Alternet Article on Kerry's Takedown of BCCI

[LibeMatt]

Why isn't this story being hammered to the press by Kerry and the rest of our side?

URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/

Blurb:

"As a senator, John Kerry was a tenacious investigator and exposed BCCI, an international criminal bank, and its murderous clients. The experience should serve him well in dealing with the international threats we face today."

First Four Paragraphs:

"One gets an eerie sense of déjà vu watching John Kerry battle the Bush clan. He’s done it once before, against the old man, President Bush’s father, though many voters have probably forgotten. That battle involved the first Bush administration’s attempt to put the lid on an investigation that connected a worldwide criminal bank to narco-traffickers, terrorists, and to Middle East money men who helped the Bush family make piles of cash. Those links connect to people now on the U.S. post-9/11 terrorist list.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kerry fought to expose an international criminal bank, BCCI — the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The bank was run by a Pakistani, working with Persian Gulf managers who operated through a network of secret offshore centers to hide their operations from the world’s bank examiners. They weren’t, however, hidden from the CIA, which not only knew what the bank was doing, but used the bank to funnel cash through its Islamabad and other Pakistani branches to CIA client Osama bin Laden, part of the $2 billion Washington sent to the Afghani mujahideen. The operation gave bin Laden an education in black finance. CIA director William Casey himself met with BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi. The CIA also paid its own agents through the bank and used BCCI to fund black ops all over the world.

Kerry took on not only the Bush clan and its friends, but the CIA, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. This is not irrelevant history, but important to examine, because it reveals a lot about Kerry and how he might respond to terrorism or other global criminal enterprises. Kerry’s record shows that he took on powerful political and bureaucratic interests, was a tenacious investigator, and savvy about international crime and money flows, which is crucial in the fight against terrorism.

Against the opposition of powerful Republicans and Democrats, and in light of a lack of cooperation from a very politicized Justice Department and stonewalling by the CIA, Kerry worked with investigators and ran Senate hearings that exposed the bank’s shadowy multi-billion-dollar scams and precipitated its end."

[Larkspur]

1. That's nice, but Bush & Co. are back in power

so what did Kerry's BCCI exposure do and if it was such a grand triumph, why is Kerry running neck-and-neck with the most incompetent and corrupt Prez in US history?

[LibeMatt]

3. What it did

Well, for one thing BCCI was dismantled, or whatever you call it when a corporation is forcibly ceased to exist (ok, the grammar's kind of weird on that one but you see what I mean :) ). Of course, other similarly shady institutions took over its role, but some people got busted, and others seriously inconvenienced.

As far as why Kerry is running neck-and-neck, in addition to the many reasons surely being discussed all over this message board, with regard to this particular topic I would surmise that they aren't pushing it hard enough yet--I would think that combining this with his record as a prosecutor (he took down or helped take down the number 2 syndicate boss in New England) and an aggressive boat commander would enable the Kerry campaign to help even those who-can-handle-our-security ratings and subsequently crush Bush in the election. Or at least squeak by. Perhaps this is their own October Surprise...

[molly]

2. Thankyou for this - I put together this email based on your post

This is one of the reasons I support John Kerry. I know most of you are old enough to remember tho it may have slipped your minds. This is all documented out there on the web. I did a google search with just the search word "BCCI" and came up with 178,000 hits.

The key words "BCCI John Kerry" gave me 10,300 hits including this by my friend Will Pitt.

http://yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_13879.shtml

Here is a very good article......

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268 /
(the rest of your post)

As a matter of fact I may just post this in GD.

[bklyncowgirl]

4. Why doesn't Kerry use this? I don't know.

My understanding is that some think it's too complicated for the average voter. But I still think they could distill it into something comprehensible.

I also understand that Kerry's BCCI takedown involved implicating some powerful Democrats i.e. Bert Lance. Maybe they don't want open some old wounds.

To me that all sound quite excellent, it tells the people that our guy is honest, he'll take down members of his own party if they're crooked and he's been going after terrorists and knows more about the sort of financial shenanigans they use then anyone in congress.

I just don't get it.