.

Ralph McGehee, a reknown ex-CIA agent, is featured in this documentary. He is most famous for publishing Deadly Deceits.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secrets-of-the-cia/