Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

The Pakistani government is examining records of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International in its investigation into the role Pakistani scientists may have played in selling nuclear knowhow to Iran, North Korea and Libya.


According to bankers, some of whom worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try to uncover payments made to scientists connected with Pakistan's nuclear programme.

BCCI's role in financing Pakistan's own nuclear efforts has long been the subject of scrutiny. In 1992, a report into BCCI from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, said "there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme". Though it said the issue deserved further investigation, there was little public follow-through.

This year, however, as evidence has mounted that Pakistani scientists helped the uranium enrichment programmes of Iran, North Korea and Libya, the Pakistani government has launched an investigation. A government spokesman in Islamabad said that anybody found to have passed on secrets would be punished, but denied that the government approved any transfers.

contd:

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281357120

(note -- knowing the FT, this story will go 'pay-per-view' in about 24 hours, so save it to disk if you want to keep it for reference)

[GCP]

1. You mean the BCCI linked with GWH Bush, Carlyle and Bin Laden?

Gosh, I'm so surprised.

James Bath, an old buddy of Dubas, served together in the National Guard (when Dubya was not A.W.O.L.) was one of his earliest financial backers in his series of failed oil companies. Bath was bin Laden’s representative in Houston and he managed millions of the Saudi Arabian banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, who was one of the biggest stockholders in Bank of Credit & Commerce International. BCCI provided banking services to the Medellin drug cartel, Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden,etc. and used oil money to influence American politicians.

http://www.confrontthefacts.com/page8.htm

After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush?s son, George Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13876/index.php

Google on ghw bush and bcci

[blm]

2. THANKYOU. Expect BushInc to go after Kerry BIGTIME now.

They thought they had muted him with all the hoopla around Dean.

They failed. They will pull something else, no doubt.

I'm going to repost this at GD2004. Maybe some people will start to realize that working AGAINST Kerry is working FOR Bush.

[bobthedrummer]

3. Although originally a Pakistan product, any look at the convoluted

history of BCCI leads to the Saudis and OBL.
Here is a long documented BCCI article from the era of Reagan/Bush/Thatcher for example showing how money was diverted for terrorism.
http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.htm

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

4. ... and yet another Blair promise unkept

He pledged to release the National Audit Office report of the Al-Yamamah if elected, but guess what ...!

(& any money the Powell's (Charles - Maggies private secretary & Jonathan - Blair's Chief of Staff) have probably had a hand in its suppression.)

There's a very dark story to be told about the eighties, but I fear it'll have to wait until everyone involved in the Western establishment is long gone.

[blm]

5. Shame on Americans who don't GET the import of this.

I am embarrassed by the utther lack of interest and knowledge displayed by Democrats who should be up in arms over this.

[htuttle]

6. This is why we were correct when we invaded Pakistan!

See! They support terrorists, possess WMD's and even sell them on the open market. We had to invade them to prevent nuclear weapons from getting into Al Queda's hands, whom Pakistan's intelligence agencies have direct ties to. They are also known to have sold nuclear technology to North Korea in exchange for long range missles.

They also were involved in 9/11, and were known to have sent $100,000 to Mohammed Atta! Finally, they are run by a brutal dictator who deposed a democratically elected leader. So we were right in invading Pakistan.

Oh. Wait. We invaded Iraq, not Pakistan.

Nevermind.

[blm]

8. Exactly.

This is VERY big stuff and noone is noticing.

[SpiralHawk]

10. Well, you know it is Super Bowl weekend

And then next week there is likely to be some "tantilizing leaks" in the Martha Stewart trial.

So there really isn't any time for the media to pay attention to this.

The media is On Its Collective Knees

BrownNosing BigTime.

For shame.

[blm]

11. I hear ya.

(shaking head)

[Aries]

7. Thomas Kean, Khalid bin Mahfouz, and BCCI...

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd01312003.html

...Kissinger's replacement, retired New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was a "safe pair of hands," we were assured by the professional assurers in the mainstream media. The fact that he'd been out of public life for years--and that he hadn't collaborated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Cambodians, Chileans and East Timorese--certainly made him less controversial than his predecessor, although to be fair, Kissinger's expertise in mass murder surely would have given the panel some unique insights into the terrorist atrocity.

But now it seems that Kean might possess some unique insights of his own. Fortune Magazine reports this week that both Kean and Bush share an unusually well-placed business partner: one Khalid bin Mahfouz -- perhaps better known as "Osama bin Laden's bagman" or even "Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law."

Kean, like so many worthies, followed the revolving door out of public service into lucrative sweetheart deals and well-wadded sinecures on corporate boards. One of these, of course, is an oil company--pretty much a requirement for White House work these days. (Or as the sign says on the Oval Office door: "If your rigs ain't rockin', don't come a-knockin'!") Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, an oil giant married up to Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil in a venture to pump black gold in Azerbaijan. (The partnership is incorporated in a secretive offshore "tax haven," natch. You can't expect a worthy like Kean to pay taxes like some grubby wage slave.)

One of Delta's biggest backers is the aforesaid Mahfouz, a Saudi wheeler-dealer who has bankrolled some of most dubious players on the world scene: Abu Nidal, Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Mahfouz was also a front for the bin Laden family, funneling their vast wealth through American cut-outs in a bid to gain power and influence in the United States.

One of those cut-outs was Mahfouz factotum James Bath, a partner in George W.'s early oil venture, Arbusto. Bath has admitted serving as a pass-through for secret Saudi money. Years later, when Bush's maladroit business skills were about to sink another of his companies, Harken Energy, the firm was saved by a $25 million investment from a Swiss bank--a subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BBCI), partly owned by the beneficent Mahfouz.

What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then....

[Fovea]

9. I would personally like to thank Kevin Phillips

for reminding us of the multi-generational nature of this crime against the American People. And more importantly, for makeing it clear to those out in sleeperland and freeperland alike.

[blm]

12. amen

.