Follow The Money
The CIA is the World's Filthiest Laundromat
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This is a follow-up to Clowns in America, School of Assassins and Dictators, The Shadow Game and Shadow Government Exposed, an introduction into the seedy origins and consequences of the CIA.
When a shadow government is making untold billions of dollars from worldwide drug trafficking and weapons sales, what do they need the most?
How does a criminal ‘enterprise’ wash the rivers of dirty cash constantly flowing into their hands?
Money laundering is big business.
What exactly is money laundering?
Here’s a summary from Brave Search Engine that defines it perfectly:
Money laundering is a financial crime that involves concealing the origin of money obtained from illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement, or gambling, by converting it into funds with an apparently legal source.
Criminals, including terrorist organizations, attempt to disguise the proceeds, sources, or nature of their illicit activities through money laundering.
The process can be broken down into three main stages: first, the illegal activity that garners the money places it in the launderer’s hands. Then, the money is passed through a complex system of banking transfers or other transactions, generating the appearance of legitimacy for the illicit gains. Money laundering facilitates a broad range of serious underlying criminal offenses and ultimately threatens the integrity of the financial system.
When you have large amounts of money to launder, what do you need most?
Banks.
You need financial institutions to make transfers and transactions in order to legitimize the money. This threatens the integrity of these financial institutions.
Money laundering requires many front companies and financial transactions to hide the ‘origin’ of the cash. It’s a very complicated process and is made a whole lot easier by banks that are ‘complicit’ in the illegal activity. It also requires someone with the knowledge and skill, along with experience, to successfully avoid all the banking and money laundering laws on the books.
I believe the CIA is running the biggest money laundering operation in the world.
They shouldn’t be called the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA actually means ‘Criminals In Action’.
I will continue to make the case that George H.W. Bush is the architect of the modern day CIA and shadow government.
In my last article, I talked about the Iran-Contra scandal and how the shadow government focused the American people’s attention on illegal arms sales while all the evidence of massive money laundering got swept under the rug.
The shadow government knew that fighting communism and freeing hostages would gain ‘sympathy’ from the American people, so they wouldn’t really demand justice, and they were right.
Those illegal arms deals are now a footnote in history.
But something happened a year before these Iran-Contra investigations that actually did strike some fear in the shadow government. It was a different set of Senate hearings that were digging into something related to Iran-Contra. These hearings would expose evidence of something the shadow government desperately wanted to hide from the American people.
What was it?
Drug trafficking by the CIA.
These hearings, led by Senator John Kerry, didn’t get near the media attention, and have been long forgotten. But what was revealed was some truth that needs to be shared. The American people need to know the truth.
Have you ever heard the name Ramon Milian Rodriguez?
Who is he?
According to the New York Times:
An accountant testified under oath to Congress today that he laundered billions of dollars in illegal drug profits through Panama's banking system with the help of Gen. Antonio Manuel Noriega, commander of the country's army and police and de facto leader.
Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a 36-year-old American who was born in Cuba and is now serving a 43-year sentence for money-laundering, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that a ''ballpark figure'' of what he paid General Noriega for his services was between $320 million and $350 million.
Remember, Noriega was a graduate of the School of Americas (SOA) and an installed CIA dictator in Panama. He was a paid CIA asset and was known to be heavily involved in trafficking cocaine from Colombia into the United States. He was the ultimate narco dictator and a controlled puppet of the CIA.
Don’t miss this important point:
Ramon Milian Rodriguez was a Cuban-American. That’s not a coincidence. There are going to be a lot of Cuban Americans that play key roles in the shadow government, just like Felix Rodriguez, who I talked about in my last article.
Ramon Milian Rodriguez was an accountant who laundered billions in illegal drug profits through the banking system in Panama.
But who was he working for?
More from the New York Times:
In hundreds of trips to Panama, Mr. Rodriguez said, he moved about $11 billion in drug profits from secret safehouses around the United States run by the Medellin cartel from Colombia, through Miami to Panama. He said he personally earned about $2 million to $3 million a month, and that toward the end of his career, he was laundering $200 million a month.
He moved approximately 11 billion dollars in drug profits. Drug trafficking is a huge business.
The accountant was working for Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel. The money laundering operation sent the flow of dirty cash from Colombia to Miami and then back through Panama.
More from the New York Times:
Describing General Noriega, who was indicted last week on drug charges, as ''sort of a slippery and tricky fellow,'' Mr. Rodriguez testified that he paid a commission of between 1 to 10 percent to the Panamanian leader, depending on the transaction. In exchange, General Noriega gave him the use of Panama's airports, banking system and security officers to facilitate the money-laundering, and provided information about the identity of American drug agents, radio frequencies and the schedules of Coast Guard and American Navy surveillance vessels.
Mr. Rodriguez said he laundered money not only through Panama, but also through Curacao, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Bahamas.
Don’t miss that last part!
The Medellin cartel accountant was also laundering money through banks in Curaçao, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Bahamas. That’s a huge data point that we’ll come back to.
Noriega was a CIA asset and was feeding the Medellin cartel info on DEA agents and Coast Guard and US Navy surveillance information. He was getting this information from the CIA, who were trying to protect their drug trafficking operation.
Here’s where we see something very important. We see the difference between those involved in the shadow government who are ‘untouchable’ and those who are ‘expendable’.
Untouchable vs Expendable.
This Congressional testimony was the beginning of the end for Noriega. There was no way for Bush to rehabilitate Noriega’s image with the American people. He was now a liability and a danger to exposing everything, so the shadow government would deploy a new strategy. They would come up with a new narrative.
What was it?
Noriega would be painted as the face of narco drug trafficking in South and Central America, and Bush would be painted as the presidential hero fighting drug traffickers.
Noriega became expendable.
He would be indicted by the Bush administration and Panama would be invaded by our military in order to arrest him. It was a huge news story. Noriega’s capture and extradition became a major narrative deployment that would shield Bush and the CIA from accusations of trafficking drugs. Bush was now seen as waging war on drug traffickers.
That is exactly what happened to Pablo Escobar, too.
The CIA was completely involved in the Medellin cartel drug operation. But when Pablo Escobar began a massive murder campaign in Columbia and started assassinating government officials and judges, he brought a lot of unwelcome attention. He became notorious for his brutality and that made him a liability. Bush as president, would now have Pablo Escobar hunted down and killed, further reinforcing his image as being tough on drug traffickers.
Killing Pablo Escobar didn’t slow down the drug trade into the US at all. New leaders would rise up to replace him that were unknown to the American people and below the radar.
Painting Bush as the hero fighting the war on drugs would now become a big narrative push by CIA-controlled media assets. But were they giving the American people the true story?
Who is Ramon Milian Rodriguez? What’s his background?
Here is the link to a transcript of an incredible show, which is full of interviews that actually dove into the CIA connections into drug trafficking. It aired in 1988, the year Bush was running for president. It gives us some real interesting history on Ramon Milian Rodriguez. I would encourage you to read the whole transcript.
According to Frontline:
JUDY WOODRUFF
“Good evening.
Two of the most persistent offensives of the Reagan presidency have been the war against communism in Central America and the war on drugs here at home.
But investigations of America's secret war in Nicaragua have revealed mounting evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency has been fighting the Contra war with the help of international drug traffickers.
It is not a new story.
Tonight's FRONTLINE investigation traces the CIA's involvement with drug lords back to the agency's birth following World War II. It is a long history that asks this question: ‘In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?’”
Isn’t that a great question?
“In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?”
The CIA didn’t control all of the media back then and television shows like these were doing great damage to the CIA and the shadow government.
I mentioned in my last article that Felix Rodriguez was a Cuban exile who was recruited and trained by the CIA. He was also a member of a covert CIA team of Cuban exiles called Brigade 2506. This brigade participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion along with other covert operations.
The Frontline program revealed who was leading Brigade 2506, and also his important connection to the accountant for the Medellin cartel.
More from Frontline:
NARRATOR
The Brigade had been created and trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. After their defeat the CIA continued to maintain and use this skilled force of covert operators, wherever they were needed. Their numbers grew into the thousands. They had their own navy, as well as other assets provided by the CIA, including businesses and banks.”
Here’s some interesting questions:
Why would this brigade have their own businesses and BANKS?
Brigade 2506 was connected to a money laundering operation in order to fund a shadow government’s covert operations.
Who was leading this CIA brigade?
More from Frontline:
Manuel Artime:
“I was in charge…”
NARRATOR
“Manuel Artime was the agency's favorite Cuban, handpicked to command both the Bay of Pigs and the covert operations that followed. In 1972, he recruited and arranged CIA training for a brilliant young accountant called Ramon Milian Rodriguez.”
Did you catch that?
This is a huge bombshell revelation.
Manuel Artime was the CIA golden boy and leader of their covert Cuban Brigade 2506. He is the one who recruited Ramon Milian Rodriguez into the CIA and arranged for him to receive ’CIA training in accounting’.
This is even more proof that the CIA was directly involved in the drug trade, but more importantly, directly tied to the Medellin cartel and Pablo Escobar.
The CIA recruited and trained the accountant who was laundering all of Pablo Escobar’s drug profits.
The CIA wasn’t just a bystander, they were actively participating. Nobody can train money launderers better than the CIA.
Doesn’t this raise a huge question?
Who was the accountant really working for?
Was it the Medellin cartel, or was it the CIA?
All the media stories would describe Ramon Milian Rodriguez as the accountant for the Medellin cartel and would completely ignore the fact that he was a CIA operative recruited by Manuel Artime.
More from Frontline:
Ramon Milian Rodriguez:
“He ran covert operations out of Miami for the CIA.”
Frontline:
“So Artime had a whole group of people who were his people?”
Milian Rodriguez:
“Oh yes, Artime ran a very large operation, it was very large. It was very active, all over Central and South America.”
Milian Rodriguez:
“He was in charge of, among other things, the Watergate burglars and things like that.”
Frontline:
“Did you launder any money for the Watergate guys?”
Milian Rodriguez:
“I made payments for the Watergate burglars, yes. I start out in life in one scandal and I've ended it in another, it seems. After Watergate, the group that Manuel Artime was running in Miami was disbanded.”
Milian Rodriguez has Watergate connections.
What a coincidence.
The CIA Watergate burglars were getting paid by the Medellin cartel accountant. That’s another direct connection that proves the CIA was directly tied to the Medellin cartel and Pablo Escobar. I wonder why nobody looked into that?
(More on the Watergate burglary in a coming article.)
Here’s another direct connection to the CIA through an untouchable, Felix Rodriguez.
According to The Washington Post:
A money launderer for the major Colombia cocaine cartel has told Congress in secret testimony that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through former CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, congressional sources disclosed.
Milian-Rodriguez testified that the money was delivered in several installments after 1983, when he was arrested, the source said. The subcommittee source said that Milian-Rodriguez claimed he passed the money in Central America to couriers selected by Felix Rodriguez.
Felix Rodriguez was a CIA untouchable and Milian Rodriguez gave 10 million dollars to him in installments AFTER he was arrested. The Medellin cartel was a CIA-connected drug cartel in every way, but that is information that continues to be hidden from the American people.
Manuel Artime was in charge of the CIA’s covert Cuban brigade in Miami that Felix Rodriguez was part of.
Do you remember who was in charge of the CIA station in Miami? It was Ted Shackley, who was overseeing all these operations under JMWAVE and would later go on to Vietnam to oversee the Phoenix Program.
What was JMWAVE?
According to Wikipedia:
JMWAVE or JM/WAVE or JM WAVE was the codename for a major secret United States covert operations and intelligence gathering station operated by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1961 until 1968.
JMWAVE began as the operations center for Task Force W, the CIA's unit dedicated to Operation Mongoose, a U.S. effort to overthrow Fidel Castro's Communist government in Cuba.
Under Theodore Shackley's leadership from 1962 to 1965, JMWAVE grew to be the largest CIA station in the world outside of the organization's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, with 300 to 400 professional operatives and possibly including about 100 based in Cuba and an estimated 15,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles on its payroll. The CIA was one of Miami's largest employers during this period. Exiles were trained in commando tactics, espionage and seamanship and the station supported numerous exile raids on Cuba
An estimated 15,000 Cuban exiles were CIA operatives working out of Miami. They were involved in a lot more than just a Watergate burglary.
There was another important person who was mentioned in the Frontline program.
The former CIA director, William Colby.
More from Frontline:
WILLIAM COLBY, Former Director, CIA
“CIA has had a solid rule against being involved in drug trafficking. That's not to say that some of the people who the CIA has used or been in touch with over the years may well have themselves been involved in drug traffic, but not the CIA.”
William Colby is one of the untouchables.
I wanted to include this statement by Colby for a reason.
According to him, the CIA has never been involved in drug trafficking. To believe that, you would have to ignore the evidence that CIA-owned airplanes were transporting drugs globally since the Vietnam war and even into the United States. You would also have to ignore the fact that the CIA recruited farmers from America to help increase opium production in Laos, and also trained accountants for the Medellin cartel to help them launder billions of dollars through banks around the world.
And guess who provided the banks?
Do you remember where the Medellin cartel accountant was laundering money besides Panama?
He was also laundering money in Curaçao, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Bahamas.
Curacao.
According to Curacao Chronicle:
The US has again named several Caribbean countries, including Curaçao, as ‘Major Money Laundering Jurisdictions’ in its new International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
According to the report, Curacao is a regional financial center and a transshipment point for drugs from South America.
Switzerland.
In my last article, I laid out how Richard Secord and Oliver North were using Swiss bank accounts to launder a lot of money. The CIA has used Swiss banks a lot and Switzerland has been a banking hub for criminals for many years.
Hong Kong.
In order to understand the importance of Hong Kong, we’ll have to first go to Australia.
There was something huge that happened in Australia back in 1980. It would launch several major investigations by the Australian government that would expose a lot of crimes, but ultimately, it would also be whitewashed and swept under the rug with no criminal prosecutions.
Have you ever heard of the name Michael Jon Fuller?
Who is he?
He’s a guy that was living in Idaho and had his own business called G.M.I. Manufacturing. The company manufactures tactical weapons for US Special Forces, special operations groups and hunters.
Why is he so important?
Well, that’s not his real name. It’s actually his alias.
His real name is Michael Jon Hand.
Who is he?
According to ProPublica.org:
Decades After Disappearing From Australia, a CIA-Linked Fugitive is Found in Idaho
Michael Jon Hand was at the center of a decades-old mystery, an Australian bank called Nugan Hand with ties to American military and intelligence officials that defrauded depositors and investors and then collapsed.
It was one of the greatest disappearing acts of modern times. Amidst a swirl of allegations and rumors that the Nugan Hand bank was involved in arms smuggling, drug-running, and covert operations for the CIA, the institution’s American founder vanished from Australia. Thirty-five years later, that man, Michael Jon Hand, was tracked to a small town in Idaho where he has been living under the name of Michael Jon Fuller.
The Nugan Hand bank was involved in arms smuggling, drug trafficking and covert operations for the CIA, before it collapsed.
Who is Michael Hand?
More from ProPublica.org:
Hand had been a Green Beret in Vietnam and a CIA operative in Laos, before moving to Australia, where he and Frank Nugan, a wealthy playboy, established the Nugan Hand Bank in 1973, with $80. Hand fled Australia seven years later after Nugan was found dead inside his Mercedes Benz, his left hand holding the barrel of a .30-calibre rifle a few inches from his head, his right hand near the trigger.
During an inquest into Nugan’s death, Hand testified that the bank was insolvent, owing investors (large and small) some $50 million. The inquest ruled Nugan’s death a suicide, a finding that many Australians found dubious.
Are you surprised that Michael Hand has ties to the CIA secret war in Laos? He’s a CIA operative and he started a CIA bank.
When the CIA is running a massive opium operation in Laos, they need a complicit bank to launder the money through. That’s where the Nugan Hand Bank came in.
Michael Hand’s partner was Frank Nugan, who had been found dead of a suspicious suicide. That kicked off the bank’s collapse and launched multiple investigations. Guess whose name was found on documents on Nugan’s body at his death? None other than William Colby, who was the ‘legal adviser’ for the bank. What a coincidence.
Michael Hand would escape Australia in a disguise with a phony passport and according to a declassified document, he ended up down in Central America helping to fight the Sandanista’s in Nicaragua a few years later.
Clearly Michael Hand was part of the protected class. He had an alias but was still using the same Social Security number—that’s how they tracked him down in Idaho. He was protected by a shadow government and untouchable, but his partner Frank Nugan was clearly expendable.
They started this bank with just $80. Did you know it was that easy to start up a bank? Apparently it’s really easy to start a bank.
More from ProPublica.org:
Nugan wrote the bank a check for $980,000, then covered it by writing a bank check to himself for the same amount. “Through this elementary accounting fraud, Nugan could claim that the company’s paid-up capital was a million dollars,” Alfred W. McCoy writes in “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”
From this simple fraudulent scheme, they could immediately start attracting new customers. Guess what kind of customers?
More from ProPublica.org:
From those humble and corrupt beginnings, grew a global goliath that attracted investors with promises of 16 percent interest on deposits, in off-shore accounts. By 1979, Nugan Hand had 13 branches around the world, and many of its depositors were drug traffickers, according to Australian investigators.
This CIA bank was a magnet to a whole lot of drug traffickers. Do you think that’s just a coincidence? This bank was purposely set up for one reason—to launder drug money.
According to the New York Times:
Australian detectives are expected to visit the United States and Southeast Asia in the next few weeks as they attempt to determine whether the failed Sydney-based Nugan Hand Merchant Bank was involved in trafficking in heroin and covert activities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
In a report released earlier this week, the Australian Government said it had uncovered evidence of a link between the C.I.A. and Nugan Hand. The report, heavily censored because the Government thought publication might inhibit the investigations, was made by police studying the possible involvement of the bank in drug trafficking.
The report said Mr. Hand, who was born in New York City, and a Nugan Hand associate, Bernard Houghton, a 62-year-old Texan who was the bank's representative in Saudi Arabia, had a background in American intelligence before they arrived in Sydney in 1967.
A CIA operative from Texas and a Green Beret soldier who fought for the CIA in Laos both came to Australia in 1967. That was the same year that Bush and his CIA partner at Zapata Offshore traveled to Vietnam.
Just a coincidence?
This is a key point.
Bernard Houghton was another CIA operative working for Nugan Hand bank and was in charge of the branch in Saudi Arabia.
More from the New York Times:
The censored part of the report is believed to discuss links between Nugan Hand and organized crime, establishing that the bank was involved in heroin smuggling.
Almost 40 pages of the 240-page report were devoted to Mr. Houghton. The report said that when Mr. Houghton ran the Saudi Arabian office, the bank transferred millions of dollars out of Saudi Arabia. The money has yet to be traced.
Bernard Houghton was a big part of this operation and was also an untouchable. He owned several bars in Australia that would become the popular hangouts of American soldiers taking “R&R” during the Vietnam War. The US soldiers on ‘relax and recreation’ were spending about 9 million dollars a month, and Houghton was collecting a lot of this money. These same seedy vice bars would be where a lot of our soldiers would be able to get heroin, which became a huge epidemic during the war.
But what about all that money that disappeared from the Saudi Arabian branch of the bank?
According to WikiSpooks:
Saudi Arabia
Nugan Hand Bank's most brazen fraud was possibly the theft of "at least $5 million, maybe more than $10 million, from American civilian and military personnel in Saudi Arabia. The man in charge of Nugan Hand's Saudi operations was Bernie Houghton, the barkeep with high-level ties to U.S. and Australian intelligence
Bernie Houghton not only stole anywhere from 5 to 10 million dollars or more from American civilians and soldiers in Saudi Arabia, but he also profited off our soldiers heroin addiction that he was helping to provide.
Nothing ever happened to him because he was an untouchable, but clearly our soldiers were expendable.
So where is the Hong Kong connection to the Nugan Hand bank?
Nugan Hand bank had opened many branches around the world in very strategic locations. The bank has a branch and was registered in the Cayman Islands in order to avoid taxes. It also opened a branch in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which was the epicenter of the heroin trade in the Golden Triangle. That branch in Chiang Mai was located in the same building as the DEA office there, yet it was never under suspicion of laundering drug money at all. They were protected by a shadow government.
But a key branch was opened in Hong Kong and Bernie Houghton is directly connected to it.
According to a book written in 1992 by Joel Bainerman called ‘The Crimes Of A President:’
The Nugan Hand bank collapsed, owing some $50 million. None of the deposits were secured because they were used for illegal activities. These included defrauding American military personnel in Saudi Arabia out of nearly $10 million. The bank sent out "investment counselors" to installations where Americans were working in Saudi Arabia and told them to invest their salaries in Nugan Hand's Hong Kong branch in secured government bonds.
Houghton was sending ‘investment counselors’ to Saudi Arabia to talk American civilian and military personnel into investing their salaries in ‘secured government bonds’ through their Hong Kong branch. They lost all their money and none of it has been traced or recovered.
More excerpts from ‘The Crimes Of A President:’
The Australian government eventually investigated the collapse of the bank and found that millions of dollars were missing and unaccounted for. It discovered that the main depositors of the bank were connected with the narcotics trade in the Middle East and Asia, and that the CIA was using Nugan Hand to finance a variety of covert operations. Government investigations revealed ties between Nugan Hand and the world's largest heroin syndicates. The reports said that the Bank was linked to at least 26 separate individuals or groups known to be associated with drug trafficking.
In 1983 the Australian Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking released a report on Nugan Hand's activities to Parliament which said Shackley, Secord, Clines, Quintero, and Wilson were people whose background "is relevant to a proper understanding of the activities of the Nugan Hand group and the people associated with that group."
Nowhere in media reports did you hear the names Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, Thomas Clines, Rafael Quintero, and Edwin Wilson connected to the Nugan Hand Bank collapse.
Why?
They were untouchables.
I mentioned Shackley and Secord in previous articles. Thomas Clines was Shackley’s deputy during the secret war in Laos. Rafael Quintero was a Cuban exile involved in many covert CIA operations. Edwin Wilson was a CIA operative who specialized in selling weapons.
Edwin Wilson would later become expendable when the public found out he had sold Gaddafi explosives and was training Libyan terrorists with Green Berets. He spent 25 years in prison before he gained access to CIA documents using the FOIA. He proved he was working for the CIA and was then released from prison.
Nugan Hand Bank was a CIA money laundering operation from its inception, and nobody was prosecuted for any of it.
Bahamas.
There is a very revealing connection between the Nugan Hand Bank to a similar bank in the Bahamas that had been shut down years earlier.
Have you ever heard of the name Paul Helliwell?
I’m not surprised if you haven’t. He’s a protected untouchable and a valuable CIA operative when it comes to setting up money laundering operations.
Here’s a picture of him along with Michael Hand and Frank Nugan as they were setting up their new bank.
Who is Paul Helliwell?
According to Wikipedia:
Paul Lional Edward Helliwell (1915 – 24 December 1976) was an American lawyer, banker, OSS official, and CIA officer. While serving in this capacity he became director of Sea Supply, Inc. and president of Castle Bank & Trust. Helliwell was instrumental in setting up Civil Air Transport and Castle Bank & Trust, both of which were CIA proprietary companies. According to The Wall Street Journal, he was "deeply involved" in financing covert actions against Cuba from 1964 to 1975.
He was a CIA member from its inception. He helped set up Civil Air Transport, which was another CIA airline used to traffic drugs and weapons. He also set up and ran Castle Bank &Trust, located in the Bahamas. It became a model for CIA money laundering operations.
What happened to Castle Bank &Trust?
According to The Washington Post:
One of the more titillating business stories that somehow managed to reach the public prints in the last decade was the great Castle Bank caper.
Remember? It was the escapade in which two Internal Revenue Service agents outdid themselves as sleuths only to have their chief throw out their hard-gained evidence of possible massive tax evasion as inadmissible.
For years IRS agents had been trying, without much success, to obtain documentary proof that Americans were using offshore banks in the Caribbean to hide income and evade taxes. One of the suspect banks was the privately owned, Nassau-based Castle Bank & Trust (Bahamas) Ltd.
IRS agents had evidence of a massive tax evasion case involving Castle Bank, but their case got dismissed by the DOJ.
Why?
More from The Washington Post:
It now appears that pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency, rather than any legal problem, was what caused the Justice Department to drop what could have been the biggest tax evasion case of all time. Moreover, the supposed legal obstacle to using the Castle Bank Depositors' list was questionable at best -- the government already had in its possession the same list, legally obtained.
What caused the Justice Department to back off seems to have been the CIA's argument that pursuit of the Castle Bank would endanger “national security.” This was involved because that bank, besides its possible use as a haven for tax evaders, was the conduit for millions of dollars earmarked by the CIA for the funding of clandestine operations against Cuba and for other covert intelligence operations directed at countries in Latin America and the Far East. A major tax evasion investigation of the bank probably would have endangered these CIA operations.
Throughout all my research, I constantly come across instances where illegal CIA operations are exposed and are prevented from being prosecuted because of “national security.”
The shadow government would constantly use this excuse as a shield in order to protect their untouchable operatives from prosecution.
Where does Paul Helliwell come in?
More from The Washington Post:
Castle Bank was set up and principally controlled by the late Paul Lionel Edward Helliwell, a Miami lawyer. Helliwell, who had longstanding ties to the U.S. intelligence community, was instrumental in helping to direct a network of CIA undercover operations and "proprietaries." (A proprietary is a concern secretly set up and controlled by the CIA, ostensibly as legitimate business.)
Despite repeated requests for comment, officials at the CIA, Justice Department and the Helliwell law firm refuse to discuss the case. Castle Bank, which closed its operations in the Bahamas and Cayman Islands in 1977, currently is based in Panama, but apparently has no offices there.
Paul Helliwell was the point man for the global money laundering operations for the CIA, and nobody knows his name.
He was a high level untouchable. He helped set up Nugan Hand Bank. Castle Bank would become the model for future operations like BCCI and I believe Milian Rodriguez, our Medellin cartel money launderer, got his training through him.
We started out this article talking about Milian Rodriguez, who was constantly described in the media as a Medellin cartel money launderer, but never described as a CIA operative.
Do you want more proof he worked for the CIA?
According to FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):
(I would really encourage you to read this article, as it reveals the CIA control of media assets.)
A key money-launderer for the Medellin cocaine cartel told Congress in February that he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, but this information was not reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the three major networks, even though all covered the hearings.
In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, Ramon Milian Rodriguez acknowledged that he laundered more than $3 million for the CIA AFTER his indictment on drug charges in 1983.
He was still laundering money for the CIA after he had been indicted—a huge piece of evidence completely ignored by the media.
More from FAIR:
He said he was trained in money laundering by men whose names he never learned, and later he delivered cash to the families of Watergate burglars. This did not interest the Times, which focused primarily on Rodriguez’s account of Noriega’s dealings with the Medellin cartel.
As chief accountant for the Colombian drug cartel, Rodriguez laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine profits through US banks in Panama. Although Sciolino noted that the cartel had $11 billion in assets in the US in 1983, she did not mention Rodriguez’s testimony about meeting secretly with people who worked for US banks but were not on the official employment roll. Rodriguez named Citicorp and the Bank of America as two banks he dealt with this way.
Milian Rodriguez was also laundering money through US banks. The Medellin cartel had $11 billion in assets “inside” the US. Some of that was cash sitting in two US banks. Citicorp and Bank of America. He dealt with representatives of these banks who weren’t on the official employment rolls.
That’s a huge reveal, and will lead into our next article, which will cover the following:
The Bush family has direct ties to Citicorp, and so does Prince Alwaleed, who is about to come back into the picture.
Bank of America would go on to play a role in the BCCI fraud in the Middle East, which was the biggest CIA bank collapse in history.
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
If you enjoyed this contribution to Badlands Media, please consider checking out more of my work for free at Joe Lange’s Substack.
So much corruption, so little time. Thank you Joe for enduring your research and bringing it to us. I imagine this impacts your soul but God wouldn’t give you an assignment you couldn’t handle. Keep up the good, great actually, work.
Excellent as always. I’m praying for your family with the loss of your father-in-law. God bless all of you.