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IN THIS ISSUE:
Wall Street’s Corruption Scandal
More On McCain
Wall Street’s Corruption Scandal
A Senate probe has covered up a huge Wall Street cash-wash, which routinely
concealed and converted trillions (yes, trillions) of tainted dollars.
Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT
By Martin Mann
Congress scheduled a series of hearings into money-laundering last month,
but then adjourned them on the second day, apparently frightened by what it
had uncovered. What researchers un earthed amounted to a vast financial
underworld in which leading Wall Street banks routinely “stashed” trillions
of dollars for thousands of unsavory clients from some of the world’s worst
badlands.
Led by Chase Manhattan, the financial flagship of the Rockefeller empire,
most major U.S. money centers maintain so-called private “banking
facilities” for special customers with at least $1 million in cash to
squirrel away.
“Private banks cater to clients who don’t just want to bank their funds;
they need to hide them,” said Axel Im mern, an independent in vestment ad viser.
Often a New York private banker will cater to this need by setting up a
so-called “private investment company” (PIC) for his client in a “secrecy
area” like the Caymans, where covert money management is protected by law.
A PIC is a front, an offshore shell company. Its registered owner is another
shell company based in Panama or Switzerland. The private banker in New York
controls both fronts. The name of the real owner of the money is now
thoroughly walled off from prying regulators, tax collectors or—most
importantly—criminal investigators.
Banks call such setups “fiduciary accounts.” The name of the depositor does
not even appear in the private bank’s own accounts, where he is listed only
under a code such as CC (Confidential Client) 2201.
That was the code used by Amy Elli ott, a Cuban-born vice president of Citi
bank’s private banking division, to hide the $100 million or so in drug
payoffs and other rakeoffs deposited with her by Raul Salinas, brother of
former Mexican President Carlos Salinas.
Citibank also arranged to have the dirty cash brought in by Salinas
laundered into offshore accounts. This is best done through conduits called
“concentrated transfers” in which a client’s money is mingled with
Citibanks’ own funds.
That makes tracing such accounts “Just about impossible,” Mrs. Elliot
admitted in her appearance before the Senate subcommittee headed by Sen.
Susan Collins (R-Maine).
That Raul Salinas is serving time in Mexico for murder, while under
investigation for a number of other crimes, does not affect the case, Mrs.
Elliott told the assembled committee.
“Keep in mind that of the seven or eight [secret] PICs I managed at Citi
bank, the Salinas account was by no means the most important. It was one of
the smallest and least active,” Mrs. Elliott explained.
Mrs. Elliott’s boss, Citibank executive Edward Montero, subsequently
testified that Citibank managed “some 40,000” stealthy private accounts.
“How much suspect cash do those accounts represent? If, as Elliott
suggested, most of them are ‘larger and more active’ than the $100 million
belonging to the Salinas family, we’re talking about hundreds of billions of
dollars’ worth of fugitive funds here,” says financial writer Bodo Thalmann.
In fact, Wall Street’s private banks are estimated to hide an eye-popping
$21.5 trillion in such deviously deodorized deposits, according to an
unpublished estimate by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), the prestigious international economic monitor.
WHY?
Why does such vast wealth go underground? The Citibank executives at the
Senate hearing could offer only halting and lame explanations to that
question, arguing that some very affluent clients feared being “kidnapped”
or “extorted” if their riches were publicly displayed.
“That’s nonsense,” snorted Thalmann. “Such deep secrecy is not contrived to
hide wealth from ‘kidnappers.’ It is meant to hide these trillions from the
law.”
The Senate’s money-laundering hear ings shied away from exploring such
potentially explosive issues. This populist newspaper, however, will
continue its investigation of this stunning financial mystery that has
robbed taxpayers of trillions of dollars.
More On McCain
Arizona Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain has led the charge to
dump his fellow POWs down the memory hole.
Exclusive To The SPOTLIGHT
By Mike Blair
Another in a Series
Of all the men and women involved in U.S. government service, one man stands
out as being most responsible for burying the issue of American POWs and
MIAs still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War: Sen. John S. McCain III
(R-Ariz.).
McCain is the favorite of the Establishment news media and the leading
challenger to the front runner for next year’s Republican presidential
nomination—Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R). The (in public) soft-spoken
Arizona senator, a POW of the Vietnam Reds for five-and-a-half years, has
been portrayed to the American public as a war hero.
Taking advantage of that perception, McCain has advanced himself as a strong
presidential aspirant to those who view the current resident of the White
House as a notorious draft dodger and as someone less than morally suitable
to hold the highest public office in the country.
However, as this SPOTLIGHT series has shown, candidate McCain is shielded by
a carefully Establishment media-crafted curtain of smoke and mirrors that
has hidden the fact that he is really a mean-spirited tyrant with a
“volcanic temper,” who has been referred to, ever since his days as a cadet
at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., as “McNasty.”
NO BIG MYSTERY
If the national media really wants to find out just how nasty McCain really
is, all it needs to do is ask any POW-MIA activist who is attempting to
force the U.S. government into getting Vietnam to account for 2,300 American
POWs and MIAs, whose fate still remains unknown. Or the national media can
ask any POW or MIA next of kin who believe that their son, husband or father
may still be alive in communist captivity.
Since he was elected to Congress nearly two decades ago, McCain has easily
been the leading figure on Capitol Hill to dump any serious effort to
account for America’s missing—men he left behind in North Vietnamese
captivity when he was released by the Reds in 1973.
Here are some of the achievements of McCain’s anti-POW and MIA accounting
campaign:
• McCain led the fight on Capitol Hill, working in lock step with Sen. John
Kerry (D-Mass.), a notorious anti-war activist with Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, in getting the Clinton administration to drop the more than two
decade-long trade embargo against Viet nam and to normalize diplomatic
relations with the strident communist state.
• A decade ago, McCain, a key and influential member due to his own former
POW status, served on a special U.S. Senate select committee established to
determine the fate of American POWs and MIAs left behind, chaired by his
friend Kerry. McCain led the charge among “non-believers” to write off the
missing as being dead.
• The Arizona senator questioned or, more appropriately, interrogated
POW-MIA activists and family members so severely during the committee
hearings that many of them were upset emotionally.
During an exchange with Dolores Alfond, the sister of a Vietnam POW-MIA,
McCain’s brutal questioning and harsh comments brought her to tears. Alfond
heads the National Alliance of Families of POWs and MIAs of all wars in
which America has been involved.
Carol Hrdlicka, wife of a known POW, glared at McCain for the rest of the
hearings.
“I figured that anybody who was a former POW should have some compassion for
the guys who were left behind,” Mrs. Hrdlicka stated. “McCain fascinated me
because he couldn’t look me in the eye. And anybody that can’t look you in
the eye, I feel, is guilty.”
• McCain accused POW-MIA acti vists of being charlatans and crooks during
the committee hearings, insisting that they be investigated by the Justice
Department. (An investigation was held as a result, but the findings
indicate no crimes had been committed by anyone.)
• When a well-respected leader in the U.S. intelligence community who had
led the government’s efforts to account for the missing Americans indicated
after his retirement that some of the men were still alive, McCain sent a
letter to then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, requesting that the
retired general be recalled to active duty to “re-examine” the issue.
BOW TO THE CHIEF
Here is how Arizona newswoman Amy Silverman recently described the part
played by McCain in supporting the Clinton administration on the
normalization of relations with Vietnam:
In a meeting at the Oval Office on May 23, 1995, McCain told President
Clinton: “It doesn’t matter to me anymore, Mr. President, who was for the
war and who was against the war. I’m tired of looking back in anger. What’s
important is that we move forward now.”
Salter [McCain’s Senate chief of staff] calls McCain the catalyst for
normalization. Salter said McCain told Clinton: “I will stand with you as
you do it. I will do whatever you want me to do.”
When Clinton hesitated, Salter says, McCain told him: “This is really about
100 people,” referring to the POW/MIA activists. “That’s all it is. Most
veterans are going to have no problems with it.”
But Clinton, for reasons we all understand . . . was incredibly apprehensive
about it. We had a hard time. We told him: “Mr. President, Lafayette Park is
not going to fill with fatigue-wearing angry veterans. Nobody’s going to
protest this . . . There’s some suspicion that you won’t do the hard things,
Mr. President. And people will look at it and say, ‘Here’s an instance where
Clinton took a political risk.’ And you’re going to get praised for this.”
It was a one day story. He was praised for it, and there was absolutely no
outcry in the veterans community at all.
Mark Salter exaggerates. No, there was no deafening outcry, but the POW/MIA
activists—who certainly number more than 100—were furious . . . particularly
when McCain stood on the dais for a photo opportunity with Clinton, then
embraced him.
‘CARDBOARD CUTOUT’
“So many people view John as being a cardboard cutout for whatever reasons
to accomplish or to facilitate the Clinton administration’s agenda on
normalization,” said Ann Mills Griffiths, head of the National League of
Families of POWs and MIAs.
Actually, normalization of relations with Vietnam destroyed forever the only
real “arm-twister” that the U.S. government had to force Hanoi to account
for the missing POWs and MIAs.
The SPOTLIGHT has learned that White House National Security Advisor Sandy
Berger is hiding a report on Hanoi’s “assistance” on the POW-MIA resolution
process. The reasons, naturally, are clearly obvious.
EMBRACES INTERROGATOR
McCain shocked many when he embraced Col. Bui Tin, a former Vietnamese
political emissary who defected to the United States and who claims to have
“interrogated” McCain in the Hanoi prison camps.
In an Oct. 10, 1985, letter to Weinberger, McCain was critical of a
statement made by retired Lt. Gen. Eugene F. Tighe, who was director of the
De fense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which was charged with investigating the
POW-MIA issue.
Tighe said that in his opinion, about 50 Americans were being held captive
against their will in Southeast Asia.
“These statements cause me deep concern,” McCain wrote.
McCain told Weinberger that “over the years there have been several
allegations of live sightings of Americans,” referring to the basis for
Tighe’s conclusion.
McCain knew very well, as did, of course, Weinberger, that those “several
allegations of live sightings” actually numbered in the hundreds since the
Vietnam War.
Weinberger, to his credit, dismissed Mc Cain’s request, realizing that his
boss, President Reagan, was a believer in the subject of live, unaccounted
for POWs and MIAs.
There is an unwritten code among former POWs about talking about each other,
as far as their days of incarceration are concerned.
When asked by Silverman about McCain, former POW Laird Gutterson said: “I
wouldn’t care to go on the record or off the record on John McCain. We have
a sort of unwritten rule that we don’t talk about each other and what we did
while we were there. I won’t vote for him, and that’s about the size of it.”
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