Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA, and Other Covert Agencies, Vol. One (Book # 2 of 30 in Defrauding America series.)

by Rodney Stich

lis pendens

A major segment of the HUD fraud was centered in the Denver area and committed by a group of closely related people and companies, who had close ties to the Reagan and Bush administrations. Numerous HUD officials left government to work for the Denver group that defrauded the American people of billions of dollars, much of which is hidden away in either offshore financial institutions or in secret locations throughout the United States. Philip Winn was one of the kingpins in the Denver group. He was a former HUD Assistant Secretary who joined the MDC group in Denver and became a key player in the HUD and savings and loan scandals. Numerous HUD officials left government service and received high paying jobs with an interrelated group in Denver. This group included, among others: MDC Holdings; Richmond Homes; Silverado Bank Savings & Loan; Aurora Bank; M & L Business Machines; Leonard Millman; Larry Mizel; David Mandarich (president of MDC Holdings); Ken Good; Bill Walters; Neil Bush; Silverado’s President Michael Wise; James Metz, major stockholder in Silverado; and dozens of subsidiaries and related companies, limited partnerships, trusts. It was learned that Leonard Millman, Larry Mizel, and Philip Winn, all members of the ADL, were partners in these schemes, as was Philip Abrams, former HUD under-secretaries. Federal regulators involved in the HUD scam included HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce, former Assistant Secretary Thomas Demery; Deborah Gore Dean and Lance Wilson, form...

Despite the large sums donated to Michael Norton‘s campaign for a senate seat, he lost. But the Reagan-Bush team appointed Norton U.S. Attorney in Denver, thereby protecting White House and other federal officials from investigation and prosecution in the HUD corruption.

pro se, representing

Mayor Federico Pena

Congress and the Reagan Administration deregulated the savings and loan industry through the Garn-St Germain Act of 1982, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on October 15, 1982. As he signed the far-reaching bill, Reagan announced that it was “the most important legislation for financial institutions in 50 years.” He added: “I think we’ve hit the jackpot.” If he meant the jackpot reference for the Mafia, the CIA, and a host of crooks, he was absolutely right. Even the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, never envisioned such riches.

Mafia figures and crooks, started buying small savings and loans in out-of-the-way-places. In that manner they gained access to the Treasury of the United States, permitting them to engage in self-dealings, sham transactions, and massive fraud against the American taxpayer. Deregulation and the concurrent fraud were financially fabulous for many people, fueling massive growth in the real estate industry during the 1980s. The public picked up the price tab in the 1990s, and they would pay for decades, well into the next century. The losses, much of which was outright theft, exceeded the cost of World War II. Never in the history of the United States had such a massive financial debacle occurred, making the American taxpayer the victim of the biggest scam in the nation’s history.

It was no secret to members of Congress what would happen if the savings and loans were deregulated. The consequences of relaxing safeguards were seen elsewhere. For instance, the danger of brokered deposits was evident when serious problems arose in California during the 1960s when these deposits were allowed to reach a high percentage of a financial institution’s deposits, threatening its solvency. Sudden withdrawal of such large sums of money deposited as a block could easily make the institution insolvent. To correct this problem, regulators ordered a cap of five percent of an institution’s total brokered deposits. This restriction remained from 1963 until the limit on brokered deposits was removed in 1982 by the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, chaired by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan. This change was enormously profitable to financial institutions dealing in such deposits, including Regan’s prior employer before he joined the Reagan administration.

Just prior to voting for deregulating the savings and loans, the nation’s worst bank failure occurred, which was caused by eliminating safeguards and permitting brokered deposits. The Oklahoma City financial institution, Penn Square Bank, failed in 1982 and brought giant Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago to the brink of failure, as well as other lending institutions that had placed large sums of money into Penn Square Bank. The American taxpayers had to bail out Continental Illinois to the tune of $4.5 billion (plus the interest that is still being paid on the payout). This amount was in addition to the payments made to the insured depositors at Penn Square. It was the largest federal bailout in the nation’s history, and showed the dangers of deregulation and brokered deposits and what could be expected with the subsequent signing of the deregulation act. Penn Square offered the deposit brokers higher interest rates and substantial brokerage commissions for funds placed with the financial institution, causing brokers to place millions of dollars into the bank on any given day. But the rates and the fees that Penn Square had to pay for these deposits required making loans on high-risk investments. Further, the continual losses due to high costs of the funds and the inadequacy of returns on these funds required a continuing infusion of money to continue the Ponzi-like scheme.

There were special-interest groups wanting President Carter removed from office. Among them was the Central Intelligence Agency, which suffered serious losses to its clandestine operations when Carter ordered the dismissal of large numbers of CIA operatives in 1977. This wholesale firing of Agency employees became known as the “October Massacre.”

The October Surprise plot was the genesis to the Iran-Contra affair, and indirectly to the Inslaw, BNL, and Iraqgate scandals.

Ben-Menashe was heavily involved in various secret activities with the Mossad and the CIA, and was one of the first to expose the Iran-Contra activities, for which October Surprise served as the genesis. Ben-Menashe stated that he was a member of the Mossad’s advance team working with the French government, which arranged meetings between William Casey, George Bush, and the Iranian factions, including the meetings on the October 19, 1980, weekend in Paris.

The meeting lasted about ninety minutes and a final agreement was reached, whereby the Iranians were to be given $40 million bribe money and large quantities of arms would be sold to them. In exchange, the Iranians would continue to imprison the 52 Americans until after the November 1980 presidential election and the January 1981 inauguration. Justice Department Obstruction of Justice CIA contract agent Richard Brenneke testified in U.S. District Court at Denver in 1988 on behalf of another CIA contract agent, Heinrich Rupp. The purpose of the testimony was to show that Brenneke’s friend, Rupp, was a CIA contract agent (as was Brenneke), and that the offenses for which Rupp was being charged were offenses committed under orders of the CIA. Justice Department prosecutors had charged Rupp with money offenses at Aurora Bank in the Denver area.

Justice Department prosecutors produced two Secret Service agents[121] to testify that Bush never left the Washington area during the October 19, 1980, weekend. But they were vague in their testimony and failed to produce the Secret Service logs showing Bush’s activities during a 21-hour period from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening. The Secret Service agents could not state where Bush was from 9:25 p.m. on Saturday, October 18 until Sunday at 7:57 p.m. My CIA sources told me that several Secret Service agents were on board the BAC 111 aircraft that flew vice presidential nominee George Bush to Paris during the missing twenty-one hours.

As could be expected, when the Reagan-Bush team took office they were then subject to blackmail by Iran, Iraq, Israel, and anyone who had knowledge of October Surprise. After Reagan and Bush took office, the Iranians received huge quantities of military equipment, many times more than they could have received had they completed the agreement with the United States government under President Carter. In 1982, the Reagan-Bush team took Iraq off the list of terrorist states despite the strong protests of intelligence organizations in the United States and Europe. Israel received huge quantities of military supplies and aid, much of it unknown to the American public, who will be paying the bill for years.

CIA Code Name for October Surprise As will be explained more fully in later pages, most CIA operations have code names, and the code name for the CIA October Surprise scheme was Operation Eurovan (EV).

Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Operation Cyclops, a program where CIA operatives are placed into financial institutions to learn the business.

He described his activities in Central America with the CIA, including Oliver North’s involvement, and the disdain that CIA and other people had for North’s incompetence and involvement in drug trafficking. “My life wouldn’t be worth a nickel”

Robert Gates; Donald Gregg (who at that time was a member of President Carter’s National Security Council),

Senators John Tower and John Heinz; Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; Jennifer Fitzgerald of the State Department (reportedly a close lady friend of Bush for many years).

“Adnan Khashoggi,

Hashemi Rafsanjani.

A lot of them went down to an entity in Spain.

defense logistics.”

“Office of Naval Intelligence?”

Mossad-CIA Cross-Check

The prosecutor who assisted in carrying out the scheme, Scott Sifferman, was later appointed a judge in the State of Missouri, as promised. Russbacher said that other State officials who participated in this scheme that eventually resulted in his state imprisonment included State Prosecutor Scott Zimmerman, who prosecuted Russbacher knowing the charges to be false; William Webster, a nephew to former FBI and CIA Director William Webster (who was Missouri Attorney General); former Missouri Governor John Ashcroft (who became U.S. Attorney General); former Lt. Governor Mel Carnahan (who became Missouri Governor in 1993).

The media exaggeration of Watergate inflicted immense harms upon the United States. The media cover-up of October Surprise inflicted far greater harm upon the United States but in a form not recognized by the uninformed American public.

U.S. media and congressional publicity on Iran-Contra focused on the illegal arms sales to Iran in the mid-1980s, but these sales began years earlier, as part of the October Surprise operation. Although the arms sales were allegedly to obtain the release of American hostages seized in Lebanon, there was also a profit motive for many of the participants. Sharing in the profits from these arms sales to Iran were arms brokers, Israel, and a private network composed of CIA and National Security Council players. These arms sales to Iran violated U.S. law, and the criminal acts involved the president and vice president of the United States, members of the National Security Council, the CIA, and others.

Another motive for the illegal arms sales was for the CIA and NSC participants to purchase arms through their front companies. The money generated by the Iranian arms sales was not gifts to the Contras, as implied by the Reagan-Bush White House and the media. The profits from the arms sales to Iran were used to purchase additional arms, which were then traded to the Contras for drugs.

It wasn’t only the Contras to whom the CIA furnished arms. The CIA, joined by Israel, arms merchants, and others, were selling and delivering arms to the opposition Sandinistas. One CIA operative said to me, “How else could we keep the fighting going!”

Iranian politician, incensed about his opponent’s participation in the Iranian arms deals, distributed thousands of leaflets in Iran exposing these dealings, followed by an article in the Lebanese newspaper Al Shiraa. Israeli arms dealers who were taken out of the loop by direct arms sales from U.S. officials to Iran sought to eliminate the American competition, and they caused publicity to be generated.

Claire George was indicted and found guilty on December 9, 1992, of making false statements and perjury before Congress. Elliott Abrams was indicted and pled guilty on October 7, 1991, to withholding information from Congress. Alan Fiers, Jr., pleaded guilty on July 9, 1991, to withholding information from Congress. Robert McFarlane was indicted and pled guilty on March 11, 1988, to withholding information from Congress. Thomas Clines was charged and found guilty on September 18, 1990, of tax-related crimes and sent to prison. Richard Secord was charged and pled guilty on November 8, 1989, to making false statements to Congress. Albert Hakim was charged and pled guilty on November 21, 1989, to supplementing the salary of Oliver North. Carl Channell pled guilty on April 29, 1987, to conspiracy to defraud the United States. Richard Miller pled guilty on May 8, 1987, to conspiracy to defraud the United States. John Poindexter was found guilty on April 7, 1990, of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. Joseph Fernandez was charged but the case dismissed on November 24, 1989, after the CIA refused to turn over documents relevant to his defense.

North was convicted of aiding and abetting obstruction of Congress, destroying Security Council documents and accepting an illegal gift.

President Ronald Reagan‘s

Rodriguez discovered this problem as he discovered single and twin-engine aircraft involved in drug trafficking. He told me that his FAA supervisors ordered him to stop investigating this matter, and not to make any reports relating to it. Rodriguez stated that when he ran an aircraft search through the FAA registry in Oklahoma City, on certain aircraft, Justice Department personnel would be notified of the check. He would then be ordered to halt his investigation. He felt that these aircraft were used by the CIA and other “intelligence” agencies for drug trafficking. Oklahoma City investigative reporter and talk show host Jerry Bohen also discovered the practice of stolen aircraft used by the CIA. Former CIA asset Terry Reed, who conducted flight training in Arkansas of Contra pilots, also writes about the practice, and that Oliver North and Attorney General William Barr were either aware of it or were involved in ordering the operation to occur. The CIA used their inside contacts with the FAA to determine what substitute aircraft registration numbers to use. Project Donation In some cases the theft of the aircraft occurred with the owner’s permission. The scheme worked like this: The CIA would instruct people owning insured airplanes to report them as stolen, after allowing CIA personnel to take the aircraft. The owner would report the “theft” to the insurance company and then collect the insurance proceeds. This plan appealed to aircraft owners who had trouble selling t...

Arrow Airlines;

Southwest Airlines.

Liberty Loan

7711 Bonhomme, Suite 704 in Clayton, Missouri.

Gerald Bull of the “Supergun” project; Adnan Khashoggi,

second planned rescue of the American hostages held by Iran in 1980, called Operation Snow Bird. Because the Reagan-Bush group involved in the October Surprise scheme publicized these plans during the 1980 presidential campaign, the rescue operation had to be canceled.

Operation Ringwind

Ringwind was a CIA Hit Team that was put together in the early 1980s.[201]

Operation Cappuccino,

Ben Weir.

Operation Espresso.

Amiram Nir,

Charles Mckee