American Intelligence and Big Business

[Greg Wagner]

I apologize if this is slightly off-topic, but it does relate to many of our threads discussing the American Intelligence apparatus.

I recently attended a gathering in Tampa (part of Santo's old stomping ground) hosted by one of the largest players in global financial markets- a very large New York-based bank. This bank invited representatives of their U.S.-based large corporate Oil, Gas & Power clients to tour their Tampa facilities. It was a great trip and I met many interesting, genuinely nice people. One of these people being a main man for this global giant, whose job it is to oversee the banking relationships for all of the Bank's large corporate clients all over the globe. This guy is in charge of the big money and the group he oversees handles all the big players in the corporate world on a global scale (nice work if you can get it). The guy was terrific- a really down to earth, funny, engaging gentleman. It made me wonder how such a laid back and nice guy climbed his way into one of those "power" jobs. So anyway, the night before the actual conference, the Bank takes us all on this dinner cruise where we eat, drink, talk, drink, and drink. To get to the point before this post becomes too lengthy, we are throwing back lots of Scotch and chatting away when he tells me he was an artillery guy (Army) back in 'Nam. He later (after more Scotch) mentions the Navy. Turns out that this guy was ONI from the early 1970's through the mid 1990's. Fortunately I'm drunk at this point- but not drunk enough get on my soap box about the assassination, Oswald, etc. He politely deflected my questions about his role, etc with ONI, but he did mention that he still does some things for the Navy from time to time. When I mentioned how odd it seemed that a career military guy ended up with that particular job, he replied, "Not really. It depends on what you did in the military. You'd be surprised."

The guy was the friendliest guy you'd ever want to meet, but all I kept thinking about is the role the CIA has historically played in undermining foreign governments in order to further the interests of American business and how the fact that a guy with this particular background (and as far as I know no international banking experience) gets placed in such a high-level job with an American mega-bank. And it sounded like his ONI career overlapped with his banking career, but I couldn't really tell for sure because the time frames he provided were general.

This all probably means nothing, but I can't get over how it fits so well. As a further irony, the same bank invited me to a Commercial Card conference this September- I promise I am not joking when I tell you that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read the location of the conference- The La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA (I'm assuming it's THAT La Costa).

Again, probably some weird coincidences happening to someone that is just too willing to believe. You know, like those people who believe that they see the face of Jesus in their blueberry muffin and then charge people $10 to come and pray around the muffin all day- they just see what they want to see. I try not to be that guy but these sure are some interesting coincidences.

Edited May 6, 2006 by Greg Wagner

[John Simkin]

I apologize if this is slightly off-topic, but it does relate to many of our threads discussing the American Intelligence apparatus.

I recently attended a gathering in Tampa (part of Santo's old stomping ground) hosted by one of the largest players in global financial markets- a very large New York-based bank. This bank invited representatives of their U.S.-based large corporate Oil, Gas & Power clients to tour their Tampa facilities. It was a great trip and I met many interesting, genuinely nice people. One of these people being a main man for this global giant, whose job it is to oversee the banking relationships for all of the Bank's large corporate clients all over the globe. This guy is in charge of the big money and the group he oversees handles all the big players in the corporate world on a global scale (nice work if you can get it). The guy was terrific- a really down to earth, funny, engaging gentleman. It made me wonder how such a laid back and nice guy climbed his way into one of those "power" jobs. So anyway, the night before the actual conference, the Bank takes us all on this dinner cruise where we eat, drink, talk, drink, and drink. To get to the point before this post becomes too lengthy, we are throwing back lots of Scotch and chatting away when he tells me he was an artillery guy (Army) back in 'Nam. He later (after more Scotch) mentions the Navy. Turns out that this guy was ONI from the early 1970's through the mid 1990's. Fortunately I'm drunk at this point- but not drunk enough get on my soap box about the assassination, Oswald, etc. He politely deflected my questions about his role, etc with ONI, but he did mention that he still does some things for the Navy from time to time. When I mentioned how odd it seemed that a career military guy ended up with that particular job, he replied, "Not really. It depends on what you did in the military. You'd be surprised."

The guy was the friendliest guy you'd ever want to meet, but all I kept thinking about is the role the CIA has historically played in undermining foreign governments in order to further the interests of American business and how the fact that a guy with this particular background (and as far as I know no international banking experience) gets placed in such a high-level job with an American mega-bank. And it sounded like his ONI career overlapped with his banking career, but I couldn't really tell for sure because the time frames he provided were general.

This all probably means nothing, but I can't get over how it fits so well. As a further irony, the same bank invited me to a Commercial Card conference this September- I promise I am not joking when I tell you that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read the location of the conference- The La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA (I'm assuming it's THAT La Costa).

Again, probably some weird coincidences happening to someone that is just too willing to believe. You know, like those people who believe that they see the face of Jesus in their blueberry muffin and then charge people $10 to come and pray around the muffin all day- they just see what they want to see. I try not to be that guy but these sure are some interesting coincidences.

This is an interesting story that is very relevant to the JFK assassination. There have been close links between business leaders and the intelligence community since the late 1940s. The man who first brought these people together was Tommy Concoran. William Pawley also played an important role in this. They started off in China after the war and then moved into Latin America. The first successful venture concerned drugs in South-East Asia. Then they got involved in Latin America. Guatemala in 1954 was their big success story. Their first real defeat was in Cuba. After licking their wounds they moved back to South-East Asia and made profitable deals in Laos and Vietnam in the 1960s. They moved from drugs into the arms industry, assassinations and banking. Important CIA figures in this corrupt network included Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Paul Helliwell, Lucien Conein, Irving Davidson, Donald P. Gregg, Carl E. Jenkins, David Morales, Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Ed Wilson, Richard L. Armitage, Michael Hand, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, Ricardo Chavez, Ray S. Cline, John Singlaub and Mitchell WerBell. They were the same people involved in Chile in the 1970s and the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

See the following thread for the full story (Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-2006):

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799