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State Secrets II (Part 1) - What the Conspiracy!
377 Plays4 days ago
M guides Josh through chapter one of Dunedinite Ben Vigden's book 'State Secrets II' in this special and incredibly confusing edition of 'What the Conspiracy!'
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
00:00:07
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and M. Denteth.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, it's the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Contain your excitement. I am Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand. They are Associate Professor MRX Dentist in Dunedin, New Zealand.
00:00:39
Speaker
We're so close and yet so far away. Indeed, and yet... So cold, Josh. So cold.
Weather and Emergency Alerts in New Zealand
00:00:45
Speaker
It was four degrees this morning, but the wind wind wind chill factor, try saying that three times fast with speechless fluency, the wind chill factor meant it felt like minus one, and it really did feel like minus one.
00:01:01
Speaker
I've discovered that wearing a lot of silverware in cold weather does make the old fingers hurt. I can imagine it might. Did you get the tsunami warning this morning?
00:01:12
Speaker
Yes, it woke me up at half past six. I was... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all right. I would say I'm not impressed. I do recognize these warnings. So, for non-New Zealand listeners, we have an emergency alert system. and i think most countries do that, yeah.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah. Which means that you get a forced alert on your cell phone. There's no way to silence it. It will just go off. Yeah. And we had a tsunami alert for the Kamchaka tsunami slash earthquake yesterday.
00:01:43
Speaker
And then again, we had one at 6.30 this morning. The one yesterday was warning us that there are going to be surge tides and undercurrents due to the tsunami along our coastline.
00:01:54
Speaker
The one this morning was once again reminding people. that this is something you need to be aware of if you're going to the beach. Many people have been complaining online that it is the middle of winter and no idiot is going swimming on a Thursday morning, except that social media has been replete with people saying, yeah, my mum got that text message this morning and she still went to the beach. So it turns out it was necessary, even though it did wake the entire country up and made them very grumpy.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yes, yes, it was interesting yesterday afternoon, i was at work when we got the the the first one, and seeing just the the slight difference in, I assume it must just be whichever mobile carrier you're with, because there'd be a bunch of alarms go off, and then like 30 seconds later, another bunch, and then a minute later, another bunch, as different people got them. but Yeah, I was in a seminar yesterday.
00:02:46
Speaker
And so, yes, one went off, then two went off, then the entire room started screaming. Yeah. So anyway, the point is we have not washed away due to a tsunami. And I guess that's a good thing because now we can record an episode.
A Mysterious Book and Upcoming Podcast Episode
00:03:00
Speaker
um Do you have any any updates, any dispatches from the Deep South before we begin?
00:03:04
Speaker
no not at all. so just to Not relevant to be discussed at this time. Right, okay. Well, then in that case, we'll crack on. but Well, no how you do have an update, though, because you've got the the material that this episode is going to be based on.
00:03:21
Speaker
I assume you found it in one of those twisty little little um bookstores that when you go around the corner and come back, it's disappeared? Well, so there is a hard-to-find bookstore down here in Dunedin. And like the hard-to-find bookstore that used to exist in Onehange, near your neck of the woods. did. And then moved to central Auckland. It is essentially a large building where the bookstore has kind of expanded into numerous rooms. So the first time you go there, it is hard to navigate around because you don't know how far into the building this bookstore goes.
00:03:57
Speaker
And this bookstore, it goes all the way to the top. Goodness. So, um should we should we say what you found in this bookstore right now? No. This is part of the main episode.
Introduction to 'What the Conspiracy' Segment
00:04:08
Speaker
but Okay.
00:04:09
Speaker
yeah Well, so, I mean, once we play the chime and we've got the introduction over and done with, I'm going to explain how this is going to be a millstone around the podcast neck for at least a month or so.
00:04:22
Speaker
Excellent. Okay. We'll play a chime and then let's hear some but some of that.
Financial Conspiracy and the Winebox Inquiry
00:04:28
Speaker
It's time to play What the Conspiracy.
00:04:39
Speaker
So, as the student listeners will be aware, this is a kind of What the Conspiracy episode. And even though it's not really going to be a What the Conspiracy episode, even though I started off with the intention, let's do the usual questions. I want a What the Conspiracy, ah Who the Conspiracy, and a Why the Conspiracy in any order that you may please. And you've probably got intuition, something about the where, which is why we're not asking where, but what, who, and why. Okay, so yes, I mean, where we know, I assume you're you're going to make the where obvious in a moment.
00:05:24
Speaker
um The who, um well, it's um i I'm wondering how far back it going to go? I'm i'm going to say like like colonial settlers, right?
00:05:34
Speaker
because there's got to be some good conspiracies around there. The why, I'm going to say colonialism. And the when, I'm going to say about 200 years ago, I guess. I didn't actually ask when, I asked what.
00:05:45
Speaker
What? Although when is also fun. I mean, a temporal dimension, that is fun. Although I do feel by going for the colonial period, the when is kind of baked in to your who and what.
00:05:58
Speaker
Okay, well, so then the what? um i assume it's about an illegal trade in dolphin smuggling. Interesting. I mean, you were so, so far off, you were never even close.
00:06:12
Speaker
Excellent. Because... The when is within our lifetime. Goodness. The what is financial shenanigans. Ooh.
00:06:23
Speaker
And the who is a person by the name of Paul White. Now, Josh, when I say Paul White, what would I be talking about? Paul White, that is not a name that's ringing any bells for me, I have to say. I mean, it should do. That's the thing. It really, really should do.
00:06:42
Speaker
Is he one of the guys who bought up the railroads and then trashed them? or Well, I mean, allegations by Paul White, or at least posthumously related to Paul White,
00:06:55
Speaker
are related to the fat cat barons who were doing those things in New Zealand around that time, if that gives you any hint. is he this is So he's not one of them. as it Was he a whistleblower? Was he an investigator?
00:07:10
Speaker
Did he own the trains that they'd sold? Did they steal his train set from out of his bedroom when he was a child and privatise it? drugs right let me ah let Let me approach this from a different direction.
00:07:22
Speaker
Have you heard of the Winebox Inquiry? I have heard of the li wine... Well, pretty sure we've talked about the Winebox Inquiry on this very podcast, but quite some time ago. Paul White was the person who who received the documents from two banks and then died in a car crash and is associated with the wineboxes.
00:07:43
Speaker
i thought were going say he was... thought you were going to say he was the vintner who had who had had made the wine that was originally in the wine box before it was emptied out and replaced with documents. I mean, that would be an interesting tale of a way. So no, we' we're almost talking about Paul White.
00:08:01
Speaker
And we're almost talking about the events that then led to the Winebox inquiry. So Paul White dies in a car crash. Notably, from my perspective, he was the subject of the film Spooked, which was itself based upon Ian Wishart's book The Paradise Conspiracy.
00:08:20
Speaker
And in the Paradise Conspiracy, Wishart argues that Paul White was killed rather than died by a simple drunken car accident. Now, we're not looking at the Paradise Conspiracy.
00:08:33
Speaker
Sorry, you're be you you about to... I was about to say, have have we skipped ahead? Are you going to tell us about this this this mysterious purchase from this mysterious bookstore? i mean, we're we're getting there because... we get Okay, sorry, I thought that was going to be the introduction to it all. but Okay, yup yep, yep, yep.
00:08:49
Speaker
could be talking about In Wish Arts, The Paradise Conspiracy. And we might have to at some point, because this is going to be a series of episodes.
00:09:00
Speaker
In part because I picked up at the Hard to Find Bookstore, and this's going to be nothing because we're not a video podcast. go show it to Josh anyway. A copy Ben Vigdon's book, State Secrets 2. State Secrets 2. So there's a State Secrets 1. Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker
Colon, the story of gun running and terrorism, full stop, what the NZ government doesn't want you to know, full stop. State Secrets 2, by its name, suggested as a sequel to State Secrets 1, which was written in the mid-90s.
00:09:34
Speaker
State Secrets 2 isn't so much a sequel as it is a kind of rewrite and continuation of the original State Secrets. why we don't need to look at the first book to be able to understand what's going on the sequel. So you're saying...
00:09:53
Speaker
You're saying it's kind of like Tunnel Vision by Martin Butler, the book that had multiple editions that expand each expanded on the rest, on the one before? Well, I mean, maybe more so than i would like to think, because when I purchased State Secrets 2 from Hard Defiant Bookstore in Dunedin, I was told, because Ben Vigdon is a Dunedin local,
00:10:17
Speaker
So he lives in Dunedin. He used to have a magazine called Deadline, which was a periodical. It had the tagline, I think, and a good read to have with your coffee.
00:10:31
Speaker
He used to have a radio program on the student radio network here at the University of Otago. I actually was talking to the program manager who was active at the time that Ben and Vinnie Eastwood were doing that show. They eventually moved on and now Ben is doing a similar segment on Fresh Essay.
00:10:55
Speaker
Fresh FM, which belongs to the CAMA network, the network that syndicates our podcasts as a radio show on some select nation, right sorry, some select radio stations around the nation.
00:11:11
Speaker
And Ben apparently is working on something because he approached the proprietor of the hard-to-find bookstore wanting to find out whether he could stock that store with whatever he's working on next. My goodness.
00:11:25
Speaker
But we're not talking about whatever he's working on next. We're talking about the the state secrets and sequels to them that are in this book. So this book was published in September 2006, And the reason why we're talking about it, and the reason why we have to bring up Paul White, is that in the very first chapter of State Secrets 1, we get this claim.
00:11:49
Speaker
It is my personal belief, due to what I have learned researching this book, that the BCCI had more to do with Paul White's death than we may think. Yet the key point is not whether White was murdered or even who killed him, as this is likely to always remain the stuff of conspiracy theories.
00:12:08
Speaker
Goodness me, he said the magic words. We're allowed to talk about him now. We are indeed. Now, Ben was, possibly still is, I mean, and a contemporary Ian Wishart. I say was because he used to write for Investigate magazine.
00:12:24
Speaker
I've not been keeping up with Investigate in the last few years. I don't know what kind of relationship Ben any and Ian Wishart have at this time. Ben is a slightly more cautious writer than Ian Wishart has turned out to be.
00:12:42
Speaker
But my contention is that Ben does a lot of either stretching points he wants to make to make them fit his particular narrative, or sometimes just doesn't understand what he's reading.
00:12:58
Speaker
I should also disclose I have a tiny bit of prior history with Ben. So many, many moons ago, back when my blog was active,
00:13:09
Speaker
I critiqued a post that he had written, which sounded awfully close to sovereign citizen territory. And due to this, Ben reached out asking whether I'd be willing to debate him on 9-11 conspiracy theories on his radio program, something which I rejected doing at the time and would still reject doing now.
Avoiding 9/11 Debate and Gish Gallop
00:13:33
Speaker
because I was very much aware that no matter what I was going to say, he was going to do the old Gish Gallop thing on me. He knows a lot about specific details of particular 9-11 conspiracy theories.
00:13:46
Speaker
So no matter what kind of critique I might have about the theories he's presenting generally, he would be able to do that. But you you you can't answer this particular point about this particular hijacker's passport being found in the pocket of a Canadian tourist's in Syria the next week.
00:14:03
Speaker
Can you dent us? Well, ipso facto, you must be wrong. I just knew that kind of thing was likely to occur. And so I said, i look, I'm willing to talk about conspiracy theories in a kind of theoretical sense and talk about my approach, but I'm just not willing to engage in a specific debate about nine eleven conspiracy theories.
00:14:21
Speaker
And he really just wanted that debate. He was not interested in a academic discussion on particularism and conspiracy theories. Right. So with it with that out of the way, so sorry, I guess I should say at start, is your plan to just talk about this book from start to finish, or does this book have a bunch of sort of conspiracy theories in it, each of which we can look at in a different episode? How's the book structured? Well, I mean...
00:14:46
Speaker
i mean I mean, the book's not structured at all. That's the home problem. it the ri So why I say this is going to be a millstone around our next for a while, is we're going to continue looking at this book on and off over the next few months.
00:15:01
Speaker
Now, I have a lot of notes on chapter one. A lot of notes. And then I was kind of looking at the book, because there were are about 12 chapters in it, going, i mean, if we do one of these episodes a month, it's going to be a year before we get to the end.
00:15:16
Speaker
And yet the next five chapters I have virtually no notes on whatsoever, because there is a narrative to this particular book, but there are so many seemingly pointless tangents that get indulged in, that the next five chapters, eh, Let's kind of sail past and I can draw out only a few things which are actually interesting.
00:15:41
Speaker
So we're going to spend a lot of time on chapter one this time. And maybe the next time we do this, we'll end up spending about our time on the next half of the book.
00:15:52
Speaker
Right. OK. Well, in that case, chapter one, let me have it. Okay, so chapter one, we need to introduce some characters. And actually, one of these characters isn't a person.
00:16:04
Speaker
It's a bank. But as we know, under corporate law, corporations are people too. So we can talk about this bank as if it were we're a person.
El Taqwa Bank and Terrorism Allegations
00:16:13
Speaker
So let me introduce some of these characters, some of whom, at least one of whom, you'll go, i know that name.
00:16:21
Speaker
Our first character is El Taqwa, a Muslim bank in Switzerland. This was a bank that was accused of and investigated for funding terrorism, particularly its connections to the bin Laden family and particularly its connection to a young Osama bin Laden.
00:16:39
Speaker
Although notably, no one on the board of directors it has ever been charged and the board of directors continue to maintain that whilst they do banking in the Muslim world, they have not been engaged in explicitly funding terrorism at any particular point in time.
00:16:58
Speaker
However, and this is a big however, they were set up by the Muslim Brotherhood as a piety bank, i.e. a bank that Muslims could use internationally for money lending and loan. Okay, so a bank, which I had not heard of, so that's I'm assuming that's not the one. So who's next?
00:17:17
Speaker
Our next character is Ayman al-Zawiri, who Ben just calls al-Zawiri as if the first name is Al and the last name is Zawiri, even though the first name is Ayman.
00:17:29
Speaker
ah This was the second in charge of al-Qaeda, Famously, this person merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with al-Qaeda back in 2001, formally became the the deputy leader of al-Qaeda in 2004, took over al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden, and was killed by drone strike in 2022. I mean, the name sounds a little familiar. Is it Ayman or Imam?
00:17:59
Speaker
because that would be a title in that case not as A-Y-M-A-N oh okay no sorry it's something completely different okay yeah yeah yep yeah I mean so I it's very likely I'm butchering the pronunciation but I would know Oman as a name rather than right Aiman or Aiman right.
00:18:19
Speaker
Okay. the right The next person you should know. Adnan Khashoggi. ah Okay, yes. No, hey, Adnan? I thought it was Jamal. No, Uncle to Jamal. Uncle, okay, right.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah. And he's important in the story because 1976... in nineteen seventy so he takes a tourist visit to Queenstown. Goodness me.
00:18:44
Speaker
1976 is the year I was born, nowhere near Queenstown. But you weren't born on November the 19th, were you? No, I was not. i was born much earlier than That's 11 months after you were born.
00:18:59
Speaker
It is. but Which means that you may have been of the right age to be engaging in investment in the Middle East, because as a New Zealander, Ednan Kishogi would be encouraging you and any Australians who might be around to invest in the Middle East.
00:19:14
Speaker
That was his purpose in queen in Queenstown. Ben alleges that he should have been arrested as a person of interest at the time, and yet someone told someone
Adnan Khashoggi's Influence on Politics and Finance
00:19:28
Speaker
to not do anything about it.
00:19:30
Speaker
A person of interest in what? What was... Well, right but li all yeah li li let me give you the Wikipedia summary of Anand Khashoggi.
00:19:41
Speaker
A commercial pioneer, he established companies in Switzerland and Lichtenstein to handle his commissions as well as developing contacts with notables such as c i CIA officer James H. Crickfield,
00:19:54
Speaker
Kim Roosevelt and United States business person Babe Robozo, a close associate of US President Richard Nixon. His yacht, the Nabala, was the largest in the world at the time and was used to the James Bond film Never Say Never Again.
00:20:12
Speaker
After Khashoggi ran into financial problems, he sold the yacht to the Sultan of Brunei, who in turn sold it for $29 million to Donald Trump, who sold it for $20 million dollars to Prince Awaiid bin Tala as part of a deal to keep his Taj Mahal casino out of bankruptcy.
00:20:32
Speaker
This man is very well connected. Khashoggi gained influence with US President Richard Nixon by donating $200 million to his 1972 political campaign through a friendly bank so circumventing existing laws that prohibited such large sums from American corporations to political campaigns.
00:20:54
Speaker
Who would have known that Tricky Dicky was a Tricky Dick? Indeed, $200 million. In 1972.
00:21:02
Speaker
In 1972, God, that's impressive, I have to say. Similar arrangement allowed Khashoggi to gain influence with important people throughout the world. ah He was also involved in Operation Moses, which was a case of smuggling Jewish people out of Egypt at the time.
00:21:22
Speaker
ah was implicated in the Iran-Contra affair as a key middleman in the Arms for Hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manchucha Gorbanafa, and in a complex series of events was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchased from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI, keep that bank's name in your memory, with Saudi and United States backing.
00:21:51
Speaker
Right. Yes, you said BCCI a minute ago, and I was about to ask what it was, but I needn't have, so that's all right. Yeah, and i will be we'll be coming back to that in just a moment.
00:22:02
Speaker
All right, our next character, and this is why this section of my research ended up taking a long time to do, is a person by the name of Simon Spitz, a Russian-Israeli arms smuggler. Righto. Should that name be familiar to me? Because it's not.
00:22:23
Speaker
No, no, no. good So according to the book, so this is State Secrets 2, Simon Spitz was identified by Charles Sturt, who was the former head of the SFO and the person who basically lost his job at the SFO because Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was felt he wasn't investigating the Winebox inquiry scandal adequately for fraudulent activities.
00:22:54
Speaker
According to Charles Sturt in his book Dirty Collars, as published by read back in 1966, Simon Spitz was not just an a Russian-Israeli arms smuggler, he was smuggling arms through the nation of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:23:13
Speaker
Okay, so it is is that it for people? Yes, but we have to spend a bit of time talking about Simon Spitz. Yeah, but so so far we've got we've got a bank, a couple of high-up people in the Muslim world.
00:23:33
Speaker
We have Jamal Khashoggi's uncle, and we have Russian-Israeli arms dealer. apparently is the main character of this book, according to Ben. Okay. But I have to say, listen the main character of this book, he doesn't actually make an appearance in every chapter.
00:23:47
Speaker
Okay, but so so that's that's that's quite a good cast of characters then. but So it's it's this Mr. Comrade Spitz who we need to look at at the moment, is it? Yes, because when Ben made the claim that Spitz was an arms smuggler smuggling arms through our particular nation state and also said this is talked about in a book, I went...
00:24:09
Speaker
I'm at a university. Universities have books. They do. I should check to see what this book says about this person called Simon Spitz, because I was hitting a bit of a dead end.
00:24:23
Speaker
I couldn't find any references to a Simon Spitz online. And you would think if you put Simon Spitz, Armsmuggler, you might get one or two hits.
Simon Spitz and Arms Smuggling
00:24:36
Speaker
if this person is an internationally renowned gun smuggler, smuggling guns through various ports of call. Now, I did discover there is someone by the name of Simon LeHavre,
00:24:51
Speaker
who is also known as Simon Spitz. And this Lahav ran a company in Australasia called Pacific Express, which was an airline that was used for commercial shipping around the world.
00:25:07
Speaker
So i was going, well, maybe this is one and the same. Maybe this person has more than one name. But I went, let's go to the book. Let's actually see what Charles Sturt apparently apparently says about this Simon Spitz slash Simon Le Havre.
00:25:24
Speaker
So I looked up dirt Dirty Collar on the University of Otago library system, discovered that they did have a copy of the book in the Håkon Library,
00:25:36
Speaker
I then discovered that to access books in the Håkon Library, I would need to get my passport, I need photographic ID to register an account there, and go to a new place in Dunedin to sit and read this book in situ, because these books are not allowed to leave the building.
00:25:52
Speaker
So I had to register an account in a university library and sit in place for a few hours, scanning through a book in the hope that I might recognize a name on a page.
00:26:05
Speaker
And how did that work out for you? Better than i expected. Okay. I was scanning book and I saw a reference to a person named Simon and then discovered that this Simon had Simon as a last name.
00:26:19
Speaker
But the section that talks about Simon with the last name then has the following section. no longer No sooner had Simon gone than he was replaced by yet another rogue, one with very powerful connections indeed.
00:26:35
Speaker
Shimon, so it's not no it's not Simon, it's S-H-I-M-O-M. Lahav, also known as Simon Spitz, was a German-born Israeli.
00:26:46
Speaker
So he's not a Russian Israeli smuggler, as Ben puts forward. He's a German-born Israeli. He arrived in 1992 and established the Auckland-based Pacific Express Group Air Cargo Company.
00:27:01
Speaker
But I felt that something was not quite kosher and started taking a close interest in his cargo company, which was operating internationally using leased aircraft and bore all the signs of being in serious financial difficulty.
00:27:14
Speaker
Within two weeks, we were on the verge of calling Lahav in for an interview when he and his wife took a one-way flight out of the country. Had he not flown the coop, I would have been interested to hear him explain the signature he had forged on documents stolen from a Los Angeles company and used to obtain $12 million dollars in credit from an Auckland bank.
00:27:37
Speaker
By now I knew he'd been convicted in Germany of embezzling $200,000 before going to Israel where he set up a business in used aircraft. Three years later, in 1989, he was stopped by the Trali authorities when he tried to fly from Ben Guron Airport in Tel Aviv.
00:27:55
Speaker
He then hired a boat and tried to leave Israel through Cyprus before being stopped again. A third attempt to leave Israel was successful, and he finally made it to Switzerland, where he set up a freight carrier, Metro Cargo, in Lugano. That's Lugano in Switzerland.
00:28:13
Speaker
At first, I couldn't understand how he'd managed to slip through Israeli hands three times. All became clear when I received overseas intelligence reports that Lahav's Swiss air cargo business was heavily backed by the CIA.
00:28:28
Speaker
Lahav had United States defense cargo contracts, was shipping weapons and helicopters for the United Nations, and gun running to Angola. strangely he'd beaten off competition for these lucrative contracts from Air America companies, which were also said to be fronts for the CIA.
00:28:47
Speaker
I went through the motions of having a warrant issued for Le Havre's arrest, and we had reported in the US and Europe. But even if he's ever located, there was little likelihood that the SFO would seek his extradition.
00:29:02
Speaker
The costs involved would be prohibitive, given the level of protection he could call on. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to spirit this convicted fraudster now wanted in five countries out of Israel.
00:29:15
Speaker
I don't fancy our chances against that kind of muscle. Okay, so another connected individual. So that' that was, sorry, who the the author of this book, he he was someone in law enforcement, was he?
00:29:29
Speaker
So he was head of the Serious Fraud Office in Aotaaroa, New Zealand, during the Winebox Inquiry. Right. Okay, so... And, was a fourth and as we're going to find out, a former police officer who was responsible for Winston Peters being in Parliament, but we'll get to that eventually.
00:29:49
Speaker
Okay. Right. So that's that's what he has to say about this character, whatever his name may be. What's notable here is that Ben's got some of these details wrong.
00:30:01
Speaker
Ben calls him a Russian-Israeli armed smuggler. He's a German-Israeli armed smuggler. Ben claims that Charles Sturt says that Simon Spitz was gun-running from New Zealand,
00:30:15
Speaker
Charles Sturd is simply saying he was a gunrunner.
Reliability of Ben's Sources
00:30:18
Speaker
At no point does he ever make the claim the gunrunning was going on here. And this is the problem with Ben's arguments and the kind of evidence he relies upon.
00:30:31
Speaker
He either doesn't understand his source or exaggerates what his source is saying. There's an attendant issue. a lot of his information is anonymous or undated. So there's one particular point where he's talking about Simon Spitz and he talks about a British journalist having written on Spitz's activities in the UK, but with no indication as to which information.
00:31:00
Speaker
newspaper this person was writing for, let alone when they wrote the particular pieces. So researching some of this stuff is incredibly difficult to substantiate.
00:31:12
Speaker
Okay, so do we need... is is that ah for Mr Spitz, or is there more? Well, he's going to come up again, but not immediately. Rather, Ben is going to use the idea that Simon Spitz is an internationally renowned gunrunner who was running guns from New Zealand...
00:31:34
Speaker
and intimate that the Muslim Brotherhood was running weapons through this country to arm Muslim brigades overseas in order to finance and continue terrorism, something that the government was at least aware of, if not actually aiding and abetting via the Americans.
00:31:59
Speaker
a I have to say, running arms through New Zealand seems like an odd thing to do, given that we're an island that's a million miles anywhere. long way away from anywhere? Yeah. And you'd never guess where we were running the guns through.
00:32:14
Speaker
I mean, a sensible answer, I assume, would be something like Indonesia, which is just sort of a hop from here to Australia and then there to the world's most populous Muslim country. But I assume it's going to be somewhere a lot further away?
00:32:26
Speaker
t y Point. So the very bottom of the South Island. Okay. You know, as far away as you can get from the rest of the world without being in Antarctica. Okay. And but but from there, or is that where they ended up?
00:32:40
Speaker
Was it like a... Was it like ah like ah like a gun bank that they were storing them down here for safekeeping? No, no, they were just passing through. and Okay. Right. Okay. So so there's this is this the main thesis of the book as a whole, this arms running business was going on? and i mean, that the subtitle, the story of gun running and terrorism, what the NZ government doesn't want you to know.
00:33:04
Speaker
Right, so it's specifically this gun running in this terrorism, not a wider history of it or anything like that? No, and it's all connected to the Winebox Inquiry.
00:33:14
Speaker
And the Death of the War White. Do we need to do a quick recap of the Winebox Inquiry? but i mean, we've done an un entire episode of the Winebox Inquiry. We have done an episode of it. Maybe go back and... Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you want to give a quick pre-say.
00:33:27
Speaker
Well, I don't because I can't remember who there it was. There were two wine boxes. Winston Peters said the wine boxes contained evidence of not just serious financial irregularities, but actual financial crimes.
00:33:41
Speaker
The investigation actually indicated that everything that was contained within the wine box was indeed unethical and immoral, but financial fraud was actually virtually impossible to prove.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yes, that'll do. I've just looked up my notes, so I could have i could have faked knowing about it, but you' you've covered it. I've real known about it, Josh. I've real known about it. Good.
00:34:04
Speaker
Okay. Right. Now, thing is we've just jumped most of the way through the first chapter. in order to make sense of what's going to happen at the beginning of the first chapter.
00:34:16
Speaker
Because as I say, this is not a well-structured narrative, and I'm still trying to pull the story out from the endless tangents this book goes through.
00:34:27
Speaker
Right. Yeah, i have to say, up until this point, I've been sitting there thinking, when is Ian going to actually get to the get to the gist of what we're actually even going to be talking about? but and you've even had to jump over stuff to be able to get to that in the first place. Yeah. So, yeah now we go back in time to March 2004, two years before the book published.
00:34:46
Speaker
two years before the book is published And the Sunday Times, which is an Auckland newspaper, reports that Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawwiri, has traveled to both Australia and New Zealand twice under the name of Peter.
00:35:06
Speaker
And this is alleged by a Pakistani journalist by the name of Hamid Muir. The authorities in both New Zealand and Australia are dubious about this claim, but then Prime Minister Helen Clark cannot rule the
Al-Qaeda's Presence in New Zealand?
00:35:22
Speaker
story out. She basically goes, well, look, the authorities is saying it seems unlikely.
00:35:26
Speaker
i mean, it is possible, but... And Ben is... finding the lack of curiosity by both politicians and the media flummoxing, because previously he's been he's tried to sell TV1 and TV3 a story about how the Muslim Brigade is using New Zealand as a gun-running mecca, no pun intended.
00:35:57
Speaker
Right, so he had been onto them for a while up until that point, was this the um Was this particular incident what convinced him he needed to put it down in a book, or had he been working on it for a while?
00:36:08
Speaker
He had been working on stories and deadline about this for a while, but it seems to be the motivating incident in the book as to why this needs to be dealt with in some detail.
00:36:21
Speaker
Now, a fun fact, Hamid Muir... who's the journalist that Ben is relying upon for the claim that the second in charge of Al-Qaeda spent some time in the South Island using the name Peter to travel by, is himself the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, particularly about the fact that as a Pakistani, Muir is a pro-Taliban person.
00:36:49
Speaker
And of course, particularly at this time, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were not getting along and considered themselves to be deeply opposed enemies. So there is suspicion at the time that actually what Hamid Muir is doing is producing a story to make al-Qaeda look like it's doing really bad things in order to deflect from the bad things the Taliban is doing at that time.
00:37:16
Speaker
Right. day it Does Ben acknowledge this at all? No, I had to find that out myself. I had to find that out out out myself. Now, the armed smuggling claim, the idea that New Zealand is involved in armed smuggling, is that weapons for the Muslim Brigade, ah and Ben uses Brotherhood and Brigade kind of interchangeably throughout this text, as far as I can tell, were being flown in on planes to Bosnia,
00:37:46
Speaker
by the very planes that were ferrying our UN peacekeepers to that region of the world. mean That would be fairly damning, surely. That's, you know, that's efficient.
UN Planes and Arms Smuggling Allegations
00:37:58
Speaker
That would make it harder for the government to say they didn't know, or at least make them look very bad if they didn't know.
00:38:05
Speaker
Now, we're going to talk about the plane that was allegedly carrying these arms the next time we do one of these planes. it these episodes.
00:38:16
Speaker
But essentially, Ben is using this claim to say, look, Spitz was using New Zealand for the gun running that he was known to do for places like Angola and and the like.
00:38:29
Speaker
And his source for this particular claim is a man by the name of Victor Ostrovsky, who even Ben has to admit is a bit of an unreliable source.
00:38:43
Speaker
Okay, he sounds Russian. Is this where he's got his nationalities mixed up? with Well, no, no, no. So this guy is Australian-Canadian. Oh, okay. Oh, no, sorry. but Israeli-Canadian, not Australian-Canadian. Many people confuse Australia and but Israel. I'm not one of them. I'm not one of them.
00:39:04
Speaker
ah So yes, he's a former Mossad officer ah who has made, has written several books on his time in Mossad.
00:39:15
Speaker
Books which have been criticized by both Israeli journalists and scholars in Israel for their sensationalist and ahistorical claims.
00:39:25
Speaker
Mostly around the fact that Osirowski works for Mossad for eight months as a case officer, and yet seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of a lot of missions he should have had no access to, to the point where people think that maybe he's just making stuff up.
00:39:47
Speaker
One thing which is notable about his writing, which Ben admits to, is that he writes in a way to downplay American interest or involvement in events.
00:40:01
Speaker
and inflate Israeli interests and involvement in the same event. It's almost as if he's going, got to make sure the Americans can't be blamed for this one.
00:40:12
Speaker
Let me make up some details to make it look as if it was an entirely Israeli operation. So is the implication there that he's possibly some sort of American stooge? Yes, well the or at least an American file who doesn't want to see his beloved country look bad.
00:40:28
Speaker
So, yeah, Ben's already admitting that one of his sources is unreliable, and as we've seen, his understanding of another source doesn't seem to be much better.
00:40:41
Speaker
Right. so we're um we've gone back up to the top slash middle of chapter one. oh yeah right so we trying to try yeah I mean, it's right. it it will It will start to make a little more sense soon. I'm trying to pull the narrative out of a very confusing book.
00:41:00
Speaker
So, We get a fairly prolonged section about the CIA and the Mujahideen and the way that the CIA basically armed the Mujahideen in order to destabilize governments in the Middle East at that time.
00:41:16
Speaker
And this is written in such a way that he it indicates his readers might not be aware the CIA have done things like this in the past. So we can kind skip through something which is acceptable wisdom. Who are the quote-unquote good guys in Rambo 3 who get a shout-out at the end of the film? Was that the Mujahideen? Yeah. There we go. Okay. So they were once allies of America and the U.S.,
00:41:40
Speaker
and then ended up being enemies of the U.S. Because as we've seen with U.S. foreign intervention throughout history, they don't like one guy. They get rid of that. And it's almost always a man. They don't like one man. They get rid of that one man. The man they replace them with, they end up realizing is actually worse than the man that they replaced them with the first place.
00:42:01
Speaker
And they have to go to war with that country to remove the people they put in, to remove the person who probably was actually quite good in the first place. Yeah. History, baby. History. yeah Never repeats.
00:42:12
Speaker
So, then he brings in Project Democracy. The idea that there was the CIA plan to basically... contra the name of the plan, subvert democracy in nations that might be looking towards it in a way that actually might disturb American interests ah abroad. And his claim is that the CIA was using New Zealand as a pipeline for both guns and money for their project democracy work overseas.
CIA's Role in New Zealand's Politics and Project Democracy
00:42:45
Speaker
And the reason why, when the second in command of Al-Qaeda travels to New Zealand under the name Peter, that he ends up not being arrested, is that the CIA have people in our institutions, Ben's claim seems to be working for the IRD, who basically say, look, this person's off limits here.
00:43:09
Speaker
Just let this person through. Right. So, i mean, I'm still trying to try trying to pull things together here.
00:43:20
Speaker
So he he's saying that we've we've got a story where people are running guns through New Zealand for the Muslim Brotherhood, and that's that's the more recent one, isn't he? He's saying that came out of an earlier scheme, running them to the Mujahideen and what have you.
00:43:38
Speaker
So is is is it the CIA who's behind all of this? I mean, that we I'm only halfway through the book and I'm still not sure. Okay, it's it's one of those. Okay, yeah. but I'm just going to have to go with it. Yeah.
00:43:49
Speaker
So the reason why the Paul White thing and the Winebox inquiry is so important here is that one of the things that might have been happening when the second in charge of Al-Qaeda comes to visit the country is that he might have been doing work for the bank Al-Taqwa, who Ben claims has been financing terrorism, despite the fact that all official investigations indicate it has done no such thing.
00:44:19
Speaker
And that's because I take it that Ben thinks that Al-Taqwa is part of the BCCI, the Bank of Credit Commercial International, which was, importantly, funding terrorism at that time.
00:44:35
Speaker
Right. Where were they based, just out of interest? Well... are they one of those big multinationals who are everywhere? ah big mo A big multinational that quite deliberately was everywhere to avoid being audited in such a way to find out what they were really up to. More on that in a second. let me Let me give you a quote from Ben here.
00:44:58
Speaker
It is of no small importance that while BCCI, and Ben calls them the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International, is often reported as having collapsed in 1991,
00:45:11
Speaker
The reality is that its chief supporters only had ever had to pay back $2 billion u s from an estimated $20 billion that was effectively embezzled. It is my contention that the central machine, such as BCI's private army of 1,200 ex-intelligence officials of virtually every nationality imaginable, simply reinvented itself, much in the way that al-Banna mutated to become the Muslim Brotherhood, before mutating again to re-emerge as al-Qaeda.
00:45:42
Speaker
a method known as the Vanguard Movement, a term used by academics to describe the changing face of the neo-Nazi movement and a deliberate tactic used by insurgent movements worldwide to constantly hide the movement's leadership.
00:45:56
Speaker
But as I always say, if you want to know the real truth, then follow the money, honey. Follow the money? Gosh. Honey? Did he make up that phrase himself? I mean, he must have done it. I've not used it before.
00:46:08
Speaker
No, no. at all now the bcc was indeed a bad bank they came under scrutiny in the 1980s due to concerns it was poorly regulated subsequent investigations revealed it was involved in money laundering and financial crimes and had illegally gained controlling interest in a major american bank first america investigators agreed had been set up to avoid review.
00:46:38
Speaker
Basically, it was broken up into several different companies, and those different companies used different auditors to audit their work. So it became basically impossible to see what the organization as a whole was doing.
00:46:52
Speaker
You could make individual parts of it look like it was operating legitimately, despite the fact that as a whole, there were big, holes in the financial accounting that was going on.
00:47:06
Speaker
And they laundered money for anyone. They laundered money for Saddam Hussein. They laundered money for Manuel Noriega. They laundered money for the CIA.
00:47:18
Speaker
So they were one of the money laundering avenues ahead in the Iran contract. ah fear And Ben is correct. Even though BCCI technically collapsed in 1991, it was discovered that they basically continued doing business for several years afterwards because the board of directors just kept their connections in the financial world.
BCCI, Winebox Inquiry, and Paul White's Death
00:47:44
Speaker
Right. Are we approaching a point? ah we We are. The reason why this relates to the Paradise Conspiracy, Paul White and the Winebox,
00:47:58
Speaker
is that there were two banks involved in the initial dossier that Paul White had, which he wanted to pass on to people to show there were financial irregularities going on both in New Zealand and the Cook Island as a tax haven.
00:48:16
Speaker
One of the banks was Citibank. The other bank was Security Pacific National Bank, who Ben alleges was controlled by one, Adnan Khashoggi, who was associated with the BCCI.
00:48:34
Speaker
And when the BCCI collapses, it needs someone to take its money. And Ben is assuming, without any particularly good evidence here, that one of the banks that takes the money is the South Pacific National Bank.
00:48:53
Speaker
And thus there would be a rationale that for people who are well connected with both the Muslim Brotherhood and the CIA to shut down someone who is passing information on about their potential financial crimes to the IRD and potentially the serious fraud office in Aotearoa New Zealand. Okay, so so is he saying that the Weinbach's inquiry and the whole affair was in reality just a tiny sort of offshoot of an enormous global money laundering arm smuggling scheme?
00:49:31
Speaker
And New Zealand was intimately involved. Okay. Well, I mean, when you say it like that, sounds like an interesting story. gather when you actually wade through the book, it's a little more tortuous route. Yeah.
00:49:45
Speaker
tortuous route Yes, so i mean that basically is the sum of where the first chapter goes. It kind of sets up this particular story. So that quote I read about Paul White at the beginning of the episode, that's basically at the very end of the chapter, where suddenly go, oh, all right, that's why you're talking about Banks.
00:50:07
Speaker
It's the Paul White affair. That's why you want to bring Banks in and gun running here. I actually went back and looked at Ian Wishart and his accounting of what's going on with the Paul White affair, because in the Paradise Conspiracy, the entire book basically is about the death of Paul White.
00:50:26
Speaker
And he does also talk about how some of these banks were probably connected to b cci And that's where your good friend, the opal or gemstone also its way in. Right, yes, yes.
00:50:46
Speaker
So Ben doesn't mention the opal file or the gemstone file, but Wishart takes it that because of what he found in the wine boxes, or at least with respect to what Paul White had found from Citibank and Security Pacific National Bank,
00:51:03
Speaker
that the gemstone file might be more plausible than people think. Right. Well, have we reached the end, then, of chapter one?
00:51:14
Speaker
We have, but we do need to end on kind of... Well, actually, there are two points to make. i When I was reading through the section of Charles Sturt's book on Simon Spitz slash Shimon Lahav,
00:51:32
Speaker
I also discovered he has an entire chapter on the death of Paul White, which is interesting because I'm assuming Ben found out about the Simon Spitz stuff because he was reading Charles Sturt's account of Paul White's death.
00:51:47
Speaker
Because Paul White, according to Charles Sturt, got really, really drunk and drove himself into a pillar beneath a bridge. So according to Sturt, Paul White was someone who was riding high in his own supply. he was basically that blackmailing both Citibank and South Pacific National Bank with the information that he had obtained illegally and was trying to get those banks to buy the information that they owned back off of him.
00:52:16
Speaker
and was basically getting somewhere with it in that he'd given over a majority of the documents back to the banks, but was holding on to basically two discs worth of material and demanding more money from them.
00:52:31
Speaker
It looked like the banks were going to pay out So he goes out drinking with friends and by all reports is a incredibly drunk when he leaves the bar at 3am and then dies in a car, a car crash about an hour later.
00:52:47
Speaker
so according to Stuart, he's just someone who gets really, really drunk and dies of natural causes. He doesn't think much of the claims other than the fact that there are rumors going around that Jim Bolger and Ruth Richardson are mentioned in the files that Paul White got from the banks.
00:53:09
Speaker
And so for that reason, he wants to investigate it to see whether there's any claim about improprietary by sitting MPs at that particular time.
00:53:20
Speaker
And Jim Bolger was prime minister of the country at this time. Ruth Richardson was his finance minister. Yeah. And so as he writes, in the meantime, though, and this is the great tragedy of the whole affair, Peters, that's Winston Peters, his legal advisors and a handful of journalists were so wrapped up in their moral outrage, this is the outrage about the supposed crimes by Fay Richwright and co, that they viewed what might perhaps have been unethical behavior as illegal behavior.
00:53:49
Speaker
Anyone who didn't agree that the Magnum and JIS schemes were illegal was attacked to the point of being branded corrupt or incompetent. Perhaps a later generation of journalists will review the sad chapter in their profession's history and report it for what it was.
00:54:07
Speaker
So this is Charles Sturt writing about Winston Peters after Winston Peters has basically forced Charles Sturt out of his job.
00:54:17
Speaker
Right. So not not not entirely unbiased. No.
Winston Peters' Political Strategies
00:54:22
Speaker
But then the book ends with this particular kicker.
00:54:28
Speaker
He, Winston Peters, was seeking the National Party nomination for the South Auckland seat of Hunua. He was facing stiff competition and wanted a special favour of me.
00:54:38
Speaker
He asked if I would speak to a National Party luncheon in Howick and address the matter of white-collar crime with reference to GBL. He also asked if I would slip in his name as someone who I'd met at law school who'd always shown us so a great interest in white-collar crime.
00:54:54
Speaker
It seemed a ah hum so this ah the harmless enough thing to speak before a pact hall in Howick, and it gave him a good pat on the back.
00:55:09
Speaker
Peters won the um nomination, but lost the election by 301 votes to a Labour Party candidate. Two or three days later after that loss, Peters came to see me once again.
00:55:21
Speaker
He thought he had evidence of fraud in the in the election, and he asked if I would examine the documents and advise whether I could detect any such evidence. There are moments in all our lives that we never forget.
00:55:33
Speaker
That evening, when I went to Peters' Howick home, will remain with me forever. I examined the various documents and concluded that there was indeed evidence of electoral fraud.
00:55:44
Speaker
Then Peters had another favour to ask. The National Party had just won a landside election. There was little enthusiasm within the party to spend what money they had left contesting the Hanua seat.
00:55:58
Speaker
They had a huge majority and they didn't need Peters. His request was whether he could use my name to persuade the Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon, to run with the case. I raise no objection.
00:56:10
Speaker
In the latter court action, the Labour Party victory was overturned and Peters was installed as a national party for Hanua. That was the last meeting I ever had with Winston Peters.
00:56:21
Speaker
Right, used him and cast him aside. What a cad. And then forced him out of the SFO... when he didn't give Peters the conclusion that Peters wanted.
00:56:32
Speaker
yeah I'm starting to think slightly poorly of Mr. Peters. Really? I can't imagine why. yeah Okay, so we've been at it for close to an hour now, and I gather this was just the setup.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah, this is this is chapter one. Chapter one is a, let me just give you the page count here. I also should point out, the book starts with a quote from The Truth by Terry Pratchett.
00:57:01
Speaker
I don't think I approve of that, to be honest. So yeah, the first chapter is a mere 12 pages only. Right. And we've spent an hour on it. Yes. Almost. and well a lot of tangents out.
00:57:13
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. um Yes, I i think you you it's fair to say you have doomed us both. This book will will will kill, not will kill us, this book will murder us.
00:57:26
Speaker
And we've no one to blame but you. It's true. It's true. I mean, i've but I'm looking at my notes for the next four chapters and yeah, it it goes somewhere, but not quite where you think it's going to.
00:57:42
Speaker
Okay. Well, um yeah. I want to say thank you for bringing this interesting topic to our attention, but I don't know if I should.
00:57:54
Speaker
No, i don't I don't think you should be encouraging this behaviour at all. No, no. How many episodes did we do on Tunnel Vision? It was four in the end, wasn't it? i mean, it felt it felt like 30, but it was four. It 30. At least of the last two of them, we insisted that we wouldn't be doing any more and then did.
00:58:14
Speaker
So, okay, well, yep. So this this isn't going to be, we're not going to spend the next three years going through this book. We'll just, we'll revisit, we'll be coming back to it, I assume. Yes, yes. It's not going to be a series of consecutive episodes. We're going to duck and dive in and out of this because we've learned our lesson.
00:58:35
Speaker
We did a lot of book reviews last year. A lot of book reviews. And frankly, fact that people persevered with us, I think indicates that we're actually greater than we think.
00:58:46
Speaker
And our audience are glosses for punishment. So maybe we should do an entire consecutive series dealing with this book chapter by chapter for six months. That would serve them right.
00:58:58
Speaker
Especially, know who would the most serve right is, of course, our patrons, who who are the most direct enablers of this kind of behavior from us. So assume that's exactly
Bonus Content Teaser for Patrons
00:59:10
Speaker
what they want. Because they are patrons and they get access to patron bonus episodes, of course, they get a verbal relaxation.
00:59:19
Speaker
from these episodes because they get additional content where we're not talking about Tunnel Vision and we're not talking about State Secrets 2 and we're not talking about Neil Levy's book.
00:59:31
Speaker
So these people get the bonus episodes that allow them to experience us talking about something else for a change. They do. And this week, we're going to talk about monkeys.
00:59:43
Speaker
Sort of. little bit. Well, I mean, not really. and yet Not really. We're going to say the word monkey at least once. I can guarantee that. well I'm probably going to hum a bit of the monkey theme tune at some point.
00:59:55
Speaker
no would a but So fun if you want to know exactly what we're talking about and how it relates to monkeys, you just need to be one of our patrons and then you'll be able to listen to the bonus episode that accompanies this episode.
01:00:09
Speaker
And if you're not currently a patron, you can just go to patreon.com and search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and sign yourself up. It's literally that easy. But for now, i think that's the end of this episode.
01:00:22
Speaker
So is it the end of this episode? I feel I need to keep checking with you. Is is that it? we We have seen everything we're going to say about this episode. this chere the time being For the time being. For the time being. Okay.
01:00:34
Speaker
Well, then in that case, for the time being, I'm just going to say conspiracy-later. Born on a hill on a mountaintop, monkey is monkey who never stops.
01:00:47
Speaker
Monkey magic. Monkey magic. You've been listening to Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Addison and M. Dentiff. If you'd like to help support us, please find details of our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.