800 MILLION dollars stolen in Iraq, on "60 Minutes" tonight...

[Archae]

THE MOTHER OF ALL HEISTS – More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency was stolen from Iraq’s Ministry of Defense by the people coalition forces entrusted to equip the Iraqi army. Steve Kroft reports. Andy Court and Keith Sharman are the producers.

:grr:

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

[babylonsister]

2. I think this happened at the start of the occupation, when they were

throwing brickloads of money around. Might be a company called Custer Battles involved, though they never got in any kind of trouble IIRC. Unless it's another 800M; it's only money.:crazy:

[TahitiNut]

3. There's more where that came from - just charge it to the MasterTard.

:evilgrin: :puke:

[seemslikeadream]

4. ,CIA Accused Of Bank Heist

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO308A.html

The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) are accused by International Currency Review, the London-based journal, of mounting a joint ultra-secret operation to electronically remove an estimated $10 billion out of the Iraqi Central Bank hours before the start of Persian Gulf War II. The whereabouts of the money is not known.

“We believe it is in a secret CIA fund which will be used to mount further special services operations, such as tracking down Saddam Hussein,” said the Review’s publisher, Christopher Story.

Story is a former financial advisor to Lady Thatcher when she was Britain’s prime minister. In the past 10 years, he has testified before several congressional committees dealing with financial scandals.

DIA coordinates all intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is headquartered in the Pentagon.

The report is titled “The Great Robbery of the Central Bank of Iraq.” It has been sent to finance ministers of leading nations, the World Bank, the Bank of England and heads of all other major banks.

The report is bound to cause huge embarrassment to President Bush after he signed an executive order on March 23, ordering a worldwide hunt for the hidden assets of Saddam Hussein and his family.

The Review claims that using skilled hackers recruited by the DIA and key Iraqi bank officials who had been bribed to provide secret access codes to the Central Bank’s accounts for Saddam Hussein and his family, the money was transferred out of the bank in a high-tech operation.

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative agency of Congress, Saddam was estimated to have accumulated “$6.6 billion between 1997 and 2000 from illegal oil smuggling and from illicit deals connected with the United Nations oil for food program



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4025.htm

Riddle As U.S. Spy Chief Quits

July 6, 2003
**Gordon Thomas: Exclusive**

Sunday Express AMERICA'S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend.

The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt.

Redmond's departure last week was accepted "without discussion" by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.

Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a GBP 25million bounty on Saddam's head. He wants Saddam "dead or alive" and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation. The official reason given for Redmond's abrupt departure was "health reasons." But stunned colleagues in the Homeland Security department in Washington, where Redmond had his office, insist the former Associate Director of the CIA was in perfect health. His departure has led to intense speculation that he may have begun to uncover embarrassing details of how the software came into the hands of Saddam and bin Laden.

Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush's father when he was in the White House - a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad's war with Iran. The Review's publisher, Christopher Story, a former financial adviser to Lady Thatcher, said: "The documents are extremely sensitive and raise some very serious questions."
more


http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/268817.shtml

Proof of Trillions in Bu$h Family Business With Saddam 1989-1991
author: Gordon Thomas
The Bush family were doing business with Saddam Hussein from 1989 up to months before the outbreak of the first Gulf War.

In a document obtained by the respected London-based International Currency Review, it was claimed that after a year long investigation, it had uncovered evidence “of the mobilisation of trillions of dollars in 1989-91”. The document names a number of banks it alleges were “supervised by the Bush Sr White House” in the transactions


Business links – involving “the mobilisation of trillions of dollars” – by President Bush’s father and his brother Neil, were under investigation by America’s top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, when he resigned.

A well-placed Washington intelligence source said that Redmond quit after a White House meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

They are known as “The Enforcers” – ensuring there is no taint on the reputation of the increasingly embattled President with the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Already, said the Washington source, the two men have ensured Bush distances himself from Tony Blair’s claims that the weapons will be found.

But equally Downing Street will want to stay clear of the allegation that the President’s family were doing business with Saddam from 1989 up to months before the outbreak of the first Gulf War.

In a document obtained by the respected London-based International Currency Review, it was claimed that after a year long investigation, it had uncovered evidence “of the mobilisation of trillions of dollars in 1989-91”.

The document names a number of banks it alleges were “supervised by the Bush Sr White House” in the alleged transactions.

The banks identified in the document include the British Royal Family bankers, Coutts; Morgan Guaranty Trust and Chase Manhattan, New York; Banco Exterior de Espana, Spain; First International Bank of Denver in the United States.

“What will cause astonishment is the provenance of some of these compromising documents. For many months we considered carefully whether they could be forgeries, and whether it could be credible that an intelligence organisation or a private gang of blackmailers and counterfeiters could replicate the precise behaviour of an obsolescent IBM computer to produce output identical to those images shown with this analysis. We checked these possibilities repeatedly with experts and also consulted banking sources to see whether these documents could possibly be fraudulent. The outcome of these investigations was unequivocally that the documentation is genuine.”






http://www.gordonthomas.ie/mindfield.htm



The CIA and Its Secret Experiments

with MKULTRA & Germ Warfare.

America’s Great State Secret

by

Gordon Thomas

(Author of Seeds of Fire: China And The Story Behind The Attack On America)

MINDFIELD

· Sensational never-seen-before documents from inside the White House, CIA and other agencies.

· Reveals the documentary evidence that links US Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the cover-up of the death of top CIA scientist, Frank Olson.



· Explains how the CIA financed a ruthless and systematic assault of the human psyche – using a British-born psychiatrist to spearhead the assault.

· Names other world renowned physicians who were involved in the most sinister research programme ever created by any United States government – and its secret partner – the British government.

· Reveals how a woman was programmed to become a CIA assassin.

· Describes how a CIA chemist was murdered by his own colleagues after he had turned to the one man he thought he could trust – a London psychiatrist engaged in similar work.

· Reveals how “expendables” – the CIA generic name for those selected for killing – were secretly murdered after they had been experimented on in Europe.

· Describes how the CIA used prostitutes and mental patients in other experiments.

· Explains how the CIA deliberately pioneered the drug culture whose effects are still with us.

· Reveals how the CIA agent selected to monitor the experiments eventually died at the hands of a physician steeped in the methods perfected by the CIA.

· Identifies how the CIA experiments are still carried on in secret establishments in Israel and China.

· Uncovers CIA terminal experiments on Vietcong prisoners in Vietnam.

· Publishes the CIA Manual of Assassination – a shocking document describing how to commit state-approved murder.

“Meticulously researched, Mindfield is a deeply disturbing story of hideous government experiments using drugs and behavioural modification. Teaching hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic were used. Many of the doctors who performed those experiments remain in high office today and still conduct those experiments with impunity. Mindfield is a terrifying warning how easy it is for elected governments to sanction secret experiments to control human behaviour. Gordon Thomas has meticulously taken us from incredulity to awareness of the Machiavellian lengths our governments go to in our unsuspecting name. This remarkable book is essential reading for all those in a trusted role to care for people. In every sense it is an outstanding text that reveals the darker side of medicine.”

Professor Anne White
M.C.S.P. Bsc M.D. F.R.C.P.A.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
McMaster University, Canada



http://www.udel.edu/global/agenda/2003/gallery.html

Spies, Lies & Sneaky Guys: Espionage and Intelligence"

Paul Redmond is an internationally recognized authority on security, counterespionage, and counterintelligence, with hands-on experience throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Former Soviet Union.

Mr. Redmond is a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a Consultant to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Crime and Loss Prevention Institute, Northeastern University College of Criminal Justice.

During his thirty-year tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Redmond managed the CIA’s extensive counterintelligence organization, and counseled three succeeding Directors of Central Intelligence on highly sensitive counterintelligence matters, including technical and personnel security concerns. He established and built productive working relationships with NATO and with foreign intelligence and security chiefs worldwide. Redmond oversaw the counterintelligence aspects of personnel, computer systems and physical plants in the U.S. and abroad, and supervised the support provided by the CIA to the private sector relating to commercial counterespionage. He was instrumental in the apprehension of Aldrich Ames.
http://www.sabatiergroup.com/redmond.html



Paul Redmond, who headed counterintelligence for the CIA, was appointed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after meeting UD students in the Global Agenda series.

[EVDebs]

19. Maybe the DoD will find their missing $2.3 TRILLION

The War On Waste
Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

[soothsayer]

22. Amen! we need this money back. Rummy announced this on 9/10/01, didn't he?

[EVDebs]

23. Oh, you can be sure they've lost even more by now ROFLMAO ! nt

[Double T]

5. That brings the Grand Total of 'Missing' and 'Stolen' USA funds........

to at least $9,800,000,000.00, give or take a billion. That certainly falls under impeachable offenses, doesn't it? The people responsible for this miscarriage of justice and sanity are still walking around free?

[EVDebs]

24. If Democrats had connections to the pope, we'd declare a national Year of Jubilee nt

[bunnies]

6. yep. wicked fucking good idea to ship over pallets of cash.

:sarcasm: :banghead:

[newyawker99]

21. Hi bunnies!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[cassiepriam]

7. A mere drop in the bucket for the biggest heist in history.

The real $$ is going to be in the trillions
and our grandchildren will be still be paying.

[in_cog_ni_to]

8. *YAWN*

says Congress.:boring:

Ho Hum...just another crime. What's the big deal? *YAWN* :boring: It's just 800 Million dollars...NO BIGGIE. *YAWN* :boring:

800 Million wouldn't have helped Katrina victims, or saved Social Security or helped to make health care affordable or helped rebuild our schools or feed the hungry...Ho hum. *YAWN* *SNORE*

:boring:

I can't wait to watch how the WH Corporate MSM talking head propagandists whitewash this one.

[enid602]

9. OOOOHH

I hope they talk about the 'cash packs;' packs of $100 that were shrink-wrapped for easy distribution without any kind of receipt. Or the Iraqi contractor who was paid $50M for a bridge whose construction was never completed. Sure, we've known about all this and more for years now, but it would be great to see it on national TV. Until it's on TV, it never really happened, as far as the public is concerned.

[MichiganVote]

10. Shit that's nothing. Where's the 8 billion that went missing a couple of years ago?

[Vincardog]

14. I believe that if you check the "Missing" funds bear an uncanny resemblance to the funds

required to buy The Russian oil industry

[MichiganVote]

18. I believe it.

[WinkyDink]

11. I'd bet my life a LOT is in Cheney's hidden bank accounts.

[Rex]

12. Yup, what did we go into Iraq for again?

Oh yeah, so the BFEE can steal the treasury blind. Duh.

[CatWoman]

13. KICK

Coming on now.....

:kick:

[karlrschneider]

15. Poor Diogenes is spinning in his crypt.

:puke:

[SpiralHawk]

16. "Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL & Cabal of republicon oil Cronies

[Olney Blue]

17. But who's listening and what will be done about it?

Get our troops out of there NOW.

[KoKo]

20. Was part of this what they "paid" to the Heritage Foundation Kids who went to Iraq

to set up a "Stock Market?" The book "life in the Emerald City?" Where MSNBC's Kate O'Beirn got the kids together for her Bush Administration Official hubby and sent them off to cushy jobs?


Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (Hardcover)
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Author)

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist, and his intimate perspective permeates this history of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquartered in the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former palace. He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational administration selected primarily for its loyalty to the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it, "everything blew up in our faces." Chandrasekaran unstintingly depicts the stubborn cluelessness of many Americans in the Green Zone—like the army general who says children terrified by nighttime helicopters should appreciate "the sound of freedom." But he sympathetically portrays others trying their best to cut through the red tape and institute genuine reforms. He also has a sharp eye for details, from casual sex in abandoned offices to stray cats adopted by staffers, which enable both advocates and critics of the occupation to understand the emotional toll of its circuslike atmosphere. Thanks to these personal touches, the account of the CPA's failures never feels heavy-handed. (Sept. 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
This revealing account of the postwar administration of Iraq, by a former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, focusses on life in the Green Zone, the American enclave in central Baghdad. There the Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every meal—a cultural misstep typical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only did many of them have no previous exposure to the Middle East; more than half had never before applied for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an anti-smoking campaign. Chandrasekaran's portrait of blinkered idealism is evenhanded, chronicling the disillusionment of conservatives who were sent to a war zone without the resources to achieve lasting change.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker