Clandestine Intelligence Bankers: Leo Wanta

Leo Emile Wanta, a 63 year-old Appleton, Wisconsin native, is acknowledged to be a very effective commodities trader and international financier. Los Angeles commodities trader and Democratic operative Tom Hanneghan is no fan of Wanta but called him a Abrilliant engineer " with a lots of technical skills." Wanta worked for the U.S. intelligence agencies@ and helped bring down the Soviet communist government." His government service included working for the U.S. Treasury, the C.I.A., and the NSC. He worked for the 1988 Bush campaign and raised $50,000 for Bush’s reelection. His activities as a US government operative are shrouded in mystery, but what little is known about them reveals that there is a vast world of clandestine activity that powerfully effects events.

Wanta claimed to be Ronald Reagan’s favorite “junkyard dog. “ He went to work for the US government in 1963 , working for the DEA and C.I.A., and became a Republican operative in 1965. In 1988, the Associated Press carried stories about his selling 30,000 automatic pistols to Manuel Noriega. It has been speculated that the guns had homing devices that later enabled the US to find Noriega’s security people. He was known to travel frequently with General Vernon Walters, an US ambassador to the UN, and visited F.B.I. head William Sessions through the secret entrance to his office.

While fronting various Treasury operations abroad, he accumulated a fortune for himself. A prime front for the Treasury was his Aneko Credit PTE, LTD in Singapore. He also conducted business for the C.I.A. through a front named Miracle Investments and AmeriTech, which seems to be partly owned by the C.I.A.. He has been accused of working covertly to drive down the price of gold on the international market, but there is very little information on it. His 1992 tax documents listed his net wealth at $432 billion. It is likely he was fronting much of that for the government. He was a specialist in currency swaps and in selling and trading arbitraged guaranteed currency deposits called “prime bank guarantees” to banks for the US Treasury. Unfortunately, his funds and those of the Treasury were commingled, and the government continued to use his funds after he was no longer in a position to direct their use.

His great accomplishment was destabilizing the Russian currency in 1990-1991. One of his firms was New Republic/USA Financial Group Ltd was used in this operation. US journalist Claire Sterling, who has a record of being friendly to the C.I.A., described the Great Ruble Scam in Thievs" World ( Simon and Shuster, 1994). Wanta came off as a scoundrel but a highly effective one.

In fact, he was working in cooperation with Israel and China and used the services of the Russian mafiya to acquire vast amounts of counterfeit rubles. He started with over a hundred billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, money he repaid with interest. The idea was to accumulate rubbles and then present them for redemption as payment to debts owed the Soviet Union of for redemption other currencies or gold. Speculation with real currency against the rubble was also involved. Marc Rich, an Israeli agent and US citizen was also involved. The Chinese and Israelis helped him accumulate rubles on the black market. The accumulated funds were used to bring down the ruble and were used in part by the Chinese to pay debts. Some rubles were sold to east European countries, who also paid down their debts. Still others were used to buy 2000 tons of Russian gold. The rubble was pegged at $1.20 to a rubble, but they could not be legally purchased. Wanta and others started with more than a hundred billion from the US treasury and other funds and bought the currency at about .28 and sold them to people with debts to Russia at .88.

Rich received his commission, but George W. Bush prevented Wanta from getting his commission. Wanta made the great mistake of talking about how he was cheated and saying that + Bush wanted to divert a large portion of the $70 billion profits into his own accounts and Wanta refused to help. Later, Wanta said Bush had managed to seize some of his commission and place it in his own accounts abroad. This money was sent to accounts in the Republic pf Vanuatu, about 500 miles west of Fiji, where many world intelligence agencies have accounts. Some of that money was then sent to the South Pacific Islands Bank, LTD. of the Philippines. At the same time that gold was reported missing from the Russian central bank, 2000 tons of soviet gold was routed to Algemene Bank in the Netherlands, now known as ABN-Amro. That bank used its share of the profit to allow its American flagship, La Salle National in Chicago, to establish 15 branches and buy out a number of other big banks.

The profits from these operations were estimated at $27.5 trillion in 1992 and about $70 trillion in 2006. Comprised of many accounts, it is called the Global Security Fund. Wanta was insisting in 2006 that the money should go to the US treasury. Eventually, international banks decided that these funds could be used to solve various liquidity problems and opposed the money being used. According to Wanta, US intelligence agencies have been able to get control of some of the money. Dark motives have been ascribed to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but it seems Clinton only wanted to use some of it to buy peace in the Middle East by bribing various Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab leaders.

Wanta agreed to divert one billion to an account in Spain for the use of George H.W. Bush and he reported that he was co-trustor of another $210 billion which Bush wanted under his sole control. Although the Bush did not get control of this money, his family was able to siphon off $100 billion through the use of various banking connections. They laundered it through Pilgrim Investments. Marc Rich was able to steal a similar amount, and he gave half a billion to Neil Bush . It is assumed that the senior Bush and Rich were acting on behalf of the C.I.A. and Mossad respectively. In all, he claims that $745 billion hs been taken from the accounts over which he claims to be “trustor.”

Wanta had worked for the NSC, C.I.A., and the Treasury and was also a White House operative for Ronald Reagan, who called him his favorite “junkyard dog.” Apparently, his main employment then was as a Secret Service agent. Close friend and traveling companion of Vernon Walters, a longtime government operative. Wanta claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate his friend “Dutch.” In 1988, he was caught trying to sell 30,000 machine pistols to Manuel Noriega for his by his security force. It has been speculated that the weapons carried devices that would enable the US to later locate Noriega loyalists.

Wanta used to visit F.B.I. director William Sessions by accessing the office through J. .Edgar Hoover’s secret tunnel, called “back of the stage.” While there he also met with the two agents charged with enforcing RICO statute against organized crime.

V.K. Durham has traced ten massive transfers of money made by Wanta after F.B.I. raided BCCI’s false front, the Banco Lavoro Nazionale’s branch in Atlanta. The feds found that the bank had loaned $4 billion to Saddam Hussein. All of Wanta’s transfers were routed through BANCO EXTERIOR DE ESPANA ~ MALAGA. Of course, he was not the only person moving massive amounts of money after that event. What is interesting is that federal authorities apparently permitted him to move the money for some reason, but he was still not in control of the funds. Some of the money went to a London house controlled by Marc Rich, to Switzerland, Monaco, China and Panama, but the bulk went to US firms such as Chase, Prudential Bache, Morgan, and several trust attorney firms.

The roughly $70 trillion held by Wanta as trustor is held in accounts around the world and are held by Title 18 , Section 6 US intelligence community corporations. Wanta is now trying to recover more than $200 billion he claims deposited abroad. He is also claiming that the huge amounts the federal government has deposited abroad should be brought home and that he be given the 1% customary finders fee. In 2005 and 2006 Wanta and an tried to access $4.5 trillion which they wanted to put to use for the American people. They believed that they had an agreement with the White House that allowed them to distribute this money in return for his giving up trusteeship for a much larger amount that Wanta thought belonged to the people of the United States. His legal efforts to access the money were blocked.

A German party source reported that a German bank twice attempted to honor Wanta’s request for payment and was prevented from doing so by Herman Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury.

This led to unbelievable reports that Germany issued an arrest warrant for Paulson. There were also press reports that Treasury Secretary Herman Paulson asked the German Chancellor to turn the money over to him. The press insisted he was briefly held. None of this is believable. It is known that by the end of the week chancellor met with President bush in the White House, and she did not look happy. As for the rest of the story, there will never be enough information to verify it.

Two interesting memos -- November 2, and December 14, 2001-- from Ambassador Leo Wanta to Vice President Dick Cheney have turned up in which Wanta indicates that he knew that ten crates of cash and other valuables were moved from the Philippines several weeks after 9/11. He suggested the money was going to several U.S. law firms . Wanta also said that a “family” is demanding repayment for funds advanced for black operations. The “family” must be a cod name for something Three of the men named in moving the crates worked for the F.B.I.’s Division Five. Fake savings certificates, covered in Business World (May 30, 2001), were also mentioned. There is no way to know what black op may have been involved .