MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains both FTRs 653 and 654 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: Revis­it­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sicker, the pro­gram high­lights more of the inter­locked scan­dals and inves­ti­ga­tions that over­lap the milieu of the Florida flight schools through which many of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trated. In the years since the 9/11 attacks, Daniel has uncov­ered evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries link­ing the flight school milieu to ele­ments of the Amer­i­can and for­eign intel­li­gence agen­cies, orga­nized crime syn­di­cates in the United States, Europe and the Mid­dle East, as well as the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of al-Qaeda and Hamas, among other orga­ni­za­tions. In this pro­gram, Daniel sets forth a tan­gled web link­ing an attempt at sting­ing Venezue­lan strong­man Hugo Chavez to a plane reg­is­tered to a CIA con­trac­tor, as well as an Argen­tine milieu linked to ter­ror bomb­ing and Latin Amer­i­can fas­cism. Among the names that crops up in this com­plex inves­ti­ga­tion is Alfredo Yabran, an inti­mate of for­mer Argen­tine pres­i­dent Car­los Menem. Like Menem and Yabran asso­ciate Monzer al-Kassar, Yabran was a native of the same, small Syr­ian town. Al-Kassar–recently con­victed in the United States–has been deeply involved in ter­ror­ist sup­port activ­i­ties, arms traf­fick­ing and drug traf­fick­ing, includ­ing procur­ing East Bloc arms for the Con­tras in Nicaragua on behalf of Oliver North and the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. Like Al-Kassar, Yabran was impli­cated in the 1992 bomb­ing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, as well as the 1994 bomb­ing of the AMIA cul­tural center–the lat­ter event linked to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Cen­ter, the Okla­homa City bomb­ing of 1995, as well as the 9/11 attacks. When his pow­er­ful con­nec­tions around the world could no longer shield Yabran from the con­se­quences of his actions, he was found shot to death, an alleged suicide.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Yabran’s con­nec­tions to for­mer U.S. Ambas­sador to Argentina Ter­rence Tod­man; review of Yabran’s links to Wences­lao Bunge of the famous (infa­mous?) Bunge fam­ily of Argentina, one of whose busi­ness enter­prises fig­ures in some of the finan­cial maneu­ver­ing that took place in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; review of Yabran’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Al-Kassar’s many crim­i­nal activities.

1. Yabran fig­ures into a recent scan­dal involv­ing bribery, sup­pos­edly involv­ing Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Among the ele­ments in this oper­a­tion are: ele­ments of the gov­ern­ments of the United States, Argentina and Venezuela; the milieu of Jack Abramoff; cocaine smug­gling; covert oper­a­tions in Iraq; covert oper­a­tions in Colom­bia; pri­vate con­trac­tors ; pub­lic scan­dals; the AMIA bomb­ing in Argentina in 1994 and evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing the direc­tion of the 9/11 attacks!

“At least two of the four defen­dants con­victed of work­ing as ille­gal for­eign agents in Florida for Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez in the Suitcase-Gate Scan­dal had ties to an inter­na­tional crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion which was oper­at­ing suc­cess­fully in Venezuela, and with seem­ing offi­cial impunity, long before Chavez him­self came to power, The Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned.

Both the recently-convicted Franklin Duran, and Car­los Kauff­mann, who pled guilty before the trial, took part in a $7 bil­lion bank scan­dal dur­ing the mid-1990’s that involved insid­ers loot­ing Venezue­lan banks, and led more than 200 Venezue­lan bankers to flee Cara­cas for exile in Miami.

Duran and Kauff­man began their mete­oric rise to com­mand­ing for­tunes, by their mid-30’s, of $100 mil­lion in Kauffmann’s case, and a stag­ger­ing $800 mil­lion in Duran’s, in the bank­ing scandal.

Also looted, iron­i­cally, was the Venezue­lan government’s response to the loot­ing: the gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion to over­see banks and ensure they weren’t looted again.

When a U.S. jury in Miami recently con­victed Venezue­lan busi­ness­man Franklin Duran in the Suitcase-Gate trial, the ver­dict raised more ques­tions than it answered.

The scan­dal, which soon became well-known through­out Latin Amer­ica, began last year with the dis­cov­ery of a mys­te­ri­ous suit­case filled with $800,000 in cash at an air­port in Buenos Aires.

The $800,000, as well as $4.5 mil­lion in cash in a sec­ond suit­case which wasn’t dis­cov­ered, accord­ing to tes­ti­mony in the trial, was a bribe–or, more char­i­ta­bly, a token of his esteem– from Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez to Nestor Kirch­ner and wife Cristina, the for­mer and cur­rent Pres­i­dents of Argentina, three days in advance of a state visit by Chavez last year.

Miami “busi­ness­man” Guido Antonini Wil­son, here­after known as “Guido the Bag­man,” said it was his suit­case. And then began the cover-up attempt that ended when four Venezue­lan men were even­tu­ally con­victed of attempt­ing to secure Guido’s silence about the source of the loot.

From the start, observers saw the pur­pose of the pros­e­cu­tion as being to embar­rass and point a fin­ger at cor­rup­tion in the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela’s cur­rent Pres­i­dent (and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion bete noire) Hugo Chavez.

But while Chavez’s “Boli­var­ian rev­o­lu­tion” was being sin­gled out by Bush Admin­is­tra­tion pros­e­cu­tors as the source of the cor­rup­tion, the men act­ing on Chavez’s behalf have con­nec­tions which have so far been ignored to scan­dals which occurred under past Venezue­lan Pres­i­dents as well.

In sto­ries today and over the next two days we will report the results of a two-month long inves­ti­ga­tion into the facts behind the Suitcase-Gate Scan­dal, and offer a par­tial recon­struc­tion of what was, for those involved, “a bad day in Buenos Aires.”

Evi­dence unearthed to date points to a thorough-going cover-up. Among the items being concealed:

Details repeat­edly left out or omit­ted, in both media accounts and in the trial itself, which would have iden­ti­fied not just the indi­vid­u­als charged in the case, but also impli­cated a larger crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion with cor­rupt ties to pre­vi­ous Venezue­lan Pres­i­dents for at least the past two decades.

Among the cru­cial details being con­cealed is the role played by the inter­na­tional crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion of Argen­tine “busi­ness­man” Alfredo Yabrán, widely reported to have inter­na­tional Mafia con­nec­tions as well as extremely close ties to the Argen­tine mil­i­tary jun­tas respon­si­ble for atroc­i­ties dur­ing Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Yabrán later became the Argen­tine king­maker behind dis­graced for­mer Pres­i­dent Car­los Menem. He was at one time so pow­er­ful in Argentina that his pic­ture had never appeared in a newspaper.

When a photo of him was finally pub­lished, he had the jour­nal­ist who took the pho­to­graph mur­dered: shot and then burned to death in his car.

Also hid­den from pub­lic view dur­ing the trial was the iden­tity of the owner of the American-registered (N5113S) top-of-the-line lux­ury Cita­tion X jet car­ry­ing the cash-filled suit­case flight to Buenos Aires.

As we reported in our last story, the jet car­ried the same reg­is­tra­tion, or” N” num­ber, as that of a plane fly­ing for Air-Scan, a CIA avi­a­tion con­trac­tor in Iraq.

In tomorrow’s follow-up story, The Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews will pub­lish another exclu­sive: the plane’s offi­cial FAA reg­is­tra­tion, which can be traced to a for­mer major client of dis­graced Repub­li­can lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff.

The plane was owned, the reg­is­tra­tion records indi­cate, by a woman who first struck it rich as a 800-number sex-lines porn mogul, then as an Inter­net “porn princess,” and finally as major­ity owner of one of the world’s most lucra­tive online gam­bling sites.

Today she is an Amer­i­can liv­ing in exile in Gibral­tar, and one of the world’s wealth­i­est women.

Her pic­ture has never appeared in a news­pa­per, either.

Another appar­ently piv­otal player unmen­tioned at the trial is Alex del Nogal, who fled Argentina the same day his asso­ciate Guido Antonini Wil­son was caught smug­gling a cash-stuffed suit­case into Buenos Aires.

One month later, Del Nogal was arrested in Italy after an inter­na­tional man­hunt. He was charged, and later con­victed, of inter­na­tional nar­cotics trafficking.

Amaz­ing but true: this par­tic­u­lar “Guido asso­ciate” had been serv­ing 20 years in Venezue­lan prison for mur­der­ing a busi­ness rival by shoot­ing him in the head and then drop­ping him from a plane into the Caribbean… until being par­doned by Hugo Chavez in 2001, and appointed to the Venezue­lan secret police.

It had all the ele­ments of a first class spy thriller: An impres­sive stash of con­tra­band cash, wing­ing its way to Argentina in the mid­dle of the night, on a Cessna Cita­tion X lux­ury busi­ness jet, the fastest civil­ian air­plane in history.

And there was a strong whiff of drug and arms traf­fick­ing, made more plau­si­ble by the fact that the Cita­tion is faster than any drug inter­dic­tion planes of the DEA, or, for that mat­ter, of almost any other coun­try in the world.

Suitcase-Gate had real world con­se­quences. Venezuela began stag­ing war games with Russ­ian forces. Argentina and Bolivia kicked out their U.S. Ambas­sadors. Venezuela spent bil­lions of petrodol­lars on Russ­ian weapons.

And Hugo Chavez “reached out,” as they say on the Soprano’s, to Iran, cul­ti­vat­ing warm bilat­eral relations.

Not to be out-done, the U.S. Navy reestab­lished its Fourth Fleet, which had been dis­es­tab­lished way back in 1950, to over­see U.S. naval activ­i­ties in Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean waters.

And West­ern offi­cials began express­ing fears that the Iranian-backed ter­ror­ist group Hezbol­lah is using Venezuela as a base for operations.

What was going on? Was all this over a lousy $800 grand?

Did Venezue­lan strong­man Hugo Chavez really spend $30 bil­lion dol­lars to win influ­ence in South Amer­ica? Was Chavez trash-talking Uncle Sam while send­ing money and weapons to FARC guer­ril­las in Colom­bia? What’s the truth about the charge that Venezuela is doing busi­ness with Hezbollah?

Clearly the cit­i­zenry of all three countries—the U.S., Venezuela, and Argentina— deserve to know more.”

“Suitcase-Gate Decoded” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­cow Morn­ing News; 11/24/08.

2. Yabran fig­ures promi­nently in a tan­gle of scan­dal, ter­ror and fas­cism brack­et­ing suc­ces­sive Argen­tine gov­ern­ments and over­lap­ping the worlds of inter­na­tional drug and arms traf­fick­ing and intel­li­gence. This con­tate­na­tion was high­lighted in FTR #109.

“One of the most impor­tant and least pub­li­cized play­ers in the tan­gled world of weapons and drug traf­fick­ing, ter­ror­ism and espi­onage is Monzer Al-Kassar. A key player in the Iran-Contra Scan­dal, Al-Kassar imports 20 % of the heroin that comes to the United States (accord­ing to the DEA) and has appar­ently fig­ured promi­nently in numer­ous ter­ror­ist inci­dents. This pro­gram sets forth alle­ga­tions of pos­si­ble involve­ment by Al-Kassar in two ter­ror bomb­ings in Argentina, as well as his con­nec­tions to the late Alfredo Yabran, a Mafia-like wheeler dealer who (like Al-Kassar) had strong con­nec­tions to the gov­ern­ment of Argentina. Argen­tine pres­i­dent Car­los Menem, Yabran and Al-Kassar are all from the same town in Syria. In addi­tion, the pro­gram con­tains infor­ma­tion about inter­na­tional con­nec­tions to the AMIA bomb­ing (one of the bomb­ings Al-Kassar was allegedly involved with), the mys­te­ri­ous “sui­cide” of Yabran, Yabran’s con­nec­tions to for­mer U.S. Ambas­sador Ter­rence Tod­man, who assisted with Yaban’s finan­cial machi­na­tions and also inter­ceded with the U.S. Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion on Yabran’s behalf. The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram deals with Yabran asso­ciate Wences­lao Bunge, a Harvard-educated lawyer who is appar­ently part of the Bunge fam­ily that has been piv­otally involved with Bunge and Born. One of the world’s largest com­modi­ties bro­kers, Bunge & Born fig­ured promi­nently in an intri­cate stock mar­ket manip­u­la­tion that was appar­ently con­nected to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.”

Pro­gram Descrip­tion for FTR #109; Recorded on 9/2/1998.