The War and Peace Digest is a bimonthly international newsletter on issues of disarmament, government secrecy, media accountability, the nuclear threat (from both civilian power plants and the military weapons complex), ecological destruction, and peaceful conflict resolution through the structures of the United Nations. If you would like to be placed on our mailing list or receive a copy of our new information packet on nuclear power, contact Matthew Freedman at 32 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003-3295 (Tel: 212-777-6626).
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BNL - IRAQGATE SCANDAL
The Chicago Connection - Bush & Saddam Inc. Key documents - sought by Gonzalez - withheld
With George Bush ready to take America into another war with Iraq to destroy the nuclear, chemical, biological and missiles weapons that Bush himself helped Saddam Hussein to build, Congressmen Henry Gonzalez, the courageous Texas Democrat who heads the House Banking Committee, continues, single-handedly, to peel back layer after layer of cover-up to reveal the monumental proportions of the Iraqgate-BNL (Banca Nazionale Del Lavoro) scandal that now threatens to bring down the Bush regime. But the most explosive documents have been withheld.
Over the past several months Gonzalez has shown the Iraqgate-BNL scandal to be bigger than anyone had imagined. He has uncovered and reported incontestable evidence that Bush and his associates secretly sold nuclear, biological, chemical and missile-related weapons materials to Saddam Hussein; blocked investigations into the use of such materials by Hussein; suppressed memos warning of the dangers of such sales; deliberately falsified documents on such sales submitted to Congress and interfered illegally to halt investigations into the criminal activities of the BNL bank in secretly diverting American agricultural loans to buy the weapons for Hussein.
BNL-BCCI Chicago Branches
Gonzalez has revealed a Bush policy disaster that lead to the first Gulf War and a blunder that is now costing the Americans $2 billion to pay off the loans Bush guaranteed with U.S. taxpayersU money . Bush repeatedly ignored warnings that Iraq would default on the loans. Now, certain key documents - perhaps the most revealing yet - are being withheld from the Gonzalez investigation. They are said to be the records of the Chicago branches of BNL and BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), through which, some investigators say , George Bush and Saddam Hussein may have been involved in a joint, private enterprise to skim oil profits arising from Reagan-Bush policies toward Iraq. The documents have been impounded by a Chicago court and Congressman Gonzalez Banking Committee has been denied access.
Bush's Pennzoil Profits
Between 1980 and 1990 the Gulf region exported a trillion dollars worth of oil to the West. Hundreds of billions of dollars in kickbacks were involved. Some of the kickbacks were said to be handled by the BNL/BCCI banks for Pennzoil, an oil company founded by George Bush The Pennzoil case was (is?) the target of Ross PerotUs much-denied investigation of the Bush family and friends. Investigators believe the Chicago bank records could help explain BushUs massive, covert military support for Iraq in the years between 1981-1990.
The Chicago BNL /BCCI records could also provide clues to why the Bush Administration secretly - and possibly illegally - exempted eleven members of the Bush cabinet from conflict of interest restrictions in their handling of the Gulf war policy. Bush simply declared that the law regarding conflict of interest would cease to apply to his advisors on the Gulf war policy. He then ordered that his declaration would be not be made public. Congressman Gonzalez is now asking Bush to explain the deal. Bush has not responded.
According to some investigators, the BNL-BCCI bank documents now impounded by a Chicago judge could shed light not only on the Iraqgate case, but on other illegal transactions including Iran-Contra, October Surprise and the Inslaw case. In all instances monies passed through the BNL/BCCI banking network.
BNL is an Italian bank now under investigation by Congress for fraud in using loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance IraqUs pre-war military buildup. Over the past thirty years, BNL is suspected of involvement in a wide range of international criminal activities. (French Intelligence investigators have even linked the bank to large payments to certain individuals in Europe in late 1963, thought to be associated with the John Kennedy assassination.)
On December 28th 1990, when Gonzalez sought the records of the Chicago branch of BNL (Case number 90 C 6863 of the U.S. District Court in Chicago: People of the State of Illinois ex re; William C. Harris v. the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), Gonzalez was told by Federal Judge, Brian Duff that he could not have them. Duff, a friend of both Bush and Reagan, works closely with the Federal Reserve Bank. Duff impounded the documents and abused GonzalezU attorney for Rbehaving like an 800 -pound gorilla.S That is when Duff impounded the records.
Questions abound. Suspicions arise from the fact that among officials involved in the BNL bank is Brent Scowcroft, BushUs National Security advisor who, Gonzalez has now revealed, maintained a million-dollar financial interest in 40 of the biggest U.S. weapons companies that profited from U.S. policies toward Iraq, including General Electric, General Motors, ITT, and Lockheed. Gonzalez has also revealed that Assistant Secretary of State Laurence Eagleberger worked closely with BNL when he and Scowcroft were part of Henry KissingerUs consulting firm. Kissinger was a member of the board of BNL and his firm represents BNL in the USA.
BNL, P2 and the Vatican Bank
The BNL bank was also used for secret arms trade by the outlawed P2 Masonic Lodge of Rome, whose Grandmaster, Licio Gelli is thought to have been the mastermind behind BNLUs illegal, world-wide banking strategies, until his arrest in 1981, for embezzling $1.5 billion from the Vatican Bank. The Vatican Bank had close ties with BNL. Gelli was recently sentenced to 18 years in jail for his role in the case.
Gelli was involved with the PopeUs banker and bodyguard, Bishop Marcinkus (formerly of Chicago) in the Vatican Bank embezzlement. When the Italian government issued a warrant for the BishopUs arrest they were blocked by the Vatican, which claims separate city-state authority. (The Pope is still closely involved with Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank is still closely associated with BNL.)
Bush and Gelli are friends. Gelli was guest of honor at the 1981 Reagan-Bush inaugural ball. (N.Y. Times, June 4, 1981, page 7.) Kissinger also knew Gelli. When Gelli was arrested in March, 1981, Kissinger immediately sent an agent to Rome with $18000 to try to buy some of the documents in the P2 case to keep them from becoming public ( In These Times, Sept. 1982). It may be of interest that P2 had a lodge in Chicago.
Chicago, it is now emerging, has been the central point for vast, international, illegal transactions involving the BNL and BCCI banks and secret deals with American oil companies, military manufacturers, the CIA, and possibly U.S. politicians. (According to a London source, unreleased BCCI documents in the possession of the Bank of London list the names of at least 105 members of U.S. Congress - of both Houses and both parties - who have received money through the Chicago branch of BCCI. The U.S. Federal Reserve is said to have a copy of the same secret BCCI list).
The Octopus
Just as the P2 scandal in Italy brought down the government and destroyed hundred of careers in politics, industry and banking, so too the BNL/BCCI - Penzzoil case could bring down the Bush administration and send dozens of top administration officials to jail. Indeed the P2 and BNL cases overlap in the October Surprise case, and U.S. investigators would do well to examine the Italian government documents in the P2 case as part of their inquiry into the October Surprise/BNL/BCCI/Penzzoil/Bush/Hussein links. It is beginning to look as though the late journalist, Danny Casselaro was on the right track at the time of his highly suspicious RsuicideS last year, when he was investigating what he called RThe OctopusS, a vast, interlocking, international criminal conspiracy.
Bush's Watergate
Congress is now calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate the ballooning BNL-Iraqgate case. In his insightful and relentless reporting on the case in The New York Times, William Safire says flatly that BNL will be BushUs Watergate. Saffire is now investigating the Chicago link to the case. (Updates on the case now appear regularly on the recorded telephone hotlines of controversial Chicago investigator, Sherman Scholnick of the RCommittee to Clean Up the CourtsS, who has spearheaded his own investigation. Call: 312 - 731 1100 & 312-731 1505 for five-minute recorded updates.)
When appointed, the Special Prosecutor in the BNL/Iraqgate case should have immediate access to all the records, including the crucial documents now confiscated and impounded by the Chicago court.
When the truth of the BNL case is finally revealed, the War & Peace foundation believes we will see the extent to which politics around the world have been corrupted by the arms trade. Iraqgate will serve as further evidence of the need for international monitoring by the United Nations of all weapons traffic as a first, essential step toward complete world disarmament.
Ironically, as we go to press, joint efforts by both houses of Congress in the wake of the Iraqgate revelations to tighten restrictions on the sale of nuclear weapons-related materials to nations like Iraq, Iran and Syria, have provoked a threat of veto by George Bush, who argues that such non-proliferation legislation would mean a loss of business for American nuclear exporters!
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