BANKS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE: 1977
With all the stories in the past few years on bearer bonds and their associated scandals, it's worth pausing once again to put some things in a longer historical context, which I hope to be doing in the next few blogs. We'll begin here, with an article by Tad Szule, "The CIA and the Banks," that appeared in Inquiry on Nov 21, 1977. (The PDF of the entire article is here: The CIA and the Banks). This article was shared with me and I thought - given my forthcoming book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilziations - that this was definitely worth sharing and analyzing.
As Szule points out in this article, the Carter Administration was reluctant to pursue the prosecution of former CIA Directer Richard Helms because of national security issues:
"The White House feared that disclosures of the CIA's globe-girding financial activities would not only paralyze the agency's operational capabilities - the CIA simply cannot function effectively without secure and deeply concealed channels for the massive movement of money around the world - but, even more, would embarrassingly spotlight the very considerable involvement of some of America's leading banks, financial institutions, and multi-national corporations in top-secret intelligence work abroad. This, in turn, would have led to international scandals, severely damaging the good name of the U.S. banking system."(p. 11)
True enough, any intelligence agency needs a secure source of funding. But what Szule is rightly, and subtly, pointing out is something that forms one of the main themes in my forthcoming book: the sheer industrial-scale size of the CIAs monetary operations is such that, exposure of it, "would have led," in Szule's words, "to international scandals, severely damaging the good name of the U.S. banking system."
In other words, the sheer scale of the CIAs activities is so significant that the entire U.S. banking system is implicated. Szule was subtly suggesting in 1977 that it was not the evil banksters that were "in charge," but rather that they too were penetrated and beholden to something else: a national security state and intelligence apparatus which, given the "globnal threat" of Communism, required a global covert response.... and truly huge financing to accomplish it.
Don't get me wrong...this also was a source of inestimable profits and, moreover, of income that banks in their endlessly creative ways could keep off the books. Everyone stood to make money off the "war against Communism/terrorism...fill in the blank here." Such an arrangement, however, also spells something else: the quasi-permanent nature of the structure - an intelligence-military-industrial-finance capital complex - being erected.
As I have blogged here and suggested, and again, as I suggest in the forthcoming book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations, the scale of this system constitutes a truly hidden system of financial leverage, erected in my opinion on two pillars: plunder, and fraud, a fraud inclusive of industrial scale counterfeiting whose true origins and role in this "Enterprise" have to be understood from a vast historical context. While this isn't the place to outline that context, the scale of the fraud - as evidenced by bearer bond scandals running in the trillions of dollars - is gigantic, and as also evidenced by recent financial events also detailed on this site, many countries in the western system of finance are signaling that they are aware that something is up: the calls for audits of gold and in some cases repatriation of national gold reserves are nothing less than the signal that this system has become known, and that trust and confidence in its Anglo-American overlords is breaking down.
What was this huge system used for? I review it in some detail in my forthcoming book, but Szule's summary is as adequate as any:
"Beyopnd theChilean operations loom the whole skein of CIA worldwide financial relationships - the hidden transfers of vast sums of money to finance subversion, revolutions, coups d'etat, apramilitary operations, bribery, and payments to foreign agents - that the agency would not want to come to light under any circumstances. Such revelations could destroy many of these arrangements and cause untold harm to institutions that have cooperated with the CIA for 'national security reasons.'" (pp. 12-13)
One might add "election fraud" to this list through the tried and true methods of ballot box stuffing and computerized vote hacking. In any case, Szule wrote at a time prior to the massive financial and banking scandals that would eventually implicate the CIA - Nugan Hand, BCCI, Savings and Loan, not to mention the whole cesspool surrounding Roberto Calvi, Michele Sindona, the Vatican bank, and so on. Szule states "There is nothing illegal in these banking operations..."
But let's end this first installment on a what if, on a speculation: What if, as a part of those operations, the national security structure was involved in massive and deliberate fraud, in counterfeiting securities, in stealing currency plates?
Such an enterprise would, by the nature of the case, have to involve at least complicit bankers, if not institutions... and that is a secret that would have to be protected...at all costs....
...the only question is, do covert operations account for the total amounts seemingly involved in such a system? Or to ask the same question differently: do the bearer bonds scandals represent the total? or are they just the tip of a very large iceberg, which iceberg would include derivatives, credit default swaps, and the vast mortgages frauds we saw in the previous decade? If so, then maybe President Carter, in hindsight, should have prosecuted Helms...
See you on the flip side...
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someone commented on this blog, what would happen if the productive decided to be unproductive.
Thats a pretty good topic, in short…the unproductive cannibalize the productive, then cannibalize each other.
Madoff was a good example…his comment that the US was one giant ponzi scheme was probably the only truth ever utter from his nasal twanged lisp.
All the while, while the slaughter is happening, the fingers are pointing to the phantom menace.
Cave dwelling neanderthal wonky eyed group think immoral nut jobs will never be good Sheppards.,,,entropy and croc tears.
It sickens me that this scapegoat is paraded around, as if something is being done about the fraud & plunder. Letterman/Leno throw his name about – when, in a real world, they should be ridiculing the “real” perpetra(i)tors.
The link that Joseph provided to the pdf of Tad Szule’s article “The CIA and the Banks” didn’t work for me, so I tracked it down and uploaded a copy of the pdf to my website:
thepythoniccow.us/The CIA and the Banks – Tad Szule.pdf
Dang – sorry – this forum software turned the short dash in the URL to the copy of Tad Szule’s article into a long dash, breaking the link I posted (after I carefully verifyied that I was posting the right link.)
So I have now renamed the file to use no spaces or dashes, to avoid such URL mangling.
The pdf of Tad Szule’s article “The CIA and the Banks” is now at:
thepythoniccow.us/The_CIA_and_the_Banks_Tad_Szule.pdf
It would be nice if hitting “log in and replay to whomever” actually posted the comment in the correct place.
And yes the fault is with the website.
DB-
My guess would be that Deak got killed for more than pissing off various mafias. And that funds from his banks were backing something else and or came from somewhere other than drug and gun running.
Else why use a homeless Mark David Chapman or Sirhan Sirahan (and that latter didn’t even shoot the senator)?
Is this the “Tad Szulc” (=”Ted Shultz”) of the NYT? Odd spelling you have used, unless it was another guy.
Max Keiser/Matt Taibbi discuss worldwide financial fraud. And in first half with Stacie Herbert: “Hollywood Accounting”. Also, an interesting tidbit: Dorothy Parker’s cat was called: “Cliche”.
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-377-max-keiser/
my kitty is a royal Egyptian Mau, given to me by a blind woman….she named him Cyber after space and computers..
I had a friend who had a cat(Jack) that was part siamese and part alley cat. He was black.
One day, Jack came back from a fight with one good blue-eye left.
He renamed him,
One-Eyed Jack.
And I called him Black Jack.
Bitcoin-Central.net becomes today the first Bitcoin exchange operating *within* the framework of European regulations.
Very small excerpt from from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129461.0
User’s accounts will be protected by the “Garantie des dépôts” which is the French equivalent of the American FDIC (the insurance cap applies to each account individually, and not to the sum of all user balances, so unless your EUR balance exceeds 100kEUR your fiat is 100% insured by the French taxpayer)
Each account will in a few months get its very own IBAN number, users will be able to use it as any other bank account,
Thanks for this post.
“Bitcoin”, as I understand it, is the antithesis of the centalized banking model; in that, it is DE/centralized.
Yes, it’s a decentralized peer 2 peer currency and payment network in one
http://www.weusecoins.com/
Great under 2 minute video.
I passed it on to friends & family.
Thanks again, for posting these.
Kennedy’s vast conspiracy.
Judging from the treatment meted out to the NBC digital chief with regards to the infamous 43 trillion dollar lawsuit and the seemingly untouchable nature of the Wall St. dons, the rules governing this cabal derive entirely from Sicily, Cosa Nostra and Omerta.
In “their” eyes GOD is:
Gold, Oil, Drugs.
The CIA is finance by a capitalist/facsit monopoly of which your faith in GOD does not coincide with “theirs” Once the people “realize” the way they are being “gamed” the jig is up. This erosion proces is well under way. Their “breakaway” civilization has, as the saying goes, “more money than GOD”. They have electronized it, to a point of monopolized fascist control.
The ancient systematic fraud/plunder syndrome, is so intrinsic, that it, …MUST be uprooted.
Like weeds from the garden.
In its stead; a “new” system, based on life.
NOT the current elitist system of destruction.
Gold, CIA,. Drugs, Asian Triads, Fascist International, Mind Control, Ron Paul, Apartheid era South So. Africa, and a man named Deak.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/better_than_bourne_who_really_killed_nick_deak/
YAJ,
Amazing article. Thanks.
db
Hey Joe:
How do you “know” whether the CIA is using the banks, or whether the banks are using the CIA??? You recently seem to be leaning towards the idea that the CIA is controlling the banks. I do not claim to “know” the answer here, I would just like to know your arguments for choosing “the CIA is the boss” idea, because there ARE arguments for the idea that the BANKS are the ones controlling the CIA, as I am sure you are aware.
Will you discuss this issue in the upcoming book??
bdw,
I would give the upper hand to the CIA– more sophisticated methods of surveillance, blackmail, and assassination. Generally, greater access to cutting edge technology including no doubt their access to US military technology.
Also, we might be dealing with two different mindsets– the conservative bankers trying to hold on to what they got versus the CIA cowboys with no boundaries, an expansionist agenda where the world is their oyster and they have been given blessing by the US government to crack it open. Forward, innovative thinking versus stodgy, unadventurous thinking.
And, the CIA replenishes its ranks with mostly new blood where the bankers are recruiting out of the same played out, narrow and elitist minded gene pool.
just my guess.
“One might add “election fraud” to this list through the tried and true methods of ballot box stuffing and computerized vote hacking.”
Can we please get past the meme that ballot box stuffing is the method of election fraud in the 21st century? It is used by those that would have us do away with paper and totally vote by touch screen- or even worse- by internet.
Did it happen? Yes. Can it be done on the scale that electronic voting can? No.
If the chain of custody is maintained and if witnesses are present and of various parties, then voting on paper is actually one of the most accurate you can have. (Counted by hand)
Please don’t spread this meme as it’s used by TPTB to imply that electronic voting is much more secure- and you can shop for non-existent bridges if you believe that one.
Sure people have benefitted from ballot box stuffing- but that’s small potatoes compared to what you can do via computer. Paper in a ballot box IS the best way, hand counted, as long as you have chain of custody and citizen witnesses doing their job. Unfortunately, we’re supposed to think of conducting elections like ordering fast food from a window- it’s just too time consuming to, gasp, actually conduct elections in a democratic manner, with citizen participation. No, have to outsource everything to companies because, well, outsourcing became the answer to everything including obscene profits for companies like Halliburton….
… as a footnote here, Canadian federal elections are on paper ballots and can be hand-counted in 4 hours w/ few errors! See comments by election reform expert Victoria Collier here – http://www.ratical.org/ratville/BHoCEFiA.html [esp. under heading Paper Ballots – A Radical Idea] – and at blackboxvoting.org . Little has changed since then.