Kosovo: Major International Scandal
By Sherman H. Skolnick
Producer/Moderator, Public Access Cable TV Program "Broadsides"
Since 1963, Founder/Chairman, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts
May 9, 1999
Editor's note: Sadly, Sherman Skolnick died on May 21, 2006. He was a man of impeccable integrity for whom I had immense respect and from whom I learned. He is sincerely missed.
The NATO attack on Serbia regarding their province of Kosovo is part of a much larger picture. According to well-informed financial and other police, in Italy, Great Britain, and the United States, the International Red Cross, supposedly dedicated to humanitarian deeds, has reportedly been implicated in smuggling weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA. Yet, drug enforcement authorities worldwide recognize that the KLA have long been considered as the major druglords of Europe, distributing narcotics for Red China and others. Trafficking in high purity heroin from Southwest China, called "China White," and from elsewhere, the KLA thus fund their operations in seeking to breakaway the province of Kosovo and to annex the same to Albania, for more than 40 years a puppet client state of Red China.
Further, American, British, and Italian law enforcement authorities are inquiring into the suspected role, in the arms smuggling and use of the proceeds, of Elizabeth Dole, until recently head of the American Red Cross. She is now a candidate for President in the year 2000 Election.
Wife of 1996 Republican Party Presidential candidate Bob Dole, the former U.S. Senator from Kansas with strong ties to the oil industry, Mrs. Dole, according to some campaign funding experts, receives funds as a presidential hopeful from the Kosovo Liberation Army. To offset their negative image as druglords, the KLA is often described by the monopoly press as so-called "freedom fighters" in their rebellion against the Belgrade government.
The police in the three countries contend the arms smuggling to the KLA has been arranged, with the help of the American CIA, through Portugal among other places. And the International Red Cross have reportedly played the role of facilitators.
Italian authorities for some years now have been tracking a criminal ring reportedly set up by Roger D'Onofrio, a former official of the American CIA with joint Italian and U.S. citizenship who lived near Naples, Italy. Here are some excerpts from wire service stories from December, 1995, when his role became publicized, as he was arrested by the Italian police on money laundering charges stemming from an investigation into international arms trafficking: Italian "Investigators believe he played a leading role in an international crime network, dubbed by the Italian press 'Specter' after James Bond's arch-enemy." He was part of a ring in the "illegal trafficking in gold, currency, treasury certificates and arms worth some $2.5 billion.... Among the illegal deals allegedly uncovered by police was an attempt to sell osmium, a substance used in the manufacture of nuclear detonators, to arms traffickers in Slovenia and the sale of $17 million worth of Kuwaiti dinars printed during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait." And: "Investigators said D'Onofrio had used contacts made during the 40 years he worked for the U.S. intelligence agency to organize illegal financial deals and arms shipments. D'Onofrio was also a suspect in a 1983 arms trafficking inquiry and was described by a witness then as one of the CIA's paymasters, with the task of making secret payments to CIA assets and business partners." [United Press International, 12/2/95, dateline Rome.]
A Reuters story, 12/2/95, dateline Naples, Italy, stated about Roger D'Onofrio "A former CIA agent was arrested Saturday in connection with a probe into a money laundering ring that has involved the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Barcelona," Italian police said.
An Associated Press dispatch, dateline Naples, Italy, December 2, 1995 stated: "D'Onofrio, a native of Italy, lived several decades in the United States before returning to Italy in 1993, [Italian police official Vincenzo] Vacchiano said....Police have said the Vatican Bank may have been used to process some of the illegal profits...."
A story in the British newspaper "The Independent," December 4, 1995 stated as to D'Onofrio: "His arrest promises to unravel a network of worldwide organized crime originally set up to provide arms to the former Yugoslavia in the run-up to the war there, and now dedicated to recycling those same weapons across the globe via established criminal trade routes."
"Details are as yet sketchy, but police in Italy, Spain and the United States have arrested dozens of suspects in the last year, pointing to the involvement of the warring factions in former Yugoslavia, the various Mafias of Calabria, Puglia, and Sicily, a shady front company in Singapore, and cocaine barons of Latin America. In addition, international investigators want to check out a claim made by one those arrested suspects that $65m [pound 42m] was laundered through the Institute of Religious Works, better known as the Vatican Bank."
Some items left out of these stories and in matters up to date:
1. That the KLA and other terrorist gangs in Yugoslavia, in the Balkans, and nearby countries, had the assistance if a so-called "terrorist" operation headed by Osama bin Laden, created by the American CIA. Bin Laden's reputed several hundred million dollar fortune comes, in part, through a construction business in Saudi and elsewhere. His reported business partner has been the family of the wife of US Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th [D., W. Va.], Sharon Percy Rockefeller. Although the Clinton White House says they cannot find bin Laden's funds to freeze them, the monies are deposited under various names with the Harris Bank, a Chicago-based unit of Bank of Montreal, owned by the whiskey barons, themselves in the dope traffic, the Bronfmans.
2. The former long-time head of the Vatican Bank, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, originally from the suburban Mafia enclave of Chicago, called Cicero, has been the dominant force behind the First National Bank of Cicero, now the flagship of Pinnacle Banc Group. Pinnacle became the successor and alter ego of the espionage crime enterprises known as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI.
Pinnacle has reportedly been interwoven with the worldwide rackets in the ring set up by Roger D'Onofrio, the former long-time CIA official. Without success, Italian authorities had tried for years to force the U.S. to turn over Marcinkus for prosecution on various criminal activities arranged by him through the Vatican Bank for the traditional Mafia jointly with the American CIA. Marcinkus fled the Vatican and returned to the U.S. late in 1991 and took up residence in Sun City, Arizona. A crony of his became the Treasurer of the State of Illinois, Judy Baar Topinka. [She praised Marcinkus when she appeared on my public access Cable TV Show.] Marcinkus's nephew and godson, Christian Henning , Jr., was part of a series of major swindles implicating the First National Bank of Cicero and a 47 million dollar embezzlement of an Arkansas Savings & Loan, for which Bill and Hillary Clinton are subject to federal criminal prosecution and prison. The details are in various court records and are known as the Joseph Andreuccetti Affair, named for a Chicago-area caulking contractor swindled out of millions and millions of dollars by Marcinkus, Henning, the bank in Cicero and banks linked to them. Corrupt top officials of the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, are likewise implicated.
3. The American monopoly press has not publicized much on the D'Onofrio worldwide criminal enterprises and has not dealt with matters up to date. Such as: that a top member of what is called the "Russian mafiya" meets with Clinton and/or others in the Clinton White House and has so far total immunity from state and federal law enforcement. The Russian criminal is interwoven with the D'Onofrio gang as well as Osama bin Laden. Stay tuned.
The Journal of History - Spring 2010 Copyright © 2010 by News Source, Inc.