Record­ed Novem­ber 28, 2004
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 487 and 488 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

1. The pro­gram begins by repris­ing a sec­tion of an excel­lent arti­cle about BCCI by the bril­liant Lucy Komis­ar. (This arti­cle was a major focal point of FTR#485.) The excerpt pre­sent­ed in this pro­gram high­lights the piv­otal role of BCCI in the Iran-Con­tra and Iraq­gate scan­dals and the relat­ed arms and drug traf­fick­ing oper­a­tions involved with both. BCCI was also at the epi­cen­ter of the Afghan mujahideen sup­port effort, which also involved the arms for drugs mer­ry-go-round that we’ve seen so often in our stud­ies of covert oper­a­tions. The arti­cle points out that mon­ey laun­der­ing appears to have been an almost for­mal rai­son d’etre for the bank. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the pro­found rela­tion­ship between the Bush fam­i­ly and the Mid­dle East­ern per­son­ages at the core of the bank’s oper­a­tions. As we saw in—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 462, 464, the elder George Bush’s involve­ment with covert oper­a­tions and his rela­tion­ship with the Sau­di pow­er elite set the stage for wealthy Saud­is con­nect­ed to BCCI to buy their way into favor with the younger George Bush. Much of Bush’s busi­ness career in the oil busi­ness was cap­i­tal­ized by Saud­is con­nect­ed to the BCCI milieu. The fail­ure of inves­ti­ga­tors to come to terms with the BCCI case set the stage for the per­pet­u­a­tion of these cor­rupt rela­tion­ships. The Bush/Saudi/BCCI/Enron nexus appears to have set the stage for the financ­ing of the theft of the 2004 elec­tion.

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

“. . .The Bank and the CIA

BCCI was found­ed in 1972 by Pak­istani banker Agha Hasan Abe­di and ini­tial­ly cap­i­tal­ized by Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi. It incor­po­rat­ed in the bank secre­cy juris­dic­tion of Lux­em­bourg but oper­at­ed out of Lon­don. Dur­ing two decades, it expand­ed to 73 coun­tries world­wide, with near­ly a mil­lion depos­i­tors with accounts total­ing more than $10 bil­lion. When the bank was final­ly shut down near­ly 20 years lat­er, between $9.5 and $15 bil­lion, the ana­lysts dif­fer, had been lost or stolen, mak­ing this the biggest bank fraud in the world.

The bank had carved out a niche: it was the »Con­tin­ue orig­i­nal arti­cle»

2. Much of the broad­cast focused on two arti­cles authored by Wayne Mad­sen for Online Jour­nal. The arti­cles allege that the same nexus of covert oper­a­tions, fun­ny mon­ey and Sau­di-relat­ed enti­ties that fig­ured in the BCCI imbroglio were front and cen­ter in a heinous exam­ple of elec­tion fraud. A few days after this pro­gram was aired, the fact that the $29 mil­lion check which was a cen­tral part of this inves­ti­ga­tion was fake. Obvi­ous­ly, this casts some doubt on the oth­er aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Not that this nec­es­sar­i­ly inval­i­dates the point that Wayne makes here. ONE WONDERS IF THE KARL ROVE MACHINE IS AT WORK HERE. THIS FEELS SOMEWHAT LIKE THE STING PERPETRATED ON 60 MINUTES AND DAN RATHER. IS “BUSH’S BRAIN” DELIBERATELY SEEDING THE INVESTIGATION OF VOTING FRAUD WITH DISINFORMATION? FOOD FOR THOUGHT AND GROUNDS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH.

Saud­is, Enron mon­ey helped pay for US rigged elec­tion
By Wayne Mad­sen
Online Jour­nal Con­tribut­ing Writer

Novem­ber 25, 2004—According to informed sources in Wash­ing­ton and Hous­ton, the Bush cam­paign spent some $29 mil­lion to pay polling place oper­a­tives around the coun­try to rig the elec­tion for Bush. The oper­a­tives were pos­ing as Home­land Secu­ri­ty and FBI agents but were actu­al­ly tech­ni­cians famil­iar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Tri­ad, Unilect, and Dana­her Con­trols vot­ing machines. These tech­ni­cians report­ed­ly hacked the sys­tems to skew the results in favor of Bush.

The leak about the mon­ey and the rigged elec­tion appar­ent­ly »Con­tin­ue orig­i­nal arti­cle»

3.

More on the buy­ing of elec­toral fraud by the Bush cam­paign.
By Wayne Mad­sen
Online Jour­nal Con­tribut­ing Writer

Novem­ber 26, 2004—Additional infor­ma­tion on the buy­ing of vote rig­gers with Sau­di and for­mer Enron funds has been obtained. The epi­cen­ter for the vote rig­ging oper­a­tion is Dal­las, Texas, and the oper­a­tion may involve retired FBI agents who used a well-estab­lished “good ole boy” net­work to arrange for access to polling precincts by elec­tron­ic vot­ing machine tech­ni­cians who took advan­tage of var­i­ous Novem­ber 2 secu­ri­ty “lock­downs” to ille­gal­ly alter the tab­u­la­tion of votes in favor of Bush. Some of the retired agents may have used cour­tesy cre­den­tials issued upon retire­ment to fool unsus­pect­ing polling place work­ers.

The cost of the oper­a­tion was esti­mat­ed at $29 mil­lion with »Con­tin­ue orig­i­nal arti­cle»