The CIA is Wall Street

The CIA is Wall Street.  Wall Street is CIA.  This is perhaps one of the easiest landmarks to establish on our map.  We do it by looking at key players in the CIA’s history and their relationships to America’s financial engine.

Clark Clifford:  The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former secretary of defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman.  In the 1980’s, as chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI (founded by a Pakistani national) a license to operate on American shores.  His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.  BCCI and its particular web of characters have been a virtual cut-and-paste overlay linking up Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and terrorist financing. [3]  It was Clark Clifford who was retained by former CIA Director Richard Helms when the latter was indicted and prosecuted for lying to Congress in 1976. [4]

Clifford and his banking partner Robert Altman were eventually indicted on criminal charges for their role in illegally helping BCCI purchase an American bank, First American Bancshares.  At the time BCCI had been connected to both drug money laundering and financial support for Afghan rebels supported by the CIA through its director Bill Casey. [5]

John Foster and Allen Dulles: These two brothers “designed” the CIA for Clifford.  Both were active in intelligence operations during World War II.  Allen Dulles had been America’s top Office of Strategic Services (OSS) spy in Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after US investments in Germany.  He also held an executive position with Standard Oil. John Foster went on to become secretary of state under Dwight Eisenhower, and Allan served as CIA director under Ike, only to be fired by JFK after the abortive 1961 US-led covert invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs.  Their professions:  partners in the most powerful – to this day – Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell.

Enron is only one of Sullivan and Cromwell’s current clients, and it employed a dozen “former” CIA officers before its fall from grace.[6]  Other prominent Sullivan and Cromwell clients are AIG, Global Crossing, ImClone, Martha Stewart, and the Harvard Endowment.

Stanley Sporkin:  Sporkin served as the CIA’s general counsel under Casey.  But he had previously served for more than 20 years at the Securities and Exchange Commission, rising to the post of general counsel.  Casey’s right-hand-man, he was one of the first people Casey brought with him to the CIA in 1981.  Almost all of Sporkin’s tenure at the SEC was spent in the enforcement division, charged with prosecuting corporate and stock fraud.

During the Iran-Contra investigations it was revealed that Sporkin had routine contact with Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was later convicted on several felony counts including lying to Congress.[8]  At times the e-mails between the two men, alluding to the 1920’s comedy team Laurel and Hardy, read “To Stanley from Ollie.”

After retiring as CIA general counsel in 1986, Sporkin was soon appointed as US district court judge in Washington, DC, where he presided over some of the most important trials (including Microsoft’s) in the country.  He resigned from the bench in January of 2000 and joined the Wall Street law firm of Weill, Gotschall, and Manges, self-described as specializing in “Wall Street Management and Capital.”  Weill, Gotschall, and Manges is currently serving as Enron’s bankruptcy counsel.  Although Sporkin received praise for many of his decisions from anti-corporate critics such as Ralph Nadar, he presided over a number of more nefarious cases, including that of former Federal Housing Commissioner Catherine Austin Fitts, whose firm Hamilton Securites had been targeted for malicious and unfounded harassment after uncovering evidence of covert operations that tied the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to drug operations, slush funds, “friendly” Wall Street interests and political corruption.

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard:  until he joined the CIA in 1998, Krongard was the CEO of the investment bank Alex Brown.  In 1997 he sold his interest in Alex Brown to Banker’s Trust, where he served as vice chairman until “joining” the CIA.  A close friend of CIA Director George Tenet, the colorful, cigar-smoking former Marine specialized in private banking operations serving extremely wealthy clients.  It has been heavily documented by official US government investigations into money laundering that private banking services are frequently used for the laundering of drug money and the proceeds of corporate crime.[10]  Private banking services were especially criticized in investigations of money laundering connected to the looting of Russia throughout the 1990’s.[11]


John Deutch:  Deutch retired from CIA as its director in December of 1996.  He immediately accepted an offer to join the board of directors of the nation’s second largest bank, Citigroup, which has been repeatedly involved in the documented laundering of drug money.  This includes Citigroup’s 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.[12]  Deutch narrowly escaped criminal prosecution after it was learned that he had kept a large number of classified CIA documents on non-secure personal computers at his private residence.[13]

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg:  The CEO of American International Group (AIG) insurance and manager of the third largest pool of investment capital in the world was floated as a possible CIA director by Bill Clinton in 1995.[14]  From The Wilderness exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted by the attacks of September 11.  Under Greenberg’s stewardship, an AIG subsidiary severely bent several laws in conjunction with the Arkansas Development Financial Authority (ADFA) to establish what many have alleged was a first-class money laundering operation for drug funds arising from CIA-connected cocaine smuggling into Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980’s.

In that series From The Wilderness reported that AIG employed in its San Francisco legal offices the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder.  I actually went to San Francisco and had lunch with her in the summer of 2001.  Our investigations later disclosed that AIG had been tied to US covert operations going back to World War II and conclusively linked to the heroine trade.[15]  We also reported that AIG owned and operated the largest private fleet of full-sized airliners and cargo planes on the planet.[16]


I was not surprised when Greenburg – a staunch supporter of Israel – was chosen by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2001 to lead an investigation of terrorist financing.  The CFR report, not surprisingly, was extremely critical of Saudi Arabia.[17]


Professor Dale Scott of the University of California at Berkeley, author of many historically crucial books on covert operations and deep politics, observed in the early 1970’s that six of the first seven CIA deputy directors “under Walter Bedell Smith and Truman, came from New York legal and financial circles.”[18]  The headquarters of the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, was in the New York financial district..