‘Panama Papers’ Law Firm Helped CIA Operatives, Gun-Runners Set Up Shell Companies

By Aviva Shen, ThinkProgress

07 April 16

fter journalists started naming names in the massive document dump known as the Panama Papers, which details the shadow networks of shell companies and tax

CIA – J. Scott Applewhite (AP)

havens used by the super-rich, many wondered why Americans went unmentioned in the international scandal. Now, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has implicated the CIA as one of the players of this secret — if technically legal — game of hiding money from tax collectors.

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that sprung the leak, reportedly works with many intelligence operatives and CIA contractors to set up offshore companies to hold personal funds.

The documents name several intermediaries and gun-runners who helped the CIA supply firearms to anti-communist right-wing fighters in Afghanistan, South America and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War — including a couple of wealthy players suspected to be involved in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Ronald Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in an attempt to free American hostages and bankroll right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi billionaire, popped up in the files starting in 1978. According to ICIJ, he “negotiated billions of dollars in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and played ‘a central role for the U.S. government’ with CIA operatives in selling guns to Iran, according to a 1992 U.S. Senate report co-written by then-Sen. John Kerry.”

The fallout from the Panama Papers has thus far claimed one political career. Iceland’s Prime Minister was forced to resign Tuesday after days of protests by thousands of Icelanders. American names have not yet hit the press, though it’s been well documented that U.S. companies and individuals take advantage of the same tax avoidance strategies as their international counterparts. The U.S. has lost out on an estimated $150 billion in revenue thanks to the use of tax havens.

Offshoring Isn’t Just a Problem in Panama, Nevada Has 1000 Secret Firms

By Steve Reilly, USA TODAY

08 April 16

USA TODAY analysis of more than 1,000 American-based companies registered by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers leak, casts the

Las Vegas. (photo: Getty)

United States openly into an uncomfortable role: an offshore haven of corporate secrecy for wealthy business operations across the globe.

The analysis found that both Nevada and Wyoming have become secretive havens much like Bermuda and Switzerland have long been. And at least 150 companies set up by Mossack Fonseca in those states have ties to major corruption scandals in Brazil and Argentina.

The corporate records of 1,000-plus Nevada business entities linked to the Panamanian law firm reveal layers of secretive ownership, with few having humans’ names behind them, and most tracing back to a tiny number of overseas addresses from Bangkok high rises to post offices on tiny island nations. Only 100 of the Nevada-born corporations have officers with addresses in this country: 90 in Nevada, nine in Florida and one in Delaware.

The financial records show more than 600 of the companies’ corporate officers are listed at one of just two addresses in the world, one in Panama and the other Seychelles, a small Indian Ocean archipelago. The addresses, in both countries, are the same as Mossack Fonseca’s headquarters.

For about 700 of the American shell companies, the corporate officers are business entities rather than people, meaning no individual is linked to the Nevada firm in state records.

“We shouldn’t be thinking about this as a Panamanian problem,” said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, D.C. “We should be thinking about this as a very American problem, and a problem that arguably is worse here in the states than it is in Panama.”

President Obama to Unseal Files on Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, MARCH 17, 2016

Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla took power in Argentina in a 1976 coup and led a military junta that killed thousands of his fellow citizens in a dirty war to eliminate “subversives.” AP Photo/Eduardo Di Baia, File

WASHINGTON — President Obama is moving to declassify American military, intelligence and law enforcement records that could reveal what the United States government knew about Argentina’s brutal “dirty war” of the 1970s and ’80s, a senior adviser said on Thursday, hoping to pierce the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded a painful chapter in that country’s history.

Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said that the president would use a visit to Argentina on Wednesday and Thursday, which coincides with the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that began the war, to honor the victims and formally begin the declassification process.

“On this anniversary and beyond, we’re determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation,” Ms. Rice said during a speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

Human rights activists have long pressed for access to more classified United States records about the war, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, a period when the Argentine government and military carried out vicious crackdowns against dissidents and abducted thousands of people, including babies taken from parents who were detained.

The Argentine government had formally requested that the documents be declassified. The issue has taken on greater urgency in recent days, after human rights groups noted that Mr. Obama would be in Argentina on the painful anniversary and began pressing him to use the occasion to acknowledge the abuses that took place.

Several of the groups, including Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo — which works to find people who were taken as babies during the dictatorship and raised by families close to the military — submitted a formal request on Monday to the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires for Mr. Obama to release the secret records.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a group that opposes government secrecy, said Mr. Obama should be applauded for engaging in “declassified diplomacy.”

The president’s decision, Mr. Kornbluh said, “not only provides a historical atonement for early U.S. support for the coup and the repression in its aftermath, but also can provide actual evidence and answers to the families of human rights victims who continue to search for their missing loved ones in Argentina, 40 years after the coup took place.”

New FBI Cuba Documents

Cuba 109

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of a brand-new document collection obtained from the Assassination Archives and Research Center. The FBI’s 109-HQ-12-210 “political matters” file on Cuba, referred to in shorthand as the “Cuba 109 file,” is a chronological collection of memos, reports, and other documents created in the mid-1950s and extending into the 1970s. It contains a wealth of information on anti-Castro organizations and activities.

March 20, 2016 Update: This collection has been completed now by the addition of several thousand additional pages. These new documents include correspondence between AARC President James Lesar and various third-party agencies whose documents were represented in this FBI collection. The letters provide a rare glimpse into the work of a FOIA lawyer, and they are accompanied by thousands of pages of attachments containing released files from the Department of State, Department of Justice, CIA, Air Force, Navy, and other federal agencies. See the correspondence subfolder of the FBI Cuba 109 file.

Today the MFF has posted over 10,000 pages of these files, with more to come.

Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots

White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact

New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence

President Ford formally receives the Rockefeller Commission report, June 6, 1975. (Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library)

Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney.

Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public. The documents show that the leadership of the presidentially-appointed commission deliberately curtailed the investigation and ceded its independence to White House political operatives.

This evidence has been lying ignored in government vaults for decades. Much of the work of securing release of the records was done by the John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Board in the 1990s, and the documents were located at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; or at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Additional mandatory declassification review requests filed by Archive fellow John Prados returned identical versions of documents, indicating the CIA is not willing to permit the public to see any more of the assassinations story than we show here. The documents in this set have yet to be incorporated into standard accounts of the events of this period.

Among the highlights of today’s posting:

White House officials of the Ford administration attempted to keep a presidential review panel—the Rockefeller Commission—from investigating reports of CIA planning for assassinations abroad.

Ford administration officials suppressed the Rockefeller Commission’s actual report on CIA assassination plots.

Richard Cheney, then the deputy assistant to the president, edited the report of the Rockefeller Commission from inside the Ford White House, stripping the report of its independent character.

The Rockefeller Commission remained silent on this manipulation.

Rockefeller Commission lawyers and public relations officials warned of the damage that would be done to the credibility of the entire investigation by avoiding the subject of assassinations.

President Ford passed investigative materials concerning assassinations along to the Church Committee of the United States Senate and then attempted—but failed—to suppress the Church Committee’s report as well.

The White House markup of the Rockefeller Commission report used the secrecy of the CIA budget as an example of excesses and recommended Congress consider making agency spending public to some degree.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

The Rockefeller Commission, the White House and CIA Assassination Plots

By John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi |National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 543

The current controversy over drone attacks has an important backstory. During the 1970s it became known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had plotted the murder of foreign individuals. These persons for the most part were prominent leaders or even heads of state. That the U.S. government had in any way been engaged in murder became a dark charge against the CIA, and helped inflame the political climate in a way that ensured investigations of the U.S. intelligence agencies would occur.

During those 1975 investigations, particularly those of the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, allegations of CIA involvement in assassinations were among the most important lines of inquiry. President Gerald R. Ford himself had a key role in triggering the investigations, inadvertently but artlessly revealing the fact of CIA involvement in plotting assassinations during a meeting with press editors.[i]

There had already been revelations of illegal domestic activities by the CIA. These led to the creation of a presidential panel under Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, and committees of inquiry in both houses of the United States Congress. Ford’s January 1975 admission of CIA involvement posed a dilemma for the administration. Vice President Rockefeller attempted to head off inclusion of the subject, restricting consideration of assassinations to the question of what role Cuba might have had in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That proved unacceptable to some members of his own commission, among them then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan. When the Rockefeller Commission took a vote on whether to include charges of CIA assassination plots in its inquiry, the group overrode its own chairman.[ii]

Rockefeller’s key opponent in the fight over investigating assassinations was the panel’s staff director, David W. Belin. A lawyer for the Warren Commission, empanelled to look into the Kennedy assassination in 1963-1964, Belin had been handpicked by Ford for the Rockefeller group. Ford, one of the Warren commissioners, was confident of Belin’s loyalty, but this time the lawyer fought hard to investigate deeply.

The investigators sought CIA documents on assassination plots conducted in its history and information on administrative routines. They also questioned key witnesses. As CIA lawyer John S. Warner admitted under questioning, the agency “certainly” had “no specific authorization” to conduct assassinations (Document 7). Warner additionally admitted he was “not clear” that a president had the constitutional authority to order an assassination, though that “might” lie within his powers.

Documents in this electronic briefing book reveal the views on the assassination reports of not only Belin but key members of his staff. At the time, in the spring of 1975, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) was just being constituted but the Rockefeller Commission inquiry was already in progress. Days after Church Committee members met with President Ford, press adviser David Gergen advised the president to say nothing about assassinations (Document 1).

The jurisdictional and procedural issues regarding whether to include an investigation of assassination plotting, so far as the Rockefeller inquiry was concerned, were fought out over this same period (Documents 2,3,4,5). White House officials, including panel chairman Rockefeller, continued a rearguard action in opposition, first to covering CIA assassination plots at all, and later to including that material in the Rockefeller Commission report. Belin continued to press for the coverage, took a primary role in interviews the commission conducted for this part of its inquiry, and became the main author of the portion of the report dealing with CIA plotting against Fidel Castro (including Operation ZR/RIFLE).

CIA cover memo for file describing Project ZR/RIFLE, relating to plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro (see Document No. 9)

The Rockefeller Commission collected a wide array of evidence, as illustrated by a staff member’s report on what could be learned from the papers of former CIA Director John McCone, and a CIA compendium document on the ZR/RIFLE project (Documents 8, 9, 10).

As of mid-April 1975, Belin expected to have the assassination portion of the panel report complete by the end of the month. He so informed White House officials. However, the CIA dragged its feet on providing materials, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who initially promised cooperation, provided little. Kissinger became a major actor in the struggle to suppress the Rockefeller assassinations report.[iii] When Belin scheduled a press conference to announce the panel’s assassination findings, deputy assistant to the president Richard Cheney and White House Counsel Philip Buchen, citing Kissinger’s concerns, intervened to induce Belin to cancel it.

As the Rockefeller Commission moved toward finalizing its report, panel staff concluded that the assassinations issues were going to be buried. Several recorded their objections to this course (Documents 11, 12). The Rockefeller Commission’s public affairs director, for one, observed that leaving out assassinations would make the report seem like a cover-up and cast doubt on the Commission’s entire project (Document 13). Nevertheless Belin and staff could not prevent determined superiors from holding back the entire subsidiary report that dealt with assassinations.

Meanwhile at the White House, Cheney led the way in “editing” the Rockefeller report—including suppressing the assassinations section. The final draft of the full report contained a brief passage noting that President Ford had asked the panel to investigate the assassination plots after its inquiry began, that the staff had not been able to complete the investigation, and that Ford had then asked that assassinations material be turned over to him. The Cheney edit inserted doubts by adding that it was unclear whether assassinations fell within the scope of the Commission’s mandate, thus resurrecting jurisdictional issues which had previously been resolved. The revised language also reduced President Ford to a bit player—asserting only that he had “concurred” in the panel’s decision to investigate rather than that he had revealed the existence of CIA plotting and then been obliged to modify the Commission’s terms of reference to include an investigation of the matter. White House editors also changed the original text, from indicating that records were still in the process of being turned over to the president, to the statement that it already “has been” done.

CONTINUE READING AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE

Sirhan Denied Parole: It’s a Broken Criminal Justice System

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News | 25 February 16

Paul Schrade at the Sirhan parole hearing. Schrade, a victim at the Robert Kennedy assassination in 1968, testified in Sirhan’s defense. (photo: Washington Post)

ernie Sanders keeps driving it home. “We have a broken criminal justice system.” Sanders thunders that the focus is on incarceration, not rehabilitation. The above photo is introduced as Exhibit A.

Sirhan Sirhan, the accused killer of Robert F. Kennedy, was denied parole for the 15th time on Wednesday, February 10. After 48 years in prison, he has done everything he could to change his life. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called not only for his release but for a new investigation of his father’s death.

One of the men Sirhan shot, UAW organizer Paul Schrade, testified on Sirhan’s behalf at the hearing. Schrade, 91, expressed his confidence that a second gunman shot Bobby. Sparks flew when Schrade turned to Sirhan and said, “Sirhan, I forgive you.” The parole board told Schrade he had no right to speak to the prisoner.

Schrade is one of the victims of Sirhan’s bullets. Schrade has spent more than 40 years mastering the evidence in the RFK murder. Under California law, a victim can speak at the parole hearing for as much time as he or she wants. How dare these people say that Schrade cannot look into a man’s eyes and speak to him?

Because the people who run the criminal justice system are powerful, well-connected, and above the law. The RFK murder was figured out a long time ago. There was a second gunman, but the California criminal justice system has no interest in looking for the killer.

The cover-up in the RFK case is well-documented. Review the evidence at sirhanbsirhan.org or at any number of competent websites. We live in a society that has lost its way. We need a mighty burst of outrage to turn things around.

Sirhan has determined attorneys, but they have little power in the face of a determined law enforcement machine that is unaccountable to its citizens.

Bernie Sanders puts his finger right on it when he talks about the outrageous number of people of color facing criminal charges while the fraud artists on Wall Street walk free. A steadily increasing percentage of prisons are now run for profit by the private sector – Sanders says this also must end.

The political battle must be waged – justice cannot depend on dollars.

Ever try to research the funding sources of the criminal justice system? Good luck. You will find a series of opaque sources.

The district attorneys are an incredibly conservative bunch with seemingly unlimited budgets. The public defender’s office is traditionally stretched like a tightrope with an inherently unmanageable caseload.

Want a private lawyer? Good luck. Most people facing criminal charges cannot afford counsel except in the simplest of cases.

A look at the police department is like a look at the DA’s office. In most cities, police budgets are considered sacrosanct. Police associations run roughshod over citizens’ review boards that attempt to actually discipline officers.

In this bleak landscape, how did Black Lives Matter get traction? Great organizers, yes. And cell phones. Videos showing people of color being lynched broke out across the Internet and into the evening news. People fighting back on this front is reason to rejoice.

But go to the courthouse some morning for a wake-up call when they announce the criminal calendar.

The attack on people of color and the poor is a never-ending campaign. The latest wrinkle is that now the Feds seem to have found the perfect tool to harass the political dissidents.

Last June, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project. The court decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy “coordinated with” or “under the direction of” a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as “terrorist” was a crime.

In this case, human rights workers wanted to teach members of the Kurdistan PKK, which seeks an independent Kurdish state, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought an independent state in Sri Lanka, how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes.

Despite the nonviolent, peace-making goal of this speech and training, the Supreme Court interpreted the law to make such conduct a crime.

The Court held that any “material support,” even if it involves nonviolent efforts toward peace, is illegal under the law since it “frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” and also helps lend “legitimacy” to foreign terrorist groups.

This means Obama could have been prosecuted for supporting Nelson Mandela. Jimmy Carter could be facing charges for monitoring Lebanese elections. But this is not going to happen to the rich and powerful – which includes people like Obama and Carter.

Here’s what is happening, as reported by Michael Deutsch of the People’s Law Office in Chicago:

“In late September the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and anti-war offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several anti-war and community organizations …

“Federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public non-violent political organizers, many affiliated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), of providing ‘material support,’ through their public advocacy, for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

“The Secretary of State has determined that both the PLFP and the FARC ‘threaten US national security, foreign policy or economic interests,’ a finding not reviewable by the Courts.”

It’s a whole new exception to the First Amendment.

Do you need any more evidence that we have a broken criminal justice system? It’s astounding that we have a presidential candidate who gets this right. Most of the members of Congress don’t have a clue. We have to stand up in large numbers and wade into the fight.

Offshoring Isn’t Just a Problem in Panama, Nevada Has 1000 Secret Firms

Panama Papers and America’s problem

White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact

New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence

The Rockefeller Commission, the White House and CIA Assassination Plots