  (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for conspire-post@firefly.prairienet.org); Mon, 26 Sep 1994 20:07:02 -0500
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 25


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 25
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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L.J. DAVIS INTERVIEW
 
L.J. Davis, author of an article offering a good look beneath the 
surface of Arkansas politics ("The Name of Rose", *The New 
Republic*, April 4, 1994), was interviewed by phone by David Inge 
of the local PBS-connected radio station on August 4, 1994. What 
follows is my transcription of that interview.
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[...continued...]
 
DAVID INGE:
And that's... It's interesting also, because it [Worthen Bank] 
very narrowly went under. And...
 
 
L.J. DAVIS:
Very nearly. And if the Stephenses hadn't written a rather large 
check, it would've gone under.
 
 
INGE:
And so you also wonder why it is that no one... It seems that no 
one was ever really called to account for this, for that 
happening. And you know, there was sort of a similar event in 
Ohio that resulted in federal intervention and a serious run on 
the banks. In fact, the Governor had to declare a bank holiday, 
and it was the first time that that had happened in, I don't 
know, "x hundred" number of years?
 
               -+- The Great Non Reaction -+-
 
DAVIS:
And uh... Since the Great Depression.
 
And furthermore, Jimmy Carter's former ambassador to Switzerland, 
Marvin Warner, who was deeply involved in it, went to the "pokey" 
[i.e., prison]. *Lengthy* prison sentences were doled out in Ohio 
to the people that had caused this. No such thing occurred in 
Arkansas, as a matter of fact. In part, well, as somebody said 
when I was asking that question about "Why wasn't there any 
reaction?" (and Arkansas is the place of "the great non reaction" 
to a *bunch* of stuff, as I documented in my article). And the 
answer was, "Well, maybe there was no reaction because the 
Stephens family wrote that check." In other words, Worthen [Bank] 
didn't go down.
 
 
INGE:
I suppose, you know, someone might say... particularly, not so 
much about *that* particular matter: the loss of $52 million in 
state, Arkansas state tax receipts. But the formation of Worthen 
in the first place: I guess one might say, in *any* state, the 
people who are in power, the influential people in politics and 
in banking and in business, know each other very well, there are 
close associations. Now Arkansas, being a small state, this is a 
small group of people. They *all* know each other. They *all* 
live in Little Rock. So maybe it's a smaller circle than in other 
states. But in any state, this kind of activity is going to go 
on. And further, I suppose people might say, "Well, you know, the 
*appearance* of conflict of interest and impropriety is not 
necessarily the genuine article." I mean, we can *infer* a lot of 
things, but is this really any worse than what we can see in 
probably any other state, including this one?
 
 
DAVIS:
Well, as I pointed out earlier, a certain amount of back 
scratching goes on in any state. And certainly, a lot of very 
interesting things happen in Illinois! But I mentioned "the great 
non reaction" to events in Arkansas.
 
What would happen, locally, in Champaign-Urbana, if Pakistanis 
and Indonesians with a lot of money began getting off of the 
planes at the local airport? Wouldn't somebody notice?
 
 
INGE:
I would like to think so.
 
                -+- A Teeny Bit Unusual -+-
 
DAVIS:
I mean, wouldn't Champaign-Urbana be a rather odd place for a 
bunch of Pakistanis and Indonesians to suddenly start showing up?
 
And similarly, Illinois is a sophisticated, large and populous 
state. And you're quite right: everybody in Little Rock knows 
everybody else. Why wasn't there a heck of a lot of commentary on 
the fact that they were getting off the plane at Little Rock? As 
a matter of fact, one standing joke in Arkansas is, "Just who 
*would* have to get off a plane at Adams Field before the 
attorney general and long-time Governor would notice that 
something a teeny bit unusual was going on?"
 
 
INGE:
Particularly if they seemed to be interested in buying into the 
local banks. Not just that they showed up, but that obviously 
they were interested in, having an interest in, some of the 
state's most important financial institutions.
 
        -+- Yet *Another* Strange Person Shows Up -+-
 
DAVIS:
Well I... BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International]: 
possibly the largest banking scandal in modern world history, if 
not world history, was materially abetted in Little Rock. At the 
same time, of course, the Riady family had an idea that they 
could turn Worthen into a major international banking presence. 
Well this is a really good idea and seems like kind of an odd 
place to do it.
 
But yet again, *another* strange person shows up, effecting the 
introductions between the Riady's and the Stephenses -- and 
that's Robert Anderson, President Eisenhower's former secretary 
of the treasury.
 
Well nobody seems to have done a thing called "due diligence", 
that is to say, find out just *who* everybody is *now*, not who 
they were or who they *say* they are. Mr. Anderson was later 
sentenced by a compassionate judge to not very long in prison for 
running an illegal offshore bank in the Caribbean, that catered to 
money launderers and tax evaders, that he nonetheless managed to 
crater. And he also had some interesting, if not highly 
questionable (the judge seemed to feel that they were highly 
questionable), relations with Reverend Moon's Unification Church. 
Is this really the guy you want introducing an Indonesian of 
doubtful provenance to the largest investment bank in the state? 
And then allowing him to begin to use it as a major investment 
vehicle?
 
I mean, forgive me, but I think this is a rather strange sequence 
of events. And I find the lack of investigation on the part of 
the Arkansas banking authorities to be yet another one of those 
omissions that characterizes the state.
 
 
INGE:
Well we have several callers here. We want to bring them into the 
conversation. We will do that in a moment: continue to talk with 
our guest, L.J. Davis. He is a contributing editor to *Harpers* 
magazine. And if you're interested in reading the article that we 
have been talking about, you'll have to seek it out. But 
certainly you can find it. It was published in *The New Republic* 
in April of this year.
 
And questions are welcome, and we'll get to them in just a 
moment.
 
[...tape break...]
 
                    [...to be continued...]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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