The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is a daily financial newspaper published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company. Charles Dow launched it with Edward Jones in the summer of 1889, seven years after the two founded Dow, Jones & Company with Charles Bergstresser. In 1991 and 1992 its reporters covered the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Senate report on the bank cited the paper's articles on BCCI's founding, its American lawyers, its commodities affiliate Capcom and Abu Dhabi's American investments.¹²

Dow Jones and the Founding

Dow and Jones arrived in New York from Rhode Island in 1879, "with a liking for journalism and an ear for financial gossip." Dow had worked for several newspapers before teaming up with Jones and Bergstresser to found Dow, Jones & Company in 1882. In 1885 Dow became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, where he formulated what became known as the Dow theory of stock market movements. Jones left the Journal in January 1899.¹

In March 1902 Clarence Barron bought Dow, Jones & Company, including its news agencies in Boston and New York and the Wall Street Journal, for 130,000 dollars; there was no public announcement, and Dow and Bergstresser resigned their directorships. Dow died of a heart attack at 51 at his Brooklyn home in December of that year. Hugh Bancroft joined the board and in 1907 married Barron's daughter Jane. When Barron died in 1921 he left an estate of 1.5 million dollars to Jane Bancroft, who had inherited the majority shares on her mother's death in 1918; Hugh Bancroft became president.¹

The paper's circulation fell to a low of 28,000 in 1938, and about that time its editor Casey Hogate broadened it from strictly financial reports to general news; by 1961 circulation approached 800,000. In the 1980s electronic publishing replaced the Journal as the company's principal growth business, and Dow Jones acquired the quotation service Telerate. The Bancroft family long followed a policy of noninterference in Dow Jones's operations, in part to protect the editorial independence of its publications.¹

BCCI Coverage

The report of Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown opened its chapter on the Justice Department by noting that the department's handling of BCCI had "been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times."³ Among the Journal pieces the report cited were:

• Najam Sethi, "BCCI Founder: These Things Happen," July 29, 1991, cited for the account that Agha Hasan Abedi flew to Abu Dhabi in 1966 with one assistant and an oriental rug and secured Sheikh Zayed's permission for the United Bank to open a branch there.⁴
• Jill Abramson, "Clark Clifford and a Legal Armada Gave BCCI a Patina of Respectability," August 1, 1991.⁵
• A report that the former senator Charles Mathias, chairman of the audit committee of First American, wrote to Clark Clifford on August 2, 1991, urging him and Robert Altman to resign: "In recent weeks, there has been a worrisome outflow of deposits which continues to this day," and "you and Bob are perceived as the link between BCCI ...and First American."⁵
• A report of October 23, 1991, quoting a member of the late General Zia's cabinet: "It was Arab money that was pouring through BCCI."⁶
• Peter Truell's front-page article of November 22, 1991, on Capcom, cited for the account of "mirror image" trading by Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar.⁷
• An article on payments of 100,000 dollars made in July and August 1988 by Capcom to Richard Fear, formerly of Price Waterhouse in London, which Price Waterhouse told the Senate it first learned of in September 1991.⁸
• A "lengthy article" of May 20, 1992, on the Washington law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow, which it said had "served as headquarters for a billion-dollar enterprise called Real Estate Operations, Inc., owned by Sheikh Zayed's Abu Dhabi government," holding nearly one billion dollars in American investments through 22 real estate investment companies, 10 partnerships and three shell corporations.⁹

The report also recorded, citing an aide to former Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, that Regan told a Journal reporter who reached him at home in August 1991 that he had not been shown a 1985 CIA memorandum on BCCI, and that Mulholland, the CIA's liaison officer in the Treasury, later advised him that CIA records showed Mulholland had provided it to him.⁶ It cited the Journal for the statement of Charles W. Hostler, United States ambassador to Bahrain, that he had from time to time given financial advice to Mohammed Hammoud.¹⁰ Its account of the 1978 attempt by Bert Lance and BCCI clients to take over Financial General Bankshares cited the Journal of February 14, 1978.¹¹