Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 02

("Quid coniuratio est?")

C.I.A. and the Dope Business

My thanks to a CN reader for sending a videotape of several episodes of a public access show out of Chicago called "Broadside". This particular episode (below) features Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman, Jim Reis, producer of a public access show called "Wall Street Lies", Mark Sato, author and researcher, and Sherman Skolnick, researcher and founder of the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts.

[Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the persons mentioned above and do not necessarily reflect my own views.]

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CLIFF KELLEY:
I think one of the interesting banking situations was, it was supposed to be the committment to the United States after the invasion of Panama and the fall of the Noriega regime that they would change their banking laws. That never happened.

JIM REIS:
Of course not.

KELLEY

And Endera was involved in money laundering as a bank owner.

REIS

The current president [of Panama, i.e., Endera]. The one who... installed by the United States.

KELLEY

Installed by the United States. Right.

REIS

Well they always put somebody in. They say, "Here's the change." But the central fact is, it's the same gang; it's just a different face.

KELLEY

Yeah.

REIS

This has been going on...

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well Endera looks a little more handsome than Noriega. He [Noriega] was called "The Pineapple".

REIS

Well I thought it was very interesting. In fact, I was the one who called Sherman and said, "Hey! Look at this article about Mena." Because this is a story that you covered long before the mainstream press ever bothered to.

SKOLNICK

Yeah. On this show! The, uh... Mark Sweeney(sp?), the head of the Arkansas committee, who came with about two foot high of documents.

KELLEY

Let's talk about Arkansas for a moment. [Unclear] to this.

SKOLNICK

There's a similarity between the operation in Arkansas and the operation in Joliet that we're gonna talk about -- they used local development companies: in Arkansas they had the Arkansas Development Finance Authority; here they had the Will County local development authority. And they did a number of things that, to "wash" the money in both places. In Arkansas they had bond brokers, the Stephens -- which many people don't know, are the largest bond brokers outside of Wall Street. And they operate a lot of places besides Little Rock. They operate in Atlanta. And the "washing" of the money and the Bank Lavoro thing in Atlanta was arranged -- other reporters really feel; they have investigated it -- involved Hillary Rodham Clinton as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm, and her law partner, Vincent Foster, jr., who was "suicided"; they say, you know, "He committed suicide." But some of us think he was murdered.

And one of the bond brokers was supposed to go to jail, but Clinton, as governor, saw to it that he didn't. And that was Dan Lasater {3}, who was in with Clinton's brother, who was a cocaine user, I believe.

MARK SATO:
And he was in with [former Illinois governor] Dan Walker? Is that right?

SKOLNICK

Yeah. With a... through a S&L in Oakbrook [,Illinois], for which Walker was sent to jail.

But the point is...

SATO

How come Lasater didn't go to jail?

SKOLNICK

Uh...

SATO

Is that a dumb question?

SKOLNICK

No, it's a good question. Uh, but the point is...

SATO

Is there an answer?

SKOLNICK

Lasater's business partner as a bond broker, Patsy Thomasson, then became the secretary to White House aide Foster. And she's the one that reportedly moved his records, shipped them to Chicago so they could be used for blackmail, after he [Foster] was "suicided".

REIS

Let's put some numbers on here real quickly, just so people understand, that Stephens [is] the main underwriter of these Arkansas Development Authority bonds. And the last story that I saw, where they put a number on how much has been issued, was $50 billion of Arkansas Development Authority bonds! Now the last census I saw said there's 4 million people in Arkansas. So you're talking about, I believe it's $14,000 of bonds per person that's been issued. And Arkansas is, I believe, the second-lowest per capita income state in the Union, behind West Virginia. But they're both states controlled by the Rockefellers, [unclear] governors of those states, named Rockefeller. And they are the Rockefellers. And this is a humongous amount of money! And I...

KELLEY

What does that mean?

REIS

I'd like to know what they're doing with the money.

SKOLNICK

I'll give you a suggestion...

REIS

But also, through these bonds...

KELLEY

They're building airports!

SKOLNICK

They're building Mena airport, to land zeppelins!

The point is, we are currently looking into Wal-Mart, which is headquartered, I think, in Bentonville, Arkansas. And there is reason to believe that Wal-Mart got, really started to boom, in the '80s and branched out across the country, we believe, through cocaine, cocaine money.

SATO

Well you're saying they laundered money with their little toasters and things? Is that what you're saying?

SKOLNICK

Uh...

REIS

If I can give people a perspective on Wal-Mart: it is probably one of the biggest paper pyramids. On my show, I talk about "The Greatest Pyramid Scheme Ever Foisted On The Human Race", the present financial system -- which is all it is, a pyramid scheme.

But within that pyramid scheme are lots of little building blocks. If you look at a pyramid, they've got lots of building blocks to build up the big pyramid. And Wal-Mart is one of them (just from an accounting standpoint -- I do have a degree in accounting).

And when you look at a company... Let's take a 100-year-old company like American Brands, the old American Tobacco Company: They only have 200 million shares outstanding. Used to be one of the Dow-30 stocks, it was [unclear]. But this is a 100-year-old company. Now Wal-Mart is a 30-year-old company. Anybody want to take a guess at how many shares they have outstanding?

SKOLNICK

Tell us!

REIS

2.3 billion little pieces of paper [unclear] watered down. But of course, I mean, this is a paper pyramid. Not only that, but when you open all these stores -- these are new stores, that Wal-Mart's been opening up. They're not coming in and taking over a site; these are built from the ground up.

KELLEY

I don't want to get away from, from dope...

SKOLNICK

Yeah let's go back to Mena.

REIS

But I just want, just let me finish that point: that these guys have somehow managed to do this without creating debt, or some kind of obligation on the stores!

KELLEY

Does that tie in with...

REIS

Oh they could be laundering tons of money through there {4}. Easily.

SATO

It's the same story that involved Michael Milken. In other words, he was never afraid he wasn't going to be able to buy somebody out, because he knew that he had narco-money up the wazoo to support his takeover bids with the junk bonds. He knew that there'd be enough drug money available to him to take over any company he wanted, in the world.

KELLEY

What did Clinton know? Before we leave Mena and this, specify what's going on, and go ahead. What did he know about Mena?

SKOLNICK

In the book by Terry Reed, the CIA pilot who they tried to "frame", he claims that there were meetings and he had direct knowledge of, that Governor Clinton attended. And so he knew, despite what he said at this recent press conference in October, Clinton, I think is making a belated apology when he says it was "federal jurisdiction" -- which some of us took to mean "CIA jurisdiction". And of course some of us feel that he and his wife are a CIA couple. And that's a separate subject -- I think we discussed that on this program?!

SATO

You're saying he was apologizing belatedly? A belated apology would be, "I'm sorry I got involved with a drug importation operation..."

KELLEY

...when he told him, and this was even before he was elected, on a national show. And he was asked about Mena and he disclaimed any knowledge. And the questioner said, "If you don't know about C-130s, the largest transport in the world, flying out of a cotton patch -- not only shouldn't you be the President; you probably shouldn't be the governor." Then he [Clinton] said, "Well I do know about it, but it's a covert action," [in other words,] "I don't... I know it's happening. It's in my state. I don't know anything about it."

I presume this disclaimer's what...

SATO

That's a disclaimer. That's not an apology.

KELLEY

You have to understand...

REIS

...Mena right on the border...

KELLEY

Oklahoma, yes.

REIS

So they could have missed it.

KELLEY

Maybe that's why...

SKOLNICK

But the point is, by 1986, I wouldn't say that Mena necessarily was taken down, but it became more and more evident, because, I think Mark pointed out in the previous show, by 1990 came out a congressional report by congressman Doug Bernard(sp?) where he went into great length about Mena, but nobody paid attention to his report! I think we were the only ones, on this show, that...

SATO

It was called "Senior IRS Employee Misconduct".

[...to be continued...]

---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------- {3} Actually, Lasater did go to jail on cocaine charges (under federal law), but Clinton, a state governor at the time, granted Lasater a complete pardon after he was released.

{4} Besides Wal-Mart, another outfit I was suspicious of was the Phar-Mor chain. A friend and I used to wonder during the '80s how it was that Phar-Mor could make money: their prices were so low! Besides the low prices, we could also make use of "creative couponing" to even further lower what we had to pay. We kept wondering at the time, "How can they make money?" We joked that Phar-Mor must be subsidized by the government. Was Phar-Mor subsidized by narco-dollars? Food for thought.

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."