i've read a good deal of what you sent the links you sent and who you have you've really got an impressive background if i may say so you written on everything from profit you haven't had a trip to the moon and now what have you seen to me i've been everywhere now because background i want i want to show this for a minute she's a reporter and this thing go this is books she's written and her experience and then it goes if you don't mind i mean just to go through these are all articles on every single subject you can imagine over from all over the world they just go for one thousand seven hundred and twenty pages of articles with a tremendous background of interest that she's had and then also i want to show right at the outset you know mind this this is an article that is from a thing called hound dog but it's called off shore banking the secret threat to america which is a major article on international banking systems and so forth and a subject in particular concentrating on but it's a tremendous honor to welcome to the program because you've had an incredible illustrious career and welcome very much to conversations in manhattan network thank you i'm glad to here my pleasure i wonder if you could maybe you could share with me if you could we have some time we want to get into this banking thing and the things you're concentrating on now because you share your own back and i understand you were born in the bronx but i was born in the bronx and went to school in new to queens cali i got involved in the civil rights movement in the early sixty's took a leave of absence after my junior year went to mississippi and spent a year is editor of the mississippi free press in jackson mississippi it was a weekly paper that ever good for you is no clue if i made stokely was a friend of mine i really enjoy it i'm sorry past but but that was a really important time and a great deal so you were you were you are and you were on the cutting edge of civil rights movement early before it really got started and we remain in a certain sense trying to critique as it were the system more but i didn't pick up again that well yes i was i have always used journalism as a way to deal with the system power structures that it was the white power structure i was there sixty two to three that was the year before the famous mississippi summer and then i went back to school and out of school and there you go i went to queens college ok in studied and studied history a lot of it and and then i discovered that when i got out college newspapers didn't want to hire women i remember going for an interview talking to somebody at u p i and being told i'm sorry we already have three girls so i became freelance journalist and wrote from the st article i ever wrote with the village voice about the mississippi freedom party the fight about about the about whether or not there should be votes for blacks and they were demanding a participation in the delegation in the mississippi delegation y c right to elect to nominate yeah rahman  the democratic candidate but i continued to write about social issues civil rights got into women's issues not only easily because having having heard frequently that that they didn't hire women which they didn't know enough not to say i became a national vice president of now and i hold him seventy to seventy one of them began to write later more about foreign affairs i went to el honduras and you learn that these things these faults from the past don't pass overnight even when they have some of the same people that say do you know that the the man who was called the honorary proconsul the american ambassador  know and then we get into why i'm involved in this subject when i would go to someplace like the philippines where i was at the time when marcos was overthrown or due to haiti where i was also in the middle a when something is going on when there are political movements opposing the government they're not so interested they're only interested when it's already on page one ok so i found the only way i could follow what my my journalistic news  as a journalist of news good term yeah was to get to go as a freelance and one last thing did you out one of the things that was roiling everything then was and maybe is coming into the focus again now with the iraq thing i mean was the vietnam thing and did you become involved in that i did yes i did many times i didn't go you know i did not go to vietnam that was you hollow that issue because by the time i started doing foreign policy that was pretty much over from i see the american point of view and  yes and you have and it was it not yeah and it tore this country apart like it's never been torn apart i think it would have beginning of us knowing that our government lies to us ok we can beginning of the the real deep knowledge and the shock that this that is supports and is supported by the governmental apparatus that is some of the corporations and so forth are they part of an overall paradigm by which the private operates that is is not just people in government is people think it's become a lot more corporate in the last few decades i don't know that it was so corporate at the time in vietnam i don't have the feeling that the us was there for corporate reasons other than the general anti communist corporate reason that is you could that never let communist governments exist because maybe they might do something that was threatening to capitalism and then we didn't want them but i don't think that corporations were getting anything out of it on the other hand this is different from someplace for example like central america where the interests of united fruit was one of the one of the reasons why the u s overthrew the government of the democratic government of guatemala  corporate interest in vietnam but certainly there were corporate interests at the time and in central america and of course now in iraq there corporate interests but the between doing the reporting i was doing you know i was writing a lot about democratic  opposition movements in in dictatorships places like haiti or the philippines more than a year ago when i would i went there i would talk to the opposition and they would say the dictator has looted the country  into it and was astonished and sort to publish what i found and i found it very hard to find publications that were interested what i found was that there was an international bank secrecy system that had started up in the thirty's in switzerland had expanded all over the world so that now there are fifty or sixty countries that are involved in it and they run secret bank accounts and secret companies shell companies through which crooks and tax cheats terrorists dictators can hide and move and longer their money and many of these accounts are in banks in places like grand cayman or switzerland but the there subsidiaries of the big international banks these are not some fly by night bank they're subsidiaries citibank barclay commit fraud against a lot of people know what the were doing was from their sport and they were trying to avoid the tax man in enron or in in a generic in a generic sense well why are they doing that and i would everybody has an  on against the parties in the war in the balkans but they got weapons and they used secret accounts and and secret shell companies in fact bell helicopter in the u s was able to sell parts to the government of slow down the law for that and using secret companies and accounts in cyprus which is one of the offshore locations there are plenty of places where it's illegal to sell arms because of  place is both government and corporate people's private sector public sector thing and they have power and there are none of the system and there they they will establish what is legitimate but you know they stab at it and they know everybody's getting around it they establish it because it's a public face saying it was a u n embargo saying that countries could not ship oil to south africa but people like marc rich shipped a lot of oil in the south africa got pardon and yes gotten hard and he used shell companies and shell accounts th money laundering is when there is an illegal source of the funds there's something else that people don't talk much about that's profits laundering ok this is the other kind of this is the tax cheating laundering this is when the money comes from a legal place yeah maybe it's from your interest on your stocks and bonds you know or for selling from selling a company or profits from a company capital gain capital gain you know but you don't want to report it you don't report it because the government of some country is going to tax you as you would like to avoid that is right money for yourself at c n n your and so you could do well in sort of the voicing the way the government representatives would waste it that would be the rationale of the people who are in that position well that yeah but i know i may don't really need yes i know but they don't really need a rationale they just don't want to pay the government a rationale to pursue a government with an ideology or some need to rush it over to pursue its idea of what is the right way to organize things a corporate company thinks we can use it to better advantage or i can use it myself as an intrapreneur to better manage the government getting at that is not just government it's a system by which i have a little is formed in the old system that is operate a government has been elected the assumption is that this is a very faulty you know yeah the assumption is that it represents the will of the people you know and taxes tax is what we pay for government well if nobody paid taxes we wouldn't have any street repair we would you could in frederick douglass's day d if you did the law you would you would make sure that a runaway slave would be turned in because it brought well the law but that or if a woman tried to stick a vote before nine hundred and twenty in this country you're breaking the law and you could turn or nothing and i don't think anybody wants that in the corporation and by the way they do fade deep they dig very deep into the public trough they get a lot of money they sure they think it's fine to take you know they get a huge amount of money of subsidies of all their investment funds in places like grand cayman you know or other places which have number one secrecy and number two no taxes and so they don't pay taxes and this goes on its dirty little secret  f tax evasion so there is not only money laundering there is profits laundering and all the discussions that have gone on about taxes in the last few years about whether the taxes are should be reduced for the very rich whether that's a bad thing whether it's a good thing in a way that's a bit of a green yet because you know it's not that you want to move the taxes down for corporations from thirty five percent to thirty th multinational corporations some of which are headquartered here yeah but they're now that's another dimension because we're in the international realm no more and more as we go into a globalized economy and so forth but what was that again you said companies over two hundred and fifty million dollars is they have opted out of the tax system while it does in a certain sense if you were to be let's say paul wolfowitz or you were a neo con or something like that or you know norquist or something like that you what you would say it would be good because  he broke the unions and that the market will be able to get along very well in a market fundamentalist way and sold them if you just get government off the back of the business people and get government out of the picture let's withdraw al we did in the civil rights movement in the sixty's let's get back let's attack so security the new deal motions of government regulation government interference in the market let the market do everything in its market fundamentalism is in the saddle now so they would just say we're pursuing our interests in terms of that's our interest to get away from these nattering neighbor bobs of government intervention in terms of a marketplace that can serve everything very well thank you just leave us alone or if you keep setting up these barriers we're going to avoid it if we can and they can and they do well it's very good for the very rich but what about the forty percent of americans who have no health insurance system hasn't done very well by them the market system in medicine has been a total disaster for a lot of people in this country they don't have health care when moving this country whereas most of the country western europe of the world is much more reasonable and then they will say well that's that's because they make decisions and they're important decision makers and their you mean writing a kind of lay and they kind of lay and enron and so forth but there and they will just say they have that what i'm trying to say is there is an extreme radical philosophy in the saddle running things particularly here in the united states and to a degree we are now the who the hyper power of all the world we are an empire and when i said it's always been like that i think in rome it was the same in athens they had slaves it's always been a plutocratic few who run things in feudal states of europe there was always a king the duke or something everybody else wallowed around in the mud in poverty and so forth it's always been that way has it not that it's been that way in every country but in in in those very long ago periods and that it's difficult to to imagine that we could be going back to that but part of the i stopped watching the local news about two thousand and thirty years ago and i stopped watching the network news probably at least ten years ago and were not paid attention to the internet i read i read the british press i read the french press i read  invisible structure it's how they move the money away from taxes without telling everybody that's what they're doing and so the debate does never never really hits the the place where people talk they talk about the percentages and that's  raul let me let me tell you one other thing the key way this is done and it relates to globalization which is why it's getting worse now with globalization there's something called transfer pricing transfer pricing is if you have a company sometimes it's actually done with a company would you acknowledge that it's your company sometimes it's done by shell companies and you pretend it's some other it's a trading company but you use these companies in order to launder the profit so if you are making something in some venue overseas yes and you're going to sell it in the u s what you do is you sell it you move it through some shell company on some someplace like the isle of man or than a walk to or to monte carlo or the british virgin islands you move it you move it to through you sell it to a trading company there may not even be anything there but and the trading company sells it to you in the u s at another phony price so you what you have paid so much that when you sell it on the market you make very little profit on the books on the books because all the profit is in this trading company which you got it at the real price maybe they even bought it from another company not even yours but they got it at the real price of vigor and then they sold it to you at the thirty two this this little apartment was raided by the french tax police and they confiscated a lot of cash that was lying around and also books which with names of several one thousand people and it turned out that these people included some famous names the peugeot brothers there with coty of the perfume family they were generals of the army they were clergy the in the thirty's people already knew that the swiss were bankrolling hitler you know run riot round rowing to doubt the question the patriotism of these people that was sending their money to switzerland you know well the swiss bankers were very upset and they got to work on it and two years later the sort of the number comes the swiss adopted bank secrecy which made it a crime you could be put in jail for revealing the name of any account holder in switzerland under  they so that's why the accounts or the shell companies will go to those places well let me give you an example of how this works and how full of american professors did a study a year or so ago they got some  aggregate data from customs not by company but just by product and us cost us kind of and if you believed what the importers and exporters were saying of course about the prices they were selling for or buying for you would have to believe that somebody was importing dish towels from pakistan at one hundred and forty dollars per dish towel you would have to believe that they were selling truck tires to england at eleven individual tax and it is they are being helped because they couldn't do it without the offshore system they couldn't do it if the us government did not allow the transfer pricing to go on over me when somebody comes in and says we are already in the law that you have what i'm trying to that if i could you talk about united states there would but we live in live in a world where one hundred and ninety one sovereign states or so we have sovereign states and international law where the covenants are growing and there is you know capitals got all this capability to move with such ease all over the world now and so forth like that but we don't have international authority that has teeth in order to enforce something the way a federal law could enforce shenanigans where a person in illinois would take advantage would be under a federal law they're not under any international law control or so more how and why wouldn't they do that i mean it just makes sense they would do that in a social darwinistic kind of way not just doing what comes naturally to them working the angles and working the edges and holding something in place and getting away with a little capitalism that's right let me go back because you brought up enron what enron did was interesting both because it was crooked and also because it was organized by two of the biggest banks enron know so what it did it went to city banking and it went to j p morgan chase and it needed oh i think it's about six billion all together but it didn't want to tell the people out there that it was borrowing money because of their government following they needed a loan but they needed to make it look as if they had earned money so enron had citibank and j p morgan chase each of them set up go ok yeah ok yeah they they're paying them live on the for for deliver but the deal was that when the six months were up and the contract was going to be cancelled enron would pay back the money with a little bit more it was a loan it was alone in both cases you know there was never any intention to buy this gas or enron to sell this gas the two companies were not real companies they w shelters and the i r s is going after a k p n g and other accounting firms on the tax shelters it is illegal if it's just a financial paperwork so what enron did they were not real companies there never was an intention to sell anything it was just a and when the when citibank because citibank had also had some stock in enron and it lost money with the collapse and it sought to collect from its insurance company  insurance company fought this in court saying they did not deserve to get any money because the whole deal was a phony deal ok and i call the testimony of the guy from citibank you know and he said but this illegal this that and everything as though it's something you've got a system that's in place and the system is one that can monitor create it can monitor what's legal what's right the system is in place that is if you will function for the folks for everybody if it is just monitored well by investigative reporters or people like mr gonzalez if the system is monitored well it will work for everybody but there are some people who go outside of the logs or so that's one thing the other thing is the system cannot serve the masses of the world the offshore system is the financial services system for criminals the offshore system exist only to do financial leisure to maine and  a normal bank does exist some people can borrow money for a mortgage and there are car or another purpose if they so or for a business and supposedly that is a legitimate president legitimate purpose the offshore banking secrecy system and corporate secrecy system exist only to hide money ok and that does not have a legitimate right what international authority that we have there can act as like a federal r or internal you know the revenuers in the case of the united states as a sovereign in the united states of america the federal authority has authority over the states what has authority over the international pattern and the pirate the international law are some efforts the european union has been arguing among its members and with switzerland which is not not a member to do something about the tax cheating and they want to they have come up with a tentative plan where countries would send information about foreign residents who have accounts there that is if a brit has an account in switzerland the swiss have to send they've done against the law you said when they've all what they've done you can i am going to break our law what they've done is the following they have proposed a compromise which has been accepted although there are still some wrinkles not ironed out that they will take the interest earned on any foreign accounts and they will send thirty percent of that to the country of origin of the owner of the account they and they will also keep a piece of it for their i'm sorry they're form whether they put it whether they do anything so that they don't need to not report it was corrupt they don't need to not report it they just have to transfer pricing they don't need to not report and they can report it they can say we have an account in  hypothetical run is not paying taxes and has an account in switzerland a bunny market account or whatever for them so the swiss are going to pay the taxes because we assume that that guy's not paying taxes the brits want to know who is this guy the swiss say we're not going t you but he's probably not paying taxes the taxes would have been thirty percent we're going to give you the thirty percent right on without mentioning the name of government without mentioning the name that would be for people in the congo and also in other dictators well every morning  with in the european union what they're trying to do is protect their yeah because they're trying to protect the fact that they have all these counts now they have not made this deal with the congo this deal is only with the members of the european union there are you know that they will get this information  called it's tax information no bearing on this is this fight over over this has been going on for maybe four hundred and fifty six years ok hasn't been completed because there is still some say they can't do it unless they get the other big tax havens to agree because then people will just move they don't want thirty percent taken off out of their account right they'll move it to someplace else yes somebody else will do or not do that because they're right out of another one often so that those of us well and the others because it's a wide open pit  it the other part of it which is why a lot of this argument is not as it is a bit phony because this may get a small time dentist or shop owner the really rich people  liechtenstein the bahamas they worked together a lot through there you know so the u s got switzerland and liechtenstein right to send their police in immediately to get the documents in those places and those banks from the gut of the governments were able to get the governments have records yes they were able to go in with the governments and the police in miami the little guy murders that were sort of looked at on and whatever have police authority a state run police authority that can go they're probably worse they will lose it was probably some law that they could use whether it maybe it was you know name of acquired errors in the name of fighting terrorism and name of doing what the americans tell them to do well apparently the bahamas  when the americans went down to the bahamas and the accounts in the i'll talk with bank talk was not a real bank it was a shell bank what that means is there was never a building with a sign that said even a br bank and usually it's because you want to do business in a country where you're not located so that might legitimate if you're sure if you're a bank in in france or mexico and you want to do business in oh in  general public or slovakia or russia you don't have a bank there you know you have a bank account in a bank there and you move your money into that accounts and write a lot of shaking going on yes where you know your customers you move your customers money and then it was investing the money of the vatican he was investing the money of the italian mafia he was found hanging from blackfriars bridge in london was ruled a suicide the case has just been opened by the italian authorities they say he was murdered and if you've ever seen godfather three this story is the subplot of godfather three  it's with subs subsidiary continued that's the bank that was involved in what was called kremlin gate where you may recall that russian president yeltsin was involved in a scam where he was getting kickbacks through a swiss bank which was paying his for his credit cards and his daughter's credit card and a lot of other money was was being laundered money kickbacks from russian conk contracts were being laundered and one of the people involved his name was already was actually clapped into jail in the u s because he was coming to the bush inauguration and when he landed in new york he got put in jail because there was a warrant out for him by qaeda osama bin laden bank had an account the americans want to want to see what's in the account so they go down there and the bahama authority says say i'm sorry this bank secrecy you're right all one right that's our law that's right y discovered that they could no longer make international transfers using this with or other international bank transfer systems to any banks anyplace in the world outside the bahamas no who did that was that the united states government there and well we're not in any you mean the americans basically shut down their access to the international bank money transfer system they did that they did it to the bahamas this was never published this not it's not on the record but i have been told it because within an hour or so the americans were led into a room i have been told and they were boxes in the room and they were told you know we have offshore or stiction and cannot have a subsidiary offshore just right and you can shut it down ok good that sounds to me very much like the godfather where you have you where you have mafia dons who are fighting one another over territory bugsy siegel and  something like that and so but in the united states representatives who are in on this game the system is because of that way they are able to take over the territory of one of the punks who is trying to take over the something like that we can wipe out that gang the north roman times it's still a few people on everything will do everything people are wage slaves of slaves of masters no matt they haven't they haven't do you think there's something blowing in the wind as bobby dylan said that we're going to be able to get the system right rather than just let it be fought between the godfathers who are controlling things whether its banking system in america or somebody over in the other cities is going to fight this godfather kind of thing going on fighting each other or are we at a time when we might be able to get the system right for everybody and that that's blowing in the now in terms of a really large transformation people st have to understand this i have discovered when i tried to get n g o s in this country insisted that they don't think it's their issue they do not understand the the money question is maybe say it's not our issue it's different in europe you know i went to i had written an article in the nation on this subject called off the dirty air dirty money and as a result i was invited to speak at a at a conference in switzerland by some n g o s that work in development and they understood that developing countries get the money sucked out and that it's you know like the grain to the rest it's pushing up the rocket and i discovered that there were many people in europe who understood the issue that at this conference they had invited also people from germany from france from england and i for the st time met people involved with social issues who understood the offshore system and after that that all right fine listen you know one of the things we could talk for about twenty seven hours easy is really intrigued thank you very much your life is like should be made into a movie and i just wonder if you had i mean just off the cuff or something like that have you had anyone who has ever talked about violence directed at people who talk too much about things that shouldn't be no no if you're dealing with some very big issue yes well the only the one i have had a few problems let me just let me just say we've been talking with lucy commissar contact information she's got an incredible story to tell thank you really for coming in lucy and for all the work let us be sure we stay in touch do some more good in public access on the internet tax justice dot org and i did that with so dot net and so we'll see there much of the world thinks that the people who are the terrorists are the people who just invaded iraq for that they're the terrorists so you know how are they going to determine who is a terrorist and that sort of what i'm saying is a can of worms that may be opening up on large  on the human rights abuse and now they may get him on money well they got i don't really i mean him putting millions of dollars in secret bank account helped by riggs bank of washington