Kissinger Associates
New York consulting firm founded by Henry Kissinger in 1982 whose officers Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger advised Banca Nazionale del Lavoro before returning to government during the bank's unreported lending to Iraq.
Kissinger Associates is an international consulting firm founded in New York in 1982 by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. Two of its officers, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, left it in 1989 to become national security adviser and deputy secretary of state under George H.W. Bush. Between 1985 and 1989 the Atlanta branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, a firm client, lent Iraq more than four billion dollars that did not appear on the bank's books.1
Banca Nazionale del Lavoro
Kissinger sat on the bank's international advisory board from 1985 until June 1991 and was paid at least 10,000 dollars for each meeting he attended in Rome. The other members included David Rockefeller, the former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, and Lord Thorneycroft. Representative Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, told the House on April 28, 1992: "BNL was a client of Mr. Scowcroft's while he was the vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Scowcroft regularly provided advice to BNL's management and received hefty fees in return." At a meeting in New York in 1987, Kissinger, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, and the firm's chief economist, Alan Stoga, advised officers of the bank on business in several countries, and Stoga and Scowcroft took the visitors to lunch. From 1986 to 1990 Eagleburger was a director of Ljubljanska Banka of Yugoslavia, which a Federal Reserve memorandum said did 20 to 25 percent of its American business with the Italian bank.12
"Several Kissinger Associates clients had extensive dealings with Iraq," Gonzalez said, "including Volvo, Midland Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Fiat, and Asea Braun Boveri and those same companies also were the beneficiaries of BNL loans to Iraq or were involved in some way with BNL-Atlanta." He added: "Kissinger, Scowcroft, and Eagleburger maintain that they were unaware of the BNL loans to Iraq. I offer no definitive proof that they were aware of the BNL loans." Kissinger replied to the committee in writing that he had no knowledge of the Atlanta lending.1
Stoga in Baghdad
In June 1989 Stoga traveled to Baghdad with a delegation of the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum led by its chairman, the banker A. Robert Abboud, and the group met Saddam Hussein. The forum's president, Marshall Wiley, said on the television program 60 Minutes that Stoga went to advise the Iraqi government on restructuring its debt. Stoga told the Banking Committee he went "to get to know the country better." He spoke at the forum's symposium on American commercial and strategic interests in Iraq that November.1
The manager of the Atlanta branch, Christopher Drogoul, testified in 1993 that "it became clear to us that the people at Kissinger and Associates were somehow assisting clients of Iraq in further developing business." The special counsel appointed by Attorney General William Barr, Frederick Lacey, reported in December 1992 that Scowcroft and Eagleburger "came into contact with BNL management" while at the firm and that he had seen nothing to suggest they knew of the loans or influenced the prosecution.34
The State Department Certificates
On March 14, 1989, Secretary of State James Baker signed the documents certifying Matrix Churchill Corporation of Ohio as a validly chartered American company so that it could open a branch in Baghdad. Eagleburger, as acting secretary, signed a second set on May 10. Matrix Churchill was owned through London holding companies by the Iraqi military procurement organization and was financed by the Atlanta branch. "Unwittingly, in 1989 both James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger helped Matrix-Churchill establish its Baghdad branch," Gonzalez said. "Pretty good."5
BCCI and the National Bank of Georgia
The day after the Tampa branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was indicted for money laundering in October 1988, a senior officer of that bank wrote to its president describing a telephone call from Stoga, in which "Dr. Kissinger recommends that a public relations offensive be made by us." Gonzalez placed the letter in the Congressional Record. Stoga denied the account. An expense report filed in July 1986 by Roy Carlson, president of the National Bank of Georgia, which the Saudi financier Ghaith Pharaon held as a front for the same bank, lists a "Briefing Session Dr. Henry Kissinger."1
Sources
- Gonzalez, Henry B. "Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq, and BNL," Congressional Record, House, April 28, 1992, pp. H2694-H2701. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/1992_cr/h920428g.htm ↩
- "The Scourge of 'Iraqgate,'" The Christian Science Monitor, October 26, 1992. ↩
- Testimony of Christopher P. Drogoul, House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Serial No. 103-95, November 9, 1993. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit ↩
- Lacey, Frederick B. "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Investigation: Report of the Independent Counsel," reproduced in Serial No. 103-95, pp. 514-15. ↩
- Gonzalez, Henry B. "Details on Iraq's Procurement Network," Congressional Record, House, August 10, 1992. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/1992_cr/h920810g.htm ↩
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