vault backup: 2026-09-22 19:54:11

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Atlanta.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+aliases:
+  - "Atlanta, Georgia"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Georgia
+  - BNL
+  - BCCI
+  - MKULTRA
+summary: "Georgia capital where BNL's branch lent Iraq billions off the books until the FBI raid of 1989, where BCCI's frontman bought Bert Lance's bank, and where CIA-funded LSD tests ran at the federal penitentiary."
+location: "Atlanta, Georgia"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+### BNL Atlanta
+
+Between 1985 and 1989 the Atlanta branch of the [[Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]], managed by [[Christopher Drogoul]], extended more than four billion dollars in unreported loans and credits to Iraq, part of them guaranteed by the [[Commodity Credit Corporation Iraq Program|Commodity Credit Corporation]]; the money financed the purchases of Iraq's military procurement network, including [[Matrix Churchill]] and the brass plant of [[SerVaas Inc.]][^1][^2] The [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] raided the branch on August 4, 1989.[^3] The acting United States attorney in Atlanta, [[Joe D. Whitley]], recused himself on taking office on June 1, 1990, because his former law firm had represented Matrix Churchill.[^4] The indictment returned in Atlanta on February 28, 1991, named Drogoul and, among others, [[Safa al-Habobi]].[^5] Judge [[Marvin Shoob]] called Drogoul and his colleagues "pawns and bit-players in a far more wide-ranging conspiracy."[^6] The investigation became the [[BNL Scandal]].
+
+### BCCI and the National Bank of Georgia
+
+In January 1978 [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]] completed his purchase of the [[National Bank of Georgia]] from [[Bert Lance]], with the help of [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]], who paid off Lance's 3.5 million dollar bank loan the same day. [[First American Bank]], secretly owned by BCCI, bought the bank from Pharaon for 227 million dollars in 1987.[^7][^13]
+
+### MKULTRA
+
+After May 1943 [[George Hunter White]] of the [[Office of Strategic Services]] tested a truth drug on suspected Communist soldiers at camps near Atlanta, Memphis and [[New Orleans]].[^8] Under [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]] Subproject 47 the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] tested large doses of [[LSD]] on volunteers at the [[Atlanta Federal Penitentiary]] through [[Emory University]].[^9]
+
+### Other Records
+
+The [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]], with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] as president, was organized in Atlanta on January 10 and 11, 1957.[^10] [[George R. Wackenhut]] was an FBI special agent in Atlanta and Indianapolis from 1951 to 1954, before founding the [[Wackenhut Corporation]].[^11] The car [[James Earl Ray]] had driven from Memphis after the killing of King in April 1968 was found abandoned in Atlanta.[^12]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: "Drogoul gets 37 months in BNL bank scandal." *United Press International,* December 9, 1993; *United States v. Drogoul,* 1 F.3d 1546 (11th Cir. 1993).
+[^2]: Gonzalez, Henry B. "Details on Iraq's Procurement Network," *Congressional Record,* House, August 10, 1992, and "Brass Factory in Iraq," September 25, 1992, p. H9502.
+[^3]: Gonzalez, Henry B. "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Scandal: High-Level Politics Try to Hide the Evidence." *Congressional Record,* House, September 14, 1992, p. H8349.
+[^4]: Lacey, Frederick B. "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Investigation: Report of the Independent Counsel," reproduced in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, *Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro,* Serial No. 103-95, 1993.
+[^5]: Friedman, Alan. *Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq.* Bantam, 1993, pp. 185, 281.
+[^6]: "Justice probe finds no 'Iraqgate' conspiracy." Associated Press, in the *San Francisco Chronicle.* https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/justice-probe-finds-no-iraqgate-conspiracy-3160242.php
+[^7]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* Random House, 1993, pp. 11-14, as cited on the National Bank of Georgia page.
+[^8]: Marks, John D. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.* Times Books, 1979, ch. 1.
+[^9]: Earman, John S., CIA Inspector General. "Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD," July 26, 1963, as cited on the Project MKUltra page; Marks, ch. 4.
+[^10]: Garrow, David. *Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.* William Morrow, 1986.
+[^11]: The Wackenhut Corporation, biographical sketch of George R. Wackenhut, annual reports, as cited on the George R. Wackenhut page.
+[^12]: Sides, Hampton. *Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin.* Doubleday, 2010.
+[^13]: As cited on the First American Bank page for BCCI's secret ownership.

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Buenos Aires.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Argentina
+  - OperationCondor
+  - DINA
+  - FBI
+summary: "Argentine capital where DINA killed General Carlos Prats in 1974, where the FBI's Robert Scherrer kept contact with Operation Condor, and from which ITT ran its Latin American press work in 1970."
+location: "Buenos Aires, Argentina"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+### The Prats Assassination
+
+Four days after the coup of September 11, 1973, the former Chilean army commander [[Carlos Prats]] and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, left for Buenos Aires. Six weeks later [[Augusto Pinochet]] sent General Sergio Arellano Stark there on a mission whose first purpose, a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] source reported, was to "discuss with the Argentine military any information they have regarding the activities of General (retired) Carlos Prats."[^1] [[Enrique Arancibia Clavel]] ran the [[DINA]] station in the city from 1974, forming "a parallel network of informants in Buenos Aires to supply data on those being pursued."[^2] In late July 1974 Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Raúl Iturriaga]] came "with a bag of cash to hire assassins and to coordinate the operation with the Argentine service, SIDE"; a DINA captain filed a surveillance report with the couple's addresses and a drawing of the entrance to Prats's garage, and four days before the killing the Chilean foreign ministry told its consul it would be "inconvenient" to issue them passports to travel to Brazil.[^1][^3] Prats and Cuthbert were killed on September 30, 1974, by a bomb built by [[Michael Townley]], who had come to the city with [[Mariana Callejas]]; [[Manuel Contreras]] afterward called "the operation in Buenos Aires a complete success."[^1][^4] An Argentine federal court sentenced Arancibia Clavel to life imprisonment in November 2000, and the Chilean courts convicted Contreras, [[Pedro Espinoza]], Iturriaga and [[José Zara]] in 2010.[^2][^5]
+
+### Condor and the FBI
+
+[[Robert Scherrer]], the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]'s legal attaché at the embassy from 1972, responsible for the southern cone, obtained the surrender of the Cuban exile [[Rolando Otero]] in 1976 and sent the first written description of [[Operation Condor]] to reach Washington soon after the murder of [[Orlando Letelier]]. Contreras later testified that Scherrer was in "permanent contact" with Condor's representative in Buenos Aires "and received the information that he asked for."[^6][^3] On June 4, 1976, the day the exiled Bolivian president Juan José Torres was found murdered in the city, an intelligence memorandum found "no evidence to support a contention that Southern Cone governments are cooperating in some sort of international Murder Inc."[^3] On August 23 the [[State Department]] cabled the embassies in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago that "government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members has most serious implications."[^7]
+
+### Other Operations
+
+[[Rafael Eitan]] took part in the kidnapping of [[Adolf Eichmann]] in Buenos Aires in 1960.[^8] [[Hal Hendrix]] worked for [[ITT Corporation|ITT]] from Buenos Aires until mid-1970, with [[Robert Berrellez]] reporting to him; on September 17, 1970, two weeks after [[Salvador Allende]] won a plurality in Chile, the two recommended paying for a relocation center in Mendoza or Buenos Aires for the families of "key persons involved in the fight."[^9] In 1994 Argentine investigators implicated Iranian officials, among them [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]], in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the city.[^10]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "The Pinochet Regime at 50: The Assassination of General Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert." National Security Archive, October 1, 2024. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2024-10-01/pinochet-regime-50-assassination-general-carlos-prats-and-sofia
+[^2]: *Arancibia Clavel, Enrique Lautaro s/homicidio calificado y asociación ilícita y otros,* Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Argentina, August 24, 2004.
+[^3]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.* New Press, 2004, pp. 74-77, 90-94, 121-122.
+[^4]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth.* Viking, 1982, pp. 67-69.
+[^5]: Chilean press reports of the 2010 judgments of Judge Alejandro Solís and the Supreme Court, as cited on the José Zara page.
+[^6]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row.* McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 130, 237-239.
+[^7]: U.S. Department of State, cable 209192, "Operation Condor," August 23, 1976, in National Security Archive, "Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!," May 27, 2016.
+[^8]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, ch. 21.
+[^9]: Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations. *Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy,* hearings on ITT and Chile, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 1973. https://archive.org/details/MultinationalCorporationsAndUSForeignPolicyUSSenateHearings
+[^10]: "Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani." *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ali-Akbar-Hashemi-Rafsanjani

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Hong Kong.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - China
+  - Banking
+  - Lippo
+  - BCCI
+summary: "Financial center where the Stephens and Riady families formed their first joint company in 1978, where Lippo sought BCCI's failed subsidiary, and from which a Lippo company paid Webster Hubbell in 1994."
+location: "Hong Kong, China"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+### Stephens, Riady and Lippo
+
+[[Mochtar Riady]] of Indonesia's [[Lippo Group]] met [[Jackson Stephens]] and [[Witt Stephens]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] in 1976 while looking for a stake in an American bank, and in 1978 the two families formed Stephens Finance Ltd. in Hong Kong. [[John Huang]], sent to Hong Kong by Union Planters National Bank of Memphis in 1983, became in February 1985 at once vice president of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank and Far East manager of [[Worthen Bank]], reporting to Riady in both. About 1987 the Riadys traded their Worthen shares for the Stephens interest in the Hong Kong Chinese Bank.[^1] "Through the end of 1991, it seemed likely that Indonesia's Lippo Group would take over" the Hong Kong subsidiary of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]], "paying out as much as forty cents on the dollar"; the plan was dropped in February 1992, when Hong Kong investigators found 145 million dollars in unrecorded claims against the bank.[^2] Huang had been sent to Beijing in 1991 to negotiate a joint bid for it with China Resources.[^1]
+
+On June 23, 1994, [[James Riady]] had breakfast with [[Webster Hubbell]], who had resigned as associate attorney general in April, met President [[Bill Clinton]] with Huang at ten, and had lunch with Hubbell; on June 27 Hubbell wrote to a director of [[Hong Kong China Limited]], a Lippo company, offering his services for 100,000 dollars a year, and the money reached his account by that day.[^1] The charge to which Riady pleaded guilty in 2001 listed transfers from foreign Lippo companies to Huang's account in Hong Kong in 1990 and 1991 and cash payments to a Lippo executive in Hong Kong until May 1994.[^3]
+
+### Intelligence
+
+[[John Gittinger]] of [[Psychological Assessment Associates]], the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]'s contract personality-assessment firm, opened its branch office in Tokyo and later moved it to Hong Kong to serve the agency's stations in the Far East.[^4] The [[Nugan Hand Bank]] had a branch in Hong Kong and was alleged to have laundered the proceeds of [[Golden Triangle]] heroin through its Southeast Asian offices.[^5] Within a year of ALLTEL's purchase of [[Systematics]], the Little Rock banking-software company, in May 1990, the subsidiary acquired Systems Limited, "an international banking software firm headquartered in Hong Kong."[^6] In the February 1987 raids on [[The Finders]] in Washington, the Customs agent [[Ramon J. Martinez]] reported finding a telex he described as a purchase order for two children in Hong Kong through a contact at the Chinese Embassy; no second investigator's record confirms that document.[^7] [[Edward Snowden]] flew to Hong Kong in May 2013 with classified documents of the [[National Security Agency]] and met the journalists there in June.[^8]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ; Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, *Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns,* S. Rept. 105-167, 1998.
+[^2]: Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin. *False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire.* Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
+[^3]: Department of Justice. "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law." Press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
+[^4]: Marks, John D. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.* Times Books, 1979, ch. 10.
+[^5]: Kwitny, Jonathan. *The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA.* W.W. Norton, 1987.
+[^6]: "Systematics sees opportunity beyond bank outsourcing." *American Banker,* September 3, 1993.
+[^7]: Martinez, Ramon J. U.S. Customs Service reports, February 7 and April 13, 1987. https://archive.org/details/ted-gunderson-fbi-the-finders ; Sword, Autumn. "Were 'The Finders' a CIA-Fronted Satanic Cult?" *Skeptical Inquirer,* February 28, 2023.
+[^8]: Greenwald, Glenn. *No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.* Metropolitan Books, 2014.