Jack Blum

Jack Blum is a former Senate investigator and chief counsel to Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, widely recognized for his pivotal role in exposing the BCCI scandal. Described as a crusader and a moralist, Blum was known for his unwavering pursuit of truth, even when it meant challenging powerful institutions and individuals.¹

Early Career and Senate Investigations

Blum began his career in Washington in 1965 after graduating from Columbia Law School, working as an investigator for Senator Phil Hart's antitrust subcommittee. His work gained the attention of Senator J. W. Fulbright, who moved him to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By the mid-1970s, Blum had established himself as a counsel to Senator Frank Church's subcommittee on multinational corporations.¹

His investigations during this period were far-reaching, contributing to the downfall of a Japanese government and the imprisonment of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka due to the Lockheed payoff scandals. He also played a key role in exposing ITT's improper activities in Chile, identifying Robert Vesco and the $3-billion global Ponzi scheme as central figures, and was a driving force behind the creation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Notably, his questioning led to the indictment of former Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms for perjury.¹

Kerry Committee and Contra Drug Trafficking

After a decade in private practice starting in 1976, Blum re-entered the public sector in 1986 as special counsel to Senator John Kerry's subcommittee, spearheading probes into drug trafficking and producing a report accusing the Reagan administration of interfering with the "war on drugs" to protect clandestine support for the Contras.¹ Blum testified before the committee that "the narcotics are coming into the United States not by the pound, not by the bag, but by the ton, by the cargo planeload."²

After seeing early news stories about Norwin Meneses, Blum asked the Justice Department to turn over its files on Meneses and the long-closed Frogman case. He ran into a buzzsaw. Blum later described the resistance: "We had a terrible, terrible time getting information about Meneses from the fellow who was the U.S. attorney out there at the time, Russoniello, who was as rabid a right-wing true believer as ever came down the road." The Justice Department's obstruction prevented the Kerry committee from fully investigating the Meneses connection.²

When Gary Webb called Blum years later while researching the Dark Alliance series, Blum confirmed that Meneses had been an early target of the Kerry investigation and that the Justice Department had stonewalled the committee's requests for information.³

Uncovering the BCCI Scandal

Blum's interest in BCCI intensified in spring 1988 during Kerry's hearings on drug trafficking, which veered into Manuel Noriega. He discovered that BCCI was at the epicenter of Noriega's financial operations. Despite a Miami BCCI branch being busted for money laundering, Blum believed the plea bargain was a "very big fix" and that BCCI was a "global criminal empire" on the verge of collapse.¹

He left the Kerry subcommittee after his proposal for a serious investigation into BCCI was dismissed, and his contract was not renewed. Frustrated by federal inaction, Blum approached Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in 1989 (Beaty and Gwynne date it to March; the Senate report dates his Tampa approach to March and his New York meeting to the late spring), presenting the BCCI scandal as "the biggest bank fraud in the history of the world." He provided information from a tape-recorded debriefing of a former BCCI officer, Ali Mirza, who detailed efforts to influence the Senate subcommittee, bribery of the Georgia legislature, and BCCI's secret ownership of American banks.¹

Blum's persistence helped prompt the Federal Reserve Board to investigate BCCI, leading to the bank's global seizure in July 1991. He consistently argued that BCCI was not merely a bank but a "global criminal empire" with deep ties to intelligence agencies and illicit activities.¹

The Justice Department and New York

According to the Kerry-Brown Senate Report, the subcommittee authorized subpoenas to BCCI in March 1988, and Blum deferred serving them until late July 1988 at the request of the Justice Department and the Customs Service, which were concerned for the C-Chase sting in Tampa. In the spring of 1989, as he was leaving the subcommittee, Senator John Kerry authorized him to give his information to the Justice Department. In March 1989 he took two BCCI witnesses to the United States Attorney in Tampa and arranged for a debriefing to be taped. After his informants told him that officials in Florida were not following up, he took the same information "in the late spring of 1989" to prosecutors working for Robert Morgenthau in New York.⁴⁵⁶

The Tampa prosecutor Mark Jackowski testified that he had discounted Blum's information because Blum had made "wild accusations" about the subcommittee and asked for money, and characterized Blum as a "wacko." The report noted that Jackowski made no contemporaneous record of the alleged remarks, never investigated them, and first raised them some thirty months later. The New York District Attorney's office told the subcommittee in a letter of November 21, 1991: "At no time did Mr. Blum ever seek or request money form this office for his assistance to us in the investigation of BCCI." The report concluded that while the Justice Department prosecutors "regarded Blum as a 'wacko,' and his information as worth little, the New York District Attorney's office took it seriously, investigated it, and proved it out."⁵⁶