How the "Media" Lies to Us

A Review of Foreign Policy's article: The Dictator-Run Bank That Tells the Story of America’s Foreign Corruption

We all know the ‘media’ isn’t the PRESS that is referred to in the constitution. The current ‘media’ is a corporate public relations (PR) arm of the #InternationalSyndicate and the intelligence agencies, worldwide. Take, for example, the title of this article; “Dictator-Run Bank” implies that dictators that banked at this particular bank (BCCI) among them, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noreiga, and many more, were running the bank…they were customers but were NOT running the bank. The bank, despite its rag to riches story of Agha Hasan Abedi, was not his bank nor was it even a Pakistani bank in reality…that’s A story, not THE story. It was another intelligence facade masquerading as a bank. And while there was foreign corruption, the BCCI scandal illustrated the corruption INSIDE the United State more so than foreign corruption.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was better known as the Bank of Criminals and Crooks for a reason. Everyone in the banking industry understood exactly what it was and its purpose. Everyone in Congress knew because they were a constant target of the wining and dining of BCCI and its lobbyists. There were extravagant international trips, expensive dinners and gifts for everyone who was anyone that could help BCCI (CIA). BCCI, at its heart was a CIA (MI6, et al) money laundering operation for drugs, weapons, and human trafficking pretending to be a bank.

Let’s proceed with analyzing one of the thousands of articles written about the bank written in July of 2020 looking back at the BCCI story. We will copy a section of the article and provide comments to point out how the brainwashing, misinformation, and disinformation game works. They tell you A story, just not THE story. The article can be found here and I strongly encourage you to read the article with your Gladio glasses on; you will be able to spot all the inconsistencies for yourself. You’re welcome. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/07/the-dictator-run-bank-that-tells-the-story-of-americas-foreign-corruption/

The article begins with:

“One bank, above all others, highlights the modern realities of transnational corruption and how authoritarian governments abroad can sink their tendrils into Western governments. Overseen by autocratic oligarchs abroad, this bank used everything including shell companies, fake foundations, and anonymous real estate purchases to launder billions and billions of dollars. And when Western investigators got wind of its financial fraud, this bank immediately began bankrolling white-shoe law firms and shady PR operators—even going so far as to fund leading U.S. presidential campaigns, corrupt the leading voices in at least one American political party, and even grow close to the American president himself.”

The authors conveniently left out the fact that all the foreign authoritarian governments were installed by the west and their intelligence agencies. They aren’t really ‘foreign’ governments at all; they are proxy governments of the west under the post World War 2 imperialist model. This model uses corrupt indigenous people, bought and paid for by the west, to manage the ‘foreign’ plantation (countries) much like the Democrat Party uses blacks to manage their modern day plantations inside the United States more commonly referred to as large urban cities. Same model.

The phrase “autocratic oligarchs abroad” is extremely misleading. The oligarchs they are referring to are Arab leaders who were involved in the bank but this bank was registered in Luxembourg and ran out of the City of London with Price Waterhouse providing the ‘audits’ used to sustain the corrupt entity. It was Bank of America that enabled it to exist in the first place…but sure, let’s call that ‘autocratic oligarchs abroad.’

“this bank used everything including shell companies, fake foundations, and anonymous real estate purchases to launder billions and billions of dollars” looks exactly like every intelligence agency in the west modus operandi, does it not? Yes, in fact, the CIA has created thousands of shell companies (as did the Vatican Bank which money laundered in the same fashion), fake foundations (you know them as the Ford Foundation, Zuckerburg’s foundation, etc) and bought up trillions of dollars in real estate over the last 70 years to hide the money they laundered from the illicit selling of trafficked goods to fund covert operations. #OperationGladio #OperationCondor

BCCI didn’t hire Washington DC, high powered, law firms AFTER the fraud was identified, they hired them BEFORE it and used them to buy U.S. banks illegally and commit the fraud in the first place. The most egregious part of this segment: “even going so far as to fund leading U.S. presidential campaigns, corrupt the leading voices in at least one American political party” The funding of the democrat machine by BCCI American lawyers and PR firms didn’t corrupt the leading voices in the democrat party…that’s ass backwards. It was the corrupt democrat politicians that worked with the democrat party lawyers and PR firms to facilitate the illegal purchase of U.S. banks, grease regulatory agencies, lobby the Fed and defraud U.S. citizens.

Let me give you one example of how this worked…according to Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Guynne’s The Outlaw Bank, David Paul worked with Abedi as a very well connected political insider. Senator John Kerry appointed Paul to run the finances of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). The same DSCC that John Kerry was in charge of…the same John Kerry that was in charge of the Senate’s investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering by…BCCI and CIA. Isn’t that convenient? So said another way, you have the senate investigating a bank for money laundering CIA drug network profits; that same bank hires a guy that is the DSCC financial officer and the DSCC senator in charge is the same guy investigating the bank/drug network. Yes, those are the facts that somehow never gets mentioned in the article.

Beaty and Gwynne also point out that David Paul’s calendar, which was submitted into evidence, featured lunches/dinners with Jimmy Carter (whose OMB chief was fired because he sold his bank to BCCI illegally), Florida Senator Bob Graham, Louisiana Senator John Breaux, Colorado Senator Tim Wirth, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and Senator John Kerry (“the investigator”) to name a few. He had business meetings Michigan Senator Don Riegle and Delaware Senator Joe Biden (who was later involved in a very similar operation set up in Ukraine). Eventually BCCI was indicted along with David Paul and a few others. However, most of the information for indictments DID NOT originate with the Department of Justice. As a matter of fact, the DOJ did everything possible to impede the only guy brave enough to take on this octopus: Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau. Yes, you read that correctly…the supposedly dictator ran, foreign bank that was corrupting a political party and defrauding the U.S. citizens was spearheaded by a city’s DA and NOT the (just as corrupt as the bank) D. O. J. It was estimated the damages to the U.S. was approximately $5B, which is another wealth transfer from us to them, the syndicate. Which is, at its root, just another form of money laundering or wealth theft.

Moving on with the article…

The story is, in many respects, the perfect blueprint for modern kleptocracy—and how autocratic regimes abroad use strategic corruption and financial secrecy tools to swindle billions of dollars while also shifting U.S. policies to their own corrupt ends.

It’s easy to spot the misinformation with Gladio Glasses…'autocratic regimes’ are manufactured by the #InternationalSyndicate and not organic. The ‘strategic corruption’ is created, shaped and nurtured by the syndicate to meet their end state. The secrecy tools are part of the system and the only truism in this quote is that it is all used to shift U.S. policy. But inferring the shift benefits the autocratic regimes is ludicrous, it benefits the syndicate. Any temporary benefit to others, is just that, temporary.

But there’s one thing: This bank no longer exists. Instead, the story of this bank—the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI—takes place decades ago, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Technically the bank exists but only as a Pakistani bank inside of Pakistan. But many more have taken its place, we just saw TD Bank fined for money laundering drug trafficking cash with a fine of billions of dollars. https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/10/investing/td-bank-settlement-money-laundering/index.html

It’s a saga that has been largely forgotten. That’s a shame, because in many ways the unprecedented graft and collapse of BCCI foretold precisely the kinds of transnational kleptocratic practices that would take root around the globe over the past decade—and how wide-open the United States remains when it comes to the infiltration of foreign dirty money. In hindsight, it’s almost impossible to believe just how overlooked the BCCI affair now is. The bank, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates and closely connected to ruling regimes in both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, initially pitched itself as the leading bank for the so-called Third World. It tried to position itself as a non-Western alternative for small-scale depositors across the postcolonial space, from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia to Latin America.

The bank was NOT headquartered in the UAE, it was headquartered in London and registered in Luxembourg as I mentioned before. The royal families of several UAE emirates were involved in the bank; they took over financing once Bank of America decided it was getting too risky. It was close to the Pakistani regime the CIA installed after they got rid of the prime minister that was trying to warn everyone about BCCI. BCCI had a habit of showing up where the west coup’d governments almost as if it was the Sunday church service collection plate.

And for a while, that scheme succeeded. BCCI ended up operating in over 70 countries—including the United States, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom—and at one point boasted over $20 billion in assets (or nearly $50 billion in today’s money). By the mid-1980s, BCCI appeared well on its way to meeting its goal of becoming the world’s largest bank by the year 2000. And it wasn’t just the size of BCCI’s till. Those running BCCI spun the bank as an institution interested more in achieving moral gains, rather than increasing its total assets. (“The spirit of BCCI is permeated by a moral dimension and this eases the burden of management,” its founder once claimed.) To that end, BCCI bankrolled the Third World Foundation, which it said would help “relieve poverty and sickness” in developing nations, and even created an award to mirror the Nobel Peace Prize, which it awarded to everyone from Nelson Mandela to former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

The awarding of a ‘prize’ to the very people responsible for the NATO and NATO aligned overthrowing of governments, drug/weapon/human trafficking is a cherry on top of the pile of excrement. The foundation, by the way, is registered in the UK, NOT UAE too.

Unbeknownst to those small-scale depositors taking advantage of BCCI’s services, though, the bank was in reality little more than a Ponzi scheme for the higher-ups involved, who were simply pocketing the deposits while trying to recruit new customers. By the time BCCI collapsed, nearly $10 billion had disappeared, never accounted for.

And by disappeared, they mean it was loaned out with uncollaterized loans to themselves and the syndicate leaving the commoner banking at BCCI (that they professed to be so concerned about) holding an empty bag.

As investigators later found, BCCI was the perfect money laundering vehicle for everyone from Panamanian drug kingpins to Pakistan’s dictatorial first family (installed by the CIA) to brutal regimes across the Middle East (primarily installed by MI6/CIA). Utilizing the kinds of kleptocratic tools still with us—anonymous shell companies, anonymous real estate purchases, and plenty more—the bank helped everyone from Panama’s Manuel Noriega (CIA installed) to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (CIA installed) to the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos (CIA installed) move and stash their money abroad. Indeed, foreign dictators couldn’t get enough of BCCI’s services; at one point, according to one analysis, BCCI grew so close to Pakistani despot Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq that “it is almost surprising that the dictator himself didn’t get a job with the bank.” (Zia’s son ended up getting a job as vice president with Bank of America, which was one of BCCI’s American partners.)

As you can clearly see, Bank of America was a partner in the crime but was never indicted. Do you know what you do when you want something NOT to happen again? You hold EVERYONE accountable. This illustrates exactly just how corrupt our government really is…all of it. The SEC, DOJ, FBI, CIA, DEA etc all knew exactly what was going on and who was responsible.

They blocked any accountability until the Manhattan DA took action and then it was limited hangout prosecution. But you notice a pattern that is actually very revealing in this passage…did the CIA, once they coup’d a government and installed their dictator, set up accounts at BCCI to pass money between…let’s say to the corrupt dictator, then to BCCI and back into the US to buy/pay off politicians to look the other way? Is this how money was laundered from World Bank loans, IMF loans, Department of State and DoD contracts into the newly installed dictator’s country and then back into the U.S.? Did you know that BCCI bought a Washington DC bank? A bank that most of the congressional members banked at? Where it was possible to monitor the congressional member’s accounts for blackmail but possibly more importantly to slip pay offs to them without detection by outside authorities? I’m seeing another pattern evolve…

BCCI, of course, couldn’t keep its Ponzi scheme going forever. So when rumors about financial malfeasance first began percolating in the mid-1980s, the bank sketched out a playbook that corrupt foreign outfits would employ for decades to come. The firm employed a number of sleazy PR operators and supposedly white-shoe law firms in the United States to threaten any critical voices. (One of the firms linked to the BCCI scandal, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, would later play a key role in former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s corrupt schemes out of Ukraine, using many of the same tactics BCCI employed.) It filed heavy-handed lawsuits against any critical journalists, especially in the U.K.—where one investigative journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas, was beaten and stabbed during his reporting and had his investigative findings into BCCI stolen. BCCI’s Western auditors (most especially PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers) also completely whiffed on discovering the gargantuan fraud right under their noses—or, in some cases, simply ignored it wholesale.

The sleazy PR firm is CIA front company Hill and Knowlton where CIA asset Robert Gray worked. We’ve ran across Gray in many of the #OperationGladio stories inside the U.S. He’s the guy that set up a fancy whorehouse in DC and many of the congressional members were members of the ‘club’ set up inside the upscale whorehouse. This was another blackmail sting on congressional members. Robert Gray was a ‘republican’ and he worked with ‘democrat’ Frank Mankiewicz at Hill and Knowlton. Two wings of the same bird is an appropriate description of their arrangement.

During the Senate inquiry into BCCI, among other CIA related activities (Kerry Commission), Customs Service Commissioner William von Raab criticized Hill and Knowlton saying that its lobbying efforts on behalf of BCCI resulted in a very lenient plea agreement and not shutting down the multiple banks BCCI owned in the U.S. which were bought via fraud. Hill and Knowlton had at least one partner leave the firm over their representing BCCI because everyone knew it was a CIA front bank involved in criminality.

It was proven that Hill and Knowlton had contact with Capitol Hill on BCCI’s behalf (specifically First American) when Clark Clifford (former secretary of defense) and Robert Altman were employed at the BCCI banks and legally represented them as well. There was also written communication between congressional staff Michael Pillsbury and Karna Small (Hill and Knowlton). Pillsbury was asking Small if he could help in any way with public relations for BCCI. You may recognize Small’s name, she was assistant press secretary to James Brady, press spokesperson for National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and most importantly assistant to the National Security Counsel during the period when McFarlane, Admiral John Poindexter and Lt Col Oliver North were running Iran/Contra…you know the drug and weapons trafficking operation the CIA and the National Security Counsel was running with laundered money? Yes, she was assistant counsel (legal representative) for the government sanctioned money laundering operation generated from the U.S.’s government’s covert sale weapons and drugs. She moved over to the CIA front called Hill and Knowlton after doing such a great job at running a CIA operation inside the White House. Oh, and did I mention BCCI was used to arrange the financing and weapon sells to Iran via Adnan Khashoggi? Yeah, that’s probably a relevant tidbit to add right here.

Since the communication, offering to help Hill and Knowlton in their defense of BCCI, was generated by Michael Pillsbury, we should take just a second to learn a little more about him. Pillsbury received his bachelors degree from Stanford University (surprise, just kidding, they’re in all these stories). He earned his Ph.D. in Chinese studies (under the aegis of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michel Oksenberg) from Columbia University. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and made regular visits to China (I wonder if he ever ran into Tim Walz?). He cut his #InternationalSyndicate teeth as an assistant political affairs officer at the United Nations from 1969 to 1970. From 1971 to 1972, he completed a National Science Foundation doctoral dissertation fellowship in Taiwan. Yes, the dictator led Taiwan back in the 1970’s when they were serving as the drug trafficking capital of the world with Chiang and his KMT army turned political machine. National Science Foundation is another corrupt CIA fed propaganda machine to push agendas of the new world order.

Pillsbury moved on to work as a ‘social science analyst’ (read that as propaganda specialist) at the RAND Corporation (CIA) from 1973 to 1977, he published articles in Foreign Policy and International Security recommending that the United States establish intelligence and military ties with China. You know, the same China they tell you is our #1 enemy today…yes, that China. This is where it gets really interesting if you understand #OperationGladio … Pillsbury’s proposal, publicly commended by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, later became US policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations. He was hired by the Reagan administration in the Department of Defense, working as Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. This was the office responsible for implementation of the program of covert aid known as the Reagan Doctrine. In other words, he was working with NATO running Operation Gladio and the covert activities like Iran/Contra. Now do you understand why he was offering to run interference from his congressional perch for BCCI? He knew all about BCCI and its activities BECAUSE HE USED IT TOO.

Oh, his career gets even better…Pillsbury served on the staff of four United States Senate Committees from 1978 to 1984 and 1986–1991. As a staff member, Pillsbury drafted the Senate Labor Committee version of the legislation that enacted the US Institute of Peace in 1984. Wiki describes the US Institute of Peace as “an American federal institution tasked with promoting conflict resolution and prevention worldwide. It provides research, analysis, and training to individuals in diplomacy, mediation, and other peace-building measures.” In other words, the CIA goes in and overthrows the government of a sovereign country and the Institute of Peace goes in and ‘fixes’ the chaos their fellow agency created. That’s it in a nutshell. Talk about a self licking ice cream cone…There is also this tidbit “Occasionally, USIP receives funds transferred from government agencies, such as the Department of State, USAID, and the Department of Defense.” Its another CIA embed disguised as a PEACE advocate. The Tea Party representatives in congress tried to get rid of it; “February 16, 2011, by Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah and former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, attacked funding for USIP as part of the broader debate about federal spending.” They voted to get rid of it but the funding was restored before the final bill was passed. That’s your corrupt government at work for the syndicate and NOT you.

The most significantly detrimental thing Pillsbury was responsible for was drafting the legislation to create the National Endowment for Democracy and the annual requirement for a DOD report on Chinese military power. Yes, the NED used to overthrow governments was drafted by Pillsbury and a few of his closest fellow miscreants. He was rewarded for his good work by President George H W Bush and assigned as Special Assistant for Asian Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, reporting to Andrew W. Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment. The Office of Net Assessment is where Stefan Halper hung out while trying to interfere with the election of President Donald Trump. They are the covert operations action office of dirty tricks within DoD.

Pillsbury would be designated a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations for all his hard work on behalf of the #InternationalSyndicate. He is also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies which serves as another CIA front organization to publish studies that support whatever the CIA will be doing in its next adventure and to justify any and all covert operations involving CIA in the past. And just in case you doubt that he was that close to the CIA and their operations (from wiki): “In 2015, a former Central Intelligence Agency director revealed that a book called The Hundred-Year Marathon "is based on work Michael Pillsbury did that landed him the CIA Director's Exceptional Performance Award." The official website has declassified documents and photos that illustrate the book.”

Pillsbury was the common link between the U.S. arming/sharing military technology with China in both democrat and republican administrations; he was intrinsically involved in President Reagan's decision in 1986 to order the CIA to arm the Afghan resistance with Stinger missiles. It’s always nice to have a CIA asset on the staff advocating for CIA covert paramilitary activities. "For Michael Pillsbury, the covert operations in Afghanistan represented the fulfillment of the decade-old dream of American military cooperation with China… To help him win the argument, Pillsbury made use of his China connections."

It’s necessary to summarize…Pillsbury is a typical example of how the system works. He advocated for sharing military technology with China for years…then he made a living telling you that China is the biggest menace in the world. Do you see the pattern? Another historical example: we funded/created/armed the Bolsheviks and then build a massive government around the principle of defeating their communism. We are being played by fellow Americans working for the #InternationalSyndicate and against us. Pillsbury is one of those guys. He offered to help protect BCCI which ultimately left BCCI functioning as multiple banks inside the U.S., knowing it was corrupt, and many more Americans lost their life savings as a result of Pillsbury and his ilks treasonous actions. These are just a few of the organizations that facilitate the fraud of people like Pillsbury. Oh and by the way, he’s the leading advocate telling everyone that China has a plan to replace the U.S. as the sole super power. Again, they need chaos to further their control. This is a list of his accomplishments:

Back to the article…

“Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, would later play a key role in former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s corrupt schemes out of Ukraine, using many of the same tactics BCCI employed.” Once they figure out a scheme that works, they use it again and again. The similarities between BCCI and Privat Bank in Ukraine are many. They used lawfare to silence journalists to ensure no one in journalism or congress spoke out. Journalist Anthony Mascarenhas was attacked and brutally beaten while covering the story of BCCI and no one even batted an eye. Mascarenhas had become a pain in the side of the CIA well before BCCI. He was a British/Pakistani reporter who exposed the corruption inside the CIA sponsored activities of Pakistan’s terror campaign waged in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). One of his many articles was titled: Genocide. It was credited as the turning point of the establishment of Bangladesh and the defeat of the CIA backed Pakistani efforts to commit genocide. Indira Gandhi credited him and his exposing the genocide as the reason she prepared India to intervene in the conflict. No one will be surprised that the violence began as a result of the CIA and Pakistani ISI (same thing) interference in the landslide election of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan. You know like the CIA did here in 2016, 2020 and in Chile with Allende and so many more.

Then there is Price Waterhouse as BCCI auditors. PwC are involved, as the ‘auditors’ on every fake CIA bank I’ve researched. They produce all the necessary reports/audits to keep the fake bank in operation, until the bank goes into bankruptcy. Some of the audits are dated within days, giving the bank a clean bill of health only for it to fail in the next week or two. They are nothing but a corrupt, rubber stamping ‘audit’ company for intelligence agencies and their laundering activities.

Washington on their behalf. Among those voices on the dole of the BCCI network was Clark Clifford, then considered one of the doyens of the Democratic Party, who had worked closely with presidents from Harry S. Truman to Jimmy Carter. BCCI’s affiliates had also helped bankroll presidential campaigns, such as Gary Hart’s presidential run. Higher-ups at BCCI affiliates even grew unnervingly close to Carter. All of these deep political connections helped stonewall Washington’s investigations into BCCI’s massive corruption. Even when the Department of Justice finally began probing BCCI’s financial schemes, it hardly pushed far; when the department offered a sweetheart deal to BCCI, the lead Senate investigator said it was indicative of “the power of BCCI to fix anything,” adding that Washington’s response was a “fucking outrage.”

Yes, yes it was and also typical of corrupt politicians inside Washington D.C.