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FinCEN: Computer Coverup of Covert Thefts? 
 
By Clark Matthews 
 
 Remember FinCEN, the subject of last week's column? FinCEN stands 
for the "Financial Crimes Enforcement Network." It's a highly computerized, 
secretive agency within Lloyd Bentsen's Treasury Department. 

 Is FinCEN starting to make an impression on you? I hoped it might. 
FinCEN is supposed to sniff out financial crimes, bank frauds, money 
laundering and similar dastardly deeds. Its computers are supposed finger 
the bad guys in flagrante when they try to loot your local bank, S&L or 
credit union. 

 Its high-powered computers and communications networks are supposed to 
snoop on financial transactions and spot suspicious activities. 

 The agency was intended to snare gangsters when they try to launder drug 
proceeds. Or bank-busters attempting to wire their ill-gotten gains 
out of the country, to tax havens like the Channel Islands, Hong Kong or 
Luxembourg -- the home of the Rockefeller family trusts. 

 FinCEN sounds like a swell idea, doesn't it? Think again. 

First, let's look at what FinCEN's computers and communications networks 
are really designed to do. Then let's take a peek at the sort of people 
running the agency, including the treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen. 

VECTOR PROCESSORS 

 By all accounts, FinCEN has an unprecedented array of powerful, 
state-of-the-art computer and communications equipment. The agency 
undoubtedly needs lots of high-tech hardware and software in order to 
monitor all financial records and transactions on a daily basis. 

 But the number and type of machines installed at FinCEN, along with 
the capabilities of the software the machine are said to be running, are a 
sure sign of the intentions of people who run the agency. These systems and 
software are a road map to the real purpose of FinCEN--and the road map 
takes the Bill of Rights directly over a precipice. 

 Take the computers: The engines powering FinCEN's snooping operations are 
said to be "vectorized" multiprocessor IBM 9030 mainframe computers, 
possibly supplemented with a one or two National Security Agency (NSA)- 
style Cray supercomputers. These immensely powerful computers would have 
to be supported by a larger array of small systems dedicated to performing 
"on-line transaction processing" (OLTP). 

 The "vector processors" and their custom-built software can assemble a 
complete financial profile of anyone--from all the information stored at 
FinCEN, going back for years--in five minutes or less. The OLTP machines 
would be necessary to tirelessly ferret through every reported banking 
transaction, credit report, property record, tax return--you name it--to 
provide fodder to keep your FinCEN financial profile current. 

 Then there's the "artificial intelligence" software reported to be 
running on FinCEN's mainframes. Created at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 
this experimental software spots areas where people have a lot of cash. So 
everyone in the neighborhood can be singled out for special attention by 
FinCEN's computers and human agents. 

 Without Smart Cards, FinCEN can't have total financial surveillance 
capabilities over all Americans. But clearly they're already quite close, 
even without Clinton's National "Health" Security cards. 

SPOOKS EYE YOUR ASSETS 

 Far from focusing on its supposed mission, FinCEN seems to have been 
perverted into a universal financial surveillance service, right from the 
start. 

Even worse, FinCEN could very well function in ways that actually conceal 
racketeering by "patriots" associated with the CIA and similar agencies. 
According to people who have dealt with FinCEN--as well as published 
accounts-- the agency's computers are already busy gathering lifetime 
financial histories of all American citizens. They are identifying assets, 
tracking income and cash flows, checking credit histories, retirement 
accounts, pension plans, insurance records and more. 

 Your assets are being reportedly being indexed to your Social 
Security number, for future "action" by authorities by the FBI, Drug 
Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Treasury Department or local 
law enforcement. 

 Does this sound familiar? In the early 1990s, insiders from the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came forward with stories of a similar 
project. They said FEMA's budget was paying for computer experts at the 
NSA in Fort George Meade, Maryland. 

FEMA's NSA contractors were planning and testing a massive database of each 
American's assets, property and possessions for confiscation by FEMA 
during a "declared emergency." 

CONCEALING COVERT FRAUDS 

 What's worse, FinCEN appears to be organized to actually hide financial 
frauds that are sanctioned by--or directly benefit from--America's "national 
security" apparatus and individuals inside it. 

 It all depends who's watching the computers, you see. With permanent, 
high-level links to the darkest recesses of America's National Security 
State, FinCEN is not likely to enforce the law against criminal enterprises 
run by government insiders. 

 Why not? 

 Look at past history--it's not encouraging. Remember the 1980s S&L debacle? 
Gangsters and CIA operatives alike raped and wrecked one S&L after  another--
and one figure who appeared repeatedly in the social and business circle of 
the S&L wreckers was none other than the present Secretary of the Treasury, 
Lloyd Bentsen. Ditto for Bentsen's son, Lan--who by all accounts makes Neal 
Bush look like a piker. 

 Then there were the dual Bank of Credit and Commerce International 
(BCCI) and Banca Nazionale de Lavoro (BNL) frauds and scandals--which 
supposedly went unnoticed by U.S. bank regulators. Not so. In fact, 
regulatory authorities at the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and 
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) spotted dangerous goings-on in the 
mid-1980s. 

 But, according to published sources and interviews, the regulators' 
reports on BCCI and BNL disappeared when they reached the desk of a career 
CIA official named Douglas Mulholland at the Treasury Department. In fact, 
Mulholland apparently ordered documents on these massive bank failures and 
frauds to be shredded. And officials at the treasury and the Fed obeyed 
instantly. In fact, reports say the Fed actually shredded BCCI documents 
twice: in 1988 and 1990, when they found more. 

 So FinCEN isn't the first instance of a law-enforcement agency 
transformed by the CIA into a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for "officially 
sanctioned" racketeers. 

FINANCIAL FRAUD FAN DANCE 

 Like a fan dance, FinCEN's computers appear intended to simultaneously 
conceal and reveal. 

 Almost instantly, they can reveal your complete financial history and 
profile to shadowy, greedy National security insiders and the interests 
they serve. But they can just as easily conceal massive looting of 
federally insured deposits, pension funds and retirement funds--everything 
from your savings at the local bank to the Social Security trust fund to 
U.S. treasury assets. 

 FinCEN is just getting started--just like these columns on this sinister 
agency and the forces working through it. 
