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