Pinnacle Bank--All the Usual Suspects

                        by J. Orlin Grabbe

        The Directors of, and investors in, a proposed Little Rock bank, 
to be called Pinnacle Bank, forms a rogues gallery.  Pinnacle has applied 
for an Arkansas state banking charter (*Arkansas Democrat-Gazette*, 
September 10, 1996).  
        
        There's James Blair, the Tyson food attorney who helped make 
$100,000 for Hillary Clinton in the market for cattle futures.  (Most of 
her profits were made by going *short*, a little detail Hillary seemed 
unaware of when her "this-was-not-a-bribe" PR hacks talked of riding 
the upward wave of cattle prices.)

        There's Bill Cravens, former chief executive of Worthen Bank (once 
part of Jackson's Stephens money laundering empire) and now chairman of 
Alltel Information Services--otherwise known as Systematics, a Little Rock 
supplier of banking software replete with security holes (and operational 
back office manager of Jackson Stephen's national laundry).

        There is Rick Massey, a partner in the Rose Law Firm, which
represented Systematics in the BCCI takeover of Washington-based
First American Bank.  Some of Rose's former senior partners are either
dead (Vince Foster), in prison (Web Hubbell), or facing indictment in
short order (Hillary Clinton).

        There's Joe Ford, Chairman of Alltel Corp., the Arkansas phone 
company, whose advertising revenue provided to *Forbes* helped get Jim
Norman, author of "Fostergate", fired from that magazine.

        There's David Knight, general counsel for Stephens Inc., the 
largest investment bank outside Wall Street, and one whose one-man
futures trading operation, John Markle, used three different handguns
(they said) to kill his wife, his two young daughters, and then himself 
after he lost his job on Friday the 13th (Nov. 1987) for putting profitable 
trades in an out-of-state brokerage account and sticking Stephens with the 
unprofitable ones.

        Stephens Inc. was once so desperate for foreign business, they set 
up a joint venture with the Indonesian banker Mochtar Riady to write letters 
of credit in Hong Kong (the center for heroin trade), and placed Stephens 
Link computer terminals in Panama (then the center for cocaine trade).

        And, to round out the Jackson Stephens family picture, there is
W. R. "Witt" Stephens Jr., senior vice president at Stephens Group Inc., 
who might have helped Jackson remove those two bodies wrapped in barbed 
wire which recently showed up on his lawn.

        "We think its a real opportunity for us," said Bob Althoff, the 
president and chairman of the new bank-to-be.

        Bill Clinton may be going down the tubes.  But it just goes to
show you that the usual suspects still plan to conduct business as usual.

September 11, 1996
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