Irony: Kerry used the law to bring down terrorist bank; Bush abused it

to bring down America!

snip...

Revisiting the scandal in a serious way also would have recognized the brave work on the issue by Sen. John Kerry in the latter half of the 1980s – and corroborated the initial contra-cocaine article that I co-wrote with Brian Barger for the Associated Press in 1985.

snip...

Contra-Cocaine Case

In my 1999 book Lost History, I deal at length with the earlier exposure of the contra-cocaine trafficking and the investigations that followed Webb’s series. But on this first anniversary of Webb’s death, I am including a summary of that history below:

The contra-cocaine story first reached the public in a story that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985. Even then we had extensive evidence, including official documents from Costa Rica, alleging that contra units were helping major cocaine traffickers at clandestine air strips and commercial ports.

Though the big newspapers pooh-poohed our discovery, Sen. Kerry followed up our story with his own groundbreaking investigation in early 1986 when Ronald Reagan was at the height of his power and George H.W. Bush was eyeing a run for the White House.

The Reagan-Bush administration did whatever it could to thwart Kerry's investigation, including attempting to discredit witnesses, stonewalling the Senate when it requested evidence, and assigning the CIA to monitor Kerry's probe.

But it couldn't stop Kerry and his investigators from discovering the explosive truth: the contra war was permeated with drug traffickers who gave the contras money, weapons and equipment in exchange for help in smuggling cocaine into the United States.

Kerry also found that U.S. government agencies knew about the contra-drug connection, but turned a blind eye to the evidence in order to avoid undermining a top Reagan-Bush foreign policy initiative.

For his efforts, however, Kerry encountered either media indifference or ridicule. Reflecting the dominant attitude toward Kerry and his probe, Newsweek dubbed the Massachusetts senator a “randy conspiracy buff.”

In the ensuing years, other confirmation of the contra-cocaine problem did pop up. During the 1991 federal drug trial of Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega, the U.S. government called to the stand Colombian drug lord Carlos Lehder, who testified that the Medellin cartel had given $10 million to the Nicaraguan contras, a claim that one of Kerry’s witnesses had made years earlier.

For once, the Washington Post praised Kerry for his earlier investigation. “The Kerry hearings didn’t get the attention they deserved at the time,” a Post editorial said on Nov. 27, 1991 – without noting that one of the principal reasons for the neglect was the Post's own poor reporting on the scandal.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/120905.html

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/BCCI_Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International

BCCI and George W. Bush

In the early 1990s, then-private citizen George W. Bush, son of the president, benefited financially from BCCI. The bank helped fund at least one of his failed oil exploration ventures. W’s Texas Air National Guard friend, James R. Bath, was reported to be a director of BCCI. Bath was kicked off the Texas ANG flight line, along with his fellow officer Bush Jr, who also was involved with BCCI through the bin Laden family.

BCCI was protected by politicians the world over, including members of both parties in the United States. The record shows the bank bought influence at the highest levels of the US Government, establishing a base of operations with the help of Clark Clifford and those close to Jimmy Carter on the Democratic side.

BCCI did even bigger business with the Republicans, using the services of Henry Kissinger and his crowd — and wherever there's a Kissinger, a Bush won't be far behind. Of course, as president George H. W. Bush did all he could to bury the BCCI affair. It was personal, after all, it involving his sons, family and closest friends and business associates all the way from the Middle East to Texas.

to continue the BCCI probe when it was clear that it involved some of the highest Democrats of the time as well as the Republicans because he knew it was important and he knew it was the right thing to do.

Those thinking he was the DLC candidate, that he was pushed by the media or some mainstream Democrats, should think of these things. Kerry won with less machine support than ayone - only Teddy Kennedy was there in the beginning. 2004 was our chance for a candidate who was bought by no one and we almost made it.

Kerry kept at it until he brought them down. Way to go JK.

was a corporate whore and one of the establishment.

There wasn't a more ostracized senator in DC than John Kerry.

He doesn't participate in the good ol' boys (and girls) cronyism after the Senate sessions wrap.

Rumor has it, he'd rather "have a beer" with "normal people" than pal around with the rest of the clique.

Or so I hear. :-)

Follow the Money
How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank.
By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin

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

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

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



snip...

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

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

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

after it came out.

When Kerry brought it up during the campaign, I expected some media would discuss it then.....and still.....NADA.

I couldn't believe it when I saw someone here call him "live shot". That nickname comes directly from this time and the Republicans attempts to ridicule Kerry. When he tried to get around the media blackout by leaping at any live camera, that's how he got that nickname.

Sometimes I think he damaged himself permanently politically. People try to forget him. Before he presidential run, they'd just refer to him as that OTHER Senator from Massachusetts.

that were used to discredit the BCCI investigator.

Will they do the same to Conyers down the road? Fitzgerald?

Don't they get it, yet, about how GOP operatives work? Do they think THEY could survive 30 years worth of operations and surveillance against them?

They likely had him under intense suveillance throughout the Regan/Bush years and knew he was very clean.

Don't forget BCCI too. It really shows the difference between them and their priorities. Bush is nothing more than a mafia wannabe.

as BushInc and get away with it as easily.

BushInc makes the mafia look like preschool.

The miscreant dynasty
By Howell Raines
December 19, 2005

Bush generations have enriched themselves while impoverishing the presidency.

AT THIS point, the policy legacy of George Bush seems pretty well defined by three disparate disasters: Iraq in foreign affairs, Katrina in social welfare, corporate influence over tax, budget and regulatory decisions. As a short-term political consequence, we may avoid another dim-witted Bush in the White House. But what the Bush dynasty has done to presidential campaign science — the protocols by which Americans elect presidents in the modern era — amounts to a political legacy that can haunt the Republic for years to come.


http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/12/18/1134840743188.html