DIRTY MONEY LAUNDERING: The Pegaus File by David G. Guyatt from Nexus Magazine

PEGASUS: DIRTY MONEY LAUNDERING

But Tatum's story takes us even further along the dark road of power, greed and corruption. During l986, he had left Honduras and set up a money-laundering business in Watertown, New York State, close to the home base of the Army's 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. The location was chosen with care. With access to Fort Drum's telephone lines for secure communications, he was assigned a Cherokee-140 fixed-wing aircraft,⁵ used to ship personnel and supplies across the Canadian border under radar cover. His tenure with these companies lasted from 1986 through to 1990. This was a pure Pegasus operation.
It was at Watertown that Tatum was provided with a civilian cover in the form of three construction companies: American National Home Builders, American Constructors and American Homes. Funding was provided by Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican politician and well known as the CIA's "black money" man. Hyde provided a US$250,000 line of credit with Key Bank, Watertown. Although Tatum was listed as the president in all three companies, in reality all were under the
control of Ben Whittaker, a lawyer from Rochester, New York. Whittaker, Tatum says, is closely associated with Tony Wilson of the Wilson family who owned Xerox Corporation. They are extremely wealthy and "friends of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers". In addition, he was also closely associated with South Eastern US Investment Group (SEUS) - an investment bank in Savannah, Georgia - from 1985 through to 1989. Another proprietary he was involved with was Irving Place Development, a service organisation of Irving Bank and Trust Company. Cocaine proceeds were laundered through these companies by an ingenious use of construction loans.
In response to a question asking why the "drug-related money" was placed in "Arkansas, Colorado and Ohio", Tatum simply explains that he doesn't know why, adding that "It was being done before I got there. I assume banking laws and whether or not Bush had people in his pocket in these areas." He does explain that the primary figure involved in the laundry exercise in Arkansas was "Jack Stephens". Jackson Stephens, owner of Worthen Bank & Trust Company, is closely aligned with President Bill Clinton. Tatum states that "...Clinton received the cash and divided it up between Stephens and [Dan] Lasater to clean it up. Stephens' company [Worthen Bank] was used as the guarantor, providing 'warehouse' lines of credit."
Developing this theme in more detail, Tatum explains that the Enterprise was receiving drugs in exchange for the guns they supplied to the Contras. The raw product in the form of coca leaves was supplied by the Colombians and pressed into large cube-shaped bales and then shipped to Nicaragua and Honduras.⁶ All the "product" was pre-sold and the delivery into the US "guaranteed".
This eventually resulted in the sale proceeds being pre-paid to Panama, under Noriega's control. Some of this money was washed through banks and other companies operating in Panama and elsewhere. The rest was sent to Arkansas, Ohio and Colorado. Thereafter, the dirty money was filtered via construction loans with permanent "takeouts" "arranged by banks and mortgage- lenders". These, in turn, were later sold to Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's - negotiable US Federal Mortgage Securities that are traded globally on a daily basis. Each laundry "cycle" lasted from six months to a year. The result was dirty money transformed into good, clean, US currency.
This system wasn't arbitrary or accidental. One initial "test-bed" was a small residential mortgage lender named Carl I. Brown (CIB) in Kansas. Others were larger, and still others became national. All were ultimately destined to be purchased by a bank (proprietary) from Japan within a specific time-frame, 1996, as part of ongoing Pegasus plans. Eric Brown, the son of the founder of CIB, was heavily involved in these activities. Three additional companies were involved, to Tatum's knowledge: US Homes, Pulte Homes and Richmond Homes. All became very successful, providing "the American dream - as VP Bush put it in a meeting in 1987".

PEGASUS: ASSASSINATION & NEUTRALISATION