Gosh, I remember this from my small collection of BCCI books, but had never realised it was the same John Kerry. This really ought to count in peoples’ minds a lot more than any tales of heroics in Vietnam. The fact that George W Bush borrowed money from BCCI in 1987 but John Kerry launched the investigation in 1988 that eventually brought them down really says about all you need to know about the character of the two men. BCCI was a really quite extraordinarily bad organisation and Kerry’s investigation opened the eyes of the whole world to the extent that it was possible to get away with corruption in high-quality financial centres. It was about this time, by the way, that the liberal media of the USA were smearing Gary Webb as a “crackpot conspiracy theorist” for reporting, accurately, on the fact that politically well-connected Nicaraguans were being allowed to get off easily on cocaine smuggling charges. The Washington Monthly story is well worth a read.
Link comes via Atrios, btw, who obviously needs the vast publicity that a CT link can generate.
{ 8 comments }
will 08.19.04 at 11:49 pm
Apropos of nothing, the article uses the wording “Panamanian strongman,” which is the title of an arcade game played by Bart Simpson.
praktike 08.19.04 at 11:58 pm
Wow. Hello “contrasting” campaign ad?
If things get truly nasty, Kerry can go all “digby” on Bush and this will help.
But even so, this one seems like a way of invoking 911 against Bush without explicitly doing so.
Matt McIrvin 08.20.04 at 12:22 am
Yeah, the BCCI investigation and the normalization of US relations with Vietnam were the two high points of Kerry’s Senate career. I’m a little mystified that more isn’t made of BCCI in the campaign, actually.
Joseph Briggs 08.20.04 at 3:06 am
I agree that more should be made of this. Here is an article about him from over a year ago that goes over the same things. Bringing Iran-Contra and BCCI under scrutiny are definite selling points to me, though Iran-Contra may be a little touchy for the swing military vote.
Martin Bento 08.20.04 at 7:08 am
The problem is the huge bias against “conspiracy theory” in the media and among most of the intelligencia. Most of the public still thinks the Webb stories were paranoid fantasies because they were so loudly ridiculted in the media, constantly conflated with UFO, the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, etc. BCCI and Iran/Contra were conspiracy theries that panned out. The investigations began with suspicions of covert machinations behind the scenes. Most such theories do not pan out, but that is true of theories of any type. The person who primarily exposed Iran/Contra, Robert Parry, is now villified and ignored as a conspiracy theorist.
Tom - Daai Tou Laam 08.20.04 at 8:29 am
The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International does sound like a conspiracy theory. The Kerry report does its best to avoid the tinfoil hat realm of the bank, but even the sanitised version is pretty amazing in who gets named.
Read Kerry’s Report on BCCI or if you’re impatient just the Executive Brief. My excerpts from the Executive Brief and a few links to more resources on “the fringe” of the web about the story.
bull 08.20.04 at 1:41 pm
Wow! 20 years in the Senate and he actually had one bright and shining moment. And it was only 16 years ago!
You’re right — that’s all I need to know.
self 08.20.04 at 5:19 pm
Not so fast, those hearings never reached a prosecutorial conclusion. Rep. Henry Gonzalez was on record saying that he believed there was resistance on the Senate side. Maybe this is not fair to lay at Kerry’s feet but it was Gonzalez who initiated the investigation that died in the Senate.
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