Freemasons, Chase Manhattan & the Arming of Saddam Hussein

(Excerpted from Chapter 14: Saddam’s Banker in Atlanta: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

The Chase Manhattan Two-Way Mirror

Chase Manhattan Bank’s board of directors had a huge presence on Banca Nacionale de Lavoro’s (BNL’s) Consulting Board for International Policy.  In fact the two boards mirrored one another.  Along with Chase Chairman David Rockefeller and his long-time lieutenant Henry Kissinger, interlocks between the boards included Fluor Saudi partner Sheik Ahmed Juffali, Indian tycoon Ratan Tata, Royal Bank of Canada insider Gustavo Cisneros, Giovanni Agnelli of the Italian Fiat conglomerate, Pehr Gyllenhammer of the Swedish Volvo, Mitsubishi Chairman Koichiro Ejiri and British Lord Carrington.  Members of the BNL advisory board included former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, former British Defense Secretary Lord Thornycroft, Britain’s Lord Ezra and chairman of Petrofina Jean-Pierre Amory. [1]

Roy William Harris didn’t hang out with this cadre of international oligarchy elite, but he was a star trader at Salomon Brothers Philbro Energy trading unit, which Salomon (now part of Citigroup) purchased from the Oppenheimer family.  With financing from David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, Harris founded Arochem, a private oil refining company that went bust in 1992 after squandering $200 million.  Harris insists he lost the money on oil trades, but the judge who sent him to prison wasn’t buying it.

Harris did deals with Bayoil, an affiliate of the Iraqi weapons front Bay Industries.  Bayoil was run by David Bay Chalmers and in 1987 served as middleman for an Iraqi oil for arms network involving Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who had ties to Pinochet’s DINA secret police.  Cardoen owned Industrias Cardoen-Chile and quickly became the biggest arms supplier to Iraq.  The company built and shipped weapons for the South African company Armscor- a long-time CIA conduit.  According to an ABC Nightline investigation, Bush CIA Director Robert Gates worked closely with Cardoen.

Bayoil once claimed to own Arochem. The companies shared an office building in Stamford, Connecticut.  The $200 million which Harris had misplaced was likely skimmed from the Chase-financed Arochem to bankroll Cardoen’s CIA oil for arms scheme.  Harris’ attorney was David Lewis, CIA defense lawyer for Company fall guys Manuel Noriega and Ed Wilson. [2]  Bayoil was founded as Bay Petroleum in 1935 by Chalmers’ great uncle- an OSS operative.  Bay was sold to Tenneco is 1955 and Chalmers’ father started Coral Petroleum, which operated throughout the Middle East.  Coral went bust in 1983, but David’s father found the means to retire on a grand estate in Mexico. [3] Coral Petroleum is also the name of the Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz firm which has joint Caspian Sea ventures with the Four Horsemen.

David Bay Chalmers started dealing with the Iraqis in 1987 while working with Carey Petroleum, which was owned by New York Governor Hugh Carey’s brother Ed.  Chilean arms dealer Cardoen was sending boatloads of cluster bombs to Saddam.  The shipments were paid for in Iraqi oil, deals which Chalmers brokered for Cardoen, who was getting zirconium for his cluster bombs from the Oregon-based Teledyne Industries. [4]

DEA informant John Pastis said Chalmers assured him that the US government had approved the deals.  In 1988 Chalmers floated plans to construct a $3 billion PC-2 mustard gas complex in Iraq, later built by Bechtel.  That same year Oscar Wyatt, chairman of oil refiner Coastal Corporation, bragged to Vanity Fair that he did many favors for Reagan CIA Director Bill Casey in Coastal’s numerous dealings with the Iraqi government.

Roy William Harris founded Arochem when he bought a Puerto Rican benzene plant in 1987.  Chase Manhattan financed the deal, putting up twice the money Harris actually needed, money that may have been diverted to Cardoen’s efforts.  Harris associate John Moller ran USA Petroleum in Los Angeles.  He and Harris would buy put options on overpriced stocks, with the profits from this short-selling going into private Harris accounts.  Delaney Petroleum of London, which was owned by David Bay Chalmer’s friend Michael Linehan, was also buying put options and skimming profits.  One of Delaney’s oil traders was Coastal Chairman Oscar Wyatt’s son Steven.

The mastermind of these complex oil and metals trades was Irwin Vosko, who ran Bayoil’s office in the Bahamas with Peter Shaddick.  Shaddick helped Banco Ambrosiano President Michelle Sindona loot the pedophilia-ridden Franklin National Bank in 1974.  Sindona, a good friend of Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy, was never convicted. Shaddick received a paltry one year prison sentence.  Arochem had its offshore offices in the Cayman Islands, where Saudi Intelligence was busy laundering Medellin Cartel drug money.

When the Attorney General of Connecticut launched a probe of Arochem, Chase Manhattan hired future FBI and CIA Director William Webster.  Webster made sure an FBI unit close to him nabbed Roy William Harris before a different FBI group in Stamford, CT could. Arochem skated.  Chase Manhattan dumped its bad Arochem loans on a syndicate of small European banks who took a $15 million bath, then sold Arochem’s refinery in Puerto Rico to Israeli investor Gad Zeevi, who owns another Chase-financed refinery on the island, for $6 million.  The European banks sued Chase and lost.  A lawsuit by Arochem’s bankruptcy trustee alleged that Chase “looted Arochem’s assets”.  Chase denied any knowledge of its Arochem loans brokering Iraqi arms for oil deals. [5]

Another international oil high-flyer Roger Tamraz donated $300,000 to the Democratic Party in 1995-1996.  Tamraz was charged with fraud and embezzlement in France, where he controlled Paris-based Banque de Participations et Placements from 1987 until the French government shut it down at the same time the Bank of England was shuttering BCCI.  Tamraz’ bank’s name was strikingly similar to the BCCI Swiss branch Banque de Commerce et de Placements.  The story line is similar as well, with depositors, including the Congolese government, getting swindled when $47 million disappeared into thin air.  Tamraz transferred the money to his Almashrek Bank of Beirut in his home country of Lebanon, taking Almashrek depositors to the cleaners for another $200 million. [6]

Tamraz was President of both Oil Capital Ltd. and Tamoil Inc.  He was an early promoter of the Caspian Sea oil pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan through Turkey and had taken Chinese National Petroleum Company as a partner in the project.  He accompanied Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on trade missions to Russia and headed First Arabian Corporation of Luxembourg, whose investors included Gaith Pharaon and Sheik Mohammed Bedrani, nephew of Saudi Intelligence chief and BCCI crook Sheik Kamal Adham. [7]

Tumbleweed’s nephew went gambling in Monte Carlo.  Ron Brown died of a gunshot wound to the head in a plane crash over Yugoslavia.  Caspian Sea pipeline pioneer Tamraz became expendable and went to jail.  And the Caspian Sea Pipeline Consortium opened November 28, 2001 under the control of the Four Horsemen, whose buddies at Bechtel built it.

In May 2005 a scandal emerged involving illegal Iraqi oil deals done during the 1990’s sanctions period..  According to a May 18, 2005 report on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, it was Bayoil that imported over 200 million barrels of black market Iraqi crude during the sanctions period.

See No Evil

From July 27-29, 1989, a week before the FBI raided BNL Atlanta offices, the bank wired large amounts of money to BCCI through Morgan Guaranty Trust.  On August 4th, the day of the raids, William Hendricks III, a top official at the Bush Justice Department, resigned to take a job with a law firm representing BNL.

There he joined former Carter Attorney General Griffin Bell, who had earlier brokered the BCCI takeover of National Bank of Georgia; and William Rogers, former Nixon Secretary of State and Eisenhower Attorney General.  Bell was retained by George Bush during the Iran/Contra hearings and worked for EF Hutton when that company was accused of check-kiting in 1985.  Bell represented Exxon during the Valdez oil spill, stumped for AH Robbins during their Dalkon Shield controversy and went to bat for Dow Corning when it came under scrutiny for its bogus silicone breast implants.  Rogers came to the rescue of Saudi Intelligence Chief Adham during the BCCI investigations.

Bush Justice Department official Joe Whitley quietly stepped down to join an Atlanta law firm representing Matrix-Churchill.  For his efforts Whitley was named US Attorney for Atlanta by Attorney General Richard Thornburgh the day after Iraq attacked Kuwait.  Whitley replaced William Barr, who moved up to replace Thornburgh as Attorney General.  Thornburgh named Roberto Martinez, the lawyer representing Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, as US Attorney for Miami. [8]

BNL’s New York auditor Louis Messere was shredding documents during the FBI raid. A few days after the raid, Italian military attaché to Baghdad Colonel Guiseppe Schiavo was gunned down at his home in Turin.  Former Citigroup executive Paolo Di Vito took charge of damage control at BNL Rome on the recommendation from Henry Kissinger.  US Ambassador to Italy Peter Secchia aided in the Rome sanitation effort.

Bush Justice Department hacks served up BNL’s Atlanta manager Christopher Drogoul as fall guy in the ensuing cover-up.  BNL official Franz von Wedel put a serious dent in this strategy when he testified that Drogoul had acted on advice from the bank’s consultants- Kissinger Associates.  Drogoul was debriefed for six weeks by a government BNL investigative task force led by Arthur Wade, who testified under oath that RD&D was a CIA front for BNL/Iraq transactions.  Yet official court transcripts show a “no response” to this question.  Customs officials who tried to call Dale Toler, the NSA spook who headed of RD&D, were disconnected immediately. [9]

Justice sent a memo to the Federal Reserve telling it not to provide 70 BNL-related documents to House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D-TX), who launched the most thorough investigation of BNL to date.  The Federal Reserve also blocked Gonzalez’ attempts to find out who really owned Iraq’s Central Bank.  The National Advisory Council, headed by Bush Treasury Secretary James Brady, withheld minutes of its 1989-1990 meetings on BNL from the Gonzalez hearings. The fiery Gonzalez, who was threatened at the San Antonio airport for his inquiry by G. Gordon Liddy, concluded, “The US has no regulatory oversight on the $800 billion known as ‘Foreign Financial’, much of which is tied to the drug trade”. [10]

NSA Kissinger Associate Brent Scowcroft and (Texas) Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher ignored invitations from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Don Riegle (D-MI) to testify about BNL.  Scowcroft invoked “executive privilege” in dodging similar requests from both House Banking and House Judiciary Committees.  Six days before Christopher Drougal was indicted, Henry Kissinger stepped down from BNL’s advisory board.  That same day Iraq surrendered in the Gulf War.

Atlanta Federal Circuit Court Judge Marvin Shoob, who heard the Justice tirades against Drogoul, shared Gonzalez’ suspicions, once stating, “Smoke is coming out of every window.  I have to conclude the building is on fire.”  Shoob stepped down from the BNL case in October 1992, issuing a 15-page statement exposing a CIA/BNL Rome cover-up.  In a parting shot, Judge Shoob refused to sentence five defendants who plea bargained with prosecutors, describing them as “bit players and pawns in a far more wide-ranging conspiracy”.

In 1992 Shoob’s replacement Judge Frederick Lacey issued a statement denying the need for a special prosecutor because there was “no evidence of CIA involvement in arming Saddam Hussein”.  Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) accused both Lacey and Attorney General William Barr, who appointed Lacey, of having conflicts of interest.  Schumer said of the Lacey dismissal, “I think it’s a run around the facts.”[11]

Barr colluded with Lacey in denying repeated Congressional requests to appoint an independent counsel to investigate BNL, the first such denial by an Attorney General since the independent counsel provision was created in 1978.  Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX) accused Barr of stonewalling, while House Banking Committee Chairman Gonzalez prepared a House Resolution calling for Barr’s impeachment on obstruction of justice charges.  Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC) stated, “I believe documents have been falsified, government officials have lied to Congress and there has been a cover-up by the White House.”

As the chorus of dissent grew louder, Barr ordered FBI Director William Sessions to open an investigation by his agency into BNL connections higher up the political and economic food chain.  Four days later Justice announced that it would launch a separate investigation into the Attorney General’s use of his expense account.  Someone was sending Barr a not so subtle message.  The FBI probe never got off the ground.

Lacey, Barr and Thornburgh all have close ties to the intelligence community.  Lacey was formerly one of seven judges who sit on the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), which issues quick warrants for NSA electronic and phone intercepts.  Another former FISA judge Albert Bryan is Grand Master of the Freemason Lodge in Washington, DC, the most powerful in the nation. [12]  Chairman Gonzalez accused CIA cover-up point man Thornburgh of, “delaying the BNL indictments and repeatedly trying to have the investigation of the committee obstructed and curtailed under the false pretense that it would endanger national security.”

In 1993 President Clinton issued a statement exonerating Bush officials of wrong doing in the BNL case after his Justice Department blocked attempts by Christopher Drogoul’s lawyers to subpoena George Bush, Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker III.  Federal Judge Marvin Shoob said Clinton’s conclusion could only be reached in “never-never land”.  Clinton then refused to release executive branch documents to the Gonzalez investigation.  Clinton’s rush to clear the decks had much to do with protecting the First Lady.

From 1990-92 Hillary Clinton, a Wal-Mart director, was also corporate agent and board member at LaFarge Corporation, an affiliate of Kennametal, one of the companies illegally arming the Iraqis through BNL.  According to a letter from US Attorney Marianne Gasior to Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Kennametal was shipping its arms to Iraq via the Ordnance Center at LaFarge’s Marblehead Peninsula facility in Ohio.

In the end lead counsel Griffin Bell won a $400 million settlement for BNL. US taxpayers- already reeling from Iraqi defaults on BNL, CCC and EIB loans- got the bill, while corporations and bankers partied with Saddam in Baghdad.

The Gnomes of Zurich

A 1981 Italian investigation revealed that five top BNL Rome executives, including director general Alberto Ferrari, were members of the Italian P-2 Freemason Lodge. [13]  P-2 had a penchant for working with South American dictators, fascist death squads and drug traffickers.  P-2’s activities affected the European continent as well.  P-2 Grand Orient Lodge leader Robert Calvi controlled Banco Ambrosiano.  Calvi was once invited to John Connelly’s Texas ranch where the two founded another P-2 front called Committee for the Defense of the Mediterranean.

Calvi was referred to as “God’s banker”. When Pope John Paul I launched an investigation into Banco Amrosiano and its connection to the Vatican bank Instituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), he was found dead only thirty-four days after becoming the Holy See.  Calvi was shortly thereafter found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London with $15,000 cash in his pockets and a brick (a Masonic symbol) hanging around his neck.  Hours earlier Calvi’s secretary, Graziella Corrocher, was pushed through a 4th story window at Ambrosiano’s Milan headquarters.  She had also been the bookkeeper for the P-2 Freemasons. [14]

Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy’s good friend Michelle Sindona was Robert Calvi’s partner at Banco Amrosiano.  Sindona funneled CIA cash to the Vatican and to European Christian Democratic Parties, which the CIA much preferred to the Socialists.  Sindona teamed up with IOR and the Vatican’s chief US banker Continental Illinois to buy Milan-based Banca Privata Finanziara (BPF) and Geneva-based Banque de Financement.  The consortium launched Moneyrex in Rome, which over 850 international banks used to move Italian mafia and P-2 heroin proceeds out of Italy. Much of this was laundered through the Vatican to Switzerland. [15]

Sindona had close ties to the Gambino crime family. He looted Franklin National Bank which, according to former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp’s book The Franklin Cover-up, was at the epicenter of an international pedophile ring.  In 1969 Sindona was financial adviser to Pope Paul VI and the Vatican Bank became Ambrosiano’s biggest shareholder. [16]  In 1986 Sindona was convicted for ordering the death of estate liquidator Giorgio Ambrosoli, who was shot in 1979 after finding evidence of criminal activity while working at Sindona’s home.  Two days after being sentenced to life in prison, Sindona was found dead in his jail cell from cyanide poisoning.  Just before his death Sindona stated, “They are afraid I could reveal some very delicate information that they don’t want divulged.”[17]

In 1967 Continental Illinois sent $4 million through BPF to finance a CIA-sponsored right-wing coup in Greece that toppled the Socialists and gave rise to the November 17 underground left, which has since killed both US and British military officers and bankers.  During the 1972 elections Continental used BPF to channel $10 million in CIA funds to the Italian Christian Democrats.  In 1973 Continental CEO David Kennedy joined the board of FASCO, the Liechtenstein holding company which controlled Banco Ambrosiano.  FASCO was a CIA conduit for funding the Italian P-2 and had close ties with Gulf & Western Corporation, controlled by United Brands powder pushers Carl Lindner and Max Fischer.

Continental made frequent loans to the Four Horsemen and was conduit for Chicago diocese funds controlled by CIA asset Bishop Paul Marcinkus, who helped the Company bankroll the Polish solidarity movement and now presides over the National Bank of Cicero, the BCCI immaculate resurrection based in the “Al Capone land” Chicago suburb of Cicero.  P-2 leader Calvi was paymaster to the Polish solidarity movement and helped the Vatican buy US properties, including the Watergate complex.  When Continental went under BCCI-founder Bank of America took control of it for pennies on the dollar at a bankruptcy auction.

The Vatican’s secretive Opus Dei, often referred to as the “saintly Mafia” was behind the ascent of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to Pope John Paul II.  The new Pope launched an Opus Dei/Vatican offensive to roll back Latin American liberation theology movements and East European communism. Robert Calvi had been on his way to meet with Opus Dei financiers the night his brick-laden body was discovered.  In its January 2004 issue, Counterpunch revealed that US Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia is a member of Opus Dei.

Further south Calvi P-2 associate Stephen Delle Chiaie founded Patria y Libertad in Chile.  Delle Chiaie met frequently with General Augusto Pinochet, while P-2 worked with the CIA Trak II program to overthrow socialist President Salvador Allende.  Patria y Libertad and Delle Chiaie associate Michael Townley delivered P-2 violence to the streets of Washington in 1973 when he planted a car bomb killing Pinochet critic Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit of the leftist Institute for Policy Studies.

Letelier was on a hit list that was part of the same Operation Condor under which Chilean DINA agent Carlos Cardoen was smuggling weapons to Iraq.  Others on the CIA hit list were Chilean General Carlos Prats, Argentinean nationalist Juan Torres, Uruguayan politicians Hector Gutierrez and Zelmar Michelini, and Bolivian General Joaquin Zenteno. [18]  CIA Director George Bush, who’d already helped cover up the JFK hit, now suppressed evidence of DINA role (and possibly his own) in the Letelier and Moffit assassinations.  The bloodshed was far worse in Chile where Pinochet unleashed a reign of terror on the Chilean left.

Lucio Gelli, a pro-Franco Spanish Civil War veteran, was P-2’s founder.  He helped the OSS lay down the “rat line”, by which Nazi war criminals escaped to South America.  Gelli was an early version of Carlos Cardoen, negotiating numerous arms for oil deals on behalf of the Four Horsemen and CIA.  He served as economic consultant to Argentine strongman Juan Peron and was Ambassador of the Knights of Malta to Uruguay, a major South American drug money laundry where Vatican chum Umberto Ortolani owns a major bank.  Gelli was a business partner of Klaus Barbie and an honored guest at the 1980 inauguration of President Reagan.  Gelli claimed to be friendly with George Bush, honorary P-2 member and 33rd Degree Mason.

By 1981 Italian authorities had uncovered what one court document described as “a secret structure (that) had the incredible capacity to control a state’s institutions to the point of virtually becoming a state-within-a-state”.  In a search of Lucio Gelli’s home, police found a list of fellow Freemason collaborators that included three cabinet ministers, forty members of Parliament, forty-three military generals, eight admirals, intelligence heads, police chiefs of four major cities, industrialists, bankers, diplomats and celebrities. [19]

They also found a document titled The Strategy of Tension, which proposed fabricating terror to discredit the leftist Italian Red Brigades and to compel Italians to demand a more authoritarian fascist government.  The plan evolved from Gladio, a secret NATO strategy implemented after WWII that advocated an alliance between the mafia, CIA, Vatican and Knights of Malta.

In 1980 P-2 operatives bombed a Bologna train station killing 85 people, then blamed it on the Red Brigades.  In 1978 Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by the Red Brigades.  Both Moro’s widow and one his closest associates say Moro was told by Henry Kissinger to halt his stabilizing policies or “you will dearly pay for it”.  Kissinger was called as a character witness by ex-Italian Prime Minister Guilion Andreotti- a close friend of Lucio Gelli’s- who was being tried for mob involvement. [20]  A London Independent article stated that Moro’s murder may have been a CIA/P-2 hit.

P-2 financed Manzur al-Kassar’s top-secret CIA COREA heroin trafficking ring in Syria. The Italian media reported that P-2 was financed through a Panamanian company called Amitalia and claimed that part of the purpose for the US invasion of Panama was to destroy documents connecting George Bush, the CIA and P-2 Freemasons to the Lockerbie bombing.  P-2 recruited high-ranking South American military officials, ran guns and drugs, and supported both extreme right and extreme left parties, utilizing this “strategy of tension” to create a climate of fear conducive to military coups which would bring “law and order” fascists to power. [21]

The Vatican’s Opus Dei had strong ties to P-2 and Patria y Libertad South American fascist movements.  The CIA and P-2 propped up the narco-terrorist regime of Alberto Fujimori in Peru during the 1990s, through their Peruvian surrogate the National Intelligence Service, whose acronym is quite appropriately SIN.  Fujimori launched a state terror campaign against the Peruvian left, temporarily obliterating two Indian rebel groups, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru.  In 1991 SIN killed seventeen civilians in the poor Lima suburb of Barrios Altos.  Two years later SIN disappeared nine university students and a professor in La Cantuta.  The head of SIN was Vladimiro Montesinos, who defended drug traffickers in court as a sideline.

In 1996 Tupac Amaru rebels seized the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Lima and took several hostages.  Fujimori’s chief negotiator during the crisis was Bishop Juan Luis Cipriani, a right-wing Fujimori backer and member of Opus Dei.  SIN and Peruvian Special Forces tunneled into the house and ended the month-old standoff in typically bloody fashion, killing all the kidnappers.  One hostage who was released early was Kieran Metcalfe, a Canadian mining executive.  Metcalfe said of his captors, “I’m not sure if anybody took sides with the people involved, but I think many people developed some respect for these people (Tupac Amaru)”.

In 2001 SIN Chief Montesinos was found in the pay of drug traffickers and forced to flee to Panama to avoid prosecution.  President Fujimori knew he was next and fled to Japan, his ancestral home, where he was quickly given a teaching appointment at Kyoto University.  The new Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo requested that Japan extradite Fujimori to stand trial.  The Japanese government refused.  Toledo, a former World Bank executive, became increasingly unpopular due to his privatization agenda.

In 1993 Argentine President Carlos Menem, a close friend of Citigroup and the Bush family, resigned amidst a major drug scandal.  Menem was just the latest in a series of crooks to run Argentina, long a favorite drop point for Southeast Asian HSBC-financed heroin entering Latin America.  In 1968 the CIA began training police and right-wing death squads in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina to attack leftist revolutionary groups.  The region became an Orwellian nexus of bloody fascist dictators and CIA/P-2 drug running.

The Argentine juntas were particularly brutal.  The CIA used August Ricord’s Corsican heroin mafia to infiltrate leftist movements.  In Argentina Ricord smuggler Christian David infiltrated the Tupamoros revolutionary group which kidnapped CIA torture experts Dan Mitrione and Claude Fry.  Mitrione was executed. [22]  David recently stated from his prison cell that he was offered a contract to assassinate John F. Kennedy, but turned it down.  He said old money Sicilian banking families ordered the Kennedy hit.

In 1997 Mothers of Plazo de Mayo, an Argentine group of mothers whose sons and daughters died in that country’s CIA-sponsored genocide, accused the Vatican’s Envoy to Argentina from 1974-1980, Pio Laghi, of playing a role in the tortures, disappearances and murders of their children.  Laghi was Vatican Envoy to the US and currently heads the Congregation of Catholic Education, which oversees Catholic schools worldwide. [23]

Decades of drug corruption have left the Argentine economy in shambles.  In late 2001 Argentina defaulted on its $132 billion debt to the international bankers led by Citigroup.  Argentine protestors attacked banks, the Argentine peso was severely devalued and the IMF issued the typical austerity demands.  Five Presidents later, Argentina has refused to comply with IMF demands and remains cut off from international lending.

The directorate that presides over the P-2 Freemasons who terrorized South America and armed Saddam through BNL is based in Switzerland at the Alpina Lodge.  Members of the Alpina Lodge Directorate include Stephan Delle Chiaie, Lucio Gelli, Club of Rome founder and depopulation advocate Aurelio Peccei and Henry Kissinger.  The Alpina Lodge is joined by every Swiss banker worth his salt.  The Alpina power-brokers are often referred to as the Gnomes of Zurich.  The Alpina Lodge, Banco Ambrosiano, P-2 and Lucio Gelli have all been linked to Priory of Sion through a pro-Nazi French group known as Alpha Galates. [24]

P-2 predecessor P-1 was founded by Guiseppe Mazzini, the 33rd Degree Grand Master Mason of the Grand Oriente Lodge in Rome, whose name is synonymous with mafia.  Mazzini’s P-1 did not consist of the illiterate Italian restaurant goons which the US corporate media likes to pass off as the mafia, ala The Godfather, The Sopranos, etc.  Rather P-1, P-2 and Freemason lodges worldwide, which house the real mafia, are chartered by the delicate tea-sipping white glove hands of the Duke of Kent in London, who answers directly to his cousin Queen Elizabeth II, the Bush family relative who presides over the British House of Windsor. [25]

Numerous Priory of Sion documents housed in the French National Library were published by the Alpina Lodge.  French journalist Mathieu Paolio claims to have seen these same documents in the Alpina library.  A short time after publishing a book detailing the Priory’s interest in the Merovingan bloodline, Paolio was reassigned to Israel where he was executed as a spy.  Other Priory of Sion documents which list genealogies for the Merovingan dynasty were held at Silver Triangle player Lloyd’s of London until 1979.  All Englishmen connected to the Priory are executives at a huge insurance firm known alternately as Guardian Assurance and Guardian Royal Exchange Association. [26]  All have aristocratic titles or are connected to international banking, the Churchill family or British Intelligence.

[1] “Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq and BNL”. Chair Henry Gonzalez. H2694. Senate House Banking Committee. 4-28-92

[2] “Oilman, Trader, Banker, Spy”. James Norton. Forbes. 1-30-95. p.84

[3] Ibid

[4] Shell Game: A True Story of Banking, Spies, Lies, Politics and the Arming of Saddam Hussein. Peter Mantius. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1995. p.56

[5] Norton. p.85

[6] “Fundraising Figure Faces Trial in France”. Anne Swardson. Washington Post. 10-10-97

[7] “Oil Financier Got US Security Briefing While Negotiating to Build Big Pipeline”. Michael K. Frisby. Wall Street Journal. 3-14-97. p.14

[8] “A Gift for George: Why is Bill Clinton so Desperate to Bury Bush’s Iraqgate Scandal?” Stephen Pizzo. Mother Jones. 11/12, 1993. p.62

[9] “CIA to Furnish Files in BNL Case”. John J. Fialka. Wall Street Journal. 9-21-92. p.A1

[10] “My Advice to the Privileged Orders”. Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D-TX). H1107. Senate House Banking Committee. 3-9-92

[11] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 12-9-92

[12] The Puzzle Palace: America’ National Security Agency and its Special Relationship with Britain’s GCHQ. James Bamford. Sidgwick and Jackson. London. 1983

[13] Mantius. p.101

[14] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.258

[15] Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.52

[16] In Banks We Trust. Penny Lernoux. Anchor Press/Doubleday. Garden City, NY. 1984. p.146

[17] Marrs. p.259

[18] The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism. Henrik Kruger. South End Press. Boston. 1980. p.204

[19] Marrs. p.257

[20] Ibid. p.258

[21] Naylor. p.78

[22] Kruger. p.78

[23] “Group Accuses Papal Envoy of Role in Argentina’s Dirty War”. AP. Missoulian. 5-21-97

[24] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992. p.367

[25] Ibid

[26] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK.

Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve & Stickin’ it to the Matrix. You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @ www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

Filed under: Left Hook Columns Tagged: Alpha Galatas, Big Oil & Their Bankers, BNL, Chase Manhattan, Dean Henderson, Freemasons, Gnomes of Zurich, Left Hook, Stickin’ it to the Matrix, The Grateful Unrich