Recorded Novem­ber 11, 2004
REALAUDIO

This broad­cast cov­ers a range of top­ics. Fea­tur­ing the work of pre­mier jour­nal­ists Robert Parry and Lucy Komisar, the pro­gram begins with Robert’s dis­cus­sion of the gross irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the 2004 elec­tion process. A sharp dis­crep­ancy between the exit polls (gen­er­ally viewed as very reli­able) and the ulti­mate elec­tion results is among the indi­ca­tors that the 2004 elec­tion was tam­pered with in a seri­ous way. Robert’s Con­sor­tium News (www.consortiumnews.com) was one of the few media out­lets to report and ana­lyze the dis­par­i­ties in the vot­ing sta­tis­tics. For doing so, they were branded as “spreadsheet-wielding con­spir­acy the­o­rists” by the Wash­ing­ton Post. Robert points how char­ac­ter­is­tic this is of the so-called “lib­eral news media.” Far from being lib­eral, they are in fact very conservative—often dis­hon­estly so. After high­light­ing the Repub­li­cans’ devel­op­ment of a well-financed media/think tank nexus fol­low­ing the humil­i­at­ing defeat of Water­gate. This appli­ca­tion of what the CIA calls “per­cep­tion man­age­ment” is essen­tial to the suc­cess of the GOP and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Next, the show turns to the sub­ject of the Iran-Contra scan­dal. Robert and his col­league Brian Barger first reported the exis­tence of Oliver North’s back-channel sup­port net­work for the Con­tras, and fresh­man Sen­a­tor John Kerry led the con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion of its oper­a­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, Kerry basi­cally “cracked” the Contra-cocaine con­nec­tion and endured the open ridicule of the media estab­lish­ment for doing so. Lucy Komisar joined the pro­gram at this point and detailed the oper­a­tions of the BCCI, high­light­ing the bank’s pro­found involve­ment in the intel­li­gence and finan­cial scan­dals of the ‘80’s. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the bank’s links with the Afghan muja­hadeen and peo­ple and insti­tu­tions linked to Osama bin Laden. And the milieu of the BCCI is the milieu of the Bush fam­ily. Lucy high­lights John Kerry’s cen­tral role in pur­su­ing the BCCI affair. As was the case with the Iran-Contra scan­dal, Kerry led the way. After Lucy reviews the fun­da­men­tals of the Octo­ber Sur­prise story, she dis­cusses the Clearstream net­work and its appar­ent involve­ment in that case. The pro­gram con­cludes with Lucy and Robert point­ing out how the same cast of char­ac­ters fig­ures in the inter­re­lated intelligence-related scan­dals run­ning through the last two decades.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: An appar­ent PLO con­nec­tion to the Octo­ber Sur­prise; the role of Khalid bin Mah­fouz in the BCCI scan­dal; Bin Mahfouz’s links to Islamic char­i­ties that have funded Al Qaeda; Lucy’s syn­op­sis of the role of off­shore bank­ing havens in world affairs; the media establishment’s trash­ing of Gary Webb for his story about the Contra/Cocaine traf­fic; the active obstruc­tion and media crit­i­cism Kerry received for his inves­ti­ga­tion of BCCI; cur­rent FBI chief Robert Mueller’s cover-up of U.S. gov­ern­men­tal com­plic­ity in the BCCI case.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of The Wash­ing­ton Post’s unfair (and frankly ludi­crous) char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Robert Parry’s Con­sor­tium News as “Spreadsheet-wielding con­spir­acy the­o­rists” for their cir­cum­spect, judi­cious exam­i­na­tion of the anom­alies in the vote count in the 2004 elec­tion. Specif­i­cally, Robert noted the dis­crep­ancy in the exit polls (which showed Kerry win­ning) and the ulti­mate results of the elec­tion. Robert encap­su­lates the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in the sto­ries pre­sented below. Of par­tic­u­lar note is the fact that Repub­li­can Dick Mor­ris observed that it was extra­or­di­nary to blow even one exit poll, let alone polls in all six swing states. (Mor­ris then pro­ceeded to spin a con­spir­acy the­ory that main­tained that Kerry sup­port­ers were more “chatty” than Bush sup­port­ers.) Consortium’s work on the elec­tion was cov­ered in these stories:

2.

Big Media’s Democ­racy Dou­ble Stan­dards
By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
Novem­ber 23, 2004

The Wash­ing­ton Post and other lead­ing Amer­i­can news­pa­pers are up in arms about the legit­i­macy of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion where exit polls showed the chal­lenger win­ning but where the incum­bent party came out on top, amid com­plaints about heavy-handed election-day tac­tics and pos­si­bly rigged vote tallies.

In a lead edi­to­r­ial, con­tinue orig­i­nal article

Wash­ing­ton Post’s Sloppy Analy­sis
By Sam Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
Novem­ber 12, 2004

The Wash­ing­ton Post and the big media have spo­ken: Ques­tions about Nov. 2 vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties and George W. Bush’s unusual vote tal­lies are just the rav­ings of Inter­net con­spir­acy theorists.

In a Nov. 11 story on A2, the Post gave con­tinue orginal article

Evi­dence of a Sec­ond Bush Coup?
By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
Novem­ber 6, 2004

The­o­ret­i­cally at least, it is con­ceiv­able that sophis­ti­cated CIA-style com­puter hack­ing – known as “cyber-warfare” – could have let George W. Bush’s cam­paign trans­form a three-percentage-point defeat, as mea­sured by exit polls, into an offi­cial vic­tory of about the same margin.

Whether such a scheme is fea­si­ble con­tinue orig­i­nal article

Bush’s ‘Incred­i­ble’ Vote Tal­lies
By Sam Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
Novem­ber 9, 2004

George W. Bush’s vote tal­lies, espe­cially in the key state of Florida, are so sta­tis­ti­cally stun­ning that they bor­der on the unbelievable.

While it’s extra­or­di­nary for a can­di­date con­tinue orig­i­nal article

[For details on the Florida turnout in 2000, see MSNBC. For details on the 2004 Florida turnout, see CNN.]

3. Next, Robert high­lights the myth of the “lib­eral news media”. Despite the drum­fire from con­ser­v­a­tive media pun­dits about the media hav­ing a lib­eral bias, the fact is that the media have an overt con­ser­v­a­tive bias. Although the major­ity of reporters and staffers are rel­a­tively lib­eral, they do not exer­cise edi­to­r­ial author­ity over the media out­lets. That author­ity is exer­cised by pow­er­ful peo­ple who real­ize a cor­po­rate agenda that could be described as con­ser­v­a­tive, if not out­right reac­tionary. He notes that, fol­low­ing the Water­gate scan­dal, the Repub­li­cans and their con­ser­v­a­tive reporters put together a vast, right-wing media machine. This media appa­ra­tus, in turn, was closely affil­i­ated with a series of right-wing think tanks that gen­er­ated many of the “ta

lking points” and the party line on key issues that were trum­peted by the right-wing media establishment.

4. The dis­cus­sion then turns to the sub­ject of the Iran-Contra scan­dal. Robert Parry and his col­league Brian Barger broke the story of the Oliver North back chan­nel intel­li­gence oper­a­tion that sup­ported the Nicaraguan Con­tra rebels. Fol­low­ing the down­ing of Eugene Hasenfus’s plane in 1986, the full extent of the scan­dal broke.

5. A major focal point of the pro­gram is the fact that fresh­man Sen­a­tor John Kerry “took the point” in expos­ing the fact that a con­sid­er­able amount of the Contra’s finances were derived from cocaine traf­fick­ing. Kerry was branded a “randy con­spir­acy buff” for his trou­ble. Robert Parry’s arti­cle for Salon.com:

How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scan­dal
By Robert Parry
Salon.com

Derided by the main­stream press and tak­ing on Rea­gan at the height of his pop­u­lar­ity, the fresh­man sen­a­tor bat­tled to reveal one of America’s ugli­est for­eign pol­icy secrets. Octo­ber 25, 2004: In Decem­ber 1985, when Brian Barger and I wrote a ground­break­ing story for the Asso­ci­ated Press about Nicaraguan Con­tra rebels smug­gling cocaine into the United States, one U.S. sen­a­tor put his polit­i­cal career on the line to fol­low up on our dis­turb­ing find­ings. His name was John Kerry.

Yet, over the past year, even as Kerry’s hero­ism con­tinue orig­i­nal article

6. At this point in the broad­cast, Lucy Komisar joins the dis­cus­sion. One of the insti­tu­tions that was cen­trally involved in the Iran-Contra machi­na­tions was the BCCI. Lucy high­lights that Bank’s involve­ment with Oliver North’s net­work, as well as the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions’ use of the bank to arm Sad­dam Hus­sein. After not­ing that BCCI was used to laun­der money for ter­ror­ists and drug deal­ers, Lucy also notes the involve­ment of the BCCI with the fund­ing of the Afghan muja­hadeen. Among the prin­ci­pals of the BCCI were peo­ple such as Saudi banker Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Mah­fouz was heav­ily involved with the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion, an Islamic char­ity allegedly involved with fund­ing Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Lucy recently pub­lished a very impor­tant story on the BCCI, set­ting forth the piv­otal role of John Kerry in expos­ing the scan­dal. As was the case with the Contra/Cocaine case, Kerry “walked point” with the BCCI case and was repu­di­ated for doing so. In addi­tion, con­gres­sional com­mit­tees and gov­ern­ment agen­cies that should have coop­er­ated with Kerry’s inves­ti­ga­tion failed to do so. Lucy’s arti­cle is repro­duced below:

The Case That Kerry Cracked
By Lucy Komisar
AlterNet.org
Posted Octo­ber 22, 2004
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.

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 con­tinue orig­i­nal article

7. In con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion of Lucy’s remark­able arti­cle, one should not fail to notice that the Jus­tice Department’s cover-up of the BCCI case was over­seen by Robert Mueller, now head of the FBI. We have noted that Mueller has also cov­ered up Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion linked the milieu of the BCCI to the milieu of the fun­ders of Al Qaeda. The milieu of the BCCI is very closely linked to that of George W. Bush.
THE SCALE OF THE COVER-UP OF BCCI IS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE STARTLING FACT THAT, AS LUCY NOTES IN THE ARTICLE ABOVE, ONCE THE BCCI CASE BEGAN, SEVEN FIRES BROKE OUT IN THE FIREPROOF LONDON WAREHOUSES IN WHICH THE BANK’S RECORDS WERE STORED. IN ONE OF THOSE FIRES, FOUR FIREMEN DIED.

8. Next, Lucy explains the role in con­tem­po­rary busi­ness of the off­shore bank­ing and tax havens, of which BCCI is one.

9. The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram deals with the Octo­ber Sur­prise, the deal cut between the Reagan/Bush cam­paign and the Iran­ian Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ists to with­hold the U.S. hostages taken from the Amer­i­can Embassy until after Pres­i­dent Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat are assured. Lucy sum­ma­rizes the role of the Clearstream net­work in some of the finan­cial trans­fers involved in the Octo­ber Surprise.

10. Next, Robert Parry details his own expe­ri­ences cov­er­ing the Octo­ber Sur­prise story. After a Con­gres­sional task force dis­missed the alle­ga­tions, the sub­stance of the inves­ti­ga­tion was sub­stan­tively ver­i­fied by dis­clo­sures com­ing by way of French intel­li­gence (specif­i­cally Alexan­dre de Marenches) and the files of the for­mer KGB. Nonethe­less, the main­stream media refused to acknowl­edge this crit­i­cally impor­tant dis­cov­ery. Robert actu­ally founded Con­sor­tium News (ini­tially) to pro­vide an out­let for this crit­i­cal information.

11. A fas­ci­nat­ing aspect of the inves­ti­ga­tion con­cerns an appar­ent PLO con­nec­tion to the Octo­ber Sur­prise machi­na­tions. This is dis­cussed in the Con­sor­tium arti­cle pre­sented below:

Arafat & the Orig­i­nal ‘Octo­ber Sur­prise’
By Mor­gan Strong
ConsortiumNews.com
Novem­ber 2, 2004

A top aide to Pales­tin­ian leader Yasir Arafat has dropped a new clue about the orig­i­nal “Octo­ber Sur­prise” mys­tery of 1980: the name of the Repub­li­can oper­a­tive who sought the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Organization’s help to block Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter’s nego­ti­a­tions to free 52 Amer­i­cans then being held hostage in Iran.

Long­time Arafat con­fi­dant Bas­sam Abu Sharif said con­tinue orig­i­nal article

[For more details, see Robert Parry’s new book, Secrecy & Priv­i­lege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Water­gate to Iraq: also see Robert Parry’s Trick or Trea­son: The Octo­ber Sur­prise Mys­tery.]

12. In their con­clud­ing com­ments, both Lucy and Robert noted that the same cast of char­ac­ters crops up through­out a cou­ple of decades of scandal—from the Octo­ber Sur­prise, through the over­lap­ping Iran/Contra, BCCI and Iraq­gate scan­dals, right on up through the inves­ti­ga­tion into Osama bin Laden and 9/11. In all of these imbroglios, the same vil­lains and the same insti­tu­tions hold cen­ter stage.
IT IS THE SAME VILLAINOUS CAST OF CHARACTERS THAT DOMINATES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND ITS ATTENDANT PERSONNEL AND INSTITUTIONS.