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Belgian "Nebuleuse" tied to child abuse networks, Iran Contra and the BCCI's "Black Network" An expansion on ISGP's 'Beyond Dutroux': The craziest story on the internet just got a little crazier "To comprehend this nebula, it is necessary to abandon traditional financial or political logic; this is not merely a question of nation, political party, or of ordinary economics... Our conclusion would be that at least over the last twenty years, the economic powers, some of which mafia types, have allied themselves with political forces and organized criminal structures, and reached the 4th stage of money laundering, namely, Absolute Power. It has been specified to us that at the present moment these characters control 50% of the world economy." - Introduction of a Belgian gendarmerie report to a number of senior officials, District of Liege, November 21, 1994. Contents
| Intro |
| Jean Violet's activities in Belgium |
| More child abuse accusations |
| "The Organization" |
| "The Nebula" |
| This is where people die |
| Concluding summary |
Intro After publishing the 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' article in July 2007 I was almost completely empty when it came to the information I had. Virtually everything I had learned in the previous 1,5 years went in that article. In the past six months people have sent me a number of new documents, making it possible to expand a bit on different groups which appear to be involved in a lot of the abuse. Jean Violet's activities in Belgium Eight months before 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair', ISGP - at the time called PEHI - had published an article on Le Cercle, a private, secretive, and rabidly anti-communist discussion group which for decades has brought together hard-right elements of Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The Cercle had a particular focus on European integration and even though the British played an equally prominent role, the Cercle had been founded as a branch of what this site has been calling the "Vatican-Paneuropa network". In 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' ISGP began to expand on the Belgian branch of both the Cercle and the Vatican-Paneuropa network. As expected, Jean Violet, the primary founder of the Pinay Cercle, was closely affiliated with the persons running Belgium's anti-communist stay-behind networks, or at the very least all its illegal offshoots. First it turned out that in the late 1960s or early 1970s Violet had organized the Académie Européenne de Sciences Politiques in Brussels. As with the founding of Le Cercle, Violet acted as a frontman for Otto von Habsburg and his Vatican-Paneuropa network. Paul Vanden Boeynants was reportedly a board member of this hard-right think tank. This may or may not have been the case, but what we do know now is that Baron de Bonvoisin certainly was a (regular) member [1]. People who have read 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' will recall that Paul Vanden Boeynants and Baron de Bonvoisin were the twin pillars of the fascist underground in Belgium during the 1970s and 1980s, and that both have been accused of extremely sadistic child abuse. While writing 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' it also turned out that Jean Violet was a member of Cercle des Nations, which we described as "a private, aristocratic club, which started out with about 80 members who generally were royalist, staunchly anti-communist, pro-Nato, pro-European integration and highly fascist." Besides Paul Vanden Boeynants and Baron de Bonvoisin, members included Paul Vankerkhoven, a side-kick of Otto van Habsburg who founded the Belgian branch of the World Anti-Communist League; and countless people who have been accused of sadistic child abuse: Jean-Paul Dumont, Count Herve d'Ursel, Roger Boas, Charly De Pauw, Guy Mathot, Ado Blaton, General Rene Bats, Philippe Cryns and the de Merode family. A lot of these men belonged to Opus Dei; Violet was no exception.
Although these associations of Violet with Belgium's subversive and apparently child abusing elite are telling, it would be nice to have more details on the personal relationship
between the Pinay Cercle founder and persons like de Bonvoisin and Paul Vanden Boeynants. A "strictly confidential" report written by substitute magistrate Jean-Francois Godbille does just that. On pages 52 and 53 we read: "Major BOUGEROL and de BONVOISIN, according to a confidential report of the gendarmerie of the Wavre district dated August 14, 1985 (photocopy in appendix), were extremely close the lawyer Jean VIOLET, a member of the secret services of France and the Vatican, and close to the SAC and the P2 Lodge. This is confirmed when reading parts |  | Photocopies of the Godbille Report.
of the dossier about A. de VILLEGAS ... and that of de BONVOISIN, in which it appears that at the request of BOUGEROL, VIOLET was introduced to BOUGEROL by de BONVOISIN (cfr file PDG)."
Godbille did far more here than confirm Violet's closeness to de Bonvoisin. First of all he repeated the previous claims that Violet was a senior agent of the Vatican. He also stated that Violet not only was involved in running Belgium's fascist underground, which was largely overseen by Bougerol, de Bonvoisin and Vanden Boeynants through their PIO intelligence group, but also that he was in contact with similar subversive elements in France (the Service d'Action Civique, or SAC) and Italy (P2). Of course, those who have read the article on Le Cercle will find no surprises here. PIO and its successor, the European Institute of Management, like Cercle des Nations, have been tied to extreme child abuse. EIM had additional ties to Wackenhut, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rabidly anti-communist Moony cult. Violet's Pinay Cercle actually appears to have been a continuation of the most reactionary pro-fascist forces in France and Great Britain who were active at the time of World War II. Two key French members of the Cercle, Jean Violet and Georges Albertini, were tied to the notorious "Synarchie" movement. Sir Peter Tennant from Britain, a banker who chaired a number of early meetings of the Cercle, had a close relative, Sir Ernest Tennant, who as a leading light in the Anglo-German Fellowship and a good friend of Hitler's ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, had tried to bring about an anti-communist Anglo-German alliance. Sir Frederik Bennett, a close associate of the British Cercle leadership, had a father who was a member of the secretive, subversive and highly anti-semitic Right Club. [2]
More child abuse accusations Baron de Bonvoisin was accused by two witnesses in the X-Dossiers of child abuse: X1 and X2. These actually are not the only accusations. [update: person wishes to remain
Photocopy of relevant document. Event written down in Dutch. |  | anonymous], has been in the possession of four brief summaries of witness testimonies about child abuse. De Bonvoisin's name comes up in three of them. Here's a rather familiar sounding excerpt: "Event: Witness her husband, who has passed away, received an invitation for a party at a castle in the neighborhood of ATH. Former minister DESCAMPS and Baron de BONVOISIN were present there. At a certain point children of approximately 10 years of age were brought in. These were then abused by the guests present. The husband of the witness
didn't know this would happen and left the place because he didn't want to participate … Date of the event: About 4 years ago."
"Descamps" is a reference to the liberal politician Pierre Descamps, whose political allies were questionable figures as Jean Gol (partouser at Les Atrebates, together with Nihoul; X2 stated she had attended a meeting at the Hilton between Madani Bouhouche's spouse (husband of an alleged abuser), Paul Vanden Boeynants (alleged abuser), Wilfried Martens (alleged abuser), Guy Delvoie (alleged abuser who partied with Lippens and Davignon), Nihoul (alleged abuser) and Jean Gol) and Jean Militis (special forces col.; CEPIC; PRL member of parliament; named as a coup plotter along with Vanden Boeynants), and reportedly also was a friend of the notorious gang leader Patrick Haemers. Descamps was born in ATH, a Belgian municipality located in the Walloon province of Hainaut, in the West of the country. He was appointed a honorary Minister of State in 1973. The following excerpt of a similar summary brings up another familiar element in child abuse cases involving high-placed persons: intimidation of victim-witnesses and investigators. "The witness points out several people implicated in various affairs. She informs us that she already shared what she knew with the PJ [Judicial Police] of NAMUR [Namen].. She says to us that she received threats on behalf of examining magistrate MAROTTE of the NAMUR District Attorney's office. She seems to know an enormous amount of things, but doesn't want the NAMUR District Attorney's office to handle the information. The PJ [Judicial Police] warned her over what she said. A gendarme of the BSR [Special Investigations Unit of the Gendarmerie] of NAMUR, Daniel PETIT, would have liked to help her but he feared for his family and his job. She gives us a series of names: ..." [3] One of the names this witness mentioned was Philippe Cryns, owner of the aristocratic Mirano club. In the 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' article we discussed how child abuse parties would have taken place here in the 1980s involving Baron de Bonvoisin and other notables. In another document (see document 2 at note 2 under 'sources') a witness spoke about "pink ballets" - normally a reference to parties where children are abused - at which de Bonvoisin, Frans Reyniers, and Guy Spitaels were present. Reyniers was a controversial Brussels police commissioner who in the early 1980s was a "partouzer" at Les Atrebates, together with Michel Nihoul. He also went to the Jonathan, a club loaded with members of the fascist underground. Reyniers has been a close associate of police commissioner Georges Marnette and police officer Yves Zimmer. The trio Reyniers-Marnette-Zimmer, centrally located in Brussels, has been accused of aiding numerous cover ups, from the Gang of Nijvel, to Group G, and the X-Dossiers. Both Marnette and Zimmer have been accused of child abuse (actually, Zimmer has only been seen at the wrong places with the wrong people). Interestingly, Zimmer was head of the sexual abuse department of the Brussels police from 1982 to 1987. Guy Spitaels was a socialist politician and vice prime minister under Wilfried Martens (accused of child abuse) from 1979 to 1981. In the late 1980s his nickname was "God" because of his dominant influence in government. His political career came to an abrupt end in the early 1990s after accusations that he was involved in the Agusta scandal. He would later be convicted of "passive corruption" in this affair. From 1977 to 1997 Spitaels was the mayor of ATH. "The Organization" Among the documents received by ISGP also was a police report about the Haemers Gang, which was involved in a number of high profile robberies throughout the 1980s, starting in 1981. Leaders of the gang were Patrick Haemers and his father Achiel. It was only in January 1989 that the Haemers Gang really received national and international notoriety when it kidnapped former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants. At first it was reported that Vanden Boeynants had been kidnapped by the "Socialist Revolutionary Brigade", which no one had ever heard of, and the equally peculiar "Fighting Communist Cells" [4]. Only in the weeks and months after the kidnapping it turned out that the Haemers Gang was behind the affair. Michel Vander Elst, the gang's lawyer after their arrest, later was convicted for having provided false alibis for the gang members and even for having been the coordinator of the kidnapping. [5]
Looking back at Vanden Boeynants's long involvement in all kinds of illegal anti-communist and anti-socialist intelligence operations, including false flag terrorism and gangsterism, this
Partial photocopy of the Haemers document. The original language is Dutch, by this author considered a welcome deviation of the usual French. |  | can be considered a highly curious kidnapping; also because Vanden Boeynants knew his captors [6] and was under almost continuous investigation for forgery, tax evasion, corruption, and what not. Over the years many have suspected that the kidnapping was some sort of staged event, but the exact details have never come out. This new police report, based on information from an informant close to the Haemers Gang, adds a very important detail: namely that there was some kind of "organization" with "dangerous political ideas" behind the kidnapping and used the Haemers Gang to carry it out. According to this informant, the lawyer Michel Vander Elst, the alleged mastermind behind the kidnapping, actually
was only an intermediary between the Haemers Gang and this unknown organization. The police report:
"Between mid January '89 and February (before 14 February '89) there has been contact between the HAEMERS family (Achiel, Lilis and Bobonne) and Patrick HAEMERS, Denise TYACK and Kevin. This happened somewhere at a chateau, outside Paris (probably QARTRES). ... During the conversation with his father Patrick told him that he was behind the VDB case. ... Patrick would have told Achiel that he worked for an "organization" and that he was well compensated for his services. The "organization" would pay the rent of the apartments and they needn't worry about anything. The organization would consist of influential people and has their own doctor and lawyers. They would have dangerous political ideas and Patrick described them as "the dangerous mad men". ... The contact between the "organization" and the gang around HAEMERS is a lawyer, a certain VANDER ELST... In any case Patrick feels he's super-protected by this organization. - According to the informant, VDB would also have ties to this organization and his kidnapping has possibly been staged. In any case VDB is well acquainted with his kidnappers. ... Eric HAEMERS would know more about the organization, but would be afraid to speak about it." The name Michel Vander Elst may sound familiar to those who have read 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'. This is the person who provided Michel Nihoul, Dutroux's (alleged) associate in the kidnapping of children, with an alibi; an alibi which later on turned out to be incorrect. Vander Elst is also among the persons pointed out by X1 who, along with Nihoul, is said to have abused, tortured and murdered a number of children. Vander Elst's law office was located in the same building as the apartment of Vanden Boeynants [7], a person with similar accusations against his person. "The Nebula" Vander Elst's name also popped up in an internal confidential report of BSR (Special Investigations Unit of the Gendarmerie) investigators to Belgium's top magistrates and gendarmerie officers. The report, dated November 21, 1994, was part of the ATLAS Dossier, a case opened in the summer of 1994 after the collapse of a company named Commerciale et Minière d'Uele (Comuele). The immediate history of the Comuele affair goes back to 1990 when two members of the Russian mafia, Boris Nayfeld and Riccardo Fanchini, set up the "import-export" firm M&S International in Antwerp. Nayfeld, a top figure in the Russian mafia in New York, had just fled to Belgium because the American authorities were closing in on his illegal operations. Riccardo Fanchini was a gangster originally from Poland. He would soon become a top Russian mafia boss with close ties to President Boris Jeltsin. The Ukrainian gangster Rachmiel "Mike" Brandwain, who had a wealth of experience in arms, gold and diamond smuggling, became the managing director of M&S. In 1992, the real estate firm Comuele, headed by Bruno Goldberger and Arthur Fogel (not the tour producer of Madonna and U2), took a controlling interest in M&S International. According to the ATLAS Dossier, Comuele at this point was controlled by a shady group of Russian and Israeli financiers, who had been brought in by Bruno Goldberger with the help of Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-American diamond merchant who had a long relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Despite the injection of capital from the east, Comuele began to collapse in the summer of 1994, leading to the exposure of the Comuele-M&S ties to the Russian mafia. The ATLAS document is specifically focused on a person with the name Felix Przedborski and the network he controls. According to the authors of the ATLAS document, Przedborski is a mafia boss with a double nationality, Belgian and Costa Rican. His group, allegedly controlling some 7 billion dollars in assets in the early 1990s, would be involved in the trafficking of diamonds, arms, narcotics, and nuclear material, and would have considerable influence over a number of politicians in Belgium and the European Union. Przedborski's group would literally control a number of multinationals through which it launders large amounts of funds. General Electric, Alcatel, the Schneider Group, and Lyonnaise des Eaux are among the multinationals named in the document. The authors specifically wondered why Przedborski, whom they stated had been caught trafficking nuclear materials with the Chinese in 1956 (and was released after Konrad Adenauer intervened), by the 1990s was Costa Rica's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The ATLAS document clearly indicates that elements in the Israeli government and intelligence are involved in what is described as Przedborski's "Nebula". We cite: "Around 1983, PRZEDBORSKI would have hired a MOSSAD Colonel for his own safety and that of his group. ...
"Later, this Colonel would have accepted the proposal to leave the MOSSAD and put his entire team at the service of PRZEDBORSKI.
The Mossad played a key role in both Iran Contra and in Felix Przedborski's "Nebula". |  | "This Colonel would have ... trained members of the CONTRAS as well as those of the CALI CARTEL... "It is said that some weapons of IRANGATE would have been transferred to the CONTRAS of NICARAGUA by this network. (It appears that on this matter PRZEDBORSKI would have called an American president by his first name)." The Iran-Contra affair, or Irangate, was the result of decades-long U.S. support for the Shah of Iran. When the Shah's regime collapsed in 1979, David Rockefeller and associates
convinced Carter to allow the Shah refuge in the United States [8], leading to an acute and strong anti-American feeling in Iran, not only with the Ayatollah but also with the general population. Iranian radicals seized the American embassy while the Iranian leadership began to sponsor and train Hezbollah, an Islamic paramilitary organization in Lebanon which soon also began to take American hostages.
After the first hostages had been taken, members of the U.S. government - often through
Israel - began to negotiate arms shipments to supposedly pro-Western factions in Iran and the Iranian government. The idea was that these factions would negotiate the release of hostages. These "arms-for-hostages" deals proved unsuccessful, however, as new hostages would be taken as soon as a previous group had been released. Eventually these secret arms shipments were exposed, leading to the Iran aspect of the Iran-Contra affair. The Contras came in when Oliver North and his associates at the National Security Council decided to use the proceeds of the Iranian arms sales to supply the Contras of Nicaragua with weapons. Clandestine U.S. involvement in aiding the contras had been forbidden by the Boland Acts of of 1982-1984, so when the arms to Iran scandal broke in 1986 this automatically evolved into the Iran-Contra affair. Iran-Contra was much more complex and sinister than illegally supplying arms to both Iran and the Contras. First of all, U.S. officials labeling the Contras as "freedom fighters" or even as "anti-communists" is misleading, as their daily operations consisted of terrorizing the population by brutally torturing and murdering villagers at random, including women and young children. Although the Sandinista opposition may not have been a whole lot better, the fact that the United States, in cooperation with the Israelis, were actively arming and training these Contras shows the inhumane nature of the members of this cabal. The group's involvement in drug trafficking should not be surprising then. The CIA and its allies allowed the Contras to ship huge amounts of cocaine into the United States and sell it to mafia families in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Miami, and a number of other places. The proceeds of these sales allowed the |  | Anastasio Somoza, whose family almost continually ruled Nicaragua from 1936 to 1980. His brutal dictatorship was supported by anti-communist reactionaries in the United States. When Carter withdrew support for Somoza, the Israelis - again - were used to keep Somoza's dictatorship afloat - an effort which failed. Somoza lost to the far-left Sandinista forces. The Contra terrorist units, trained and funded by the Israelis and the forces behind Reagan, were largely composed of former Somoza supporters. According to John DeCamp, among Somoza's business partners was Roberto Alejos Arzu, who is said to have been involved in procuring of children for pedophile networks. [35] Arzu's biography certainly fits this accusation. Arzu was an extreme right CIA asset, a Knight of Malta, involved with the Knights of Malta-run Americares and Covenant House (tied to a major abuse scandal), involved in the Guatemalan death squad killings (including the murder of Covenant House employees who tried to clean up the institution, together with a number of children), and reportedly sent the children of the plantation workers he killed to "local charities". His plantation at one point was used by the CIA to train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. [36]
Contras to buy (third-rate) arms and other supplies from the United States. The CIA recruited Manuel Noriega in Panama as an intermediary in a lot of the drug trafficking. [9]
The Israelis played a major role in the whole Iran-Contra affair. They were used as an intermediary to sell the arms to Iran. They also supported the United States in training the Contras, and apparently also in shipping the drugs and assassinating those who tried to expose these schemes. The accusations in the ATLAS document that the Mossad was
Costa Rica's central location in Central America. |  | training the Contras and members of the Cali Cartel while protecting friendly drug dealers as Felix Przedborski do not stand on their own then. In fact, the ATLAS document appears to lay bare the seldom discussed Belgian-Costa Rican aspect of the whole Contra affair. Costa Rica sits right in between Nicaragua in the north, where the Contras were fighting the Sandinista government, and Panama in the South, where General Noriega was supporting the United States in shipping the drugs from South and Central America to the United States. It is already known that Israeli special forces as
Colonel Leo Gleser were operating out of Honduras, to the north of Nicaragua (in cooperation with the "Secret Team" or "the Enterprise" from the United States), and that General Noriega's right hand man in running the drugs and arms was the Israeli Mossad officer (and former assassin) Mike Harari. [10] Costa Rica has largely been ignored, but it is known that this country was used by the United States as a staging ground for anti-Contra special operations. It is also known that drugs coming from Columbia in some cases went through Costa Rica before ending up in the United States. President of Costa Rica throughout the Contra operations was Luis Alberto Monge, who in the ATLAS document is described as a friend of Felix Przedborski. The ATLAS document further alleges that Przedborski's group imported weapons from Belgium and, once again, had the Contras pay for them with drugs - heroin in this case. These weapons apparently would have come from Fabrique National [11] and ASCO, two very interesting companies.
In January 1986 the Belgian fascist Juan Mendez was shot dead, apparently by a member of the fascist-pedophile underground earlier described in 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'.
Mendez was a sales director at Fabrique National (FJ). His Peruvian predecessor, a person with the name Carlos Davilla del Pielago, had fled Belgium after it had been found out that he worked for the CIA and was involved in illegal arms and drug trafficking. In the weeks before his death, Mendez himself had been interrogated about his connection to Douglas Stowell, a rich American businessman who apparently was working for or with the CIA in the Iran-Contra operation. [12] Mendez had been groomed by Madani Bouhouche - the person who apparently murdered him - as a member of a group that some day was to conduct a terror-extortion campaign against warehouses as part of an effort to destabilize the Belgian state. Just as interesting, according to his friends and family, some time before his death Mendez had informed them that he had been invited to join some kind of clandestine group that was gathering data on political adversaries to be used during and after a coup. [13] In other words, the claim that Fabrique National was part of Przedborski's network is not at all far-fetched. The other company, ASCO, featured quite prominently in the testimonies of X1. Let's recap a portion of 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair': "The factory" X1 regularly spoke about (see above) was a location, where besides regular abuse, snuff movies were shot. Vanden Boeynants' private driver Henri Bil, Baron de Bonvoisin, Annie Bouty, Michel Nihoul, Tony, |  | Just amazing: the person who provided Nihoul with an alibi (later proven false) for the day he was named as an aide in the kidnapping of one of Dutroux's victims, not only had been involved in the kidnapping of former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, but according to the ATLAS document, had a father who was the lawyer of "Nebula" leader Felix Przedborski (not to mention the lawyer of the Grand Orient Lodge and a personal counselor to King Albert II). Vander Elst, Jr. was pointed out as a child abuser by X1 two years after the ATLAS dossier was written (she also put him at ASCO). Another report had previously mentioned Vander Elst, Jr. as an intermediary between the Haemers gang and an unknown but very influential political group consisting of "dangerous madmen".
the controversial lawyer Michel Vander Elst, former prime minister Wilfried Martens, examining magistrate Melchior Wathelet and lawyer Jean-Paul Dumont apparently all went to the ASCO factory to torture and abuse children. (270). In November 1996, X1 took the investigators to the location she had described. On arrival, it turned out that the witness had been talking about the ASCO factory, located just outside Brussels. The description she had given matched, and coincidentally, ASCO was (and is) owned by the Boas family, which used to be close friends and business partners of the late Paul Vanden Boeynants (271). X1 mentioned having seen a "Roger" (272) at the factory, apparently the head of the Boas family who used to be a member CEPIC and Cercle des Nations."
Isn't it just amazing how a lot of the same names keep coming up? According to the ATLAS document, the following persons were involved in illegally shipping weapons to Iran and Central America: "a) Andre COOLS - Assassinated former Belgian minister b) Roger BOAS (ASCO company) c) Abraham SHAVIT - Right hand of Roger BOAS - Personal friend of Israeli minister BEGIN - It is known that Andre Cools stayed at Shavit's when he went to ISRAEL d) Guy MATHOT - Former Belgian minister e) Paul VANDENBOEYNANTS - Former Belgian minister and prime minister f) Fernand BEAURIR - Former Gendarmerie commandant of Belgium" Back in 2006 and 2007 when 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' was written, ISGP had already stumbled across reports that Israeli general Efraim Poran, a businessman and military liaison officer for prime ministers Menachem Begin (PM 1977-1983) and Yitzchak Rabin (PM 1974-1977 and 1992-1995), used to be a board member of ASCO. Nothing was done with these reports because they were not particularly authorative and because there appeared to be no real Israeli connection to the things described in 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'. Next to Poran, there was however one other hint to the possible involvement of the Israelis in this network. This was escort madam Fortunato Israel, a mistress of Roger Boas who ran a prostitution network for the rich, including Belgian royals, Arab princes, and men working for international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. But again the connection to Israel was weak. She had occasionally been mentioned as someone closely tied to interests in Israel, but these connections appear not to have been investigated in any detail.
The ATLAS document now mentions Abraham Shavit, and again it is ASCO that supplies the Israeli link. Shavit was a manager of ASCO at the time of Iran Contra. Besides his ties
Oliver North, apparently never far away in this type of business. |  | to the Israeli government and Belgian minister Andre Cools, Shavit has been described as a friend and associate of Portuguese arms dealer Manuel J. Pires. [14] This Pires, who "handled secret CIA arms transfers to Angola, and later to both Iran and Iraq", [15] worked with the infamous Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran Contra scheme. [16] Incredibly, not only have the Belgians that were involved in Iran Contra been accused of child abuse (Boas, Mathot, Vanden Boeynants and Beaurir), but North and his employer, vice president and later president George Bush, were uncomfortably close to the Franklin child abuse affair in the United States. Both were mentioned by witnesses as having attended the parties of alleged
child abuser, Satanist, Contra supporter, money launderer and drug dealer Lawrence E. "Larry" King. [17] Another Contra supporter and alleged child abuser, Robert Keith Gray, was also close to Bush, North and King. [18]
The ATLAS document also reported that both the "Przedborski Group" and the Belgian arms traffickers tied to the ASCO factory - Paul Vanden Boeynants, Roger Boas and
Abraham Shavit - used the Republic National Bank, and its owner Edmond Safra in particular, to launder some of their funds. The Mossad would have used the same conduit. [19] Safra, a member of Syrian-Jewish banking family, certainly had impeccable connections to the Zionist intelligence network, a network going back to the days of the Haganah and its Sonneborn "institute" in the United States. A number of sources have referred to Safra's controversial banking associates and have named him as a major money launderer for Russian and Eastern European mafias. [20] Back in 1989, newspapers reported that, "massive money-laundering investigations spanning four continents have intersected through a single account at Republic National Bank of New York. That account appears to link Colombian cocaine money, Mideast heroin profits and a criminal enterprise run by the Bulgarian secret service." [21] Safra's reputation survived these investigations, but during the late 1990s he reportedly became so worried about the FBI closing in on his illegal activities that he allowed the bureau to monitor some of the funds moving through his bank. [22] The banker died under suspicious circumstances in December 1999, amidst claims that he had been murdered for giving evidence to the FBI and Swiss prosecutors concerning the diversion of a $4.8 billion IMF |  | The somewhat controversial banker Edmond Safra. A member of the Board of Overseers of B'nai B'rith International in the 1980s, together with Edgar M. Bronfman (chair) and Max Fisher (highest level connections in the US and Israeli governments), he was a prominent Zionist. Like his friend Robert Maxwell he had close connections to both the Russian and Eastern European mafias and Israeli intelligence. The ATLAS document's allegation that his bank was used by the Mossad and Israeli Iran-Contra traffickers is not a big surprise then.
loan to stabilize Russia's economy. [23] Interestingly, Safra had a fall-out with the notorious Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky just weeks before his death. The meeting apparently had shaken Safra to such an extent that he fled in panic to his heavily fortified Monte Carlo residence [24], where he would soon be killed in a fire. Safra was a member of the 1001 Club of Prince Bernhard and Prince Philip. [25] And in February 2004 the London Evening Standard reported that, "it was the super-well-connected Jacob Rothschild who helped introduce the billionaire widow of banker Edward Safra, Lily, to Prince Charles, and helped establish her in London." [26]
This is where people die In 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' ISGP created a separate list of Belgiums tied to controversial affairs who have died under suspicious circumstances. There are no less than 48 people on the list, and includes the earlier-discussed gang leader Patrick Haemers who hung himself in prison in 1993. Even Jean Denis Lejeune, father of one of the girls Dutroux murdered, stated: "As if by coincidence people die. There is no explanation for their deaths. For instance, they are victims of a deadly traffic accident just when they are under way to testify. Or one finds their charred bodies. Our judiciary apparently doesn't have sleepless nights over this." [27] Going through the ATLAS document you realize the same thing: a lot of people die under suspicious circumstances in these circles. Examples are the politician Andre Cools, who was murdered; mafia businessman Mike Brandwain - assassinated; former French vice-prime minister Pierre Beregovoy - suicide; Edmond Safra - died in a fire. There also was the report of an unnamed person who, "would have committed suicide by jumping off the 47th floor of a New York building". The ATLAS document elaborates that it would actually have been wealthy diamond trader Joseph Kaszyrer who would have given the order for this assassination. It is possible to see the same pattern of suspicious deaths in other countries where really big, criminal interests are threatened. Names that come to mind at this moment are Frank Nugan (murdered), Salem Bin Laden (plane crash), Senator John Tower (plane crash), Danny Casolaro (suicide), Robert Maxwell (drowning accident), Maxwell's associates Sasho Danchev and Peter Boychev (suicide), John O'Neill (died on 9/11; chief investigator of anti-terrorist and mafia networks, including those of Safra and Bin Laden), and Daniel Pearl (murdered; investigated ISI ties to 9/11). Senator John DeCamp noted, "From late 1988, when the Franklin case first broke into public view, until mid-1991, at least 15 people associated with the case as investigators, alleged perpetrators, or potential witnesses, died sudden deaths, many of them violent." [28] His friend, the former CIA director William Colby, warned him to get off the case or risk being killed too. [29] DeCamp followed his friend's advice, and it actually was Colby who died under mysterious circumstances in April 1996. These strange deaths could also be seen in the 1975-1976 period at the time of the Church Committee hearings when half a dozen mafia bosses and associates suspected of involvement in the Kennedy murder all died one after another. [30] Another notorious case is the "Clinton deaths". Although the idea of Clinton's involvement in these 40-some deaths, including Vince Foster and the teenagers Kevin Ives and Don Henry, has been promoted by America's ultraconservative right-wing and are likely not true, the fact remains that many of these deaths were extremely suspicious. They surrounded big interests as illegal drug imports and the Promis affair. One particularly interesting case in relation to this article is the one of Colonel Edward P. Cutolo, a special forces officer who wrote an affidavit claiming he was part of a team that secured drug trafficking operations from Columbia to Noriega's Panama, from where these drugs were shipped to the United States. Cutolo claimed these operations were overseen by Edwin Wilson, Wilson's superior Thomas Clines (representing "the Enterprise", or the U.S. side of Contra operations'; Clines in turn was a deputy to Ted Shackley, head of the Secret Team and a highest level player in the CIA drug trade), and Mossad agents David Kimche and Mike Harari. The latter was Noriega's right hand. In his affidavit Cutolo claimed that one of his associates, Colonel Robert Bayard, had been assassinated by Kimche and Harari (the latter a known assassin). He announced to investigate these two Israeli officials in more detail. Cutolo wrote the affidavit in March 1980; in May 1980 he died in a car crash in England. About half a dozen people who came into the possession of the affidavit also died under strange circumstances. [31] Concluding summary Iran-Contra, which is what the ATLAS document largely comes down to, is just one of many scandals tied to the same international network of conspirators, consisting of anti-communist military and intelligence men, pro-Zionist neoconservatives, arms dealers, bankers, businessmen, mafia organizations, diplomats, etc. Examples of scandals tied to this network are the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank in 1980, the October Surprise in 1981, Iran Contra in 1986, the collapse of the Franklin Credit Union in 1988, the Craig Spence affair in 1989, Iraqgate in 1990, and the BCCI scandal in 1991. It was during the BCCI scandal that senior executives of the bank actually gave a name to this network. They referred to it as the "black network", and made sure not to elaborate too much on it. The influence of this "black network" turned out to be so pervasive that even the official investigators of the scandal suspected they had been put under surveillance by this network, which was described as a "a global intelligence operation [with] a Mafia-like enforcement squad". [32] Only a handful of reporters ever reported on this black network. Among the exceptions was Jack R. Payton, editor of the St. Petersburg Times, who in October 1992 wrote: "Well I've just finished slogging through a 794-page government report on the scandal, and believe me it's even worse than I thought. Much worse... "Consider, for a moment, what it might mean to have an organization around that could pull off the following: Manipulate the Central Intelligence Agency and the spy agencies of Britain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Syria, Israel and who knows how many others all at the same time...; Help Pakistan buy nuclear technology on the international black market...; Launder drug money for the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia; Bankroll Abu Nidal, the most notorious terrorist in the world; Handle Manuel Noriega's finances in Panama; Procure prostitutes, some of them children, for traveling Middle Eastern potentates; Rig international commodity markets so that a few insiders could make hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day; Intimidate potential opponents to the point that they feared for their lives. There's a lot more, but you get the idea... "This is scary enough as it is. The reason we may never know is that as thorough as the Senate investigation may have been, it didn't have access to reams of information that could shed more light on BCCI. The CIA has several hundred reports on BCCI but allowed the subcommittee to look at only three of them. British authorities also have a stockpile of information on BCCI they won't make available because it was classified by British intelligence, MI-5... "But despite the years of investigation, the arrests and confiscations, even the Senate subcommittee had to admit that we may never know the full extent of BCCI's crimes, how many top politicians it bribed or if it really had a so-called "black network'' of assassins who would eliminate anyone who got in its way. "Even so, what we do know about BCCI is mind-boggling. It's also incredibly complicated - as the Senate subcommittee itself admits, almost beyond comprehension." [33] A few years after the reports on this black network, the Comuele scandal in Belgian broke out. After an elaborate investigation, gendarmerie investigators working on the ATLAS dossier, wrote: "To comprehend this nebula, it is necessary to abandon traditional financial or political logic; this is not merely a question of nation, political party, or of ordinary economics. "Our conclusion would be that at least over the last twenty years, the economic powers, some of which mafia types, have allied themselves with political forces and organized criminal structures, and reached the 4th stage of money laundering, namely, Absolute Power. "It has been specified to us that at the present moment these characters control 50% of the world economy. ... "One should not lose sight of the fact that this nebula would control the majority of the financial traffic, as well as the highest political leaders, worldwide. "This same structure could, if it wanted, put pressure on the most important cities of this world, controlling in each one almost everything (energy, communications, provisioning of water, environment....) ... in order to impose itself, its strategy has been to use corruption, and has done so for many years." Powerful words. Both the BCCI and the ATLAS report talk about very powerful international networks involved in drug trafficking, the procuring of child prostitutes (indirectly in the case of ATLAS), the use of terrorists [34], the smuggling of nuclear materials, and massive money laundering. Both reports also concluded that these networks are extremely complex, very hard to understand, and just as hard to fight. We all heard the rumors, the "conspiracy theories"; but now it slowly begins to seem as if important police and judicial reports that can confirm the existence of above-government, criminal networks are locked away in national security archives around the world. We definitely need to find ways to get these files out. Notes
[1] | Who's Who: "BONVOISIN, Benoit ... Memb.: ... Académie Européenne de Sciences Politiques"
[2] | Discussed and sourced in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article
[3] | Declaration of witness [update: person would like to remain anonymous] to the Belgian Judiciary, October 24, 199x, (copy for Neufchateau cell) (scan appears in bibliography note 2, document 4)
[4] | January 18, 1989, New York Times, 'Hunt Pressed for Belgian Ex-Prime Minister': "The Belgian authorities investigated presumed terrorist organizations today in their search for former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, who disappeared from his home here Saturday night. The Belgian authorities investigated presumed terrorist organizations today in their search for former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, who disappeared from his home here Saturday night. Several ransom notes and claims of responsibility have been sent to newspapers. The police said they believed that the case was a kidnapping rather than a hoax and that they took seriously claims from a previously unknown group calling itself the Socialist Revolutionary Brigade. There was also a call today from a man claiming to belong to the Fighting Communist Cells, a terrorist group responsible for 27 bombings in Belgium in 1984 and 1985. The man said Mr. Vanden Boeynants would be killed in 72 hours unless the authorities freed four Belgian terrorists from the group serving life sentences."
[5] | March 25, 1989, Washington Post, 'Belgians arrest kidnapping suspect': "The lawyer of an alleged gang leader being hunted for the kidnapping of a former Belgian prime minister has been arrested on suspicion of masterminding the abduction, the prosecutor's office said today Michel Vander Elst, 41, was placed under arrest after nine hours of questioning on suspicion of being "the author, coauthor or an accomplice in the kidnap" of Paul Vanden Boeynants, a spokesman said. Other accusations included extortion and forgery... Vander Elst represents Patrick Haemers, 36, the alleged leader of a gang being sought by police for a string of unsolved violent crimes. Vanden Boeynants was snatched in the garage of his Brussels home Jan. 14 and released a month later after a ransom payment of up to $2.5 million. The spokesman charged that Vander Elst had seen some of the suspected kidnapers after they had rented a villa in the northern French resort of Le Touquet, where Vanden Boeynants was held for a month. He said the lawyer also had received calls from public booths in Le Touquet."
[6] | Vanden Boeynants visited some of the same clubs as members of the Haemers Gang. Haemers Gang gendarmerie file (as published on ISGP website), pp. 1, 3: "According to the informant, VDB would also have ties to this organization and his kidnapping has possibly been staged. In any case VDB is well acquainted with his kidnappers. --- Additional info:... The lawyer is Michel VANDER ELST, who usually keeps himself occupied with financial business and has his bureau in the same building as the appartment of VDB, in the Franklin Roosevelt avenue..."
[7] | Ibid.
[8] | *) Largely described in the following book: 2007, Peter Dale Scott, 'The Road to 9/11'. *) 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 365-366: "My relationship with the Shah had never been that close... but I told Newsom [under secretary of state for political affairs] I found it incomprehensible that the President [Carter] would ignore American tradition by denying political asylum to a man who had been a great friend of our country. I refused to become complicit in the decision... I had dinner with Henry Kissinger and Happy Rockefeller, Nelson's widow, at her home in Pocantico. Henry and I discussed our telephone calls from David Newsom and the Shah's plight. Happy told me of Nelson's close friendship with the Shah and about the weekend they had spent with him and Farah Diba, the Shah's wife, in Tehran in 1977. Happy reminded me that when the Shah realized he would have to leave Iran, Nelson offered to find a suitable property for him in the United States. We also talked about the precedent that President Carter had established by refusing to admit the Shah into the United States. Both of us believed our allies, particularly those in the Middle East such as Sadat and King Hussein, who had taken great risks on our behalf, were likely to entertain second thoughts about the dependability of the United States in light of this action... Jack McCloy... soon joined our effort [to convince Carter to allow the Shah access to the US]."
[9] | There are quite a number of books on this. One I recommend and which also talks about the Israeli aspect: *) 1991, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, 'Dangerous Liaison - The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship', pp. 244-261 See also the following articles taken from ISGP's Cercle article: *) January 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega': "On Monday, November 14, 1983, Noriega's entourage took off for Washington... all expenses paid by the U.S. government. Almost two whole days, however, were set aside for the institutions that already had long-standing working relations with Noriega. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Noriega was swept off for a meeting with CIA Director William Casey. Back in Panama, Noriega would later boast about his four-hour lunch with Casey..." *) August 23, 1991, The Miami Herald, 'Noriega: CIA, DEA OKd Deals': "Manuel Noriega says he had good reasons for allowing drugs and guns to slip through Panama: The last seven CIA directors, including George Bush, asked him to help with the guns, while four directors of the Drug Enforcement Administration sought his help on the drugs... The weapons shipments were destined for Nicaragua and Honduras, the papers said. Besides Bush, the CIA directors who asked Noriega to allow them to travel through Panama included Richard Helms, William Colby, James Schlesinger, Stansfield Turner, William Casey and William Webster... The DEA directors who purportedly asked Noriega to allow drugs to pass through his country included Terrance Burk, Francis Mullen, Jack Lawn and John Ingersoll... Diane Cossin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the prosecution will present evidence that links Noriega's BCCI money and drugs."
[10] | Good source: 1991, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, 'Dangerous Liaison - The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship', pp. 244-261
[11] | ATLAS document, part 5: "The weapons would have left the FN [24] through the airport of BIERSET25 to go initially to NANTES/FRANCE, and from where they left for COSTA RICA. (to SANTA ELENA... apparently an immense area in this country). In return drugs would have been shipped back."
[12] | 1990, Hugo Gijsels, 'De Bende & Co. - 20 jaar destabilizering in België' ('The Gang & Co. - 20 years of destabilization in Belgium'), p. 88: "Several weeks before he was murdered, Juan Mendez was interrogated in relation to an investigation in illegal arms trafficking to Honduras and Nicaragua. The weapons would have been smuggled from Belgium via France and Switzerland to Latin America by Douglas Stowell, an American with homes in Switzerland, Costa Rica and Honduras. The wealthy American palyed the role of official intermediary in the negotiations between FN and countries to which arms deliveries were political challenging. ... The French police which arrested Stowell is still of the opinion that the American - whether or not on the orders of the CIA - worked on behalf of the Contra's in Nicaragua. From his side Mendez said to friends and family that he was convinced that the large weapons supplies, coming from FN and officially destined for Nicaragua, were shipped to Iran. Mendez would have resisted these arms shipments."
[13] | 1990, Hugo Gijsels, 'De Bende & Co. - 20 jaar destabilizering in België' ('The Gang & Co. - 20 years of destabilization in Belgium'), p. 98, 153-155: "On top of that, the detectives dug up a large amount of explosives in the backyard of Mendez. Confronted with the testimonies of Amory, Bouhouche admits that he set up such an organization, that the group had political motives and that it had been structured in a military way... It is a fact that Bouhouche explained to the detectives that he had been given the assignment to recruit Mendez from the WNP leadership and that the role of Mendez in the 'brewery affair' was part of an admission test the FN-engineer had to pass... Shortly before his death Mendez had told family members that 'one' had offered him membership in a clandestine organization which at that point was working on the political categorizing of opponents and this with an eye towards a coup... Bouhouche was a member of the WNP [others doubt that and just consider him a close associate] and his main contact was Michel Libert, the right hand of Paul Latinus... It all seems a little bit too much for one man. A number of detectives therefore assume that Bouhouche was only a small part within the clandestine organization Mendez spoke about, a Belgian version of the P2. An interesting coincidence: Robert Beijer stated in an interview with the RTBF that Bouhouche had proposed to him to become a member of a clandestine organization. Beijer said he had declined this offer, that he doesn't know the name of the organization and that he knows nothing about its purposes."
[14] | 2002, Alan A. Block (Professor of Crime, Law and Justice at the Pennsylvania State University), 'The origins of Iran-Contra: Lessons from the Durrani Affair', p. 61: "Pires was especially chummy with the Israelis, particularly Abraham Shavit who was based in Belgium and was the manager of a Belgium company called ASCO."
[15] | Ibid., p. 59: "He [Durrani] ended up working on this project with a Portuguese arms dealer, who held a Spanish passport, Manuel J. Pires. In years past, Pires had handled secret CIA arms transfers to Angola, and later to both Iran and Iraq."
[16] | July 26, 2003, Hartford Courant, 'Man wants arms conviction reversed claims relationship with CIA': "[Arif] Durrani, a Pakistani, was deported from the United States in 1998 after a 1987 conviction for illegally dealing to Iran spare Hawk missile parts he obtained from Radio Research in Danbury. [Mark] Zaid's mission now is an attempt to get Underhill to reopen the case on the premise that Durrani was working for the government through alleged Central Intelligence Agency weapons operative Manuel Pires and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a former White House national security aide. Zaid said a document has been found from the Office of Independent Counsel that references a CIA document about Pires. Durrani claims he worked with Pires as go-between for North to get the missile parts Iran wanted."
[17] | *) 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 173-174, 322: "Direct ties of Larry King to persons and institutions active in Iran-Contra are a matter of public record. In 1987, according to the World-Herald, King donated $25,350 to Citizens for America, a group that sponsored speaking tours for Oliver North and the Contra leaders. CFA was a key public relations group for Iran-Contra; King was a founding member and one of its largest contributors. According to his May 22, 1989 interview with Omaha radio station KKAR, King was trying to bring North to Nebraska. A former security guard for King has sworn that he saw North attend at least one of King's parties at which children were also present. Since he was stationed outside, he has no knowledge of what might have happened inside. "I just thought it seemed kind of curious, the whole set-up," he said. ... Lt. Col. Oliver Noth--whom at least one witness reported seeing at a party thrown by Larry King--had overseen the Contra resupply effort, and had been fully aware of the planeloads of drugs coming into the United States. A U.S. Senate subcommittee report under Massachusetts Senator John Kerry cited extensive evidence that the Contras were involved in drugs, and North had noted the fact in his publicly exposed notebooks. ... Think about the constant rumors that King was involved in financing the Contras, who have now been proved to have been running dope by the ton. The first investigative reporter to ever look at Franklin, the World Herald's James Flanery, told associates that King was "running guns and money into Nicaragua," and that the CIA was heavily involved. (Flanery was soon taken off the story and shipped out of state for a year.) Records exist to show that Larry King was a top contributor to a Contra "support committee," the Citizens for America (CFA). King's own public relations firm was also used by the Contras." *) 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 164, 176-177, 180: "Nelly first brought up Bush in 1986, when she told Julie Walters about the sex parties she was flown to in Washington and Chicago. She saw Bush at two of these parties, she said, one in each city. ... Bush's name surfaced again in Lowe's May 1989 review of reports by Thomas Vlahoulis from the state attorney general's office: "Sorenson told Vladhoulis that both Kimberley and Nelly brought up the name of George Bush and indicated that they had both met him. ..." On June 10, 1989, Lowe received a letter from a citizen: "There is a psychologist in Omaha who used to work for the CIA. In response to a direct question by an Omaha psychiatrist regarding George Bush's private life, this psychologist reported hearing rumors when Bush was head of the CIA, that corresponded directly with one of the inferences made by Nelly Webb, and commented to the psychiatrist, "But how do you investigate your boss?" ... From what I know from my own corner of the world, there is excellent reason to investigate Bush for possible involvement in the dope business. Think back to what I reported in Chapter 13, "The Washington Connection," about how George Bush and Larry King were linked in multiple ways, including eyewitness placing Bush at King's sex parties. ... [King] made a ten-minute "get-out-the-vote" video on behalf of Bush, for the 1988 campaign."
[18] | 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 178-180
[19] | ATLAS document, part 10: "k) Mentioned to us are the names of banks through which the “Przedborski Group” would have laundered money: ... * Banque NATIONAL REPUBLIC [103] - branches in Luxembourg and New York - It seems that in this bank it is a certain SAFRA [104] who would be responsible for special transfers. It is indicated to us that this bank would also be used by: A) Paul VANDENBOEYNANTS - Former prime minister and Belgian minister B) Roger BOAS - of the ASCO company C) Abraham SHAVIT - right arm of Roger BOAS D) the Mossad - The Israeli Secret Service"
[20] | 2002, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, 'Robert Maxwell - Israel's Superspy - The life and murder of a media mogul', pp. 37-38, 228, 352-353: "There were others on the list who did not need such a document [reference to Maxwell's crime associates, including the notorious mafia boss Semion Mogilevich]. One was Edmund Safra, a US-billionaire banker who had made tens of millions of dollars managing the funds of other members of the Russian Mafia. Safra had links to Maxwell: they had dined on board the Lady Ghislaine when the yacht berthed opposite Safra's home in Monte Carlo. Who can doubt they had spoken of their common wish to see those untold tens of thousands of Jews in the crumbling Soviet Union safely make their way to Israel. ... The invitation to the [Spanish] royal dinner had been extended by Edmund Safra, the billionaire banker who owned the National Republic Bank in New York. He had been a close friend of Maxwell's for some years and had personally allowed funds to be funneled through his bank from Eastern Europe. 'But like so many activities the FBI were trying to link to Maxwell, the ones between Safra and organised crime was another one hard to prove,' John P. O'Neill would later say. ... 'When Safra realised the bureau [FBI] was moving in,' John O'Neil recalled, 'he did a deal. He agreed to keep the bureau informed of what moved through his bank to the Bank of New York, which had been targeted by Russian and Bulgarian crime syndicates. Safra didn't like the heat on him, so he agreed to help the bureau.' But, when Safra announced he was going to sell his bank for $9.8 billion in 1999, he also attracted powerful enemies."
[21] | April 3, 1989, Newsday (Melville, NY), 'U.S. Banks Praised for Help In Laundering Crackdown'
[22] | See note 20.
[23] | July 25, 2000, Jamestown Foundation, 'Newspaper scandal over IMF diversion expands': "The scandal surrounding allegations that a US$4.8 billion IMF "stabilization credit" in the summer of 1998 was diverted before reaching Russia with the help of Mikhail Kasyanov... Even more sensationally, the author of Novaya gazeta's investigation, Oleg Lurye, claims that following the diversion of the IMF credit and the subsequent collapse of the ruble and Russia's banking system, Edmond Safra, the late head of the New York-based Republic National Bank, gave evidence to the FBI concerning the diversion. Safra died in December of last year of asphyxiation as the result of a fire in his Monte Carlo residence. Lurye quotes Geneva prosecutor Bertrand Bertossa as saying that Safra was murdered for giving evidence to both the FBI and Swiss prosecutors concerning the diversion of the IMF credit. Both La Repubblica and Novaya gazeta claim that the US$4.8 billion credit went from the New York Federal Reserve Bank to Republic National Bank and then to various banks in Switzerland and elsewhere, but not to Russia. Lurye also claims that at the start of autumn 1999 Boris Berezovsky visited Safra at his estate in southern France. The two men, according to Lurye, had a three-hour conversation in "raised voices," after which Safra fled in a panic to his heavily fortified Monte Carlo residence (Novaya gazeta, July 24)."
[24] | Ibid.
[25] | 1987, 1001 Club, confidential membership list (provided by Kevin Dowling in September 2008). See ISGP's article on the 1001 Club for more information on this group.
[26] | February 6, 2004, London Evening Standard, 'A guide to the new 'east-ablishment'
[27] | 2004, Herwig Lerouge, 'Het Dossier Nihoul: De knoop in het proces-Dutroux' ('The Nihoul Dossier: The knot in the Dutroux trial'), p. 192. According the author, Jean Denis Lejeune made this comment on ZDF (German) television on January 30, 2001. It appears to be a reference to the deaths of Francois Reyskens (1995) and Bruno Tagliaferro (1995) and his wife (1998). This comment is entirely plausible, because on other occasions the parents of Julie have claimed there's a cover up in the Dutroux affair.
[28] | 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', p. 4
[29] | Ibid., foreword: ""What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. This is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face. You have done your part. You have tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. It has hurt you terribly. But it has not killed you up to this point. I am telling you, get out of this before it does. Sometimes things are just too big for us to deal with, and we have to step aside and let history take its course. For you, John, this is one of those times, "Bill warned, with Sally nodding her head in affirmation."
[30] | Claims that the JFK assassination was the work of a joint mafia-CIA operation are almost universal, the reason for the assassination being that Kennedy was far too soft on communism in countries as Italy and for refusing to give crucial air support in the Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1975 the Church Committee was established to investigate the wide range of abuses reported about the CIA. George De Mohrenschildt (best friend of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas) and Charles Nicolette were murdered on March 29, 1975. Sam Giancana was assassinated on June 19, 1975. Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in July 1975. Johnny Roselli was murdered in September 1976. There had been other convenient deaths related to the Kennedy case in the past: Lee Harvey Oswald soon after the assassination by Jack Ruby, Ruby in 1967, David Ferrie in 1967, and Eladio del Valle in 1967.
[31] | Brief excerpts of affidavit of Colonel Edward Cutolo, signed March 11, 1980: "6. The purpose of Operation watch Tower was to establish a series of three electronic beacon towers beginning outside of Bogota, Colombia and running northeast to the border of Panama. Once the Watch Tower teams (Special Action Teams) were in place, the beacon was activated to emit a signal that aircraft could fix on and fly undetected from Bogota into Panama, then land at Albrook Air Station. 7. During the Feb., 1976, Watch Tower Mission, 30 high performance aircraft landed safely at Albrook Air Station where the plane were met by Col. Tony Noriega, who is a Panama Defence Force Officer currently assigned to the Customs and Intelligence Section. Noriega normally was in the company of other PDF officers known to me as Major Diaz-Herrera, Major Luis del Cid, Major Ramirez. Also present at most of the arrivals, was Edwin Wilson, and an unidentified male Israeli national. 8. The cargo flown from Colombia into Panama was cocaine. 9. The male Israeli national was identified and known to members of the 570th Military Intelligence Group in Panama who only specified that this individual had the authority from the U.S. Army Southern Command in Panama to be in the A.O. ... 83. Thee second individual I recognized from the three photographs I received, was listed as Michael Harari. I was informed that Michael Harari is listed as a senior Mossad agent. Harari was the un identified male Israeli national that met the aircraft which flew into Albrook Air Station during Operation Watch Tower. He was the one who gave Edwin Wilson two briefcases full of U.S. currency in various denominations. The briefcases were given to Edwin Wilson at the end of operations in March and Feb. 1976. It is my understanding from Pentagon contacts, that Harari's activities in Latin America are well known, including his drug trafficking endeavors. I was also informed from those same contacts that the Pentagon on the orders of several Washington VIPs have gone to great lengths to keep the activities of Harari a secret. I have begun preparations to meet with David Kimche or Michael Harari while in Europe on annual NATO exercises. I intend to verify that Harari was the individual who gave Edwin Wilson the briefcases while at Albrook Air Station during Operation Watch Tower. 84. I was told from Pentagon contacts, off the record, that CIA Director Stansfield Turner and former CIA Director George Bush are among the VIPs that shield Harari from public scrutiny. Those Pentagon contacts further indicated to me their knowledge that Operation Watch Tower was implemented and of my involvement in that operation. This was the first time that U.S. military authorities confirmed to me that the Operation occurred and gave their approval. I also learned that Harari was a known middleman for matters involving the U.S. in Latin America. Harari acted with the support of a network of Mossad personnel throughout Latin America and worked mainly in the import and export of arms and drug trafficking." Cutolo died in a car crash in England in May 1980. Col. Robert Bayard had been killed in Georgia in 1977 and Cutolo claimed he had been assassinated by the Israelis. Col. A.J. Bo Baker (the best friend of Col. Bo Gritz in Delta Force) died in Germany on March 24, 1980, just after allegedly having received the original copy of Cutolo's affidavit. Col. Nick Rowe was killed in the Philippines in April 1989, just after having planned to go public with the affidavit in the aftermath of Iran Contra. Hugh Pearce, who received a copy of Cutolo's affidavit and was planning to go public, died in a helicopter crash in June 1989. Congressman Larkin Smith, who received a copy of Cutolo's affidavit and had been planning to meet Rowe and Pearce, died in a plane crash in August 1989. Paul Neri, who also had a copy of the affidavit, was killed in April 1990. After Neri's death, one of his anonymous friends send Cutolo's affidavit to persons who made it more widely known. Bo Gritz also exposed the story of these men in his 1991 book 'Called to Serve'. Senior Mossad officers David Kimche and Micha Harari are blamed for the assassinations. They were deeply involved in the South American drug trade and gave technology to certain dictators the US didn't want to deal with directly. Among them was Noriega who received top secret NSA listening equipment.
[32] | July 29, 1991, Time Magazine, 'The Dirtiest Bank of All': "From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the "black network," which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad... [it] operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies... The black network was the bank's deepest secret, but rumors of its activities filtered through the bank's managerial level with chilling effectiveness. Senior bankers voice fears that they will be financially ruined or physically maimed -- even killed -- if they are found talking about B.C.C.I.'s activities... Businessmen who pursued shady deals with B.C.C.I. are just as frightened... Currently the black units have focused their scrutiny and intimidation on investigators. 'Our own people have been staked out or followed, and we suspect tapped telephones,' says a New York law-enforcement officer."
[33] | October 8, 1992, St. Petersburg Times, 'Latest revelations about the BCCI scandal are mind-boggling'
[34] | A comparison of: *) October 8, 1992, St. Petersburg Times, 'Latest revelations about the BCCI scandal are mind-boggling': "... Bankroll Abu Nidal, the most notorious terrorist in the world..." *) ATLAS document, part 7: "This Colonel would have been used as an intermediary for: - installing in BELGIUM a person with the name KETIB EL KETIB [39] (financier Palestinians) deceased?? - setting up the PLO [40] Bureau in Brussels" Can't really make sense of both of them. Don't know exactly what is behind this financing.
[35] | 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', p. 180: "Lauded by the Reagan and Bush Administrations as a showcase for the privatization of social services, Covenant House had expanded into Guatemala as a gateway to South America. According to intelligence community sources, the purpose was procurement of children from South America for exploitation in a pedophile ring. The flagship Guatemalan mission of Covenant House was launched by a former business partner of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, Roberto Alejos Arzu, who had ties to the CIA, according to the Village Voice of Feb. 20, 1990. The Voice quoted Jean-Marie Simon, author of Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny: "It's like having Idi Amin on the board of Amnesty International." A top source of money for Covenant House has been Robert Macauley, founder of Americares, a service organization implicated in channeling funds to the Contras." See ISGP's Cercle article for more information on Americares.
[36] | *) May 2, 1981, Boston Globe, 'Guatemalan Death Squads Make Politicians the Target': "In preparation for next year's national elections, death squads are murdering opposition political leaders here. Liberal politicians and foreign diplomats say they are convinced that the killings are the work of the right wing. The principal target has been the reformist Christian Democratic Party, which has lost 76 leaders during the last year to assassination and kidnaping. … Another active campaigner [on behalf of the right wing] is Roberto Alejos Arzu, a founder of the conservative Guatemala Freedom Foundation. He is best known abroad as the owner of La Helvetia, the sprawling plantation that was used as a training camp for Cuban exiles preparing for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba." *) October 7, 1990, Newsday (Melville, NY), 'War for the Children Guatemala Covenant House confronts death squads': "In Guatemala, where New York's embattled Covenant House extended its social service empire 10 years ago, a new director's crusade against death squads was followed by the murder of a counselor and six children. The brutal counterattack began a year ago, human rights officials say, after Bruce Harris took the helm of Casa Alianza, as Covenant House is known in Guatemala. Harris severed the charity's ties to right-wing Guatemalan patrons and began to criticize official violence against children. He also fired 22 staffers and rooted out what he said was financial chaos and sexual abuse at Casa Alianza, in a campaign that was a strange mirror image of the unfolding sex scandal that ousted Father Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House. But it was Harris' decision to break Covenant House's silence and demand justice for Nahaman Carmona Lopez, 13, a street child allegedly beaten to death by police, that proved most fateful. It placed Covenant House in the line of fire of Central America's most notorious police force, human rights groups say. Members of Guatemala's security forces, which include municipal and Treasury police and the military, according to human rights observers, for decades have formed unofficial, right-wing "death squads." … After Harris brought legal cases against Nahaman's accused killers, more children died… In June, a former Covenant House counselor was shot in the head and killed, allegedly by a policeman. No one has been arrested in that case. "It is feared that the killing may be a reprisal against Covenant House for the role it has taken," noted an Amnesty International report in July, 1990. Those killings, and death threats against Harris and his staff, prompted Covenant House president Sister Mary Rose McGeady to visit Guatemala last month. Appointed months after Ritter resigned amid allegations of sexual and fiscal misconduct, McGeady is credited with recasting Covenant House's mission and purpose, both in the United States and overseas. … Simon, Grace, Macauley and Ritter are members of the Knights of Malta, an international, conservative Catholic organization with diplomatic status and ties to the Guatemalan right wing. The four also served on the board of Americares. None returned repeated phone calls. Both organizations came together in Guatemala in the person of a sugar plantation owner named Roberto Alejos Arzu. A Knight of Malta, Arzu agreed to ship hundreds of pounds of medicine and food from Americares to Casa Alianza and to broker private donations to the charity. Arzu is also a prominent member of Guatemala's right-wing aristocracy, say human rights officials and experts. In 1960, Alejos lent his sugar plantation to the Central Intelligence Agency to train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Atkinson shrugged off talk of Alejos' background. "Roberto [Alejos] was the conduit for tons of supplies," Atkinson said. "He was a good man and I'm not going to condemn him on hearsay." Alejos, however, has also been linked to the abortive kidnaping of a Guatemalan cardinal in 1968 - in a 1982 report prepared by the Washington Committee on Latin America - and by local media to the death squad killings of workers on his plantation. Alejos could not be reached for comment. "When his workers complain, they end up in a ditch," said Allan Nairn, a longtime reporter in Latin America and a regional expert. "Soldiers would take the surviving children of the workers to local charities.""
Sources
[1] | All sources of ISGP's 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'
[2] | Police reports supplied by [update: person wishes to remain anonymous]: Document 1 | Document 2 | Document 3 | Document 4 In the first half of 2008, XX provided me with several documents that accused a number of persons of child abuse, some of whom had already appeared in the X-Dossiers. I had known about these documents before finishing the 'Beyond Dutroux' article, but never asked permission to see them.
[3] | Police report on the Haemers Gang in which Patrick Haemers is cited talking about "the organization". 84 pages. Summaries of testimonies taken in 1989-1991 period. No file numbers appear in the scanned pdf. Document supplied by an investigator who would like to remain anonymous.
[4] | "Rapport Godbille", "Strictly confidential", sent to a prosecutor of the king. 97 pages. No file number or date. Summaries of testimonies taken in 1989-1992 period. Document supplied by an investigator who would like to remain anonymous.
[5] | November 21, 1994, Gendarmerie/BSR report to a number of senior officials, District of Liege, topic: 'Criminal organization (Russian mafia and related)', reference: Dossier ATLAS. Photocopy and full English translation (Winrar - right-click to save) Author translated about 80% of document. Pierre Beaudry of Executive Intelligence Review checked these translations and did the rest. Pierre's help was extremely useful. Document supplied by an investigator who would like to remain anonymous.
Date: July 29, 2008 Author: Joël van der Reijden