#City

Places (36)

• Abu Dhabi Capital of the United Arab Emirates and home emirate of Sheikh Zayed, whose government and ruling family owned 77 percent of BCCI when regulators closed it in July 1991.
• Amsterdam Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and a city whose presence in this vault relates primarily to three intersecting subjects: the Dutch and international pedophile advocacy networks operating through publications based there in the 1970s-1980s, Francis Shelden's flight there after the North Fox Island abuse network collapsed, and the city's role as a node in European arms brokering networks.
• Atlanta Georgia capital where BNL's branch lent Iraq billions off the books until the FBI raid of 1989, where BCCI's frontman bought Bert Lance's bank, and where CIA-funded LSD tests ran at the federal penitentiary.
• Ayacucho Ayacucho is a city in the Andean highlands of Peru that served as the founding base of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), the Maoist guerrilla movement that launched its armed insurgency in 1980 and fought a conflict that killed approximately 69,000 people; it appears in this vault as the origin point of the Shining Path insurgency that prompted CIA advisory involvement in Peruvian counterinsurgency operations.
• Baghdad Baghdad is the capital of Iraq and the seat of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government; it was the destination of Donald Rumsfeld's 1983 envoy visit during the Iran-Iraq War, the primary recipient of the BNL scandal's Iraqi arms procurement financing, and the city whose fall in April 2003 ended three decades of Ba'athist rule.
• Beersheba Beersheba (Be'er Sheva) is the largest city in southern Israel and the administrative capital of the Negev Desert region; it appears in this vault primarily as the regional center nearest to the Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona and as a hub for the Israeli military and intelligence infrastructure concentrated in the southern Negev.
• Berlin Berlin was the central geographic front of the Cold War intelligence war: divided by the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989, it hosted the CIA's Berlin Base (one of the most significant Cold War stations), the KGB's Karlshorst headquarters in East Berlin, and was the site of numerous defections, intelligence operations, and the 1986 nightclub bombing that triggered the U.S. strike on Libya.
• Brussels Brussels is the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of NATO and the European Union; it appears in this vault as the administrative center through which NATO's Gladio stay-behind network and Belgian intelligence operated, and through its proximity to the Knokke-Heist area central to the Dutroux X-Dossier investigation.
• Budapest Budapest is the capital of Hungary on the Danube, most significant in Cold War history as the epicenter of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its Soviet suppression.
• Buenos Aires Argentine capital where DINA killed General Carlos Prats in 1974, where the FBI's Robert Scherrer kept contact with Operation Condor, and from which ITT ran its Latin American press work in 1970.
• Cairo Cairo is the capital of Egypt and the center of Egyptian intelligence operations; it appears in this vault as the administrative base for CIA-Mukhabarat liaison, the site of Camp David-era Egyptian diplomatic activity, and a hub for Arab intelligence services relevant to the vault's Middle East subjects.
• Charlotte Amalie Capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands on St. Thomas, seat of the governor, courts and Justice Department that registered, waived for and later sued Jeffrey Epstein, and first address of his money-management company.
• Dallas, Texas Dallas, Texas is the site of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the city's connections to Jack Ruby, Carlos Marcello's Mafia network, and CIA-connected figures make it central to the vault's JFK assassination investigation materials.
• Dubai Trading emirate of the United Arab Emirates whose ruling family was among BCCI's ostensible Arab owners, and through which a 1985 BCCI-backed TOW missile deal with Iran was channeled.
• Frankfurt German city where Abbas Gokal, principal of the Gulf Group and chief defendant in the Serious Fraud Office's BCCI prosecution, was arrested aboard a New York flight in July 1994.
• Geneva Swiss banking city, seat of BCCI's secretly held affiliate Banque de Commerce et de Placements and of the Gokal brothers' Gulf Group, whose BCCI loans led to a fourteen-year sentence for Abbas Gokal.
• Hong Kong Financial center where the Stephens and Riady families formed their first joint company in 1978, where Lippo sought BCCI's failed subsidiary, and from which a Lippo company paid Webster Hubbell in 1994.
• Jerusalem Jerusalem is the contested capital of Israel and a site claimed by Palestinians for a future capital; it appears in this vault primarily in connection with Israeli intelligence operations, Camp David Accords negotiations, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre investigations.
• Karachi Southern port city of Pakistan and capital of Sindh province, where Agha Hasan Abedi lived and BCCI kept its Pakistani branch, files and protocol department.
• Las Vegas Nevada gambling city where the CIA had the prosecution of Robert Maheu's wiretappers dropped, Pat Price died in 1975, and an FBI informant hosted Atomwaffen Division's 2019 leadership meeting.
• London London is the capital of the United Kingdom and a recurring location throughout this vault: the headquarters of MI6 and GCHQ oversight, the site of BCCI's global headquarters in the 1980s, the base of operation for Robert Maxwell's media and intelligence empire, and the location of key arms-to-Iraq commercial networks.
• Los Angeles Largest city in California and the center of the crack cocaine explosion in South Central Los Angeles, fueled by cocaine supplied by Danilo Blandón's Contra-connected drug ring throughout the 1980s.
• Managua Capital city of Nicaragua, the center of Norwin Meneses's drug empire, the site of his 1991 arrest, and where Gary Webb and Georg Hodel conducted their pivotal interviews with imprisoned Contra-connected drug traffickers.
• Miami Major South Florida city that became the center of the Nicaraguan exile community, a hub for Contra fundraising and cocaine trafficking, and Danilo Blandón's base after leaving Los Angeles.
• Moscow Moscow is the capital of Russia and was the capital of the Soviet Union; as the seat of the KGB (and its successors) and the Communist Party Central Committee throughout the Cold War, it is the ultimate target or origin point for the majority of the intelligence operations documented in this vault.
• Paris Paris is the capital of France and a key geographic node in this vault: the claimed site of October Surprise meetings between Reagan campaign officials and Iranian representatives in 1980, a hub for Middle Eastern arms brokering and intelligence back-channels, and the city where Ayatollah Khomeini spent his final months of exile before the Iranian Revolution.
• Pasadena, Texas Pasadena is a city immediately southeast of Houston, Texas that appears in this vault as a location central to the Dean Corll serial murder case (1970-1973), in which Corll, David Owen Brooks, and Elmer Wayne Henley abducted, tortured, and murdered at least 28 young males in the Houston metropolitan area; multiple victims and accomplices in the case were Pasadena residents.
• Rome Rome is the capital of Italy and home to the Vatican; it appears in this vault as the location of P2 Masonic lodge operations, the Vatican Bank (IOR) financial flows connected to BCCI and CIA-backed anti-communist programs, and the base of Italian intelligence services whose Cold War activities intersected with Gladio and the strategy of tension.
• Rotterdam Rotterdam is the Netherlands' second-largest city and the largest port in Europe, serving as a major hub for international commerce; it appears in this vault as a transit node for arms shipments documented in the Iran-Contra affair, as a location in Dutch pedophile network investigations connected to the Dutroux inquiry, and as the site of BCCI banking operations in the Netherlands.
• San Diego Southern California city where Ricky Ross was prosecuted, Danilo Blandón served as a DEA informant, and the pivotal DEA meeting with Gary Webb took place in October 1995.
• San Francisco Major California city that served as the base of operations for Norwin Meneses's cocaine trafficking network, the site of the Frogman Case, and the location of key DEA and FBI offices investigating Contra drug trafficking.
• Santiago Santiago is the capital of Chile and the site of the September 11, 1973 CIA-backed coup that installed Augusto Pinochet, including the bombing of La Moneda presidential palace; it was subsequently the operational base for DINA and the founding location of Operation Condor.
• Tampa, Florida Gulf coast city in Florida where the 1988 Operation C-Chase indictment of BCCI was brought, and whose federal prosecutors the Senate found had missed the bank's wider crimes.
• Tehran Tehran is the capital of Iran and the site of the November 4, 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy, triggering the 444-day hostage crisis that anchors the October Surprise allegations, as well as the political center from which the Islamic Republic directed the arms-for-hostages negotiations that became the Iran-Contra affair.
• Tel Aviv Tel Aviv is Israel's largest metropolitan area and de facto commercial and intelligence capital; it served as a key node in the Iran-Contra arms pipeline and the Israel-South Africa arms relationship, and is home to institutions central to the vault's Israeli intelligence subjects including Mossad headquarters.
• Zandvoort Zandvoort is a Dutch North Sea coastal resort town that came to prominence in vault-related investigations as the location of the Apollo Bulletin Board Service, a child pornography distribution network whose archives were discovered in 1998 and contained evidence of a large-scale international child abuse production and distribution operation with connections to the broader Belgian-Dutch pedophile network investigated in connection with the Dutroux affair.