Jonathan Beaty

Jonathan Beaty is an American journalist who, with S. C. Gwynne, wrote the Time cover story of July 29, 1991, "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," published after regulators in July 1991 closed the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the book The Outlaw Bank, published by Random House in 1993.¹²

"The Dirtiest Bank of All"

The article carried the byline "Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne/New York" and a deck describing "How B.C.C.I. and its black network became a financial supermarket for crooks and spies" and "how the U.S. is trying to cover up its role." It opened with two unnamed sources. A former senior officer of the bank said: "I could tell you what you want to know, but I must worry about my wife and family," adding that "they could be killed." A Manhattan investigator said: "We better not talk about this over the phone. We've found some bugs in offices that haven't been put there by law enforcement."¹

The story called BCCI "the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down early this month," and stated that "From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the 'black network,'" which it described as a 1,500-employee unit "operating primarily out of the bank's offices in Karachi, Pakistan," that used "sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping and even, by some accounts, murder." It reported, citing its own earlier reporting that month, that the National Security Council had used BCCI "to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals" and that the Central Intelligence Agency "maintained accounts in B.C.C.I. for covert operations," and that investigators had said the Defense Intelligence Agency kept "a slush-fund account" at the bank.¹

A self-described former operative, given the pseudonym "Mustafa," told the magazine: "I was recruited by the black network in the early 1980s." He described training in Pakistan and an operation of April 1989 in which crates from a Colombian container ship were unloaded at Karachi and flown out aboard an unmarked 707 to Czechoslovakia and then to the United States, supervised by an American the operatives believed to be a CIA agent. The article quoted the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau: "We have had no cooperation from the Justice Department since we first asked for records in March 1990. In fact they are impeding our investigation, and Justice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us." It also stated that the Justice Department's main probe of BCCI was "being handled by a sole Assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa, who has recently been assigned another major case," and that "one of B.C.C.I.'s Washington representatives distributed millions of dollars in payoffs to U.S. officials during the past decade."¹³

The Senate Response

The report of Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee addressed the story directly, dating it "a Time magazine cover-story on BCCI on August 15, 1991." The report stated that "None of the BCCI officers interviewed by the Senate claimed to have knowledge of a 'black network' of intelligence operatives, arms dealers, drug traffickers, burglars, or assassins employed by BCCI," and that "They declared, to a person, that they did not believe such a network existed at the bank," though several suggested that a smaller team "carrying out Abedi's most secret missions" could have existed.⁴ The former United States Attorney in Miami, Dexter Lehtinen, whose request to bring BCCI-related indictments in Miami was held back by the Justice Department until November 1991, told the subcommittee, implying that the reversal was the result of Congressional and media pressure: "There had been significant, Time Magazine and New York Times articles, very critical of the Department."⁵ See BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report.

The Outlaw Bank

The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI, by Beaty and Gwynne, was published by Random House in New York in 1993 (ISBN 0679413847). Its catalogued subjects are the corrupt practices of BCCI and of international finance, money laundering, bank failures and criminal investigation in the United States.²