Spitfire List FTR #412 The Engineer Intends To Wreck The Train

Subject: Emailing: Spitfire List FTR #412 The Engineer Intends To Wreck The Train




For The Record

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FTR #412 The Engineer Intends To Wreck The Train
Posted by FTR ⋅ June 24, 2003Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
Tags 1934 Coup, 9/11, al-Taqwa, bin Laden, Bush, Bush Family, Bush-George W, FDR, Fifth Column, GOP, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Leon Blum, Liechtenstein, Money Laundering, Muslim Brotherhood, P-2 Lodge, Philippe Pétain, Proxy War, SAAR Network, Saddam Hussein, Underground Reich, Vichy France, Virtual State

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Intro­duc­tion: FTR#412 doc­u­ments a fright­en­ing polit­i­cal and eco­nomic sce­nario involv­ing an impend­ing fis­cal cat­a­stro­phe for the United States that, in turn, por­tends a dev­as­tat­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis. In sev­eral recent broad­casts, Mr. Emory has used the phrase “the engi­neer intends to wreck the train” in order to describe the eco­nomic and for­eign poli­cies adopted by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Begin­ning with a col­umn by bril­liant New York Times eco­nomic colum­nist Paul Krug­man, the broad­cast high­lights his use of almost iden­ti­cal phrase­ol­ogy to express the view that the rad­i­cals in the admin­is­tra­tion intend to pro­duce “a fis­cal train wreck” with their sui­ci­dal tax cut­ting policies.

This “fis­cal train wreck,” in turn, is designed to force the elim­i­na­tion of social pro­grams that the Amer­i­can peo­ple would not oth­er­wise sup­port. In this con­text, one should not fail to note Mr. Emory’s past obser­va­tions that this admin­is­tra­tion is the point ele­ment of the deadly Bor­mann organization—quite lit­er­ally a Third Reich gone underground–and is designed to sub­ju­gate or destroy the United States of America.

At the core of this gam­bit is the goal of bank­rupt­ing the U.S. by slash­ing rev­enues and draw­ing the coun­try into a pro­tracted and costly mil­i­tary strug­gle against the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the Earth Island—themselves serv­ing as proxy war­riors for the Under­ground Reich.

Giv­ing numer­i­cal sub­stance to the dimen­sions of the approach­ing eco­nomic deba­cle, the broad­cast sets forth some truly daunt­ing num­bers from a Finan­cial Times article—impending deficit totals of $44,200bn or ten times the pub­licly held national debt. Com­par­ing the behav­ior of the Amer­i­can power elite with that of their French coun­ter­parts in the run-up to World War II, the pro­gram reca­pit­u­lates doc­u­men­ta­tion that the French defeat in World War II was wel­comed and engi­neered by a polit­i­cal and eco­nomic Fifth column.

That Fifth Column’s ide­o­log­i­cal and struc­tural eco­nomic affin­ity with the Third Reich dis­posed them against the demo­c­ra­tic inter­ests of their own coun­try. Sim­i­larly, the pro­found struc­tural eco­nomic ties of this country’s power elite to the Bor­mann group and to the Saudi financiers of Al Qaeda are moti­vat­ing their con­scious rush to ruin.

The sec­ond side of the pro­gram deals with the issue of off­shore tax havens and their func­tional and his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship to the eco­nomic sub­ver­sion of democ­racy. In par­tic­u­lar, the use of tax havens has facil­i­tated the col­lab­o­ra­tion of US cor­po­ra­tions with rogue regimes such as that of Sad­dam Hussein.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The French elite’s use of Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxes and the eco­nomic sac­ri­fice they were demand­ing of oth­ers; the Bush administration’s rever­sal of Clin­ton poli­cies that would have increased eco­nomic trans­parency and reduced the use of off­shore finan­cial safe­havens; Sad­dam Hussein’s use of off­shore bank­ing to hide the ill-gotten gains he accu­mu­lated from West­ern cor­po­ra­tions offi­cially enjoined from deal­ing with him; Don­ald Rumsfeld’s dodg­ing of a reporter’s ques­tion con­cern­ing the Sad­dam flight cap­i­tal; Saddam’s use of an account with the Banco del Got­tardo (part of the Al Taqwa com­plex) as a repos­i­tory for much of his money; the mys­te­ri­ous death of a Swiss lawyer hired to help rec­tify the account­ing of Saddam’s money in the Banco del Got­tardo account.

Cor­rec­tion: In some of the ancil­lary dis­cus­sion for FTR#412, Mr. Emory incor­rectly iden­ti­fies Johann Von Leers as a mem­ber of the party that left the Fuehrerbunker with Mar­tin Bor­mann. It was Werner Nau­mann, not Von Leers, who was with Bor­mann and Hitler Youth leader Arthur Axmann. Both Nau­mann and Von Leers were key aides to Pro­pa­ganda Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels, and Nau­mann was named to suc­ceed Goebbels. Both Nau­mann and Von Leers later worked for the post-war Nazi under­ground in the Mid­dle East and else­where. Von Leers is alleged to have told French intel­li­gence that Bor­mann was alive in Latin Amer­ica. For more about Nau­mann, Von Leers and com­pany, see: Dreamer of the Day: Fran­cis Parker Yockey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tional. (Autono­me­dia, copy­right 1999 [SC].)

1. Begin­ning with the con­cept from which the title of the pro­gram is devel­oped, the broad­cast sets forth a col­umn by Paul Krug­man of The New York Times (a pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity.). In numer­ous recent broad­casts, Mr. Emory has used the phrase “the engi­neer is out to wreck the train” to describe the direc­tion of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the forces that drive it. For some time, the For The Record series has advanced the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that this admin­is­tra­tion is a front for the Under­ground Reich, with the goal of the polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and/or phys­i­cal destruc­tion and/or sub­ju­ga­tion of the United States as its goal. By mani­a­cally reduc­ing the fed­eral bud­get and dra­mat­i­cally increas­ing fed­eral expen­di­tures, the GOP extrem­ists are going to destroy the coun­try. Now, the notion that “the engi­neer intends to wreck the train” is not just Mr. Emory’s refrain.

“ ‘The lunatics are now in charge of the asy­lum.’ So wrote the nor­mally staid Finan­cial Times, tra­di­tion­ally the voice of solid British busi­ness opin­ion, when sur­vey­ing last week’s bill. Indeed, the leg­is­la­tion is dou­bly absurd: the gim­micks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an offi­cial price tag of only $320 bil­lion are a joke, yet the cost with­out the gim­micks is so large that the nation can’t pos­si­bly afford it while keep­ing its other promises.”

“Stat­ing the Obvi­ous” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 5/27/2003; accessed at; www.NYTimes.com.

2. Mr. Krug­man sug­gests that “a fis­cal train wreck” is indeed intended.

“But then maybe that’s the point. The Finan­cial Times sug­gests that ‘more extreme Repub­li­cans’ actu­ally want a fis­cal train wreck: ‘propos­ing to slash fed­eral spend­ing, par­tic­u­larly on social pro­grams, is a tricky elec­toral propo­si­tion, but a fis­cal cri­sis offers the tan­ta­liz­ing prospect of forc­ing such cuts through the back door.’ Good for The Finan­cial Times. It seems that stat­ing the obvi­ous has now, finally, become respectable.”

Idem.

3. “It’s no secret that right-wing ide­o­logues want to abol­ish pro­grams Amer­i­cans take for granted. But not long ago, to sug­gest that the Bush administration’s poli­cies might actu­ally be dri­ven by those ideologues—that the admin­is­tra­tion was delib­er­ately set­ting the coun­try up for a fis­cal cri­sis in which pop­u­lar social pro­grams could be sharply cut—was to be accused of spout­ing con­spir­acy the­o­ries. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] Yet by push­ing through another huge tax cut in the face of record deficits, the admin­is­tra­tion clearly demon­strates either that it is com­pletely feck­less, or that it actu­ally wants a fis­cal cri­sis. (Or maybe both.)”

Idem.

4. “Here’s one way to look at the sit­u­a­tion: Although you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric, fed­eral taxes are already his­tor­i­cally low as a share of G.D.P. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, fed­eral taxes will be lower than their aver­age dur­ing the Eisen­hower admin­is­tra­tion. How, then, can the gov­ern­ment pay for Medicare and Medicaid—which didn’t exist in the 1950’s—and Social Secu­rity, which will become far more expen­sive as the pop­u­la­tion ages? (Defense spend­ing has fallen com­pared with the econ­omy, but not that much, and it’s on the rise again.)”

Idem.

5. “The answer is that it can’t. The gov­ern­ment can bor­row to make up the dif­fer­ence as long as investors remain in denial, unable to believe that the world’s only super­power is turn­ing into a banana repub­lic. But at some point bond mar­kets will balk—they won’t lend money to a gov­ern­ment, even that of the United States, if that government’s debt is grow­ing faster than its rev­enues and there is no plau­si­ble story about how the bud­get will even­tu­ally come under control.”

Idem.

6. “At that point, either taxes will go up again, or pro­grams that have become fun­da­men­tal to the Amer­i­can way of life will be gut­ted. We can be sure that the right will do what­ever it takes to pre­serve the Bush tax cuts—right now the admin­is­tra­tion is even skimp­ing on home­land secu­rity to save a few dol­lars here and there. But bal­anc­ing the books with­out tax increases will require deep cuts where the money is: that is, in Med­ic­aid, Medicare and Social Security.”

Idem.

7. “The pain of these ben­e­fit cuts will fall on the mid­dle class and the poor, while the tax cuts over­whelm­ingly favor the rich. For exam­ple, the tax cut passed last week will raise the after-tax income of most peo­ple by less than1 percent—not nearly enough to com­pen­sate them for the loss of ben­e­fits. But peo­ple with incomes over $1 mil­lion per year will, on aver­age, see their after-tax income rise 4.4 per­cent. The Finan­cial Times sug­gests this is delib­er­ate (and I agree): ‘For them,’ it says of those extreme Repub­li­cans, ‘under­min­ing the mul­ti­lat­eral inter­na­tional order is not enough; long-held views on income dis­tri­b­u­tion also require rad­i­cal revision.’”

Idem.

8. “How can this be hap­pen­ing? Most peo­ple, even most lib­er­als, are com­pla­cent. They don’t real­ize how dire the fis­cal out­look really is, and they don’t read what the ide­o­logues write. They imag­ine that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, like the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, will mod­ify our sys­tem only at the edges, that it won’t destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years. But the peo­ple now run­ning Amer­ica aren’t con­ser­v­a­tives: they’re rad­i­cals who want to do away with the social and eco­nomic sys­tem we have, and the fis­cal cri­sis they are con­coct­ing may give them the excuse they need. The Finan­cial Times, it seems, now under­stands what’s going on, but when will the pub­lic wake up?”

Idem.

9. High­light­ing the cat­a­clysmic dimen­sions of what the admin­is­tra­tion is doing, The Finan­cial Times set forth the deadly dimen­sions of the fis­cal impact of the Bush tax cuts. One should not over­look the fact that this infor­ma­tion is from a report com­mis­sioned by the Trea­sury Depart­ment, sup­pressed by the admin­is­tra­tion, and ignored by the US media.

“The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has shelved a report com­mis­sioned by the Trea­sury that shows the US cur­rently faces a future of chronic fed­eral bud­get deficits total­ing at least $44,200bn in cur­rent US dol­lars. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] The study, the most com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of how the US gov­ern­ment is at risk of being over­whelmed by the ‘baby boom’ generation’s future health­care and retire­ment costs, was com­mis­sioned by then trea­sury sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill. But the Bush admin­is­tra­tion chose to keep the find­ings out of the annual bud­get report for fis­cal year 2004, pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary, as the White House cam­paigned for a tax-cut pack­age that crit­ics claim will expand future deficits.”

“Report Warns of Chronic US Deficits” by Per­onet Despeignes; The Finan­cial Times; 5/29/2003; p. 1.

10. “The study asserts that sharp tax increases, mas­sive spend­ing cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoid­able if the US is to meet ben­e­fit promises to future gen­er­a­tions. It esti­mates that clos­ing the gap would require the equiv­a­lent of an imme­di­ate and per­ma­nent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase. . .”

Idem.

11. “Mr. O’Neill, who was fired last Decem­ber, refused to com­ment. The study’s analy­sis of future deficits dwarfs pre­vi­ous esti­mates of the finan­cial chal­lenge fac­ing Wash­ing­ton It is roughly equiv­a­lent to 10 times the pub­licly held national debt, four years of US eco­nomic out­put or more than 94 per cent of all US house­hold assets. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Alan Greenspan, Fed­eral Reserve chair­man, last week bemoaned what he called Washington’s ‘deaf­en­ing silence about the future crunch.’”

Idem.

12. “The esti­mates reflect the extent to which the annual deficit, the national debt and other widely reported, backward-looking data are becom­ing archaic and mis­lead­ing as mea­sures of the government’s sol­vency. Mr. [Kent] Smet­ters, now a Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia finance pro­fes­sor, said tax cuts were only a frac­tion of the imbal­ance, and that the big­ger prob­lem ‘is the whole [bud­get] lan­guage we’re using.’ Lau­rence Kot­likoff, an expert on long-term bud­get account­ing alleged in a recent Boston globe edi­to­r­ial that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion sup­pressed the research to ease pas­sage of the tax-cut plan.”

Idem.

13. The 9/11 attacks con­sti­tute an event as com­pli­cated as they are impor­tant. In FTR#’s 344–346, Mr. Emory pre­sented his view that the attacks could be viewed as “Pearl Har­bor meets the Reich­stag Fire.” They were, indeed, a sneak attack by a hos­tile for­eign power (the “vir­tual state” that is the Under­ground Reich.) It was also uti­lized by an inter­nal Fifth Col­umn that was con­nected to the attack­ers through struc­tural eco­nomic rela­tion­ships. The attacks have been used to insti­tute the foun­da­tions of fas­cism. Reca­pit­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR#366 and FTR#372, this broad­cast com­pares the attacks to the Ger­man inva­sion of France in World War II. The Ger­man inva­sion was not a “provo­ca­tion” as such, but it was used to imple­ment fas­cism in France. (The Franco-German axis that opposed the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Iraq is reflec­tive of the foun­da­tions of the events prior to, dur­ing, and after World War II.) The first side of the pro­gram con­cludes with review of a pas­sage writ­ten in 1944 by Pierre Cot, the French min­is­ter of avi­a­tion in the period lead­ing up to World War II.

“Enough evi­dence has been pub­lished already to prove that France was stabbed in the back by those who saw in Hitler the new St. George who would slay the Com­mu­nist dragon. When Pierre Lazareff, for­mer editor-in-chief of Paris Soir (the French news­pa­per with the widest cir­cu­la­tion), reports roy­al­ists as say­ing: ‘We need the defeat to wipe out the Repub­lic;’ when Elie Bois, for­mer edi­tor of the Petit Parisien (the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal news­pa­per), reports great indus­tri­al­ists admit­ting to him, dur­ing the win­ter of 1939–1940, that a plot had been orga­nized to replace the demo­c­ra­tic regime by a ‘gov­ern­ment of author­ity’ and that this plot pre­sup­posed a Nazi vic­tory; when Ana­tole de Monzie writes, in a book passed by the cen­sor of the Vichy gov­ern­ment, that Mar­shal Petain said in Feb­ru­ary, 1940: ‘They will appeal to me in the third week in May’; when Genevieve Tabouis tells of the work accom­plished in the Parisian salons by the Fifth Column’s ‘brigade mondaine’; when Henri de Ker­il­lis, for­mer offi­cer and nation­al­ist deputy, exposes the inroads of the Fifth Col­umn in the con­ser­v­a­tive and mil­i­tary cir­cles which he knew; when Henry Tor­res reveals to us what was going on in the offices of the offi­cial pro­pa­ganda . . . we have every rea­son to accept their affir­ma­tions, which tally so per­fectly with the events.”

Tri­umph of Trea­son; by Pierre Cot; Copy­right 1944 [HC]; Ziff-Davis; p. 63.

14. A very impor­tant arti­cle by inves­tiga­tive reporter Lucy Komisar under­scores the struc­tural eco­nomic rela­tion­ships main­tained by the French power elite in the pre-World War II period. (Again, lis­ten­ers are referred to FTR#272 for an under­stand­ing of these events.) One should in this con­text the sig­nif­i­cance of the Swiss tax haven for the eco­nomic realpoli­tik of the French oli­garchs. The pos­si­bil­ity that the Amer­i­can power elite’s abil­ity to secret their cap­i­tal abroad (while the coun­try is eco­nom­i­cally dec­i­mated) is not one to be too read­ily dis­missed. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the atti­tude of sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the US eco­nomic elite is sim­i­lar to that of their French coun­ter­parts in the run-up to World War II. It is worth not­ing that the title of Ms. Komisar’s arti­cle char­ac­ter­izes the issue of off­shore bank­ing as a “Secret Threat to Amer­ica.” Amen.

“In Novem­ber 1932, deputy Fabien Albertin took the floor of the National Assem­bly in Paris to denounce tax eva­sion by emi­nent French personalities—politicians, judges indus­tri­al­ists, church dig­ni­taries, and direc­tors of newspapers—who were hid­ing their money in Switzer­land. ‘The min­is­ter of finance knows very well that for ten years, the con­cern of all his pre­de­ces­sors has been to track down this fraud . . .’ he declared. ‘How­ever, till now, the infor­ma­tion one has got­ten has been extremely vague. When doc­u­ments arrive, they are rep­re­sented only as num­bers. Employ­ees of the banks don’t know the names of account hold­ers. These names are known only to the direc­tor of the bank, who the clients for­bid to cor­re­spond with them, so anx­ious are they to pre­serve anonymity.’”

“Off­shore Bank­ing: the Secret Threat to Amer­ica” by Lucy Komisar; Dis­sent; Spring/2003; p. 1.

15. “He said, ‘If one reads the Swiss news­pa­pers this morn­ing, one sees that pub­lic opin­ion in Switzer­land dreads the mas­sive shrink­ing of sums that have been deposited in its banks—of which it enjoys exclu­sive profit.’ There had been a raid on a build­ing on the Rue de la Tremoille in the aris­to­cratic dis­trict of the Champs-Elysees, where offi­cials of a Swiss bank had a five-room apart­ment. Police had passed through a crowd of impa­tient clients in the wait­ing room, entered the office, and seized all avail­able doc­u­ments. Albertin argued that the oper­a­tion should have occurred ear­lier, as the busi­ness had gone on with­out inter­rup­tion for ten days. Even so, the police col­lected 245,000 French francs, 2,000 Swiss francs, and even more impor­tant, an index, a cash­book, a file, and ten large note­books with two thou­sand names.”

Ibid.; pp. 1–2.

16. “A par­lia­men­tar­ian shouted, ‘We want to know them!’ Albertin answered, ‘the min­is­ter knows . . .’ But the finance min­is­ter declared, ‘Ah! No! Mr. Albertin, I don’t know this list at all.’ And Albertin replied, ‘I am going to sat­isfy your curios­ity. Some will say, ‘Ah! You social­ists are happy to dis­honor polit­i­cal adver­saries and show that there are classes in soci­ety!’ Yes, there are classes. And in this scan­dal, the rul­ing elite of soci­ety shows its self­ish­ness and unwill­ing­ness to obey French law!’”

Ibid.; p. 2.

17. “His list included deputies, sen­a­tors, and judges, whose role, he pointed out, was to make and apply the laws. He called them men of ‘a par­tic­u­larly tick­lish patri­o­tism’ who, he noted with irony, ‘prob­a­bly are unaware that the money they deposit abroad is lent by Switzer­land to Ger­many.’ That Switzer­land was Hitler’s banker was already known. [Hitler did not actu­ally assume the chancellor’s posi­tion until his appoint­ment in Jan­u­ary of 1933, a cou­ple of months later.] Albertin noted sar­don­ically that such peo­ple never made loans to the French defense effort. He added that the list included a dozen gen­er­als, even the comp­trol­ler of the army. He began to name the names of the tax evader elite, includ­ing two bish­ops, who he said, ‘though their king­dom isn’t of this world,’ were able to rec­on­cile their oaths of poverty with the desire to shel­ter their for­tunes. There were also man­u­fac­tur­ers of auto­mo­biles and furniture.”

Idem.

18. “ ‘Names!’ cried a deputy. ‘The Peu­geot broth­ers,’ Albertin replied. The fur­ni­ture maker was Lev­i­tan. He moved on to Hen­ri­ette Fran­cois Coty, of the famous per­fume fam­ily, who ran a news­pa­per, L’Ami du Peo­ple (Friend of the Peo­ple), and a M. Sape­tre, whom Albertin took for the pub­lisher of Le Matin (Morn­ing). Albertin declared, ‘There is noth­ing more painful, sad­den­ing, and tragic, noth­ing that can dis­cour­age the mass of French work­ers more deeply than to see every day the men who direct and inspire French opin­ion in the columns of their big dailies call for the nation’s finan­cial patri­o­tism, tell of sac­ri­fices to be asked of civil ser­vants and war vic­tims . . . and on their own part, cheat.’”

Ibid.; pp. 2–3.

19. “Swiss bankers were stunned by the rev­e­la­tions of their clients’ names. They feared that unless they could block future expo­sure, they might lose the deposits peo­ple had stashed with them to avoid pay­ing their own coun­tries’ taxes. To make sure that account own­ers’ names could never be made pub­lic again, in 1934, the Swiss con­fed­er­a­tion made it a crime for a bank employee to vio­late the secrecy of clients’ iden­ti­ties. Bank secrecy was born; even law enforce­ment on the track of thieves could not pierce it. The elites of France and else­where could rest easy. Taxes would bur­den only the poor and mid­dle classes. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 3.

20. Fur­ther down in the text of the Dis­sent arti­cle, Ms. Komisar dis­cusses the amount of wealth of US-based multi­na­tion­als that is believed to be in tax havens, as well as the per­cent­age of over­all world wealth secreted in these repositories.

“ . . . The money involved is mon­u­men­tal. Secrecy havens have 1.2 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and hold 26 per­cent of the world’s wealth, includ­ing 31 per­cent of the net prof­its of U.S. multi­na­tion­als. Accord­ing to Mer­rill Lynch & Gem­ini Consulting’s ‘World Wealth Report’ for 2000, one third of the wealth of the world’s ‘high net-worth indi­vid­u­als’ (as banks like to call them), nearly $6 tril­lion out of $17.5 tril­lion, may now be held off­shore. Some $3 tril­lion is in deposits in tax haven banks and the rest is in secu­ri­ties held by IBC’s and trusts. Experts believe that as much as half the world’s cap­i­tal flows through off­shore cen­ters. The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) says that between $600 bil­lion and $1.5 tril­lion of illicit money is laun­dered annu­ally, equal to 2 per­cent to 5 per­cent of global eco­nomic out­put. These off­shore cen­ters awash in money are the hub of a colos­sal, under­ground net­work of crime, fraud, and corruption.”

Ibid.; p. 7.

21. The same tax havens and off­shore finan­cial repos­i­to­ries are main­stays of cor­po­rate maneu­ver­ing, terrorist-financing, drug-dealing and weapons traf­fick­ing. The remark­able Lucy Komisar—showing more moxie and char­ac­ter than the over­whelm­ing major­ity of Amer­i­can journalists—braced sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld about Sad­dam Hussein’s use of off­shore havens to bank his ill-gotten gains.

“It hasn’t been reported in the U.S. press—until here, now—but in Milan, Italy’s chief pros­e­cu­tor has obtained thou­sands of doc­u­ments that show how for more than 20 years Sad­dam Hus­sein used the West­ern bank and cor­po­rate secrecy sys­tem to laun­der bribes skimmed from oil rev­enues to pay his secu­rity forces and buy West­ern arms dur­ing inter­na­tional embar­goes. The key countries—whose gov­ern­ments openly allow these money-laundering sys­tems to exist—were Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, Panama and Nas­sau. Cor­po­rate reg­is­tra­tions and bank accounts there use ‘straw men’ and secrecy rules to cover up true own­ers of com­pa­nies and accounts.”

“Rums­feld Queried on Off­shore Bank­ing Reform” by Lucy Komisar; The Amer­i­can Reporter; 5/27/2003 [Vol. 9, No. 2112]; p. 1.

22. “On Tues­day (May 27), Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld was at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in New York, and I asked him what the U.S. planned to do about this sys­tem that financed and armed Washington’s lat­est neme­sis. This was the ques­tion: ‘It’s been shown by inves­ti­ga­tions by the pros­e­cu­tor of Milan in Italy, which has got­ten thou­sands of doc­u­ments about banks accounts in Europe, par­tic­u­larly Switzer­land and Liecht­en­stein and then also Panama, that these were the accounts through which Sad­dam Hus­sein hid the rake-offs he was get­ting from West­ern com­pa­nies that were buy­ing his oil—that allowed him to get money for weapons over the 80’s and 90’s. This bank and cor­po­rate secrecy is what allowed this to hap­pen. I assume the Amer­i­cans know about this. Are you going to do any­thing about this sys­tem that allows them to get weapons illegally?’”

Ibid.; pp. 1–2.

23. “For the record, Rumsfeld’s answer: ‘The Depart­ment of the Trea­sury has been work­ing with other coun­tries and attempt­ing to locate the assets that the Sad­dam Hus­sein fam­ily and regime have placed in other coun­tries. They found some, and I’m sure they have not found addi­tional sums, and I’m sure they’re work­ing on it.’”

Ibid.; p. 2.

24. Ms. Komisar notes that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has qui­etly reversed the Clin­ton administration’s efforts at lift­ing the cur­tain of secrecy on this cur­tain of finan­cial secrecy.

“Rums­feld clum­sily side-stepped the ques­tion, because the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has reversed the Clinton-era pol­icy that attempted at least min­i­mal reforms of the off­shore sys­tem. It has blocked Euro­pean efforts to pierce bank secrecy by allow­ing tax author­i­ties to share infor­ma­tion on non-residents’ bank accounts. It does not want to change the off­shore sys­tem because its cor­po­rate and wealthy sup­port­ers use it to evade taxes.”

Idem.

25. “Rums­feld would know how that works, because he was CEO of G.D. Searle & Co. a world­wide phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany, and of Gen­eral Instru­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, which deals in broad­band tech­nolo­gies. Inter­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions rou­tinely use the off­shore sys­tem for ‘trans­fer pricing’—corporatespeak for the prac­tice of mov­ing book­keep­ing entries around the globe so they can report near-zero prof­its to the IRS. He said that when funds are needed in Iraq, the U.S. ‘will rely on frozen assets in the U.S. and other coun­tries.” But to be frozen, they have to be found. And to be found, the U.S. will have to fol­low the trails set out in the Milan documents—to chal­lenge the bank and cor­po­rate secrecy of friendly allies such as Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, Panama and Nassau.”

Idem.; p. 3.

26. “Rums­feld says that in the new Iraq, ‘Mar­ket sys­tems will be favored,’ the U.S. ‘will encour­age moves to pri­va­tize state-owned enter­prises’ and that it is devel­op­ing a plan for the oil indus­try based on trans­parency.’” The inter­na­tional oil busi­ness is noto­ri­ous for using secret off­shore accounts to move prof­its and also to bribe gov­ern­ment offi­cials for access to oil fields. Trans­parency would make that difficult.”

Ibid.; p. 3.

27. “Ear­lier this month, Rep. Henry Wax man (D-California) released doc­u­ments show­ing that Hal­libur­ton, while it was headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney, set up off­shore sub­sidiaries in places such as the Cay­man Islands to guide its deal­ings with Iraq, Iran and Libya, which were under US embargo.”

Ibid.; p. 3.

28. “If the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is seri­ous about trans­parency, if it’s seri­ous about not want­ing Iraq’s new oil barons to use the same off­shore sys­tem that skimmed prof­its for their pre­de­ces­sors, it had bet­ter recon­sider its pro­tec­tive atti­tude toward shell com­pa­nies and secret bank accounts.”

Idem.

29. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at a man char­ac­ter­ized in a recent book as the “Cashier of Sad­dam.” This individual—Elio Bor­radori– deposited much of Saddam’s wealth through a bank account in the Banca del Got­tardo, inti­mately linked to the Bank Al Taqwa complex.

“A finan­cial adviser to Sad­dam Hus­sein has revealed how the Iraqi dic­ta­tor chan­neled hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds into secre­tive off­shore com­pa­nies. For more than 10 years Elio Bor­radori, a com­pany trustee in the tax havens of Liecht­en­stein and Lugano, Switzer­land, man­aged the huge com­mis­sions’ and ‘con­sul­tancy fees’ from the Iraqi dictator’s arms deals and devel­op­ment con­tracts. The money was fun­neled into com­pa­nies con­trolled by Saddam’s appointees through Panama, the Bahamas and Switzer­land. It is thought to have partly funded the Dictator’s palaces and lav­ish lifestyle.”

“Banker Who Hid Saddam’s Mil­lions” by Stephen Grey, Nick Field­ing, Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Edin Hamzic, Paolo Fusi, Eben Black; Sun­day Times [Lon­don]; 4/13/2003.

30. “Many of the mil­lions moved in and out of an account code­named ‘Satan”, which was orig­i­nally over­seen by a rel­a­tive of Sad­dam. He was Saad al-Mahdi. But he made the mis­take of falling out with Sad­dam and was exe­cuted, pos­si­bly for pil­fer­ing from the Satan account. A Swiss lawyer took over some of the com­pa­nies; oth­ers went into the hands of Barzan Ibrahim Has­saan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother.”

Idem.

31. “Just before the first Gulf War in 1991, almost 1 bil­lion pounds was moved from Satan and other accounts to be hid­den around the world. Ital­ian police last month iden­ti­fied 300 mil­lion pounds in one account in Geneva. The net­work of off­shore com­pa­nies remained active long after United Nations sanc­tions were imposed on Ira at the end of the war. The Sun­day Times has uncov­ered more than 1,000 doc­u­ments, some of which con­firm Borradori’s role. They also pro­vide indi­ca­tions of export deals relat­ing to Das­sault and Thomson-CSF, two French arms com­pa­nies (then state owned), and to Russ­ian firms. Although many of the doc­u­ments relate to the 1980’s, oth­ers sug­gest activ­ity in the mid-1990’s. The mate­r­ial will be a fil­lip to inves­ti­ga­tors in Italy, Switzer­land and Liecht­en­stein try­ing to untan­gle the web of trans­ac­tions in the hunt for Saddam’s billions.”

Idem.

32. “Bor­radori, who said he met Sad­dam in per­son sev­eral times retired some years ago to live qui­etly in Switzer­land. But a Lugano court case brought by the al-Mahdi fam­ily, and the mys­te­ri­ous death of one of the lawyers involved, revealed doc­u­ments relat­ing to Saddam’s secret net­work of com­pa­nies. Now 75 and liv­ing on the south­ern shores of Lake Lugano, Bor­radori admit­ted he was Saddam’s bank­ing adviser. . . .”

Idem.

33. “ . . . By 1977 the net­work of com­pa­nies and num­ber of deals had grown so extensive—with both overt and covert operations—that al-Mahdi was sent to Europe to over­see them, under the con­trol of al-Tikriti, who was then the over­all head of Saddam’s finan­cial net­work . . . The main entity was Mediter­ranean Enter­prises Devel­op­ment Projects (Lugano), which had branches in New York, Tokyo, Lon­don, Paris and other cen­ters. It in turn con­trolled about 300 other com­pa­nies, mainly in Liecht­en­stein and Panama.”

Idem.

34. “Three key com­pa­nies, called Dumynta, Radis­tal and Tech­noser­vice Inter­na­tional (Vaduz), were among those that received com­mis­sions and con­sul­tancy fees, han­dling at least 300 mil­lion pounds in the 1980’s. Some pay­ments, how­ever, were stag­gered over the life of the con­tracts and stretched into the 1990’s. There were, for exam­ple, com­mis­sion pay­ments related to a mis­sile site near Mosul, in north­ern Iraq, which, accord­ing to Ital­ian author­i­ties, was not com­pleted until the mid-1990’s—even though such work was sup­posed to stop after the Gulf War.”

Idem.

35. “To cover the tracks, much of the money passed through account num­ber 70513 at the Banca del Got­tardo in Nas­sau in the Bahamas—the Satan account. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] One bank­ing slip indi­cated a pay­ment as recently as Decem­ber 1998. There were 47 other bank accounts linked to the off­shore net­work. Bor­radori was usu­ally pres­i­dent and sig­na­tory for the com­pa­nies, and the day-to-day trans­ac­tions were han­dled by an accoun­tant for him. But the man in con­trol for the Iraqi regime was al-Mahdi. Some­thing of a play­boy, al-Mahdi jet­ted around Europe, while in Iraq, Sad­dam used some of the mil­lions to build extrav­a­gant palaces . . . Sad­dam, how­ever, appears to have sus­pected al-Mahdi of steal­ing from the accounts. He was sum­moned to Bagh­dad and beheaded for theft and behav­ior dis­re­spect­ful to Islam . . . .”

Idem.

36. After the death of Al-Mahdi, his fam­ily hired a lawyer to inves­ti­gate the miss­ing money in the Satan account. That lawyer, Gian­luca Boscaro, died under sus­pi­cious circumstances.

“ . . . Years after the death of al-Mahdi, his fam­ily decided to pur­sue some of the mil­lions that had washed through the net­work of off­shore com­pa­nies. They hired Gian­luca Boscaro, a Swiss lawyer, to bring a case which named, among oth­ers, Borradori’s accoun­tant and other trustees . . . Through the legal action, Boscaro secured evi­dence of how, at least in part, Sad­dam had siphoned off a for­tune and hid­den it around the world. Increas­ingly para­noid about his own safety, Boscaro told one friend that should any­thing unto­ward hap­pen to him, the doc­u­ments should be brought to pub­lic attention.”

Idem.

37. “In the midst of the legal action in August last year, Boscaro, an adven­tur­ous man in his for­ties, died while tak­ing time off from the case to relax in the foothills of the Pied­mont moun­tains. At around 7:30 pm on a clear sunny evening, he was float­ing high in the sky beneath a paraglider. Sud­denly the canopy seemed to stall. Boscaro plunged to his death. It is a dan­ger­ous sport and such acci­dents are not uncom­mon, but offi­cials who exam­ined the canopy noticed cords were dam­aged. Police con­cluded it was an acci­dent, although friends of Boscaro dis­pute their find­ings. Acci­dent or mur­der? It may never be known. But for Sad­dam, the end was near­ing. Within months coali­tion troops ere on their way to Kuwait. How­ever, the many mil­lions Sad­dam siphoned off for his own pur­poses may never be fully traced, let alone recovered.”

Idem.
Discussion
2 comments for “FTR #412 The Engineer Intends To Wreck The Train”

As the 10-year anniver­sary approaches of the begin­ning of the sab­o­tage described in this episode, here’s an arti­cle to remind us of a start­ing point:

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/07/20/273795/ten-years-ago-bush-tax-cuts/

“As debates about deficit reduc­tion con­tin­ued to be heav­ily tilted toward cut­ting spend­ing, which threat­ens to under­mine a frag­ile recov­ery, rather than rais­ing rev­enue from those who can afford it, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber the bud­getary impact of the Bush tax cuts.
Nearly 10 years ago today, on August 1, 2001, the Asso­ci­ated Press reported that the Trea­sury Depart­ment was tap­ping $51 bil­lion of credit in order to pay for the bud­getary cost of the first round of Bush tax cuts’ rebate checks. The AP reported at the time that Demo­c­ra­tic Party oppo­nents of the tax cuts wor­ried that they’d return gov­ern­ment bud­gets to “red ink“:

The oppo­nents of the tax cut turned out to be right. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts com­bined have blown a $2.5 tril­lion hole in America’s bud­get and cre­ated deficits stretch­ing on for years.”

Posted by R. Wilson | July 24, 2011, 8:34 pm

[...] The engi­neer intends to wreck the train, FTR #412 Cette entrée a été pub­liée dans Fas­cism, Inter­na­tional Cor­po­rate Finance, Nazism, avec comme mot(s)-clef(s) Amer­i­can Idol, Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, Debt, Deficit, French Elite, Ger­many, Hol­ly­wood, Irak War, Lib­er­al­ism, Orga­nized Crime, Paul Krug­man, Sad­dam Hus­sein, Social Pro­grams, Spend­ing, Trea­sury Depart­ment, U.S., WWII. Vous pou­vez la met­tre en favoris avec ce permalien. ← Le doc­u­men­taire « La bombe à retarde­ment » sur l’histoire nucléaire d’Israel [...]

Posted by The engineer has wrecked the train: American Idol Banana Republic and its cartoon leaders | lys-dor.com | August 2, 2011, 10:53 am