-Caveat Lector-
Bill Kingsbury wrote:
>THE OCTOPUS - THE TENTACLES OF CORRUPTION
>
>http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3691e2526c13.htm
++++++++++++++++
Thanks for this post, Bill. Here's one of my favorite articles about
Jackson Stephens, gleaned from the site:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3681913c21d4.htm
Jackson Stephens: The man and the myth.
Among the many distinctions afforded Arkansas billionaire tycoon Jackson
Stephens is the fact that his firm, Stephens Inc. marshaled the WTI hazardoi
as waste incinerator's march from conception to birth. In our opinion, it
was the power of his financial empire that moved a poorly designed
monstrosity on the Ohio River from the truly dumb idea that it was (and is)
to its current manifestation as an ugly and dangerous reality.
In an attempt to understand why the U.S. government, particularly U.S. EPA
Region 5, committed so many illegalities and allowed this incinerator to be
built, it helps to understand that Jackson Stephens always gets what he
wants. In fact, no matter what you think about him, it is hard to deny that
he seems to be everywhere, with his hands on everything.
Stephens is the chairman of Stephens Inc., the nation's largest investment
bank off Wall Street. Its home office is located in little ol' Little Rock,
Arkansas. He and his brother, Witt, built the Stephens Inc. empire out of a
bible, belt buckle and bond business. In 1994, Stephens Inc. was listed as
one of the biggest institutional shareholders in 30 large multinationals
including the Arkansas based firms Tyson Food (# 10), Wal-Mart (# 113) and
Alltel (# 12). Interestingly, it was Stephens who staked Sam Walton when he
started Wal-Mart in 1970, and financed Tyson's takeover of Holly Farms in
1988. (Stephens, Tyson and Walton (1917-1992), all billionaires from
Arkansas.) Stephens sold a 275 phone exchange to Alltel when they broke into
the phone market, and guaranteed in 1990 that Alltel would get Systematics
by refusing to sell his 10% stake in Systematics to anyone but Alltel. In
many ways Arkansas is the house that Jack built. Unfortunately, for the
folks in East Liverpool, Ohio, and the Tri-State area (WV, PA, OH) who were
saddled with Von Roll's hazardous waste incinerator, Arkansas was never big
enough for Stephens.
Stephens Inc. and WTI.
According to the Ohio Attorney General's report on WTI in 1993: "It was
'Waste Technologies, Incorporated' in the late seventies, a group of
companies owned by Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas that became
interested in the possibility of developing industrial waste incinerators
which could be used to generate power. One of the Stephens companies
commissioned Battelle Memorial Institute to do a survey of industrial waste
generation patterns in the United States. The Battelle study was finalized
in 1978. After the study was complete, the Stephens-owned company (known
then as Waste Technologies, Incorporated) hired Don Brown, who had worked on
the study during his employment at Battelle. Don Brown helped make the
decision that the eastern Ohio area was a feasible site for such an
incinerator, based on the nationwide waste generation patterns study. Brown
was from East Liverpool and had contacts to local officials there. In late
1979 or early 1980, Don Brown approached the Mayor of East Liverpool, John
Payne [his former college room-mate, ed.], about the idea of locating a
waste-to-energy incinerator in the area. Mayor Payne referred Brown to the
Columbiana County Port Authority ..." upon whose land the incinerator would
later be built. So with the financial backing of Jackson Stephens and his
company, the WTI incinerator was launched in traditional business fashion:
wheeling, dealing and brazen political fixing.
Some of the Skeletons in Jack's Closet.
Jack Stephens has a unique flair for wheeling and dealin". After all, you
don't get to be one of the wealthiest people in the nation without being
good at it. Of course it also pays to be in the right place at the right
time. In 1946 he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with Jimmy Carter.
Adams & Frantz go so far as to claim that Carter and Stephens were roommates
at the Naval Academy (A Full Service Bank, 1992). 30 years later, President
Carter's friend Bert Lance, the man Carter had picked to run the Office of
Management and Budget, was in trouble. Lance's dealings with the National
Bank of Georgia (NOB) were being questioned on Capitol Hill because of
allegations that he had received favorable loan treatment from the bank as
an insider. In August 1977, Stephens arrived on the scene and introduced
Indonesian business tycoon Mochtar Riady* to Bert Lance. At the time, Riady
was set to buy Lance's 200,000 plus shares of National Bank of Georgia stock
(Associated Press, August 20, 1977).
That evidently didn't happen though. Instead, Stephens and Riady bought a
bank in Hong Kong. Later Stephens would invite Riady to invest in a Little
Rock, Arkansas bank called Worthen as well. In the meantime, Stephens found
a new buyer for Lance's NGB stock. In December, 1977, Stephens introduced
Lance to Agha Hasan Abedi (the founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International -BCCI). According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, they discussed the possibility that Abedi purchase the stock of
Financial General Bankshares (later called First American Bankshares) held
by Lance, Stephens and others and concocted a plan to take over Lance's
stock of the National Bank of Georgia U.S. SEC v Lance et. al.). The SEC
found out about the plan and sought a restraining order to prevent a foreign
bank from taking over a U.S. bank. Years later it would be revealed that
Abedi and accomplise Gaith Pharoan went right ahead anyway succeeding with
the takeover in 1982 (Corporate Crime Reporter, July 22, 1991). Abedi used
frontman Gaith Pharoan to act as his intermediary, taking over Lance's stake
in the National Bank of Georgia for BCCI. In 1990, BCCI was convicted of
money laundering for the Columbian Cocaine Cartels in Miami. In 1991, BCCI
collapsed and millions of investors in 73 countries lost their life savings.
(A Full Service Bank, Adams & Frantz, 1992). According to the Wall Street
Journal, "BCCI represents the biggest bank robbery in history... (January
18, 1994)." And that BCCI was a "$10 billion or so" heist. (Wall Street
Journal, October 28, 1994.)
On February 7, 1992, New York Post reporter, Mike McAlary reported that
Jackson Stephens "brokered the 1970s deals in which BCCI officials secretly
acquired I control of two American banks... The banks -First American
Bankshares and the National Bank of Georgia were used as a financial
clearinghouse by a collection of [the] world's most dastardly crooks, drug
dealers, dict~ ators and spies....and yet Stephens' ties to principals in
the scandal continue to this day....Lance and Stephens are reported to have
made a fortune as a result of their involvement with BCCI."
Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, County af New York, stated on July
29, 1991 that "BCCI was operated as a corrupt, criminal organization,
throughaut its entire nineteen-year history. It systematically falsified its
records. It knowingly allowed itself to be u sed to launder illegal income
of drug sellers and other criminals and it paid bribes and kickbacks to
other public officials (Evil Money, Encounters Along the Money Trail, Rachel
Ehrenfeld, 1992)."
In October, 1992, the Senate Foreign Relations released an 800-page report
on the BCCI collapse. They argued that BCCI activities represented an
"international financial crime on a massive and global scale," and that the
bank "systematically bribed world leaders and political figures throughout
the world."
In his own defense, Stephens wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "neither
I nor anyone at Stephens played any role in bringing BCCI to America nor did
we play bny role in persuading them to buy shares in Financial General. BCCI
representatives were introduced to me as representing a third party client.
We opened a brokerage account on behalf of these individuals. We were paid
normal brokerage fees for our services. Our contact was brief and ordinary
course (Wall Street Journal, November 18, 1992)."
In response to the concerns over Jackson Stephens' involvement in BCCI, the
Ohio Attorney General noted in his 1993 report on WTI's ownership:
"Stephens' name has been linked to securities violations that allegedly
occurred when the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), a
foreign bank dominated by Pakistani financier Agha Hasan Abedi, acquired
stock and control over the Washington-based First American Bank [sic. This
is an error by the Ohio Attorney General. The bank, as noted, was actually
called Financial General Bankshares.] Because Stephens no longer owns a part
interest in WTI, his alleged involvement in the BCCI affair is not relevant
to the reliability of the current owner" (page 37, footnote 4). But the
Attorney General's investigation didn't look into the financing of Von
Roll's incinera�or by the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which was
connected to BCCI through joint ownership of Luxembourg based Banque de
Credit et de Placement (Reuters, July 8, 1991; Financial Times, July 9,
1991).
Writing about Von Roll's current owner, the United Bank of Switzerland, and
its relationship with BCCI, James Ring Adams notes, "You can spin threads
from that web for as long as you like (American Spectator, October, 1992)."
Spin threads, indeed! Documents filed in Florida by the Government of Panama
indicate that General Manuel Noriega used BCCI during the 1980's to funnel
money to UBS that he had apparently stolen from the Panamanian military (The
Independent, U.K., August 14, 1991). By 1987, Noriega had become a thorn in
the side of the U.S. administration and anyone (except Jessie Jackson) who
could help get rid of Noriega was apparently just fine.
Once again, there was Jack Stephens. Gabriel Lev' is, a Panamanian
entrepreneur, and formerly Panama's ambassador to Washington, had Jackson
Stephens as his banker. Joel McCleary was an American political consultant
who had been the youngest treasurer of the Democratic National Party.
McCleary was a protege of Hamilton Jordon, and a deputy assistant for pa
litical affairs to Jimmy Carter. McCleary went to Panama in 1983, when
Jordan's friend Gabriel Lewis sowgl ht help in running the ruling party's
presidential campaign. In the mid-1980s both Lewis and McCleary fell out of
favor with Noriega, and both wanted Noriega ousted. When Lewis, in Panama,
felt that his life was under threat by Noriega he called his "banker,
Jackson T. Stephens, in Little Rock, Arkansas, who was desperate to get his
friend and client to safety...Stephens phoned his former classmate at the
Naval Academy, chairman of thq ~ Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William
Crowe. Stephens asked Crowe to help get Lewis out of the jam. Crow e phoned
the Southern Command, and within minutes General Woerner sent over a
black-paneled truck with some plainclothes bodyguards to protect Lewis and
help him escape Panama...(Divorcing the Dictator: America's bungled affair
with Noriega, Frederick Kempe, 1990)."
"In September 1987 Lewis wanted to bring McCleary back into Panamanian
affairs, this time with a brief to destroy his former employer.... Lewis had
decided he could get rid of Noriega only with the military's help. McCleary
had the contacts and knowledge he needed to pull it off. Again, Lewis's
American banker, Jack Stephens, for whom McCleary had done work in the past,
helped bring the two together..." They worked out of Washington DC. "By
spring of 1988, American foreign policy makers all agreed Noriega had to
go..." George Bush (and Elliot Abrams) wanted Noriega ousted. Noriega was
strong and he was buying intelligence from CIA agents while he was on Bush's
CIA payro 1. In August 1988 Noriega said, "I've got Bush by the balls."
According to Kempe, "the threat [was] that Noriega might reveal much of what
he knew: he had many of the administration's secrets (Overthrowing the
Dictator by Frederick Kempe)." He was finally ousted from power in 1989 when
the U.S. invaded Panama. He was convicted of narcotics trafficking in 1992
and is serving a 40 year sentence in prison near Miami.
Friends in High Places: Stephens and George Bush
As described above, Jackson Stephens was close to Jimmy Carter and several
people in his cabinet and coterie of political cronies. But Jack Stephens is
also well known for playing both sides of the fence. In 1991, Jackson
Stephens contributed $100,000 to the Republican Party for Bush's
presidential campaign, and Stephens Inc. "kicked in another $100,000."
Stephens wife was the Arkansas co-chairman of the Bush for President
campaign. (Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991.) He and his wife were
hosts to the Inaugural party for President Bush in 1989. (New York Times,
Ma, 8, 1992.) In addition, Stephens brokered the deal that allowed the Union
Bank of Switzerland (as mentioned above, a BCCI-connected bank, that also
financed and ultimately owns the WTI incinerator project) to rescue a Harken
Energy project that George Bush Jr. (son of President Bush) was involved
with in 1987. When Harken needed help, Stephens was there. A meeting in
Little Rock was set up "between Harken officials and Jackson Stephens that
produced an unusual rescue plan. Mr. Jack obtained a $25 million cash
infusion for Harken from Union Bank of Switzerland, which rarely invested in
small American companies (The American Spectator, October, 1992)."
Friends in High Places:Stephens and Bill Clinton
Jackson Stephens was a major donor to Bill Clinton's campaigns for Governor
and raised at least $100,000 for Bill Clinton's first Presidential campaign
(Seattle Times, November 6, 1993) while extending $2 million to the campaign
through Stephens and Riady's Worthen bank (The American Spectator, October,
1992). He has been the major financier of Bill Clnton's political career.
According to Peter Truell and Larry gurwin, "No group raised more money for
the nascent Clinton Presidential campaign" than the Stephens Group. "A study
released in July found that employees of Stephens Inc. gave more money to
Clinton than employees of all but two other firms in the entire country
(False Profits. The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial
Empire, by Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, 1992)." Rachel Ehrenfeld argues
that "Bill Clinton had full knowledge of Stephen's involvement with BCCI
when he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Stephens family
for his campaign (Evil Money)."
This is where things get complex. Jackson Stephens, as noted above has been
partners with an Indonesian Tycoon, Mochtar Riady*. His son, James Riady was
a co-president of Worthen Bank (Federal News Service, July 17' 1997). In
1994, Stephens' family interests owned approximately 55% of Worthen bank's
outstanding stocks (Worthen proxy, March 29, 1994). Worthern provided the
Clinton campaign with a $2 million dollar financing deal that basically
saved the Democratic National Party from a cash shortage in the early 1992
Presidential campaign (The Spectator, October 1992). The Riadys own a
company called The Lippo Group*.
According to William Safire, Lippo's ties to Jack Stephens enabled them to
receive sensitive trade secrets from out of the Clinton Administration
through Lippo employee, John Huang*, who also worked in the U.S. Department
of Commerce as a Clinton employee. The kicker was that Huang would go across
the street from his Commerce office to use a Stephens Inc. business office
as a "drop" to receive and send documents and make off the record phone
calls. "At informative Thompson committee hearings last week, we learned
that Huang, Lippo's man at Clinton Commerce, received a call on the average
of twice a week from a secretary at the Stephens drop who was instructed not
to leave her boss's name. Huang would then cross the street to pick up and
send express packages and use the Stephens phone. We know that Huang spoke
to former Lippo associates at least 237 times in his 14 months at his
sensitive trade post. 'That number troubles mej' said Senator Joseph
Lieberman. The Connecticut Democrat was further troubled to learn that 'the
237 do not include any calls C
ontact Waste Not:
Address: 82 Judson, Canton, NY 13617
Phone: 315-379-9200
Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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