https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2007-06-10 22:18:002007-06-10 22:18:00I Knew This Would Come Back to Riggs Bank
jonno says:
so, Cheney is insane with power. Will he be stopped in time? Ever held accountable?
orionATL says:
yes, i remembered oscar bongo and riggs and bush’s brother, the money shepard, and bandar bin bush from one of your previous reportings.
in fact, when i first read about bandar in britain, your’s was the post i thought of.
otherwise, i would not have had a clue about what this might be about.
so,
i was thinking the other day, after first reports about the prince of non-paupers came out,
that maybe there really was something to michael moore’s implied charges, though i had dismissed the possibility at the time.
right now, i’m not sure. there’s too little known and too much yet to learn,
but this has a feel and a smell about it that cannot be good for the bush family.
for one thing, why would a man as wealthy as bandar need to take bribes for anything?
why not just ask for contributions to charity – o.k. not al quaeda, but some worthy charity?
was some of the money bandar took being funneled back to the u.s.?
and does any of this explain why tony blair so adamantly a supporter of bush?
blair’s support for bush just never made any sense at all to me, from his or from britain’s interests.
can things get any crazier for this administration?
how long can they effectively manage multiple cover-ups at one time?
Kenneth Fair says:
As a side note, don’t forget that The Politico is funded by Allbritton Communications, a venture apparently owned by the family behind Riggs Bank. Wonder what they have to say about Bandar Bush?
JGabriel says:
EW @ TOp: â€Seriously though, this looks more and more like Dick Cheney, with his buddy Bandar Bush, has decided to relive both Watergate and Iran-Contra, all in one.â€
This brings me to a question I’ve been wondering about lately. We know Cheney used to do business with the Iranians, as recently as when he was at Halliburton in the late 90’s. So why all the hate for Iran lately?
I’d been thinking maybe they screwed Halliburton on a contract or something, and Deadeye Dick wanted his revenge. (I’m joking. Sort of.)
But if Dick and Bandar are freelancing in foreign policy, then it kind of makes one wonder where Bandar fits in the whole â€Bomb Iran†escalation deal. Just in, you know, an ugly tin-foil way.
Also, have they cut in George? Because if they have, Condi doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo yet.
Weird. All of it. Very weird.
.
Anonymous says:
Kenneth
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn’t going to throw it in here–the post is already kind of scattered. But it does make Politico look just like the Moonie Times, huh?
JGabriel
Well, remember it was the Saudis and the Israelis in Iran-Contra days who pushed the Iran side of the fence, originally.
But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.
JGabriel says:
EW: â€Well, remember it was the Saudis and the Israelis in Iran-Contra days who pushed the Iran side of the fence, originally.â€
True, but this seems to be more about money than power. I don’t mean to sound naive, I know that the two are always intertwined. This just has more of the feel of personal greed whereas Iran-Contra seemed more motivated by lust for power combined with some misguided notions about realpolitik.
EW: â€But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.â€
Ok, now you’ve lost me.
First, I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of ’sane Republicans’. But even assuming some exist, why would Bush care what they think? He’s never yet shown any particular affinity or regard for the sane. Why start now?
.
Anonymous says:
From the â€Well that’s obvious departmentâ€, wasn’t Cheney bellowing not very long ago about Pelosi freelancing in foreign policy, and his minions screaming in unison about substantial criminal violations? I am certain the esteemed Mr. Cheney would never do anything hypocritical….
JGabriel says:
Yeah, bmaz, that was pretty ironic considering it was coming from the same party that secretly negotiated behind the government’s back with the Viet Namese in ’68 and the Iranians in ’80.
Anonymous says:
Interesting. And now Bandar is back in Saudi, out of reach of US law enforcement. Coincidence?
JGabriel says:
Markinsanfran: â€And now Bandar is back in Saudi, out of reach of US law enforcement. Coincidence?â€
Well, ’for related reasons’ might be a better description. Bandar seems to have been recalled to Saudi Arabia because he pissed off the king with his foreign policy freelancing. So it looks like Bandar was recalled less to keep him out of the reach of US law enforcement than it was to keep him under Saudi observation.
Anonymous says:
John Kerry is an expert on the BCCI affair. Maybe Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Biden can commission a report from Kerry/Hagel on this scandal. It’s important to know the extent that global policy is influenced by players who are eyeball deep in corruption and graft. If we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense and billions are siphoned off in graft and recirculated to parties involved in asymetric warfare against the US it would be a powerful arguement for a more open and sane Defense procurement process.
I know this is about BAE and MoD but it may as well be Boeing and DoD.
little d says:
If true, all this constitutes Treason. When Justice comes for these evil men, I will rejoice.
Ishmael says:
â€Follow the money.†Keep digging Marcy!
pdaly says:
Interesting. I never liked Riggs Bank. Now I have a new reason to be thankful I yacked my money out when I did.
When I was a student at Georgetown in 1990 I opened a Riggs account. However Riggs was nickel and diming me, so I transfered my money to a bank in my home town Boston, MA. Even with the new bank’s $1 non-local ATM charges for the cash withdrawals in DC I saved money compared to staying with Riggs.
On the day I closed my account at the M Street Riggs branch, it was raining. The moment I told the bankteller I wanted all my money and to close my account, a huge lightning bolt struck outside and clap of thunder instantaneously followed. The bank fell silent. I was pleased. (It was only around $1000 though–not $billions, unfortunately)
pdaly says:
yanked!
alabama says:
â€But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.â€
For the past six years, we have focused (and rightly so) on these particular characteristics of Cheney and Bush. And when we try to distinguish the one from the other, we point to Bush’s â€incompetenceâ€â€“thereby alloting, if only by way of contrast, a measure of â€competence†to Cheney.
But Cheney has never been â€competent†in any meaningful sense of that word. He’s a bumbling fool (witness his acquisition of Dresser Industries during his tenure at Halliburton). And bumbling fools do incalculable damage to everyone around them.
How, then, do we protect ourselves from the bumbling fool?
One might proceed as the Mafia does, by eliminating the fool entirely–or by turning the fool into a groveling servant of some kind.
The hit-man in this particular comedy seems to be Robert Gates, appointed (one assumes) by James Baker and his friends. Gates must be spending an enormous amount of energy reigning in Bandar and Cheney. Might not Gates, for example, have dispatched Cheney on that curious round of visits to the Middle East last month?
Compelling Cheney to â€mediate†with the â€Saudi overlords†on behalf of â€Bushâ€â€“what better way to collar the fool? Leaking the story on BCCI would be another (â€current and former officials close to the Administration saidâ€â€“and who might those â€officials†be?).
Baker and friends must be moving heaven and earth to undo the damage wrought by Cheney, while letting the younger Bush to play the fool in the presence of His Holiness the Pope. And if Cheney can’t round out his tenure as an errand-boy, perhaps he’ll have to suffer a career-ending heart-attack of some kind.
Sara says:
It’s fiction, yes, but the last book by John LeCarre, â€Mission Song†was roughly based on elements surrounding the Thatcher Son’s efforts to do a Coup. If anyone is tired of non-fiction, it is a way to more or less stay on subject, but admire LeCarre’s spinning out of odd lots of tradecraft.
Odd pieces that need integrating into the Narrative here… wasn’t it Bandar’s wife who was writing checks on these Riggs Bank accounts that found their way to the San Diego based Hyjackers that initially brought this to attention? There was, in 2003 or thereabouts, an FBI investigation that was reported to Congress and Treasury about this, it has sort of fallen through the cracks, but I think it did lead to the sale of Riggs Bank. All that seemed like a story, but then it went nowhere.
You don’t have to scratch very deep to find elements that smell of scandal do you?
Beel says:
The fundamental premise of this administration, from the get go and going back even, to the â€New American Century†load, is that this is the historical moment. So they view all constraints against striking while the iron is hot, be they â€quaint†laws, intransigent governments, pesky opposition parties, annoying voters–as historically behind the curve. Hell yes it’s Iran-Contra again. It’s the same people.
prostratedragon says:
alabama, oh yeah! It continues to look like what it’s looked like for many months. Has it been in the works for much longer? From Isikoff-Hosenball:
In November 2003, Riggs filed a â€suspicious activity report†with the Treasury Department disclosing that over a four-month period, $17.4 million from the Saudi Defense account had been disbursed to a single individual in Saudi Arabia. When Riggs officials asked the Saudis who the person was and why he was receiving the funds, they were told the individual â€coordinates home improvement/construction projects for Prince Bandar in Saudi Arabia,†and the payments were for a â€new Saudi palace,†one document shows.
Because of the Comptroller of the Currency’s inquiry into Riggs, resulting in Riggs’s inquiry of the Saudis, Bandar has been exposed on the question of money flowing through these accounts for several years. Did he simply not take the hint, or did he think he was more protected that maybe he really is?
This seems to be the first time that the Bandar payments/Riggs accounts story has been a news centerpiece. Drips and draps of it have apparently been coming out since the late 1990s, but always under cover of something else which, while odious and more than worthy of regulation and oversight, is less relevant to the most sensitive areas of present and future policies —money laundering in general, terrorist financing, dictators either no longer in power or in power in peripheral locations.
Here is a link to some 2004 Senate hearings on Riggs, and here is an excerpt from the committee’s executive summary.
THanks for those links. Will play with them tonight sometime.
JGabriel
No, my point is this isn’t about getting rich. It’s about laundering money. That’s why I include the quote from Hersh.
I will predict that, one day, we discover some of this BAE money went to fund the coup in Equatorial Guinea (Riggs ties EG back in, and Mark Thatcher was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the BAE kickbacks). The coup was an attempt to put a Saudi-US friendly dictator in place, thereby putting the Saudis back with the ability to sway world oil markets, so it totally makes sense given the players.
I also strongly suspect this money has been laundered for other off-the-books foreign policy (for example, I’ll bet you some of it shows up in Columbian paramilitaries, and possibly the coup against Chavez.
And note the timing. If I’m right about this, then this is simply where the old Iran-Contra hacks moved their ops directly after they got busted in the states.
Mauimom says:
EW: Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn’t going to throw it in here–the post is already kind of scattered. But it does make Politico look just like the Moonie Times, huh?
Someone from Politico was on FTN yesterday: dessert to their main dish of Tony Snow and Joe the Liar. [Didja see all the press Joe Lie is getting for urging an attack on Iran?]
OT: today’s Robert Novak [â€we read so you don’t have toâ€] concludes with a recommended â€two-fer†to Bush — pardon BOTH Scooter AND Gonzales. Novak thinks [actually I skimmed it rather than reading] that this would be a double play whammy with Republicans: those who are clammering for Libby’s pardon plus those who want him to cut Gonzales loose because his presence drags the party down and makes DOJ a null set.
Novak does manage to acknowledge that Bush wants to retain Gonzales because he fears a part of any confirmation of a new AG would be a promise to appoint a Special Prosecutor for the US Attorneys fiasco.
Finally, today’s WaPo informs all those who’ve lived in caves [and/or read the WaPo for the last few months] that Immigration Judges were appointed based on their Republican loyalty. They put it on the front page above the fold, though.
Mauimom says:
Isakoff: Last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that his government shut down an investigation into the payments, in part because it could have led to the â€complete wreckage†of Britain’s â€vital strategic relationship†with Saudi Arabia.
I wonder how much play this â€shut down the investigation†move is getting in Britian?
dalloway says:
What I’d really like to know about is the other deal between Cheney and the Saudis: how did it happen that ALL American troops in Saudi Arabia were removed two months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? U.S. troops on Saudi soil were a threat to the royal family’s grip on power and permanent bases in Iraq were Cheney’s goal. Bandar had contacts with terrorists and Riggs was there to provide covert billions. Isn’t it at least possible that the 9/11 terrorists (15 of whom were Saudis) were hired by these ghouls to make all their dreams come true? Without 9/11, they’d never have been able to drum up support for invading Iraq. It would also explain why there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil in the past six years. Bush’s â€unitary executive†would also have been impossible without the â€justification†of 9/11. As they say in the law business, cui bono — who really benefited from 9/11?
ecoast says:
Now, if Bandar was getting paid from mid-80’s until recently a sum of $2B on a sale of $35B worth of military equipment from the Brits ($120M per year, in quarterly payments of $30M), why wasn’t he being paid commission from the US arms companies/oil companies/construction companies that did business with the Saudis? Of course, he was. After all those were the golden years for Bandar and Bush 41, from 80’s to ’92. Those payments probably resumed again on new contracts from 2001, until Bandar became too hot and probably too arrogant for the Saudi king to handle. So he was recalled.
If those US dealings come to light, many executives from US companies will never the light of day from their cells. And the repubs will be finished for generations (permanent minority, the anti-Rove irony). But how will this story break?
orionATL says:
e’wheel
your comment at 8:12 provides motives and historical context which help me understand this better.
Thanks, EW! That puts it in a little more context.
MarkH says:
â€Bandar had contacts with terrorists and Riggs was there to provide covert billions. Isn’t it at least possible that the 9/11 terrorists (15 of whom were Saudis) were hired by these ghouls to make all their dreams come true? Without 9/11, they’d never have been able to drum up support for invading Iraq. It would also explain why there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil in the past six years. … As they say in the law business, cui bono — who really benefited from 9/11?†Posted by: dalloway | June 11, 2007 at 08:58
Fascinating stuff. It’s obvious why Bush didn’t want a 9/11 commission, isn’t it? This leads us to call for another non-NeoCon 9/11 Commission study to discover just how the NeoCons and Prince Bandar and Jack Abramoff and perhaps some other Saudis and who knows who else were working together to hire thugs or get Al Qaeda types to carry out the hijackings and where the money flowed.
Clearly the result has been to slow the flow of oil and make oil company stocks more valuable.
A lot of people profited from 9/11 and we need to know who profited and who planned & executed the attacks.
prostratedragon says:
… and from the Guardian via Laura Rozen, a glimpse of what might be a conduit structure …
orionATL says:
dragon –
thanks for the cite.
very interesting.
jeez,
it seems the world around me has become dizzyingly corrupt.
scales off the eyes, i suppose.
i wonder what other time periods provide a historical analogy.
?sara
spencer strikes !! says:
Crooked Bank May Be Tie Between Prince Bandar, Big Defense Contractor
Accusations continue to swarm about a British defense corporation’s alleged kickbacks over 20 years to Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
Last week, the BBC and the Guardian reported that BAE Systems, the world’s fourth-largest defense company, paid approximately $2 billion to an Saudi account in the now-defunct Riggs Bank controlled by Bandar as part of Britain’s largest-ever defense deal. That purchase, known as al-Yamamah, brought Britain over $80 billion in Saudi money in return for BAE-manufactured aircrat in 1985, and has been a fruitful target for UK scandal-watchers ever since. Tony Blair personally scotched an investigation by his government’s Serious Fraud Office into the alleged kickbacks in December, and he reaffirmed that decision last week when the Bandar allegations broke, saying, â€I don’t believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country.â€
Both Bandar and BAE strongly maintain their innocence. BAE claims that paying the money into the Saudis’ Riggs accounts was an above-board investment in â€local advice, capabilities and guidance†in order to ensure the purchase went smoothly. Bandar’s lawyers released a statement saying that the prince was an â€authorized signatory†to the accounts, which were controlled by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation (MODA), and any withdrawals were used â€exclusively for purposes approved by MODA.†Bandar’s father, Prince Sultan, is the Saudi defense minister.
Following lengthy investigations by the Treasury Department and the Senate, in 2005, Riggs Bank, once one of the most prestigious banks in the U.S., admitted its guilt in numerous money laundering schemes involving, among others the Saudi Embassy to Washington (which Bandar helmed), former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equitorial Guinea. According to this week’s Newsweek, Riggs’s documentation of its Saudi accounts may contain clues about what Bandar in fact received from BAE.
Look for more to come out of the Riggs collapse involving Bandar in the near future.
so, Cheney is insane with power. Will he be stopped in time? Ever held accountable?
yes, i remembered oscar bongo and riggs and bush’s brother, the money shepard, and bandar bin bush from one of your previous reportings.
in fact, when i first read about bandar in britain, your’s was the post i thought of.
otherwise, i would not have had a clue about what this might be about.
so,
i was thinking the other day, after first reports about the prince of non-paupers came out,
that maybe there really was something to michael moore’s implied charges, though i had dismissed the possibility at the time.
right now, i’m not sure. there’s too little known and too much yet to learn,
but this has a feel and a smell about it that cannot be good for the bush family.
for one thing, why would a man as wealthy as bandar need to take bribes for anything?
why not just ask for contributions to charity – o.k. not al quaeda, but some worthy charity?
was some of the money bandar took being funneled back to the u.s.?
and does any of this explain why tony blair so adamantly a supporter of bush?
blair’s support for bush just never made any sense at all to me, from his or from britain’s interests.
can things get any crazier for this administration?
how long can they effectively manage multiple cover-ups at one time?
As a side note, don’t forget that The Politico is funded by Allbritton Communications, a venture apparently owned by the family behind Riggs Bank. Wonder what they have to say about Bandar Bush?
EW @ TOp: â€Seriously though, this looks more and more like Dick Cheney, with his buddy Bandar Bush, has decided to relive both Watergate and Iran-Contra, all in one.â€
This brings me to a question I’ve been wondering about lately. We know Cheney used to do business with the Iranians, as recently as when he was at Halliburton in the late 90’s. So why all the hate for Iran lately?
I’d been thinking maybe they screwed Halliburton on a contract or something, and Deadeye Dick wanted his revenge. (I’m joking. Sort of.)
But if Dick and Bandar are freelancing in foreign policy, then it kind of makes one wonder where Bandar fits in the whole â€Bomb Iran†escalation deal. Just in, you know, an ugly tin-foil way.
Also, have they cut in George? Because if they have, Condi doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo yet.
Weird. All of it. Very weird.
.
Kenneth
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn’t going to throw it in here–the post is already kind of scattered. But it does make Politico look just like the Moonie Times, huh?
JGabriel
Well, remember it was the Saudis and the Israelis in Iran-Contra days who pushed the Iran side of the fence, originally.
But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.
EW: â€Well, remember it was the Saudis and the Israelis in Iran-Contra days who pushed the Iran side of the fence, originally.â€
True, but this seems to be more about money than power. I don’t mean to sound naive, I know that the two are always intertwined. This just has more of the feel of personal greed whereas Iran-Contra seemed more motivated by lust for power combined with some misguided notions about realpolitik.
EW: â€But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.â€
Ok, now you’ve lost me.
First, I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of ’sane Republicans’. But even assuming some exist, why would Bush care what they think? He’s never yet shown any particular affinity or regard for the sane. Why start now?
.
From the â€Well that’s obvious departmentâ€, wasn’t Cheney bellowing not very long ago about Pelosi freelancing in foreign policy, and his minions screaming in unison about substantial criminal violations? I am certain the esteemed Mr. Cheney would never do anything hypocritical….
Yeah, bmaz, that was pretty ironic considering it was coming from the same party that secretly negotiated behind the government’s back with the Viet Namese in ’68 and the Iranians in ’80.
Interesting. And now Bandar is back in Saudi, out of reach of US law enforcement. Coincidence?
Markinsanfran: â€And now Bandar is back in Saudi, out of reach of US law enforcement. Coincidence?â€
Well, ’for related reasons’ might be a better description. Bandar seems to have been recalled to Saudi Arabia because he pissed off the king with his foreign policy freelancing. So it looks like Bandar was recalled less to keep him out of the reach of US law enforcement than it was to keep him under Saudi observation.
John Kerry is an expert on the BCCI affair. Maybe Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Biden can commission a report from Kerry/Hagel on this scandal. It’s important to know the extent that global policy is influenced by players who are eyeball deep in corruption and graft. If we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense and billions are siphoned off in graft and recirculated to parties involved in asymetric warfare against the US it would be a powerful arguement for a more open and sane Defense procurement process.
I know this is about BAE and MoD but it may as well be Boeing and DoD.
If true, all this constitutes Treason. When Justice comes for these evil men, I will rejoice.
â€Follow the money.†Keep digging Marcy!
Interesting. I never liked Riggs Bank. Now I have a new reason to be thankful I yacked my money out when I did.
When I was a student at Georgetown in 1990 I opened a Riggs account. However Riggs was nickel and diming me, so I transfered my money to a bank in my home town Boston, MA. Even with the new bank’s $1 non-local ATM charges for the cash withdrawals in DC I saved money compared to staying with Riggs.
On the day I closed my account at the M Street Riggs branch, it was raining. The moment I told the bankteller I wanted all my money and to close my account, a huge lightning bolt struck outside and clap of thunder instantaneously followed. The bank fell silent. I was pleased. (It was only around $1000 though–not $billions, unfortunately)
yanked!
â€But for now, I presume that Bush is stuck trying to mediate between the few remaining sane Republicans and his Saudi overlords. Given that he’s not really a manager, it’s a tall order.â€
Sociopathic, grandiose, intimidating, power-mad, self-serving, entitled, seductive, treacherous, greedy, vengeful, homicidal….
For the past six years, we have focused (and rightly so) on these particular characteristics of Cheney and Bush. And when we try to distinguish the one from the other, we point to Bush’s â€incompetenceâ€â€“thereby alloting, if only by way of contrast, a measure of â€competence†to Cheney.
But Cheney has never been â€competent†in any meaningful sense of that word. He’s a bumbling fool (witness his acquisition of Dresser Industries during his tenure at Halliburton). And bumbling fools do incalculable damage to everyone around them.
How, then, do we protect ourselves from the bumbling fool?
One might proceed as the Mafia does, by eliminating the fool entirely–or by turning the fool into a groveling servant of some kind.
The hit-man in this particular comedy seems to be Robert Gates, appointed (one assumes) by James Baker and his friends. Gates must be spending an enormous amount of energy reigning in Bandar and Cheney. Might not Gates, for example, have dispatched Cheney on that curious round of visits to the Middle East last month?
Compelling Cheney to â€mediate†with the â€Saudi overlords†on behalf of â€Bushâ€â€“what better way to collar the fool? Leaking the story on BCCI would be another (â€current and former officials close to the Administration saidâ€â€“and who might those â€officials†be?).
Baker and friends must be moving heaven and earth to undo the damage wrought by Cheney, while letting the younger Bush to play the fool in the presence of His Holiness the Pope. And if Cheney can’t round out his tenure as an errand-boy, perhaps he’ll have to suffer a career-ending heart-attack of some kind.
It’s fiction, yes, but the last book by John LeCarre, â€Mission Song†was roughly based on elements surrounding the Thatcher Son’s efforts to do a Coup. If anyone is tired of non-fiction, it is a way to more or less stay on subject, but admire LeCarre’s spinning out of odd lots of tradecraft.
Odd pieces that need integrating into the Narrative here… wasn’t it Bandar’s wife who was writing checks on these Riggs Bank accounts that found their way to the San Diego based Hyjackers that initially brought this to attention? There was, in 2003 or thereabouts, an FBI investigation that was reported to Congress and Treasury about this, it has sort of fallen through the cracks, but I think it did lead to the sale of Riggs Bank. All that seemed like a story, but then it went nowhere.
You don’t have to scratch very deep to find elements that smell of scandal do you?
The fundamental premise of this administration, from the get go and going back even, to the â€New American Century†load, is that this is the historical moment. So they view all constraints against striking while the iron is hot, be they â€quaint†laws, intransigent governments, pesky opposition parties, annoying voters–as historically behind the curve. Hell yes it’s Iran-Contra again. It’s the same people.
alabama, oh yeah! It continues to look like what it’s looked like for many months. Has it been in the works for much longer? From Isikoff-Hosenball:
Because of the Comptroller of the Currency’s inquiry into Riggs, resulting in Riggs’s inquiry of the Saudis, Bandar has been exposed on the question of money flowing through these accounts for several years. Did he simply not take the hint, or did he think he was more protected that maybe he really is?
This seems to be the first time that the Bandar payments/Riggs accounts story has been a news centerpiece. Drips and draps of it have apparently been coming out since the late 1990s, but always under cover of something else which, while odious and more than worthy of regulation and oversight, is less relevant to the most sensitive areas of present and future policies —money laundering in general, terrorist financing, dictators either no longer in power or in power in peripheral locations.
Here is a link to some 2004 Senate hearings on Riggs, and here is an excerpt from the committee’s executive summary.
The history page for that Senate committee.
prostratedragon
THanks for those links. Will play with them tonight sometime.
JGabriel
No, my point is this isn’t about getting rich. It’s about laundering money. That’s why I include the quote from Hersh.
I will predict that, one day, we discover some of this BAE money went to fund the coup in Equatorial Guinea (Riggs ties EG back in, and Mark Thatcher was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the BAE kickbacks). The coup was an attempt to put a Saudi-US friendly dictator in place, thereby putting the Saudis back with the ability to sway world oil markets, so it totally makes sense given the players.
I also strongly suspect this money has been laundered for other off-the-books foreign policy (for example, I’ll bet you some of it shows up in Columbian paramilitaries, and possibly the coup against Chavez.
And note the timing. If I’m right about this, then this is simply where the old Iran-Contra hacks moved their ops directly after they got busted in the states.
EW: Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn’t going to throw it in here–the post is already kind of scattered. But it does make Politico look just like the Moonie Times, huh?
Someone from Politico was on FTN yesterday: dessert to their main dish of Tony Snow and Joe the Liar. [Didja see all the press Joe Lie is getting for urging an attack on Iran?]
OT: today’s Robert Novak [â€we read so you don’t have toâ€] concludes with a recommended â€two-fer†to Bush — pardon BOTH Scooter AND Gonzales. Novak thinks [actually I skimmed it rather than reading] that this would be a double play whammy with Republicans: those who are clammering for Libby’s pardon plus those who want him to cut Gonzales loose because his presence drags the party down and makes DOJ a null set.
Novak does manage to acknowledge that Bush wants to retain Gonzales because he fears a part of any confirmation of a new AG would be a promise to appoint a Special Prosecutor for the US Attorneys fiasco.
Finally, today’s WaPo informs all those who’ve lived in caves [and/or read the WaPo for the last few months] that Immigration Judges were appointed based on their Republican loyalty. They put it on the front page above the fold, though.
Isakoff: Last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that his government shut down an investigation into the payments, in part because it could have led to the â€complete wreckage†of Britain’s â€vital strategic relationship†with Saudi Arabia.
I wonder how much play this â€shut down the investigation†move is getting in Britian?
What I’d really like to know about is the other deal between Cheney and the Saudis: how did it happen that ALL American troops in Saudi Arabia were removed two months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? U.S. troops on Saudi soil were a threat to the royal family’s grip on power and permanent bases in Iraq were Cheney’s goal. Bandar had contacts with terrorists and Riggs was there to provide covert billions. Isn’t it at least possible that the 9/11 terrorists (15 of whom were Saudis) were hired by these ghouls to make all their dreams come true? Without 9/11, they’d never have been able to drum up support for invading Iraq. It would also explain why there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil in the past six years. Bush’s â€unitary executive†would also have been impossible without the â€justification†of 9/11. As they say in the law business, cui bono — who really benefited from 9/11?
Now, if Bandar was getting paid from mid-80’s until recently a sum of $2B on a sale of $35B worth of military equipment from the Brits ($120M per year, in quarterly payments of $30M), why wasn’t he being paid commission from the US arms companies/oil companies/construction companies that did business with the Saudis? Of course, he was. After all those were the golden years for Bandar and Bush 41, from 80’s to ’92. Those payments probably resumed again on new contracts from 2001, until Bandar became too hot and probably too arrogant for the Saudi king to handle. So he was recalled.
If those US dealings come to light, many executives from US companies will never the light of day from their cells.
And the repubs will be finished for generations (permanent minority, the anti-Rove irony). But how will this story break?
e’wheel
your comment at 8:12 provides motives and historical context which help me understand this better.
pdaly
a funny story.
thanks
Also known as the Bank of CIA.
http://www.slate.com/id/2112015/
link to Simpson article from WSJ, via Slate.
Thanks, EW! That puts it in a little more context.
â€Bandar had contacts with terrorists and Riggs was there to provide covert billions. Isn’t it at least possible that the 9/11 terrorists (15 of whom were Saudis) were hired by these ghouls to make all their dreams come true? Without 9/11, they’d never have been able to drum up support for invading Iraq. It would also explain why there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil in the past six years. … As they say in the law business, cui bono — who really benefited from 9/11?â€
Posted by: dalloway | June 11, 2007 at 08:58
Fascinating stuff. It’s obvious why Bush didn’t want a 9/11 commission, isn’t it? This leads us to call for another non-NeoCon 9/11 Commission study to discover just how the NeoCons and Prince Bandar and Jack Abramoff and perhaps some other Saudis and who knows who else were working together to hire thugs or get Al Qaeda types to carry out the hijackings and where the money flowed.
Clearly the result has been to slow the flow of oil and make oil company stocks more valuable.
A lot of people profited from 9/11 and we need to know who profited and who planned & executed the attacks.
… and from the Guardian via Laura Rozen, a glimpse of what might be a conduit structure …
dragon –
thanks for the cite.
very interesting.
jeez,
it seems the world around me has become dizzyingly corrupt.
scales off the eyes, i suppose.
i wonder what other time periods provide a historical analogy.
?sara
Crooked Bank May Be Tie Between Prince Bandar, Big Defense Contractor
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003416.php
Accusations continue to swarm about a British defense corporation’s alleged kickbacks over 20 years to Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
Last week, the BBC and the Guardian reported that BAE Systems, the world’s fourth-largest defense company, paid approximately $2 billion to an Saudi account in the now-defunct Riggs Bank controlled by Bandar as part of Britain’s largest-ever defense deal. That purchase, known as al-Yamamah, brought Britain over $80 billion in Saudi money in return for BAE-manufactured aircrat in 1985, and has been a fruitful target for UK scandal-watchers ever since. Tony Blair personally scotched an investigation by his government’s Serious Fraud Office into the alleged kickbacks in December, and he reaffirmed that decision last week when the Bandar allegations broke, saying, â€I don’t believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country.â€
Both Bandar and BAE strongly maintain their innocence. BAE claims that paying the money into the Saudis’ Riggs accounts was an above-board investment in â€local advice, capabilities and guidance†in order to ensure the purchase went smoothly. Bandar’s lawyers released a statement saying that the prince was an â€authorized signatory†to the accounts, which were controlled by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation (MODA), and any withdrawals were used â€exclusively for purposes approved by MODA.†Bandar’s father, Prince Sultan, is the Saudi defense minister.
Following lengthy investigations by the Treasury Department and the Senate, in 2005, Riggs Bank, once one of the most prestigious banks in the U.S., admitted its guilt in numerous money laundering schemes involving, among others the Saudi Embassy to Washington (which Bandar helmed), former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equitorial Guinea. According to this week’s Newsweek, Riggs’s documentation of its Saudi accounts may contain clues about what Bandar in fact received from BAE.
Look for more to come out of the Riggs collapse involving Bandar in the near future.