Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 03 ====================================== ("Quid coniuratio est?") ----------------------------------------------------------------- RECAP OF AND UPDATE ON THE NORMAN THESIS ======================================== Thanks to an east coast source whom I will call "Mr. Mercedes", I have received an audio tape of Jim Norman's recent appearance on New York radio station WBAI, marked on the cassette as having been January 10, 1996. [...continued from CN 7.02...] Here are further excerpts from the program: JAMES NORMAN: [Hillary] had actually been an attorney of record for Systematics which at the time was owned by the Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, who tried to take over a Washington bank holding company on behalf of the BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International] crowd and install Systematics as the data processing manager of that entire operation. Which is extremely curious, because BCCI itself was essentially a huge money- laundering, arms-finance and drug-finance/drug-money laundering operation. In the process of going through all this, I actually came across what turned out to be a Swiss bank account number: it was a 10- digit, encrypted series of letters... When I turned it over to some of the intelligence sources who I'd been using on this story, they ran it through their system. And, actually a couple of months later, when I asked them, "Gee. Is it possible [that] Cap Weinberger might have money in these accounts?" They said, "Well, yeah. Don't you know? That account number you gave us was Cap's!" In fact, they mentioned that a relative of Howard Metzenbaum, former Senator from Ohio, was another co-signatory to that account; that Weinberger had multiple accounts -- not implausible to me at all. I mean, here was Weinberger, Secretary of Defense throughout the Reagan era, during which we had one of the biggest defense build- ups in history. We also participated in the massive illicit arming of Iraq with high-technology weapons systems capabilities, plus the armaments themselves. It was an environment *fertile* for kickbacks. Payola. Corruption. And, in fact, Weinberger was eventually indicted by Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh for lying to Congress, for failing to turn over his diaries. He was pardoned by George Bush just as Bush was leaving office. And so he never had to stand trial -- which was probably a merciful reprieve for Colin Powell, who was Weinberger's chief assistant at that time, chief advisor. Weinberger had basically elevated Powell to a high-level advisory position, and Powell would have been effecting a lot of the orders that Weinberger was giving him -- about moving arms here, and drugs there. And in fact... Weinberger's name has come up in connection with a Costa Rican legislative investigation, a two-volume report down there that identifies Weinberger, as well as Ollie North, our former Ambassador to Costa Rica, and various others as being personas non grata for helping facilitate a massive drug and arms operation which helped corrupt that country's society. If those people set foot down there again, they're getting arrested. So suddenly it starts to make a lot of sense. And when you think in terms of Swiss bank accounts and massive amounts of money -- kickbacks -- it explains a lot of stuff that's going on right now. What we're looking at here is massive, endemic, high-level corruption of the federal government. Bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans. It's been going on for years -- particularly since the early 1980s. The dollars involved have grown exponentially... I believe from arms and drugs trading. There is *huge* amounts of money sloshing around here. And it has corrupted the government in a fundamental way. The government cannot police itself. The normal enforcement mechanisms have been compromised: the Justice Department. The IRS. Customs. The intelligence community. And what has happened is that there *are* a lot of good people in our government who have watched this happen, have been powerless to stop it -- their protests would go nowhere. There's been *no* effective investigation by anybody of this stuff. And finally, what had happened was, a small handful of guys -- they call themselves the Fifth Column. Retired intelligence people. One is a former CIA contractor. Another is a former National Security Agency person. I know they're assisted by a variety of other people of the intelligence community -- they were able to acquire their own used Cray supercomputer from Clark Air Force Base. It's apparently an air-cooled and generator-driven machine that can actually be packed into the back of I think what *looks* like a refrigerated semi-trailer truck with a satellite uplink. And they've got this thing rollin' around the country so it doesn't get nailed. And so for the last 5 years, they have been downloading, systematically, tapping into foreign bank databases and pulling down reams and reams of account data. [James Norman goes on to describe how this Fifth Column allegedly raided the secret bank accounts of corrupt government officials, transferring the money into U.S. government accounts.] For two years they've been raiding these accounts. Now they're into Phase II.... Phase I: "Take the marbles." Phase II: "Get them out of government." Now, how do you do that? How do you get these people *out* of government in the most time-efficient and cost-efficient manner? ... Apparently they've been hand-delivering brown manila envelopes to people in Congress with actual copies of the transaction records of these Swiss and other off-shore accounts. The people get about a day to read these things, and then they get a call from one of *these* guys who I have referred to as the "Angel of Death". And then the elected official gets a choice: ... You can either announce your retirement immediately, or you can face immediate prosecution for tax evasion and various other crimes -- the minimum penalty for which, if you are convicted, is 10 years in prison. Now when a congressman goes to prison, you lose your federal pension benefits. And the pensions on these people are significant. (For instance, Pat Schroeder, congresswoman from Colorado: relatively young, she's been there a long time... She's got, over her expected lifetime, more than 4 million bucks coming to her.) Now I think the implication here is that if you just shut up, go away, get out of the line of fire -- *maybe* you'll get lucky and get to keep your pension down the road. There's no guarantee that you won't be prosecuted. But what's happened so far: all of these people have taken the retirement option. And what you have seen: an unprecedented, record number of retirements of *powerful* people from Congress. These are not "back benchers"! Since the end of the last election, until now, more than 50 Senators and Congressmen have announced their retirement. In fact, there were two more in just the last couple of days: a 30-year Republican from Indiana, and a two-term Democrat from Arkansas. The excuses they give? *Utterly* *bogus*, frankly. "Oh, we can't stand the nasty politics." "Oh, I want to spend more time with my family." "Oh, it's just time to go." It strains credulity. It just does not make sense -- until you realize there's something *else* going on here. [...to be continued...] ----------------------------------------------------------------- I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation." ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to listproc@cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1") ----------------------------------------------------------------- For information on how to receive the new Conspiracy Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net ----------------------------------------------------------------- Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc? 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