SPOTLIGHT EMAIL NEWSLETTER #26 Bank Scam Branches Across Atlantic Forty billion dollars stolen from U.S. taxpayers are only the "tip of the iceberg." EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT By Gregory Douglas What international law enforcement agencies now call the biggest criminal money laundering scandal in history has its roots in official Washington idealism and Russian criminal greed. While none of American idealism ever penetrated into the former Soviet Union, high level of Russian criminal greed quickly found its way inside the Washington Beltway, where it was embraced at the highest levels. What American investigative officials term the tip of the iceberg of theft, graft and corruption, appears in the investigations into the activities of the once-reputable old Bank of New York. In spite very high level attempts on the part of the Clinton administration to suppress it, the entire iceberg is slowly surfacing. Initial reports of "possibly $2 million" in laundering money has grown to "at least $40 billion" according to Swiss and American investigators, many of whom have revealed inside details on condition of strict confidentiality. Much of the documentary information about this wholesale theft has come from Swiss banking sources and has been made available to members of the American media. Almost none of it has been used Critics contend the thrust of the media is to downplay the identities of the players in the massive criminal operation in the Russian Republic and in the United States. The bulk of the billions involved are American taxpayer dollars, most of which were aggressively sought by the Clinton administration, pushed through a Congress kept ignorant of the insolvency of Russian and distributed to eager hands in Russia by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. This money, ostensibly, intended to assist a new, free Russia, was intended for the benefit of the Russian economy in general and the people of Russia in specific. What happened in fact was that a pervasive group of Russians, with ties to Swiss banks and Israeli intelligence organs managed to use the money to gain control of major blocks of former Soviet business concerns. Instead of using the money to rebuild the shattered socialist economy, this clique of young businessmen proceeded to sell off the assets they acquired and ship the money out of the country as quickly as possible. Although initial American hopes for a rebuilding of a free Russian economy were quickly dashed, the flood of looted money flowing into the United States through Western banks was not unwelcome in administration circles. The official posture was that great success anticipated for the prospect of a new Russian free market just around a mythical, and ever distant, corner. Critics contend members of the Clinton administration quickly became aware of the immense flood of stolen money being laundered into the United States. Efforts to pump more money into Russia are, as of this writing, still being frantically endorsed by Treasury and State Department officials in spite of an extensive number of highly negative reports from American, British and Swiss government agencies and financial institutions. A significant amount of stolen money entering American banks has found its way into the pockets of top U.S. officials. Vice President Al Gore has been one of the most powerful advocates of the Russian bail-out programs. Gore has gone to great lengths to ignore and suppress any public criticism of its dismal failure. Critics say the vice president cannot copy Clinton's eager solicitation of Red Chinese intelligence agency money, so he has turned instead to his friends in the New Russian criminal oligarchies. The present criminal scandal also has three major points to its composition. The first point in this triangle of immense theft and corruption is in Moscow, the second in Washington and the third in Tel Aviv. The Swiss have become increasingly angry at the American Jewish community for its savage extraction of money from the country. The Swiss are, quite simply, engaging in "payback" by investigating the criminal activities of Russian and Israeli financial entities in their country. The Russians are outraged that money intended to rebuild their shattered economy is being looted by what they call "internationalist" thieves. Leaks from American sources stem from a growing disgust on the part of honest U.S. law enforcement agencies at the growing, criminal activities of those who now control the government of both republics. Study Finds Local Cops Are Armed, Prepared for War Police sporting combat boots, full-body armor, "ninja"-style hoods, grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons? No, this is not war-torn Yugoslavia, or drug-infested Colombia. It's the United States. And as one researcher put it: "It's the militarization of Mayberry." EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT By Christopher J. Petherick A 911 police dispatcher at the sheriff's office in Jasper, Fla., with a population of 3,000, gets a call about a possible drug-related shooting. Not wanting to take any chances, four of the town's seven officers from the City Police Department arrive on the scene with fully-automatic M-16s provided by the federal government to investigate. Sound like the delusions of some paranoid nut? Not according to a new report by Diane Cecilia Weber for the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, called Warrior Cops, The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments. "Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement," Weber said. Evidenced by recent events such as the siege at Waco, where participation by federal law enforcement with the assistance of U.S. military and National Guard resulted in the death 76 Americans, police across the country are slowly being transformed from your friendly, neighborhood peace officers into a well-trained soldiers, the report concludes. But it's not just the equipment that is changing police says Weber. It's their whole manner of thinking that is shifting. Special police units now regularly train with U.S. Special Forces such as Navy Seals and Army Rangers. The problem with this is that police are now trained in a military mentality. Police traditionally have been taught to de-escalate situations, using minimum force to deliver a suspect to a court of law. Now, special tactics units are instructed as a soldier during boot camp, "to use maximum damage on enemy personnel." Weber writes: State and local police departments are increasingly accepting the military as a model for their behavior and outlook. The sharing of training and technology is producing a shared mind set. The problem is that the mind set of the soldier is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an "enemy" but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and unintended consequences-such as unnecessary shootings and killings. And your little town is not immune. Weber cites a 1997 study of SWAT teams by Peter Kraska and Victor Kappeler out of Eastern Kentucky University. According to their report, nearly 90 percent of police departments in towns with populations over 50,000 maintain special weapons and tactics units (SWAT). Seventy percent of law enforcement units in town under 50,000 also have them. Surveys circulated among law enforcement officials by Kraska and Kappeler reveal a frightening trend. Since police forces keep SWAT teams on staff, "mission creep" or the urge to use special tactical weapons units in regular policing is on the rise. Kraska and Kappeler asked police officials if they use SWAT to patrol communities. One-hundred-seven responded that they do. Sixty-one percent thought it was a good idea. And 63 percent responded that SWAT teams "play an important role in community policing strategies." One official responded to the survey stating: We're into saturation patrols in hot spots. We do a lot of our work with the SWAT unit because we have bigger guns. We send out two, two-to-four-men cars, we look for minor violations and do jump-outs, either on people on the street or in automobiles. After we jump-out the second car provides periphery cover with an ostentatious display of weaponry. We're sending a message: If the shootings don't stop, we'll shoot someone. PARAMILITARY POLICE Between 1995 and 1997, the Department of Defense gave 1.2 million pieces of military equipment to police across the country, including 73 grenade launchers, M-16 rifles and 112 armored personnel carriers, writes Weber. The marriage of the Justice Department and the Defense Department has brought more sophisticated equipment in to the hands of the modern police officer. New items include: armored personnel carriers, automatic weapons with laser sights; laser surveillance equipment; a gas-launched, wireless, electric stun projectile; pyrotechnic devices such as flash bang and smoke grenades; and kevlar body armor. The most alarming element to the issue of militarizing the police is that this has all been occurring with the support of Congress. The Founding Fathers, having suffered under the tyranny of their former British rulers, sought to avoid a military-police state. In drafting the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they wanted civilians to be "separate and superior" to the military. It was the landmark Posse Comitatus bill, signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, that kept the military out of American affairs. The legislation reads: "Whoever, except in cases under such circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or by Act if Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army as posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined no more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." But the U.S. war on drugs effectively changed all this, says Weber. In 1981, Congress introduced a series of bills-HR. 1806, H.R. 2532 and H.R. 3470 and S. 441-advancing military cooperation with law enforcement. The act urged local, state and federal police to take advantage of military equipment, facilities, training and expertise. It also encouraged the military to take an active role in helping law enforcement keep drugs from entering the country. As the drug war grew, Weber writes, Congress and the White House joined in invalidating Posse Comitatus. The Reagan administration in 1986 jumped into the fray, declaring drugs "an official threat to national security." In 1988, Congress directed the National Guard to help police in fighting drugs, using helicopter surveillance to search for marijuana fields. President Bush in 1989 created six regional joint task forces within the military to coordinate between the military and police units in the drug war. And in 1996, President Clinton appointed Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey to head up the U.S. drug war as director of Office of National Drug Policy. A few police forces have disbanded their SWAT units, in response to accidental shootings. The police department in Dinuba, Calif., a town of 15,000, dissolved its special weapons unit after an innocent man was killed and the small town was forced to pay $12.5 million in a police brutality suit. Albuquerque, N.M., also closed down its SWAT team and fired the police chief after an independent study showed the rate of killings by SWAT teams in the city was excessively high. Others have turned down requests to form elite units. "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted, " said former New Have, Conn., police chief Nick Pastore. "I turned it all down because it feeds the mentality that you're not a police officer serving a community, you're a soldier at war." Spotlight Dodges a Bullet The Constitution is alive and well in New Mexico. EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT By SPOTLIGHT STAFF The First Amendment won an important victory in Deming, N.M., recently when library officials decided to keep a newspaper in circulation in spite of a complaint by a local man. The newspaper is The SPOTLIGHT. The local man, Marty Holtzman, claimed the newspaper as "a soft-core anti-Semitic publication" and described it as "Holocaust denial." The Marshall Memorial Library board of trustees said removing The SPOTLIGHT would set a precedent form removing other material some considered objectionable. "The library is a learning center," trustee Kathleen Cook "I may be totally against something but removing it would be censorship." The Marshall Memorial Library is a member of the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA's Bill of Rights states: In no case should any book be excluded because of the race or nationality or the political or religious views of the writer. . . . there should be the fullest practicable provision of material presenting all points of view concerning the problems and issues of our times. When reporters in New Mexico contacted The SPOTLIGHT, Editor Andrew Arnold, asked them exactly what was supposed to be anti-Semitic. They could not answer. The newspaper has never denied the Holocaust. When Holtzman contacted Library Director Margaret Becker, she asked him to fill out a form stating why he objects to the newspaper. He refused. "Why should I fill out a form when it's about Holocaust denial?" Holtzman said in The Las Cruces Sun-News . A spokesman for the New Mexico region of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) told The Deming Headlight that The SPOTLIGHT shouldn't be displayed with other newspapers. Arnold asked a Headlight writer what the ADL found objectionable. "They didn't say," she answered. "We're not against Jewish people in any shape or form," Arnold said. "Our publisher, Liberty Lobby, is against foreign aid, because Israel receives most of the U.S. foreign aid, some articles could possibly be interpreted as anti-Israel. I would call it pro-American." Ms. Becker told the trustees, prior to Holtzman, no one had ever protested The SPOTLIGHT. "We have people who wait for it to come out," she added. Arnold had some advice for Holtzman, "If he finds it offensive, he doesn't have to read it." **************************************************************************** Subscribe to THE SPOTLIGHT! Only $59.00 for 1 year or $99.00 for 2 years. Every week, get the important stories that the popular media either miss... or ignore. For around $1.00 per issue, THE SPOTLIGHT is a steal! Don't wait any longer. Make sure that you never miss another issue. Subscribe now! To subscribe online, visit our SECURE server at www.spotlight.org. You can also mail your subscription to THE SPOTLIGHT, 300 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003. OR CALL 1-800-522-6292 **************************************************************************** If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter, send an email to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) and type in the body of the email "unsubscribe spotlist" (also without the quotes).
