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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 20
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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MAJOR MEDIA HIDES BUSH-SADDAM-BCCI KICKBACK SCAM
[CN -- I wrote to Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to
Clean Up The Courts, in Chicago, awhile back. One of the items
that Mr. Skolnick sent in reply was a photocopy of an article
which appeared in *The Spotlight* on August 19, 1991. I reproduce
the article below.]
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Should President George Bush be prosecuted for engaging in
secret, illegal international business deals with Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein?
That was the provocative topic of the March 28 [1991] broadcast
of *The Spotlight*'s nightly call-in talk forum RADIO FREE
AMERICA [RFA] with host Tom Valentine.
Valentine's guest was veteran researcher Sherman Skolnick of
Chicago, who has been investigating Bush's involvement in a
burgeoning scandal which has been ignored by the Establishment
media.
Skolnick can be reached at the Citizens Committee to Clean Up the
Courts, 9800 South Oglesby, Chicago, Illinois [60617].
Skolnick also maintains a regular five-minute telephone
commentary, changed regularly, through which he brings updates
about his research about both local and national news. The
telephone number is (312) 731-1100.
Skolnick was interviewed again on RFA on August 6 [1991], in
which he reiterated these charges and gave additional details.
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TOM VALENTINE:
Former CIA Director-turned-President of the United States George
Bush has a lot of skeletons in his closet, doesn't he?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The press has published, without too many details, that there was
$200 billion in oil shipments from Iraq to the West over the past
five years and that Saddam Hussein siphoned off kickbacks of 5
percent. That's $10 billion.
The press did not see fit to mention -- at any time -- who [else]
was involved in those kickbacks. It was none other than Saddam's
partner in private business ventures -- George Herbert Walker
Bush.
VALENTINE:
You're kidding us, aren't you?
SKOLNICK:
No. I'm going to show you step by step. The bulk of the money
went through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International
[BCCI]. That bank was formed in the 1970s with seed money from
the Bank of America, the largest shareholders of which are the
Rothschilds of Chicago, Paris, London and Switzerland.
A director of a BCCI holding company, First American Bank in
Washington, D.C., is Clark Clifford [former secretary of defense
and leading Democratic Party figure]. More about Clifford later.
The bank is also linked to the financial affairs of former
President Jimmy Carter and his friend and one-time budget
director, banker Bert Lance.
Some of the details about the Democrats who have been involved in
this whole affair have been published, for example, in the May 3
[1991] issue of the *Wall Street Journal*.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, additionally, BCCI was one
of the major financiers of the Michael Dukakis campaign.
VALENTINE:
What happened to BCCI?
SKOLNICK:
On the Columbus Day weekend in 1988 at the behest of the Reagan
White House, BCCI's facilities in the United States were seized,
including their branch in Chicago. It was claimed that BCCI was
in the drug-money laundering business.
BCCI operates in 73 countries and has 400 branches.
BCCI financed the Democratic Party in the United States and
arranged deals for Republicans outside the United States.
VALENTINE:
Why did the Reagan-Bush White House move against BCCI?
SKOLNICK:
There were two purposes behind the seizure of the BCCI Chicago
branch:
One, to stop BCCI's funding of the Dukakis campaign so that
Dukakis would have no money for television advertisements in the
remaining weeks of the 1988 campaign.
Two, to impound and suppress records at the Chicago branch
regarding kickbacks to Saddam which tend to incriminate George
Bush in his joint business ventures with the Iraqi dictator.
I point out another thing: The same bank has records showing
joint business ventures between Gen. Manuel Noriega, former
dictator of Panama, and George Bush.
VALENTINE:
You've found that there is also a link to a BCCI branch in
Florida as well?
SKOLNICK:
Yes. In January of 1990, the federal prosecutor in Tampa had
former top officials of BCCI's Florida branch on trial. They were
allowed to escape prison with only a slap on the wrist and a
small penalty.
Here's why: They told the Justice Department that if they were
going to go to prison that they had documents from their bank
showing that George Bush had private business ventures through
their bank with a series of dictators including not only Saddam
and Noriega but others as well.
What's interesting is that the records of the Florida branch of
BCCI were not seized, but the Chicago branch records were seized.
The reason for this is that the bulk of the $10 billion in
kickbacks to Saddam went through the Chicago branch.
This is almost certainly the same reason that the Justice
Department is not interested in bringing charges against the
Chicago bankers. They can use the same threat against Bush that
the Florida bankers have made.
The Justice Department not only seized the Chicago branch records
to damage the Dukakis campaign, but to cover up the joint
business ventures between Bush and various dictators, as I've
mentioned.
Another bank, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro [BNL], is also
involved in these deals. Their Chicago subsidiary also had
records relating to these deals.
VALENTINE:
Hasn't Congressman Henry Gonzalez [D-Texas] been looking into
this?
SKOLNICK:
Rep. Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, was in
the process of seizing these records via a congressional
subpoena.
However, on December 28, 1990 a federal judge in Chicago, Brian
Duff, who is tied in with the Federal Reserve, impounded those
records and chased Gonzalez's attorney out of court and called
him names, saying he was acting like "an 800-pound gorilla."
The judge ordered Gonzalez not to use any of the records that he
already has and ordered him to give the other documents back.
All of this appears in the court records. In the March 25 [1991]
issue of *The Spotlight* you published the docket number of the
case in question, which is in the U.S. District Court in Chicago.
It is the People of the State of Illinois ex rel William C. Harris
vs the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It is
case No. 90 C 6863.
Here we have two foreign banks operating in Chicago that were
part of these deals.
VALENTINE:
How did these deals involving Bush work?
SKOLNICK:
It's technical, so bear with me: Saddam's oil was shipped to
Texaco. In 1985 a Texas jury, at the behest of Pennzoil, issued
the largest damage verdict in American history against Texaco.
Pennzoil claimed that Texaco damaged them in a deal with Getty
Oil.
Who owns Pennzoil? George Bush and his friends.
Some of this came out in an obituary in the *Chicago Tribune* on
March 4. It referred to "George Bush and his partner William
Liedtke Jr. and Liedtke's brother." It said that "In the mid-
1950s [the Liedtke brothers] teamed up with then-oilman George
Bush and John Overbee to form Zapata Petroleum Co."
"Then they went on to form Pennzoil."
VALENTINE:
Everybody knows about Bush and Zapata Oil but hardly anybody
knows about his connection to Pennzoil.
SKOLNICK:
Texaco appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which upheld the
verdict but refused to review it. Thereafter there were stories
in the press in various parts of the country that judges on the
Texas Supreme Court are "corrupt."
Texaco went to the U.S. Supreme Court because they were told that
they had to put up a $12 billion "appeals bond." (It would have
been the biggest appeals bond in the history of the world.)
Bush leaned on the Supreme Court -- let's say it like it is --
Bush corrupted the Supreme Court to grant no remedy to Texaco.
Believe me, legal scholars were scratching their heads, but
there's no doubt about what happened.
VALENTINE:
How did Bush benefit from this court judgement?
SKOLNICK:
As a result of this, Texaco fell under the domination and
supervision of Pennzoil.
Where did the kickbacks to Saddam reportedly come from? They came
from the deals between Texaco and its subsidiaries purchasing oil
from Iraq. There's where the $200 billion comes from and 5
percent of that is $10 billion.
There's no way in the world that Bush would not have known about
those kickbacks, which he obviously supervised. As far as the
kickbacks, there has been something published about them.
The November 29, 1989 issue of the *Wall Street Journal* reported
that "IRS officials say that officials of the BNL got $290,000 in
kickbacks from Saddam in his deals."
The nature of these "deals" are left out of the article.
Obviously, some of these deals are the ones in which Bush was
involved.
As I perceive it, there has been falsification of records and
obstruction of justice. By what right does the White House lean
on the Supreme Court to damage Texaco for the benefit of George
Bush and his Pennzoil company?
VALENTINE:
Those are very heavy allegations.
SKOLNICK:
Let me go one step further. In the last couple of weeks the press
is trying to put all of the blame for the Noriega deals and for
the Saddam deals on Clark Clifford.
I've interviewed several sources who know Clifford and his wife.
His wife is going around crying to friends that her husband is
about to be indicted and framed by the White House to protect
Bush himself from going to prison.
I don't know if Clark Clifford is an angel or not, but I do know
it's wrong to blame all of this on Clifford and ride him into
jail without Bush going along behind him.
They are trying to make it look like the BCCI scandal is a
Democratic Party albatross and focus everything on Clifford.
I don't say any of this lightly. I'm saying that there is a
reasonable basis for grand juries to indict George Bush.
As far as I'm concerned there's only one independent source in
this country, and those are grand jurors.
If there are any grand jurors out there listening, they have the
opportunity here. They don't have to wait for the chief judge or
the prosecutor.
Our grand jurors can use their power to investigate these
transactions that have been summarized here involving Bush,
Noriega and Saddam along with BCCI and BNL. There's enough here
to prosecute Bush.
VALENTINE:
Has there been anything in the Establishment press about any of
this?
SKOLNICK:
The *Wall Street Journal* on March 25 of this year did admit that
a lot of Saddam's kickbacks went through BCCI, but they obviously
didn't go into these details even though they have good reporters
who could have dug up these matters. If I could dig it up, they
could have too.
VALENTINE:
What is Rep. Gonzalez doing about all this?
SKOLNICK:
I've talked to several sources close to Gonzalez [and they said]
that he is considering going before Congress and demanding that
the Justice Department prosecute Bush on these kickbacks to
Saddam that went through BCCI and BNL, which Bush knew about and
which his financial interests in those oil companies arranged.
Gonzalez's closest friends say that the only thing preventing the
congressman from going on the floor of the House and urging
Bush's prosecution is that the White House is invoking some sort
of "national security" matter involving these two banks.
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9