Grubstakers - Episode 111: The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

In this 3 part special series we explore the bank of credit and commerce international, or BCCI, the forgotten banking scandal of the century. We discuss this worse than Watergate scandal and the reasons why it's been hushed up including its links to Iran-Contra, the CIA, the Mossad, weapons trafficking, global terrorism, and yes, Jeffrey Epstein

I want to be held accountable for what I'm doing. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it was like the 9-11 of my career and certainly of making kombucha. Jesus is smart. This idea of income inequality, that always strikes me as a very, it's a deceptive term, income inequality. Well, let's flip it around. It comes from outcome inequality. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I got the loot, Steve!

Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined today by all of my co-hosts. Yogi Poyle. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffers. And so this week, we wanted to take a deep look at the Bank of Credit and Commerce, which I think is one of the greatest scandals in American political history that's almost unknown today. You know, I mean, maybe it's just my own ignorance, but I only learned about the Bank of Credit and Commerce

just incidentally doing research for this podcast. We did the Mahfouz family episode about the Saudi Arabian billionaires, and I learned about the Bank of Credit and Commerce through that. And the bank, yeah. No way this scandal's bigger than the Janet Jackson nipple gate of Super Bowl 41 I believe right well what I would argue to you is I think Iran Contra is a bigger scandal than Watergate and yet Iran Contra people have heard it but they don't really know what it was for the most part you know myself included until recently right I think BCCI the Bank of

Credit and Commerce International, is an even bigger scandal than Iran-Contra. So these two scandals that are so much bigger than Watergate, you know, why are they so not talked about today? Why are the effects of them, which we are still feeling, why are they not part of our political discussion? And, you know, I have a couple... Well, of course, neither of these compares to the enormous

Russiagate conspiracy. Well, I have a couple theories, because Iran-Contra, of course, takes place under the Ronald Reagan administration, and George H.W. Bush was part of it, and the very same thing happens with BCCI. This is Sarah Kensier from Gaslit Nation,

and you're listening to Mueller She Wrote. Sorry, guys, we've got a choir. It's a whole thing that we're dealing with here, but we've got to play this every 15 minutes now. Well, so Robert Mueller was actually part of the BCCI scandal in that he was part of the Justice Department as the Assistant Attorney General. And his job was to go on television and say, no, there's not a cover up here. We just didn't look into this shit for like 20 years, 15 years. So at best, we'll talk a little bit about Robert Mueller's role, but at best, his role was following orders to pretend there is nothing wrong here. That's completely uncharacteristic of how he handled, let's say, anthrax. Everything else he had to investigate?

The brief summary of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, it was originally a Pakistani bank that became an international bank, but then in 1991 it was indicted by Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney. It went bankrupt and it was indicted for being a giant fraud Ponzi scheme, stealing billions of dollars of deposit or money, being involved in arms trading all over the world. You know, also child trafficking, drug trading, terrorism, being a front, having accounts for the CIA, the Mossad, Pakistani intelligence. It was often called. Well, that's just securing our world from terrorists.

Yeah. BCCI was often said it was like one in the same with Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, for its entire existence. And so in 1991, it collapses, you know, again, $20 billion bank, at the time, the seventh largest bank in the world. And then what we go through is that, you know, various officials in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration kind of covered up for this. They kept it from being investigated. They, you know, quote, unquote, lost memos that were sent up the chain about, hey, this is a giant fraud or, oh, this is terrorist funding, you know. So why is it that this huge scandal of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration is not talked about today

by Democrats? Well, I might have two audio drops that might maybe shed some light on why that is. Okay, here it goes. Bazinga. Was that it? Yes, the Young Sheldon BCCI connection. Oh, Young Sheldon, okay. If it's funny, it's Bazinga. Interesting.

Is Young Sheldon still on? He was part of the bcci blackmail scandal so he actually has tapes of um cbs executives with dancing girls in the lahore that makes sense yeah so they can't take it off the air i i learned to code and i made us a new drops player and now i have them all at my fingertips and so there we have a whole set of drops that we're going to play uh but at the same I learned to code and I made us a new drops player and now I have them all at my fingertips. And so we have a whole set of drops that we're going to play. But at the same time... In the land of Wanda, the land down under! And perhaps most impressive of all the men seen with Abadie, a former president of the united states jimmy carter carter flew around the world with abadi with millions of dollars from bcci to promote good works in the third world the bank of credit

and commerce is unique among all the banks that i've ever dealt with they are major sponsors mr carter may not have known it but he became BCCI's most important ambassador. Law enforcement authorities now say BCCI used Carter's trips to Africa to further its larger, grander scheme. And now BCCI's political connections have become an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign. A major financial backer of democratic frontrunner Bill Clinton has long-standing ties to BCCI multi-millionaire Jackson Stevens brokered a deal through which BCCI secretly gained control of the National Bank of Georgia and Stevens assisted in BCCI's initial takeover attempt of first

American buzzing guns Stevens also helped to raise funds for another firm linked to BCCI, the Harkin Energy Corporation. President Bush's son, George, sits on the board of Harkin Energy. Congratulations, my dad. The Bush campaign is also under scrutiny for its BCCI

links. James Lake, the president's deputy campaign manager, has come under fire for his public relations contract with BCCI links. James Lake, the president's deputy campaign manager, Sean's mad about the Zingas. has come under fire for his public relations contract with BCCI's new owner, Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi. But so you heard Jimmy Carter call it BCCI unique among banks that he has ever dealt with. You know, unique.

Not every bank will secretly film senators having sex with children uh trafficked from lahore uh so you heard jimmy carter praise bcci as unique among banks he's dealt with uh he went on seems like something we should revisit in a second uh we will get to that you heard jimmy carter described bcci is unique among banks he's dealt with according to the book the outlaw bank by jonathan beattie and sc gwynn they were former time magazine correspondents they said that do they do the one on whether angels are real uh they said that bcci gave at least 10 million dollars to carter jimmy carter's charitable efforts so whether or not carter was a knowing participant, when you're flying around the world with this bank as your charitable arm

and taking money from it, people will say, oh, that's a trustworthy bank. President Jimmy Carter, he's a nice guy. He works with that bank. We should put our money in there. And then suddenly, you know, 15 or 18 billion of deposits is just gone because Jimmy Carter went around and said, yeah, the Bank of Credit and Commerce

International is unique. Put your money in there. And then the second drop was, of course, Bill Clinton. Jackson T. Stevens is an Arkansas, he's dead now, but a billionaire. His son is a billionaire. He was an Arkansas businessman, one of the early funders of Walmart, who put a bunch of money into Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, who was also heavily linked to BCCI, who helped BCCI get their front company bank set up in the United States of America. So why is the BCCI scandal not talked about the way Watergate is? Well, maybe it's the fact that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are also implicated in it. So you've got Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton,

all just knee deep in this shit and uh this sounds like white people problems okay man i don't know what you're bringing this all this up for but i guess what i wanted to do today is go kind of on a deep dive on this what i do think is of the 20th century one of the greatest scandals in american politics and i want to spend time and we're going to divide this into a two-parter at least. We might do a third part if we have to because I don't want to have to skip anything. That's a threat to the audience, by the way. Yeah, we'll do a third part if we have to. If you really ask for it, we'll do a fourth part as well. We might not have anything to say about it at that point, but you know what? Four hours of BCCI content.

We'll pull this podcast over and you will not be allowed to go to the bathroom. Yeah, we listen to the listeners. And we know you don't want to hear about BCCI's involvement in child sex trafficking or blackmail or the CIA. This is going to be about the Forex market. This is going to be about Cayman Islands. This is going to be about Cayman Islands. This is going to be about leverage ratios. This is a deep financial dive on BCCI with nothing salacious for four hours. Four-parter on the finances of BCCI.

More boring than C-SPAN. Sean, why are you hard? Well, suck on this. Suck on this. Suck on this. about you on Reddit. I was only mad because the post-production drops were being conflated with me. Yes. Zombie. Well, well, suck on this.

But so we'll divide this into kind of part one it'll be uh what you're listening to now on the free side part two and if necessary part three on the paywall and you know if you have any if you're upset about that just to be clear part two will be all of the libel so it is for our own safety that that is behind the paywall because with BCCI, you have what is, you know, very much known in public, but you do have a lot of other links, very possibly to Jeffrey Epstein, which we'll get to. Who's that? Yeah. Where there's no way of, at least with the information we have now, there's no way of proving it, but there's so much smoke that there has to be you know

something going on that's more than what we know and it is just kind of mind-blowing with bcci because all of these books all of these tv specials we played to you a frontline and an news report from i think 1992 all of this talk in 92 93 was about bcci and then you try to look nothing since then just complete radio silence what i love about that that frontline episode it's on youtube i highly suggest checking it out uh partially for you know the the whole finance whatever but also because uh in the 90s they talked differently than they do now and you don't realize it until about 30 years later and then and then it really starts to stand out and that they they have all these uh just like things that you um the sum total of

this committee's investigation is that you have been in bed with bcci for at least 10 years you're telling us all you got was a back rub nowadays it's different Nowadays Yeah No one will ever talk about Our senators are so boring Compared to that Yeah No one ever speaks Figuratively about a back rub No

No God no Yeah Sounds like I don't even like back rubs I'll take your back rubs I was doing a Dershowitz thing Oh

Sounds like he needs to study A PUA escalation techniques you know if you're in bed with somebody and you can't escalate from a back rub like you got to take my course for 49.99 a month for the 15 patrons who do our pua episodes we all have sean mccarthy method we all have pickup artist names. I'm Destiny. I'm the Outlaw Bank. I'm Drops. Yo, you want to get your dick game up? You gotta talk to Drops.

We all show up in flowing Middle Eastern turpins. And that's Peacock game. Because no one else in the club. There are no other white people in the club yourself dressed like sheiks i'll tell you what once you get the keno going you look in your you look right in her eyes and you say bazinga we don't go to clubs we go to bingo halls to pick up chicks trust me when they say d9 it's gonna be mine if you know what i mean but so when we talk about bCCI, there's so many... We'll talk more about how to get pussy at the bingo clubs in the bonus. But I guess with BCCI, there's so many different rabbit holes we could go down.

Again, this is linked to arms trafficking, child trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, bribery, assassinations, intelligence gathering. Incidentally, they didn't contribute to traffic in general though yes uh but what i wanted to a lot of public transportation the the thing that most concerns me about bcci is uh the central intelligence agency uh and it's 67 approval rating among the american public like they did a survey. It's something like 67% of Americans approve of the Central Intelligence Agency. And it's just one of those things where it's like... And that's after they stopped giving people acid.

It's one of those things where this only happens because people don't know. Like, they don't know about Iran-Contra, that they were running fucking rape genocide squads all throughout Central and South America, and they don't know about BCCI, where they're probably at least partly linked to child trafficking. Well, don't know.

You can't even look it up. Like you're mentioning, it's been washed off the internet in so many ways. And I mean, even these drops and these videos we found, the front line's on YouTube, but the 92 NBC footage, I had to clean up the audio because it's from a VHS copy of the goddamn footage. Right. So it's being deleted off the web as it is, let alone people having knowledge of it.

They can't even fucking find it. But there are Wikipedia pages of CIA-linked activity to South American dictatorships coming to power. Oh, yeah. You can just go and visit the wiki for the CIA coups and... Right, right. ...in fact, coups in Chile. Wikipedia is actually pretty decent for, like, classified information getting leaked.

Or just, like, hard to find things. Like, they have trouble taking it down because, like, to take it down because it's classified, you have to admit it's classified. But it's happened on the podcast before where, like've we've looked up shit and then i found like older articles that link stuff from wikipedia that's now been cleaned that's not on the wikipedia i mean you're right it's better than certainly previous uh ways to have information but i mean it's all the billionaire class is certainly monitoring what information about them is on the internet if not billionaire uh industries that

need to be cleaned as well it's hence the case with bcci and what's really what's really annoying with um like the whole you know americans love the cia thing as i was talking to someone recently about like valerie plame and how you know she's running this kind of bullshit i was a badass cia agent campaign and the person i was talking to was like, and I was talking about all that shit that the CIA's done. And the person I was talking to was like, well, I mean, you don't know that Valerie Planton's done that. I mean, what she did was stuff for national security. And it's like, name what she's actually done for national security.

I mean, it's classified. Of course. So you can't actually name either the good or the bad things that the CIA actually does. Well, the way I look at it is the same way justified of course so you can't actually name like either the good or the bad things that like the cia actually does well the way i look at it is the same way like when i remember growing up if you went to like new york or washington dc you would come back with like a nypd or fbi merch you know like that was like a common thing to buy and you know you look at now with like the the fair uh beating of the i mean the fair uh what the fuck it's called, the cops in the subways right now

because of the beating. Oh yeah, fair enforcement. Yeah, fair enforcement. Like, you know, they got a guy

who's in a fucking subway and they're like, we thought he had a gun but also we knew that he jumped the turnstiles. We had 15 cops on him. Like, it's like,

it doesn't make any fucking sense. That sounds like a fair beating to me. But I mean like in the same vein, like, you know, we look at these. You get what you deserve these you know officials of authority like they are uh doing a only a good service for the citizens

of the world if not at least this country but the reality is that's not the case well that's what i would say is with the cia the people who know about it and still approve of it i think what you'll find from some of them is, yeah, the CIA did bad things in the past, but that's all over now. But what I want to emphasize with Iran-Contra and BCCI, again, this is the mid-'80s through the early-'90s, what I want to emphasize here is that the people at the CIA involved in those

are the ones leading the CIA today. Right, of course. Like, nobody got fired or arrested for this shit. Like, there were the Iran-Contra prosecutions where they were pardoned by George H. today. Right, of course. Like, nobody got fired or arrested for this shit. Like, there were the Iran-Contra prosecutions where they were pardoned by George H.W. Bush. But the thing is, these organizations, it's the same fucking people. Right, of course.

At the end of the day. So that's why they are so relevant, and it's why it's very disturbing that it's not talked about, where, you know, Richard Nixon is a corrupt crook, but Ronald Reagan is praised by Democrats, when, by all accounts, that it's not talked about where you know richard nixon is a corrupt crook but ronald reagan is praised by democrats when by all accounts i mean they're both bad guys but you know reagan is not some uh honorable man who did the right thing he ran a fucking genocide in south and central america

and he ran weapons uh to both sides of the iran-raq war in a very horrible war. But what a run though. Maybe that's why they like him. They're like, yeah, I don't agree with what they did, but they did it so well. Yeah, it's Edward Snowden talks pretty eloquently about

how many intelligence operations from his view on the inside, and of course he can talk freely because as long as he's uh uh indicted for uh treason you know he's got nothing to lose in terms of saying everything that he saw on the inside right um it from his perspective like a lot of the uh spying apparatus uh in the NSA but also in the CIA it's just to maintain American interests which means it doesn't mean the interests of the average American person, it's American business interests. Of course.

And that's kind of the dirty secret of the American intelligence community, is it's not about stopping terrorism or, you know. I would argue all figures of authority. I completely agree with you. But I think everything from the FBI to CIA to the government itself to even cops on the street, they're property not rights exactly yeah but so and you know again there's a lot of things we can go down with bcci but something i find fascinating is that it really predates the modern multinational corporation where bcci is best understood as a

sovereign nation state it's the anarcho-capitalist dream where BCCI literally had their own intelligence service called the Black Network. Why did it have to be black? According to the Outlaw Bank, it had about 1,500 employees. And these are secret agents. And we'll go through it a little bit more, but they talk about how they were doing blackmail operations.

They were doing assassinations for the CIA. They were doing assassinations for the CIA. They were doing assassinations for BCCI. Of course, you know, extortion, threatening people, gathering intelligence, all this stuff. Wow. Secret Asians doing blackmail for a black network. Sean, come on. What is this?

The CIA want POC to take all the blame? How do you become secret Asian? Secret Asian? Listen, there's a whole process but trust me it's worth it is that what that eyelid surgery is about you know the feet binding thing similar very similar but you know so it really presages a lot of modern uh the modern corporation but also the offshore the money laundering thing uh the the book the outlaw bank it ends by pointing out this book

was written in 1993 it ends by pointing out that if the law was reformed with regards to the cayman islands as a tax secrecy state if the united states just said hey any government that ops that operates as a tax shelter as a tax secrecy jurisdiction if they just say that you cannot have any of your money flow through the United States, they would have to reform those laws immediately. Do we know if people actually live on the Cayman Islands or if it's just a bunch of folders

that have the names of companies? Yeah. Just in a building. Well, the funny thing about the Cayman Islands is everyone pretends the billions that flow in there every year are just like to buy fucking umbrellas for the beach and like sandals. That's so great.

Like I spent $17 billion on just sandals for my beach visit. This is Cabana Futures, actually. But it is something where, so what happened in a nutshell with the BCI theft is they set up a Cayman Islands holding company that owned the actual company. The Cayman Islands does not have to report any tax information or any corporate information to any tax authority anywhere in the world. They set up this Cayman Islands holding company and then

billions of dollars flow through the Cayman Islands and disappear. You know, so billions of dollars of deposit or money was just stolen straight out and diverted for, again, intelligence operations, bribery, everything else. There's one in Luxembourg, too. Right, yeah. The smaller one. They set up their first company in Luxembourg, and then they set up another holding company in Cayman Islands, which is how these shells work. We were talking about, like, we're the suckers we set up our podcast llc in new york state when what we should be doing and we'll do is incorporate it in delaware and then get a cayman

islands holding company and then grubstakers will not pay any taxes well i mean we were considering having the holding company be in ireland right but what with the brexit shit going down so much uncertainty we just want to be safe and del Delaware is a safer option. We need to safeguard our assets. All I know is I want to have at least 10 different holding companies. I want to start in Delaware, then we're going to Ireland, then we're going to Luxembourg, then we're going to Cayman Islands. The ultimate irony would be all of us becoming billionaires due to all of the research we've done on these fucking billionaires.

We pay like $10,000 more setting up the holding companies than we ever would have in taxes. It turns out our real money maker is a shell company that just literally sells uh seashells turns out those get really big it becomes like uh tulips and in the netherlands that's right yeah but it's like you know i guess on the surface level of the bci scan bcci scandal they you know they did money laundering laundering for pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel. But cocaine smuggling is the least interesting thing they were involved in. I do like their fraud model of just like, yeah, yeah, I'll hold your money for you and then just stealing it. Like you think it's going to be like this complicated, like, you know, for all the layers of like shell companies.

It's just like, yeah, no, just you can trust me with your money and then just like leaving with it. Well, the BCCI business model is really fascinating to me because it's like they figured out who you're allowed to steal from. Because BCCI, and we'll get to this in just a second here, they set up in the Gulf states where um with all the oil money there's a lot of pakistani migrant workers who go to the united arab emirates saudi arabia etc they all need to send remittances back home to pakistan so bcci becomes their bank of choice uh so they get all that money and it's like okay migrant workers yes you can definitely steal from them uh the medellin cartel oh no you cannot steal from them all of theellin cartel. No, you cannot steal from them. All of the people who Carter mentions as being like, wow, PSBCCI is a fascinating solution of the market.

Those are people who you can steal from. Yeah. And, you know, and so we'll get to the American and let's say European as well, aspect of this. But we've talked about it a fair bit when it comes to, you know, the looting in the post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia, where London and New York City and Washington, D.C. are all intimately involved in this. So what I wanted to point out, just one more thing to start here, is that Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCooper were the auditors of the books of BCCI for, again, like more than a decade, from like 78 to 91. And it is something where, well, they both, they paid a $175 million fine in 1998.

But again, this is what, 15? Got them. 15 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, we got them. $15 billion go missing. And these are two of the big four accounting firms. And they both look at the books and say, yep, everything seems straight here. We didn't notice $15 billion.

And it's, you know, the American and British accounting firms are happy to collect their check to just look the other way. That's the equivalent of if you successfully dispute like a late charge on your checking account yeah exactly um you know and uh uh in addition to being let's say a nation state in and of itself bcci i'll i think to start this i'll just talk very briefly about iran contra and then we'll kind of go through chronological of bcci you know i love that sean's like we'll start this, I'll just talk very briefly about Iran-Contra, and then we'll kind of go through chronological of BCCI. Yo, I love that Sean's like, we'll start this, and we're fucking 29 minutes into this fucking episode already. I guess we should get started, though.

Yeah, and that'll begin our show. Yeah. Wait, Sean, let me know when we're going to the Middle East. Yes. Yes. So, after all the bazinga drops we'll start this with uh but so i guess just to say a couple other things bcci served as an intermediary for different nation states that couldn't be seen doing business together iran contra was fundamentally

various americans are taken hostage in lebanon then, of course, the U.S. government does negotiate with terrorists all the time. Hezbollah and Iran have a deal going where the U.S. says, OK, we'll send, you know, tow missiles and other weapons to Iran in exchange, release the hostages and, you know, give us money. And then they send that money to the Contras because they can keep it. They can hide it from Congress. But, you know, BCCI serves as an intermediary where the weapons sent to Iran were actually sent from Israel to Iran. But for both the leaders of Israel and Iran, they can't be seen to be doing business together. So BCCI is the intermediary. They allow all this stuff to happen.

And in exchange, you know, various nations look the other way at other shit bcci is doing um it is it is very funny how after a watergate uh with all the the revelations about the wrongdoing of the cia the church committee and all that congress was like we're gonna cut your money and the cia like that and got to cut that now like so what do you guys say about uh selling uh drugs and weapons maybe uh you know make some bread i mean it's it's a pretty standard practice like hey if you take a kid's toys away he will find something else to play with yeah yeah so fun story uh jumping ahead a little bit but uh the current attorney general of the united states william barr who just so happened to be in charge of the justice department when epstein was quote unquote

suicided the current uh attorney general uh he was they. They're going to release the results of the video camera analysis any day now. We're going to find out about what those guards were up to. The guards who did not work at the prison and were just substitute teachers, apparently. But yeah, so William Barr worked at the CIA from 1971 to 1977 he worked for the cia and part of his job there was stonewalling the church committee and you know another hopeful uh hopefully a theme of this episode will be the senate and the congress has really no ability to impact oversight of stop yeah of the cia don't care like, yes, they really haven't tried. Like, they did the thing with torture

after that came out, where the CIA was literally going through their garbage and spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Still no prosecutions. Oh, yeah, and then the CIA was like, hey, how about you don't release any of this to the public? And Feinstein was like, okay. But so, a fun story about Williamiam barr at the cia from 1971 to

1977 becomes attorney general uh for the end of george hw bush's term uh in 1992 becomes attorney general shuts down the bc or i shouldn't say shuts down but limits the scope of the bcci investigation so i wonder why he did that yeah and then also he was the one who told george hw bush to pardon uh six of the people involved in iran contra including elliot abrams uh for lying for perjury and they were originally just gonna um pardon i think uh casper weinberger i think that's his name but uh uh william barr gave the quote i told him, in for a penny, in for a pound. If you're going to pardon one of the Iran-Contra guys, pardon all the Iran-Contra guys. What?

Baller. Yeah. And then we mentioned at the top here Bill Clinton's BCCI links. So his major fundraiser is cooked right into BCCI, Bill Clinton's is. So he's not going to look at what was going on there. And then the whole thing just gets swept under the rug. Maybe that's why Nixon went down. She didn't pardon any of his uh cronies he hung them all out to dry and so they were ready to flip big mistake i just think bill clinton could take down bcci

because he just hated taking something down the head as initials you know uh a little more on bill clinton in part two and impossible Epstein connections and all that. But I guess to just start, the connections between Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, this is the first I'm hearing of this. It is interesting. One more thing with,

with BCCI, just researching this episode, researching this episode, I've got two more months of billionaire episodes blocked out because there's so many random fucking billionaires that just show up in the bcci scandal um you know they're they're giving money to everybody and again this is the bcci operating model it's pretty fascinating every country they go into they give jobs or just straight up cash bribes to influential political figures, politicians.

They do this the most in Pakistan, where they become like one in the same with the state. And they're putting all these generals, putting all their sons on the board of directors and this kind of shit. But, you know, of course, they do it in in Washington, D.C., too. And so they like they work with Henry Kissinger's lobbying firm for a bit. They they work with various American billionaires, some of whom we'll do future episodes on. And they work very closely with the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates,

which is also another billionaire family that we'll do a future episode on. Speaking of Pakistan, Trump killed, I don't know, al-Baghdadi or announced it today. But he was, I tuned in for a segment of the speech and he was talking about bin Laden and he was like, I said in my book,

there's this guy, bin Laden, he's tall, he's handsome. You gotta take the good parts of our president calling bin laden handsome did they find on ben laden's computer if he preferred evangelion or ghost in the shell uh but yes that was another thing they were like yo we got all of bin laden's computers but of course he he was a political prisoner and had no internet connection and so like there was obviously nothing on there wasn't it that's another thing where they just kind of wiped it under the rug like yeah uh it's all uh classified you can't see his porn collection I thought he had an internet connection or was it just people would bring him shit on uh thumb drives or whatever it must have been on thumb drives or something but or at least Hirsch said

he didn't have an internet connection interesting yeah because I forget the source for this but I remember there's a Comptown episode where they're talking about how he used to go on um YouTube comments and argue with people with 9-11 truthers and say no it was not an inside job I wonder if they'll do like a mini series of Osama bin Laden's last days because like on one hand it is a very like comedian on the road type of life where you're just hanging out for hours on end waiting for the end maybe I own I'm the only one that looks at it like a comedian on the road but it very much is the same vein if you ask me well apparently the Saudis were paying Pakistan to um just keep them locked up I mean yeah that makes sense yeah that's, you know, I think with comics and jumping ahead just a little bit here,

I think the most fascinating thing with the BCCI scandal and the reason we're still feeling the impact of this today is BCCI was the conduit through which the United States funded the Mujahideen, the fighters fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So BCCI was the conduit, BCCI and the Pakistani intelligence. The CIA would give them a bunch of guns, give them pallet loads of money, just straight up hard American cash,

and they would give it to the ISI and BCCI agents and say, okay, you bring this into Afghanistan. So big surprise, a whole shit ton of that goes missing and gets skimmed off the top. So part of the reason the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence that was protecting bin Laden, part of the reason they became so powerful is because we dumped billions of dollars directly on their lap to fight the Soviets. And this is a very evil and shady organization and now they're one of the biggest intelligence organizations in the world exactly because we dumped powerful we

dumped billions of dollars and you know countless weapons and we looked the other way at heroin trafficking uh going through pakistan and the routes they controlled uh you know and so this is an organization the isi that planned and carried out the Mumbai terrorist attacks. So it's like so much of what we see in the world today can be traced back to what we did with BCCI. And, you know, with all the Indian occupation of Kashmir and this kind of shit, you have to imagine the ISI is trying to do more operations there. So, you know, if a full-scale war breaks out, or even a proxy war between India and Pakistan, like, we have really fueled the fire of this shit. We have created the ISI and made it into a very deadly and straight-up evil organization, all to further our policy in Afghanistan, which also created al-Qaeda. It's like the U.S. is bad at giving people money

to fight our own wars. Right. Yeah, but we defeated the Soviet Union, and only good things have come from that. Right. It is something where it's like the soviet war the soviet union's war against afghanistan is a very horrific war you know depending on the estimates one or two million dead uh mass civilian bombing mass rape by russian soldiers all that shit but the actual

policy that we implemented there 100 made the situation worse and we're living with the consequences of it today because we just funded an insurgency right we went to you know uh uh the pakistani secret service which was also running heroin and we said here's as many weapons and as as many as much money as you need and we're not going to give a shit about all of the heroin trafficking and everything else you're involved in here so i mean you know it is just something where it makes sense that we don't hear about this because our entire political class is implicated in what they did here and uh they would rather just point at pakistan and say oh it's a fucked up corrupt country and not acknowledge our role and what we have done. But I guess to start the episode...

Why don't... How do... I hope the levels are fucked up on that one and people get mad at us. This will be fine. How come so much corruption in this country is swept under the rug so seamlessly? Everything you're talking about, I've heard pieces of, you know, kind of my entire life. Every single piece of that I've heard a little bit of, at no point has a thorough breakdown been been presented but

more importantly it seems to me that the uh arbitrators of all of this have never been identified or fucking uh taking a task on this why why does this continue part of it's baked into the system like you know one thing with nixon was that the the Watergate break-in was to attack his political opponents. But when you have something like Iran-Contra or BCCI where it's crimes of the establishment, more bipartisan, then there's not the incentive to look into them, not the incentive to enforce them. Like Nixon made lots and lots of enemies. That was pretty much his M.O. His only crime. When they were impeaching him,

some of the higher-ups in Congress, a lot of people in Congress wanted to include a lot of his war crimes in Vietnam, but for most of the people who were pushing the impeachment, they tried to keep those out of the impeachment because that was just business as usual. Mass murder was business as usual, but breaking in to your political opponent's hotel room, that's okay. I can't wait till we start doing video feed for this podcast and the listeners get to

see all of our Roger Stone Nixon tattoos. This is the Nixon revisionist podcast. I got Frost Nixon tattooed on my ass. But so just to give a brief overview of Iran-Contra, because it's important that we kind of go through, hammer down the details here. So the Tower Commission is a Texas Senator, John Tower, who we'll actually come back to in just a second here.

He's appointed in 1986 to write this report of what happened with the Iran-Contra. And just I'm going to quote a paragraph from this here. Quote, using the Contras as a front and against international law and U.S. law, weapons were sold using Israel as intermediaries to Iran during the brutal Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was also supplying weapons to Iraq, including ingredients for nerve gas, mustard gas, and other chemical weapons. Again, the Iran-Iraq war, horrific war, at least a million dead, really a World War I style war where there was chemical weapon usage by both sides, usage of child soldiers. And we were arming both sides of this conflict

and really exacerbating the death toll and the war crimes that were committed there. And nerve gas is probably the worst of the worst in terms of gases. It's like sarin. It's the type of stuff where in the Tokyo subway bombings, just a little bit of it was released in the subways and pretty much just getting exposed to it will kill you.

Oh, really? Yeah. And then we should explain who the contras are was a right-wing rapist death squad in nicaragua where you know there was a socialist uprising daniel ortega took over nicaragua and so the reagan administration says hey we got a fun you know, right-wing death squad. That's what that video game was about. I never played that level. If you do, what is it, up, down, up, down, left, right, you get to watch four nuns beg you for mercy. Just kidding. That was El Salvador, which we also did. Number one.

So Human Rights Watch released a report in 1989 which stated quote the contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict including by launching indus including launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians selectively murdering non-combat and mistreating prisoners, including mass rape. In an affidavit to the World Court, a former Contra named Edgar Chamorro testified that, quote, The CIA did not discourage such tactics. To the contrary, the agency severely criticized me when I admitted to the, that our organization had regularly kidnapped and executed agrarian reform workers and civilians. We were told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan socialists was to kill,

kidnap, rob and torture. So. Yeah. It's so embarrassing that Bernie Sanders supported the Sandinistas. And so BCCI was the intermediary for these deals because we've mentioned here, after the Church Committee, after Watergate,

there's a Senate committee that tried to look in the CIA a little bit. Actually, in the 70s, the Senate passed a law, the Congress passed a law saying the CIA could not do assassinations. Oh, really? Which BCCI comes back to because they just contract out their assassinations to bcci

but Then I guess The drone program came along and I guess if you do it from an airplane it doesn't count right right I just drop shit from a plane who it is not my responsibility But so you know the National Security Council the Defense Intelligence Agency the, they all have secret slush fund accounts at BCCI where they just park their money with BCCI. And BCCI is so good at taking money offshore and hiding it in the Cayman Islands that they are happy to hold money for these intelligence agencies to buy favors with them. So that these intelligence agencies will look the other way on other shit BCCI is doing. But also now they have their black ops budget again,

and they can hide it from Congress. And of course, Oliver North was one of the main players in the Iran-Contra. He had a BCCI account. Adnan Khashoggi was one of the weapons dealers. He used BCCI as an intermediary. So on both sides of this transaction, you know, the murdering rapist Contras and the horrific Iranan-irak war we are sending weapons and money and making the situation worse in secret in violation of the congress and congressional law uh and bcci is the intermediary profiting from that so it's like yes this is worse than watergate there is no doubt in my mind and it's just so little talked about today and we still have all these fucking Democrats talking about

Reagan as a decent honorable Republican you know so that's the world we all live in but I guess we should just kind of I had nothing I was like Andy play drop it got too fucking dark and I need

can you tell that this frontline documentary was made in 1992? Yeah, they were just like, and then the Middle East, and then they just play an audio of just the most strained call to prayer. Like, I've lived in a neighborhood with calls to prayer. Usually they just sound like someone singing, not someone just shredding their own larynx. In fairness to Frontline, pre-9-11, this was actually an original technique in filmmaking.

And then after 9-11, this is like the standard shot in every movie with the Middle East. I like to think that they're like, is this the torture audio or the praying audio? They didn't have footage of the obstacle course, though. Right, right, right. Not yet. Al-Qaeda didn't exist yet, so they didn't have any of that. But they did have, I think, another 20-second thing of guys with rifles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. another like a 20 second thing of like guys with rifles. Yeah. It's funny because like when they're playing that sound like the what's on screen is just a city and you're like, oh, it's just a city and they're like the Middle East. Oh, okay. It's different. Yes, this is the other.

Right, right, right. That's how Wisco Tango Foxtrot opens. That's a live audio from the red light district in Lahore. But so to kind of go through the founding of BCCI, Agha Hassan Abadi was the bank's founder. He was born 1922. He dies 1995. I mean, he was certainly for a time a billionaire.

I don't know if he died a billionaire. It's a fascinating thing with the BCCI story where... But he did die a legend. Yes. Towards the end, people start looking for his secret Swiss bank account number. Because again, you know, like 15 billion, depending on your estimate of deposit or money, just vanished. So theoretically, he definitely funneled some of that into a Cayman Islands and or a Swiss bank account. But he's a fascinating character.

And he was born in what was called the territory that once belonged to the Mughal Empire in India. I guess, Yogi, you know a little bit more about that than I do. But the various Muslim rulers of large sections of India, apparently Abadi's family was important people in the court of these Mughal rulers for at least a few hundred years? The Mughal rule was when each state in India was run by royalty, and the Mughals were, I believe, primarily of the Islamic faith. And so the connection between... Can you say Mughals anymore? The connection to this guy, I believe, is that he was a part of the court function of that rule at that time.

Yeah, they get really mad if Draco Malfoy calls them mudbloods. Many of the Mughals that lived in India when the partition went up would have to move across the border to Pakistan. Are you trying to say Mughals? No, it's Mughal. M-U-G-H-A-L. Oh. Hey, you bitch. I thought you were just mispronouncing Mughal. No, that's Mughal. M-U-G-H-A-L. Oh. Hey, you bitch.

I thought you were just mispronouncing Mogul. No. I was like, why is Andy stomping on my nuts right now? God damn. The Mughals. Andy's the representation of white arrogance. Where he thinks he can correct an Indian guy on the pronunciation of the former rulers of India. But so yeah, Abadi's family were...

I have no defense for this. Abadi's family were the... Throughout his family tree for several hundred years, they were the courtiers to the Mughal rulers in India. And actually his great-grandfather, Abadi's great-grandfather, was hanged by the British because I think in 1857, there was a violent uprising against British rule that his great-grandfather, Abadi's great-grandfather, was hanged by the British because I think in 1857 there was a violent uprising against British rule that his great-grandfather and several other people within the Mughal inner circle participated in. So Abadi's great-grandfather was hanged by the British.

Yeah, it links to actually the Vijay Mallya's ancestral lineage as well because those were also freedom fighters among that period. So there were a whole bunch of uprisings against the British in India at that time. And to this fucking day, Brits,

we coming for you. It is funny. If you Google BCCI, the first result is actually the Indian Cricket League. Right, yeah. Oh, really?

You know, the CIA had to pay a lot to get that shit set up. Right, right, right. Just impossible to research to pay a lot to get that shit set up. Just impossible to research this subject if you don't know where to look. There's like a dickload of Indian banks that just got way too many fucking initials as their bank names. Like there's one that's like ICICICI. And it's like cut a couple of C's or I's, buddy.

It's too much. Forget about looking for BCCI on any video sharing site. That's only the cricket one. Right, right. But so the history of Aga Hassan Abadi, again, he's born 1922. In 1947-48 is, of course, the independence and partition of India. He's born in 1922, and then in 1947-48 is the independence. Would you say he was born in 1922? Hassan Abadi Abadah Abadah Abadah Abadah. Andy, you took way too much ADD medication today.

Why was 1922 the trigger on that one? Is that a lyric in that song? No, it's just he kept saying Abadi abadah and then 22 rhymes with blue. This is how the sausage gets made. It's more of the jungle system. The wheel is turning and then it just stops every now and then. Just like the fucking joke factory in andy's head sometimes like the safety inspector is just not looking and this kind of shit comes out and there's a massive collapse and several

workers are killed i like that there's a safety inspector in that joke factory and he there's he exists the position's there but he doesn't come out nearly as much as he used to the safety inspector is the guy who keeps the shit that doesn't make any sense in your head and prevents you from saying it out loud and having your friends look at you blankly. And he's like fucking doing a cover up with OSHA investigators. Trying to figure out what's going on at his joke factory. I'm just tweeting through it. No, this is the safest joke factory we've got.

Those statistics are wrong. CNN's lying. Acting like Mueller in the 90s. I don't see any problem with this joke factory. I mean, honestly, everything they've pumped out has been A-quality, if you ask me. That was the Robert Mueller defense. Robert Mueller went on TV a bunch of times with BCCI, and he would go something like, well, the people criticizing this just don't understand how investigation works.

You know, like, yes, we got all these hints in 1978, but it really does take until 1991 before you do the slightest fucking thing about any of this. It takes 12 years to investigate a company. Those critics are either uninformed, naive, or both. Robert Mueller of the Justice Department. This is Sarah Kensier from Gaslit Nation, and you're listening to Mueller, She Wrote. The irony of course... Man, I hope this music isn't copywritten.

The irony of course being that Robert Mueller actually gaslit the American public with regards to the BCCI investigation. Well, he made up for it with his damning indictment of the Trump presidency and their Russia. Also, Robert Mueller, head of the FBI during the cover-up of the Saudi links to 9-11. So it's very... And that's the other thing you know we talked about this shit doesn't get mentioned Robert Mueller became an American hero for Democrats again these are people who nominally belong to the opposition party this guy's a fucking Republican operative his entire life who covers up BCCI who covers up helps cover up the Saudi link to 9-11 and the uh american

biological weapons link to the anthrax and you heard none of that shit on msnbc i didn't even know any of this shit until just very recently yeah and you would think if the parties are oppositional they do everything to destroy each other the democrats would want this shit out there but well i guess if Robert Mueller's Investigating Trump you know who cares let's just throw this shit all by the wayside But so Agha Hassan Abadi he moves to Pakistan say the name three times yes Agha Hassan Abadi Agha Hassan Abadi Agha Hassan Abadi blue

You guys think as part of my research for this episode I didn't practice and google how to pronounce names you're doing great yeah so

yeah so he moves to Pakistan with the the civil war the partition he is originally in Lahore the city of Lahore

he's working for he gets a job in the Habib Bank H-A-B-I-B and then in 1957, I believe, in 59, he launches a bank, the first bank in Pakistan since its independence called the United Bank. And so the United Bank, he, Abadi, what he does throughout this time, throughout the 50s, early 60s, he takes these trips to the United Arab Emirates where, you know, this is the early part of petrodollars.

The UAE has just found oil deposits offshore. You know, it's clear there's billions of dollars coming in, but these are formerly just Bedouin tribes. You know, these are very nomadic people who don't really have any sort of banking system that they're about to have billions of U.S. dollars dumped onto them. And Abadi is smart in that he recognizes that. And so he flies out to the court of the sheiks in the UAE. He, you know, brings them rugs as a gift. And, you know, he talks to them about let's set up a bank. The first guy throws him out

but then the first guy gets overthrown and replaced with a guy named sheik zayed z-a-y-e-d who um becomes one of the richest people in the world because of petrodollars but uh sheik zayed is more receptive to abadi and um abadi actually takes him out to Pakistan, takes him falconing. You know, like that's what they like to do. They have their falcons hunt these like turkey-like birds, which apparently got harder to do in UAE as all the money came in because everybody was doing it. So he takes him out to Pakistan where like the real falconing is taking place. And he also provides child prostitutes for his entourage. Wow.

Yes. So the cool shit he does and then the slightly more shady shit he does. So he's becoming like a well-known international banker. Right. Yes. I like how falconing is kind of the equivalent of just like taking your dog out to a field with a bunch of rabbits and being like, go kill one. But you're doing it with a bird, it's slightly more acceptable yeah but you get to wear the badass glove though that's true that's right i mean all ownership of an animal is is either

watching it kill stuff or killing stuff with that animal sometimes that's what i do with my cat yeah i mean yeah i'm coming down on this but like whenever my cat kills a mouse or a cockroach i'm like yeah get it just wearing like the fucking fat ass glove with a falcon on his hand wearing the glove when he's wearing the glove but my cat's on it they are badass gloves i mean like i think they're just like to stand on it. They are badass gloves. I mean, like, I think they're just like... You just have to stand on it. Yeah. They're like thick leather, so Ravenclaws or whatever can't dig through it.

But, like, there is a very satisfying feeling to the look of that glove. It took me five years, but I finally trained her to stand on the glove. That's why the drops took so long, ladies and gentlemen. You get, like, two of them, and then you get the boots so you have four falcons and then you're like a metal gear solid boss who like shoots fucking falcons but so you know what happens is um abadi sets up this united bank um in 59, and it's going pretty well, but it's confined to Pakistan. But then Budo, Benazir Budo is a future prime minister of Pakistan. It's her father, the original Budo. He comes in, and he's originally like a socialist guy.

He's very corrupt, but he nationalizes Abadi's United Bank and various other industries in Pakistan. And Abadi has to play nice with him for a while, but then Budo is later overthrown in a military coup and executed, very possibly on the suggestion of Abadi for nationalizing his bank. This is in the 70s, yes. I believe his bank is nationalized either 71 or 72. So his solution, when his bank is nationalized,

Abadi is under house arrest for a little bit. is nationalized either 71 or 72 so his solution when his bank is nationalized he's under abadi is under house arrest for a little bit his solution is he sets up a new bank in 1972 he sets up bcci he incorporates it in luxembourg because of course the pakistani government won't let him have a bank license in pakistan so he just goes abroad at this so So it ended up growing pretty rapidly. Don't want to jump ahead too much, but between 1972 and 1976, it started out at about a dozen branches and had an initial capital of like about $100 million and $200 million in assets. Oh, wow. And then by the time of 1976, just four years later, it was at 108 branches and almost $1.6 billion.

Right. And so his startup capital for BCCI in 1972 is 30% Bank of America, which was at the time, you might have heard of it, at the time the largest bank in the United States. Bank of America buys a 30% stake in it. Never heard of them. Yeah. So Bank of America buys a 30% stake in BCCI in 1972 because they want to get

in on these petrodollars. They would later sell their stake, but they would sell their stake, but they would remain a silent partner of BCCI, where it was entirely a cover-your-ass thing, where Bank of America's like, yeah, this fraud is getting a little out of control, so we should

probably publicly separate ourselves but continue to, you know, be a counterparty for them and a broker for them and all these other things that we'll maybe get back to a little later. But so they get a 30% stake from Bank of America. And then the rest of the money, or at least most of it comes from Sheikh Zayed of United Arab Emirates. And again, he's a former Bedouin who gets billions of dollars all at once from the oil deposits in the United Arab Emirates. And so as his banker, Abadi is in a great place to grow very rapidly based on that.

And the way I've seen it described as to what happens here is BCCIci set up in 1972 there's the oil boom so they're just taking in billions of dollars but then in the early 80s there's a an oil price collapse so bcci was always involved in um let's say bribery to the pakistani and the uae and the saudis uh They were always involved in this bribery. They were probably very early on also involved in intelligence gathering, drug trafficking, human trafficking. But what happens after the oil collapse in the early 80s is those parts of the business

become much more prominent. Guys, just got an email from Louis CK. His tour dates are out. And I need you all to know that not only is he going to be in Peoria, in Raleigh, in Richmond, the Comedians B Cities, but he's also going to be in Tel Aviv, Israel. Oh, hell yeah.

Holon, Israel. Detroit, Michigan. And Bratislava, Slovakia. Oh, hell yeah. This is where you go to work when you're out as a sexual abuser. Great town. But so, you know, he's paying these bribes to Saudis and such,

and he's switching in. But you really can't tell this story without talking about Kamal Adham. Kamal Adham was a Saudi, and he was the head of the Saudi intelligence agency from 1965 to 1979. He was the main Saudi counterpart of the CIA, particularly throughout the 70s and 60s, and he just so happened to be the head of Saudi intelligence while George H.W. Bush was the head of the CIA. George H.W. Bush's president would later pretend he had never met Kamal Adham at a press conference

during the BCCI scandal. I don't know anything about this man except i've read bad stuff about him and uh i i don't i don't like you know i don't like what i read about him that is george hw bush former head of the cia saying he has never heard of the head of saudi intelligence during the time he was head of the cia for a guy who was the head of the head of Saudi intelligence during the time he was head of the CIA. For a guy who was the head of the CIA, he is a terrible liar. I've never heard of him. I mean, I don't like

what I read. I know that much. I don't like what I read about him. He's got the confidence of a person denying he's cheating on someone. He's a bad guy. I don't know what's going on with him. That's what I said about Sean when someone told me about him first.

I got read about him. That's what I say about Sean now. By the way, someone posted something you did on a Twitter, on an Instagram thing, and they were like, oh, this guy does the podcast. And from the podcast account, I said, we don't know that guy.

So look forward to that show. I don't like what I read about him. But so what happens here is, you know, BCCI's transformation to, let's say, straight-up intelligence op or whatever you want to call it, to the point where it's not even really recognizable as a bank by the mid-'80s, its transformation is, many people allege, guided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence. Because we've mentioned the Church Committee a bit here, where the CIA is trying to hide black ops money from Congress and congressional oversight. Why is it going to be black?

They're trying to hide this money, and what happens is Kamal Adham, again, the head of Saudi intelligence, 65 to 79, works with BCCI, becomes a... I don't like what I read about him. He works with BCCI. He becomes a front for BCCI, one of the people who helps them buy an American

bank, one of the people who's like, yeah, I'm here on behalf of BCCI to buy this bank. He gets millions of dollars in unrepaid loans from BCCI, and it is just something where there are allegations that are pretty convincing to me,

where you have to imagine some of this change in BCCI was guided by both Saudi intelligence and the CIA, because of course, this guy is the CIA's main link to Saudi. And what I found kind of interesting here, just quoting, or not quoting, but from the book, The Outlaw Bank, Kermit Roosevelt, you might be familiar with Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, who was actually the man on the ground who launched Operation Ajax, the coup in Iran. He, you know, put all this money in different people's hands, started a bunch of fucking fake riots to get, you know, the people out on the street and the military to come in.

Kermit Roosevelt was later representing the defense firm Northrop. This is before it merged with Grumman. And so the Outlaw Bank quotes Kermit Roosevelt as saying that in the mid-60s, Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi intelligence, he was repping three different U.S. defense firms, the head of Saudi intelligence. And because Kermit Roosevelt was working for Northrop at the time, it was his job to court Kamal Adham and get him to rep a fourth U.S. defense firm, which was Northrop. To be fair, it's not easy being green. Right. So it is something where the U.S. defense establishment and all these defense companies, which of course make a lot of money selling weapons to Saudi and UAE and whoever the fuck, whatever human rights violators, they are very much tied up in the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

There's another thing from the Outlaw Bank where they talk about Kamal Adham. In, I think it's 76, the State Department intervenes to protect Kamal Adham from SEC bribery charges? Yes. 1976, the U.S. State Department intervenes to protect Kamal Adham and Boeing from SEC bribery charges. Because the way, you know, these weapons and other deals worked in Saudi Arabia is you would get an agent to the royal family who would take a quote-unquote commission, which is, you know, under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, functionally equivalent to a bribe, which is not legal, but you have to pay these various people who are connected to the royal family, you have to pay them off. So another thing BCCI does is they become a way of hiding

these bribes that Boeing and all of these defense contractors are paying to various people within the Saudi and UAE government and such. And the State Department is, in 1976, intervening to protect this guy from bribery charges. So it is just something where, at very high levels of the U.S. government, we're working with this guy who just happens to be a major BCCI shareholder board member in addition to just the head of saudi intelligence which just happened to torture and kill political opponents throughout his entire time there so the bank is very much part of the state almost right i think like um it's it's very much part particularly the pakistani state where it's almost indistinguishable from the isi and the pakistani military and so many people are given jobs and straight up bribes from there. But also they do a very similar thing with

the Saudi government and even more so with the UAE government. But I guess we'll kind of wrap up this first half here and this first part. And we'll talk more on the next episode about how BCCI eventually fell. And we'll talk a bit about, in part two, if necessary, part three, we'll talk about possible Jeffrey Epstein and possible child trafficking links. Though I guess I should just mention one more thing here. We mentioned the Tower Commission report at the beginning of this episode. Senator John Tower is the guy who wrote the official report on Iran-Contra. And so in the Outlaw Bank, the journalists interview a former member of... Is that the guy who lost a bunch of family on 9-11? He actually did die in a plane crash, which is...

I looked into it a bit. There are conspiracy theories that John Tower was assassinated on this plane crash. And I haven't been able to find any convincing evidence of that. However, it is weird how a whole bunch of BCCI people, including Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell's father, and this guy, all died in 1991, mostly under sort of mysterious circumstances. And all of these people are heavily involved in BCCI.

There was also a journalist who was killed, which we will talk about. It's a good year for cleaning houses. But so I wanted to just mention here, in the book The Outlaw Bank, the authors interview a, at the time, member of the Black Network. You've got to be black, Sean. Come on. Which, again, BCCI's Secret Intelligence Service. They have about 1, come on. Which again, BCCI's Secret Intelligence Service, they have about 1500 members. And he talks about how you can't talk finances with any of the royal families, you know, the UAE,

the Saudi royal family. He says mainly you just either talk about camels or you bring them girls. Or he also says that the westernized sons. sounds racist that's what he said he says that the westernized sons they would actually bring cocaine for them you know like the westernized sons of the various royal families would do cocaine but he also says quote they would bring them young boys unquote uh just to hang out yeah just a little disturbing. Play video games? Yeah, back ribs. Really into Contra. But what I wanted to mention here... Place on Capcom? You think they're raping those boys, Sean?

Yes, I absolutely do. And in fact, even the Kerry Committee, this is Senator John Kerry does a report on BCCI where he says that they would go to, I think it's called the Diamond Market, and get these quote-unquote dancing girls, which were children who would be trafficked to the various the sheiks

and the entourages from the UAE and Saudi and other places they say they found testimony from people as young as 8 years old who were raped and their bodies were damaged by this rape but 8 year olds, 12 year olds

very young girls. It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke and look at this system and say, yuck, what's going on? This is, of course, John Kerry, who went on to help facilitate the Saudis carrying out their genocide in Yemen. What a good dude. Yeah, really upstanding. Strong moral compass.

Yeah, sorry, also featured prominently as one of the good guys in the Frontline documentary on BCCI, Congressman Chuck Schumer, who would later go on to be one of the most corrupt Democrats in the Senate. Yeah, there's this part where he's like, you know, I realize, like, if you see

where the money's going in and where the money's coming out, you can learn a lot about how this corruption goes down. And it's like, yeah, I assume you want to learn that. I mean, it's so funny how, like, when Sean opened the episode, he was like, you know, the people in power are still the same people. And then we're

literally bringing up these politicians that in today's, you know, society have pretty good moral standings for the most part and criticism of them from the liberal group is you know like disdained in such a missed you know erroneous level and it's like no these these fuckers are proliferating these goddamn crimes against humanity and contributing to the elite status that America has trafficked in for all time. Well, it is kind of funny. It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke. And look at this. Puke. Puke. Yuck.

Puke. Puke. Puke. It is kind of funny where um what's going on go do the remix though we'll go out on that all right cool it is kind of funny where you know john care in the early 90s john carrey and chuck schumer are the people blowing the whistle on the evil that is bcci and then they would of course go on to use that as a springboard to becoming part of the power structures that they are condemning and uh perpetrating uh similar

atrocities if not quite on the same level uh so hopefully grub stakers gets to follow the john kerry chuck schumer route where we are doing an episode condemning bcci but 10 years this podcast will be like promote doing ad reads for an even worse scam than bcci shell company three four levels deep hey guys uh we got the grubstickers episode on uh the mcdonald's clown sponsored by libra the currency we all use and i don't need to tell you anymore about it. Okay, we're getting the evil eye from our laptop so we got to go now. Now, Grubstakers, you know we only tell you the truth

but we're here to talk about the essential reforms that have been done in the Lahore diamond market. All of the dancing girls are now 18 years old minimum and this is actually a voluntary sex worker transaction and we talked to the girls and they just said they want to have fun so i don't see what's wrong with what's going

on you know grub steak is brought to you by the parallax consulting firm parallax when a pro when a senator uh gets in your way look we know parallax we never we never bullshit you guys but uh andy's going through an eviction so we have to do these ad reads for child trafficking now but i guess the last thing and we'll certainly continue this uh on the uh the next part on the paywall on the patreon side um because you know we'll talk about some of the confessions of former black network members that are uh why is it gotta be black sean god damn it really really gotta tone it down with all this race hate you got we'll talk about some of their confessions about you know doing assassinations blackmail spying um but i wanted to mention

what god damn it one of the only named American politicians in the outlaw bank. And there's, I couldn't find a source for this anywhere else. But these are, you know, former Time correspondents who wrote this book. Every allegation they wrote, they were way ahead of federal investigators breaking the story for Time magazine. And everything they said has been borne out, was borne out by the subsequent investigation. So they interviewed this former member of the white network. All right, finally. It's accessible.

Equality indeed. So one of the correspondents asks him, so who did you get to, quote, in terms of American politicians? And this member of BCCci's intelligence service says quote senator john tower they knew his weaknesses they sent him women young beauties from lahore then got videos and films and this is senator john tower who we mentioned at the top of the episode wrote the you're supposed to refer to them as the sex workers senator john tower we mentioned at the top of the episode wrote the official um tower commission

report which was the look into the iran contra and a lot of people who were named in that report such as oliver north were very upset about it it clearly told a lot of things that were true and is reliable in parts uh but it paints reagan as just being unaware of what was going on of being kind of a bad or incompetent manager who wasn't involved in these decisions when I think he very much was. But it also kind of covers up the role of George H.W. Bush. So it is just weird that Senator John Tower is the only, as far as I could find,

person who is named as a blackmail victim of this BCCI network who also happened to be the guy who wrote the government's official report on the Iran-Contra scandal. So, you know, maybe it's even worse. And I have to imagine, just of like some of the allegations, that a lot of shit happened in Iran-Contra that is even worse than what the public at large knows. And of course, John Tower was killed in an airplane crash in 1991. There are conspiracies that he was murdered. I haven't seen any evidence for that, but I think it is, to me, very credible that he was blackmailed with these trafficked underage girls by BCCI operatives.

The green countries are the countries where we wash our money. The blue countries are the... Excuse me, Mr. President, sir? Yes. But I guess to kind of wrap up as we go on to the other, as the next subject, what you find with BCCI is a lot of things that are very familiar with the Jeffrey Epstein case. There there was actually we'll talk about it on the next episode there's a 1988 florida plea

bargain to let bcci off the hook which seems to be seems to be a running theme with these kind of sex trafficking operations uh that are maybe connected to the intelligence agencies of the world um there's a lot of running themes here and the the the trafficking of jeffrey epstein i think very credibly is at least linked to the central intelligence agency and the massad and yeah there's a um an article it but it hasn't been corroborated so it's it's hard to um say how credible it is but it was claiming that a former massad agent uh had stated that uh jeffrey epstein was recruited into the massad by robert maxwell who seymour hirsch claimed uh was not was not a spy for Israel, but, you know, it's kind of up for grabs. But then basically Epstein's job was to acquire blackmail for Mossad.

Right. Which, I mean, it wouldn't be shocking. According to this article. Should we do the rest of this Epstein stuff on part two? Yeah. Part two, and if necessary, part three. We'll come back to some of the various Epstein connections and as possible links to BCCI,

and we'll also close out the story of how BCCI eventually imploded and let's say the cover-up since then, how we just since 1993, even though the lawsuits for various shareholders have been ongoing all the way up to 2017 trying to get their fucking money back, there's just been no news reports and no discussion of this even though the lawsuits for various shareholders have been ongoing all the way up to 2017 trying to get their fucking money back there's just been no news reports and no discussion of this to the point where bcci like myself included most americans had no idea what the fuck you were

talking about until i researched this episode um so we will follow up with that uh check us out patreon.com slash grubstakers and yeah, we'll hopefully get through this entire story and crack the case. But you know what? Check out the Patreon because that's where the libel is. That's where the shit that we're going to get sued over is all

stashed. And with that, this has been Grubstakers. I'm Yogi Poliwog. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean McCarthy. Thanks for listening. See you on part two. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? Mother, mother There's too many of you crying

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