Foundation X: A conversation in the House of Lords

[Carsten Wiethoff]

November 1, 2010
From http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...0215000101

Also on video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/h...146065.stm
Starts at 2h 34m.

Emphasis in the text mine.

10.42 pm

[B]Lord James of Blackheath:[/B] My Lords, I do not know what you have done to deserve me this late in the evening but I am afraid that is where it is. It has been a fascinating day. I particularly enjoyed the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, on the subject of "Brigadoon", which was the first play I ever saw in the West End. I do not think she delivered the punchline. The whole point about "Brigadoon" was that it came out of the mist for only day in every 100 years. That is a lovely idea for the Opposition.
We have heard today a great many tales of woe and dismay about the future, and some of optimism from this side. I am concerned about where the common ground is in that. One of the lessons of what is now quite a long life is that nothing is ever quite as bad or quite as good as you expect. It is probable that there will be a little more common ground between us than we might foresee at the moment. We might assist that process because growth will be what brings the two sides together. The more growth we can achieve, the more scope there will be to deal with some of the greater calamities that might occur unforeseen-since everything is unforeseen in politics.
I will talk a little about some of the growth opportunities that we might be able to harness and what we can do. As I have mentioned before, one of my great messages is a lesson from Sir Kenneth Cork, who taught me most of what I know about corporate rescue. It is that you cannot rescue a business that does not have a successful past. Anything that does not have a successful past is a failed start-up. Get rid of it and concentrate on the businesses that have a successful past. Where, today, are the businesses with a successful past? They are languishing in the intensive care units of the banks. They cannot get out because most of them have been the victims of expanding their capacity beyond the demands of the marketplace. That is a very expensive situation to get out of once you are in it. It was done with some dexterity and considerable success in the early 1970s through the initiatives that were forthcoming from three Is: investment in industry. One of the great tragedies of our economy at present is that we do not have three Is functioning in that form today. Boy, do we need them.
I am very much a believer in the principle of the collective collapse of generic groups of businesses as entities. Let me give some examples. At the present moment this year, we have probably lost half a million cars in our British export market. They would have been a very big additional factor to the economy, both in production-the wages that would have gone to the people who built them-and in the export value they would have had. Why? It is because the banks played their usual dirty trick a year or two ago: they saw that there were big markets outside-big back-orders-so they let the businesses have the money that they needed to fund the delivery of the order books that they had. The orders came in; they took the cash, reduced the facilities and the automotive component industry did

1 Nov 2010 : Column 1537

not have the working capital to gear up for the massive turn to the diesel engines, which were demanded, and the British export market could not maintain the export requirement necessary to maintain its position on the international scene.
That has largely been corrected now but a similar problem may well happen. The next big crisis is going to come in the second week of February next year when the huge crisis that comes cyclically every year afflicts the retail sector worse than ever. It is already bereft on the high street-with shuttered shops and redundant staff, and a very dismal sight it is. What happens in the banking industry is that it knows that in the first two weeks of February every year, all the credit cards that have been used to buy goods going into Christmas pay, and the retail industry has the lowest borrowings of the year. The banks lie in wait and they grab them. Remember Woolworths? Who is coming next?
So we need someone who can take a grip on a general strategy to save the retail industry from another calamity. One of the great regrets I have at the moment is that the person who would best be able to do that is Sir Philip Green, and he is doing something else. I hope that the Government will hold on to him, and once he has actually finished his present task, he will be told to go and cherry pick the entire retail industry languishing in the hands of the banks, and put together the next version of British Home Stores as a government subsidiary which needs funding and which can be imposed on the banking industry by grabbing each bit, despite the fact that there will be minority bank interests that will not want to sell out for the benefit of the major bank interest, which will get the cream of the equity conversion. That is what three Is should exist to do, and what it did so brilliantly before, and that is why we need it back now.
Another element of the world out there at the moment which is potentially waiting for the pratfall of a massive collective bankruptcy is the food processing industry. The more the accent is moved from the small corner shop to the big grocers, the more production has been stepped up by the food producers to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of cheap food coming through the grocery chains. Of course, they have fallen into the trap again of funding themselves to too high a capacity for the market demand with the result that the grocers can rub their hands with glee and say, "We can screw the margins down so tight you won't be able to breathe" and the suppliers are going to go collectively "pop" at some point in the next few months, because they will not be able to keep up and there is a big social factor coming. We will have the present dependence on cheap food to keep some sort of society structure fed, but we will actually end up being forced up on prices as the industry goes out of business in terms of its ability to keep supply going and prices are forced up in the grocery chains. This is going to be another calamity coming, and we need to have a top-down view as to what to do with it.
I have given your Lordships three examples of why I think we need something, but the creation of the three Is along the lines that I have been talking about would be of the order of a £5 billion cheque required

1 Nov 2010 : Column 1538

to do it. However, we do not have £5 billion; we do not have half of £5 billion to put in to the creation of this at the moment, so what do we do about it? At this point, I am going to have to make a very big apology to my noble friend Lord Sassoon, because I am about to raise a subject that I should not raise and which is going to be one which I think is now time to put on a higher awareness, and to explain to the House as a whole, as I do not think your Lordships have any knowledge of it. I am sorry my noble friend Lord Strathclyde is not with us at the moment, because this deeply concerns him also.
For the past 20 weeks I have been engaged in a very strange dialogue with the two noble Lords, in the course of which I have been trying to bring to their attention the willing availability of a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy in this country. For want of a better name, I shall call it foundation X. That is not its real name, but it will do for the moment. Foundation X was introduced to me 20 weeks ago last week by an eminent City firm, which is FSA controlled. Its chairman came to me and said, "We have this extraordinary request to assist in a major financial reconstruction. It is megabucks, but we need your help to assist us in understanding whether this business is legitimate". I had the biggest put down of my life from my noble friend Lord Strathclyde when I told him this story. He said, "Why you? You're not important enough to have the answer to a question like that". He is quite right, I am not important enough, but the answer to the next question was, "You haven't got the experience for it". Yes I do. I have had one of the biggest experiences in the laundering of terrorist money and funny money that anyone has had in the City. I have handled billions of pounds of terrorist money.
[B]Baroness Hollis of Heigham:[/B] Where did it go to?
[B]Lord James of Blackheath:[/B] Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than £1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with north African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue. I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defence witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.
The point is that when I was in the course of doing this strange activity, I had an interesting set of phone numbers and references that I could go to for help when I needed it. So people in the City have known that if they want to check out anything that looks at all odd, they can come to me and I can press a few phone numbers to obtain a reference. The City firm came to me and asked whether I could get a reference and a clearance on foundation X. For 20 weeks, I have been endeavouring to do that. I have come to the absolute conclusion that foundation X is completely genuine and sincere and that it directly wishes to make the United Kingdom one of the principal points that it will use to disseminate its extraordinarily great wealth into the world at this present moment, as part of an attempt to seek the recovery of the global economy.


1 Nov 2010 : Column 1539

I made the phone call to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde on a Sunday afternoon-I think he was sitting on his lawn, poor man-and he did the quickest ball pass that I have ever witnessed. If England can do anything like it at Twickenham on Saturday, we will have a chance against the All Blacks. The next think I knew, I had my noble friend Lord Sassoon on the phone. From the outset, he took the proper defensive attitude of total scepticism, and said, "This cannot possibly be right". During the following weeks, my noble friend said, "Go and talk to the Bank of England". So I phoned the governor and asked whether he could check this out for me. After about three days, he came back and said, "You can get lost. I'm not touching this with a bargepole; it is far too difficult. Take it back to the Treasury". So I did. Within another day, my noble friend Lord Sassoon had come back and said, "This is rubbish. It can't possibly be right". I said, "I am going to work more on it". Then I brought one of the senior executives from foundation X to meet my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. I have to say that, as first dates go, it was not a great success. Neither of them ended up by inviting the other out for a coffee or drink at the end of the evening, and they did not exchange telephone numbers in order to follow up the meeting.
I found myself between a rock and a hard place that were totally paranoid about each other, because the foundation X people have an amazing obsession with their own security. They expect to be contacted only by someone equal to head of state status or someone with an international security rating equal to the top six people in the world. This is a strange situation. My noble friends Lord Sassoon and Lord Strathclyde both came up with what should have been an absolute killer argument as to why this could not be true and that we should forget it. My noble friend Lord Sassoon's argument was that these people claimed to have evidence that last year they had lodged £5 billion with British banks. They gave transfer dates and the details of these transfers. As my noble friend Lord Sassoon, said, if that were true it would stick out like a sore thumb. You could not have £5 billion popping out of a bank account without it disrupting the balance sheet completely. But I remember that at about the same time as those transfers were being made the noble Lord, Lord Myners, was indulging in his game of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic of the British banking community. If he had three banks at that time, which had had, say, a deficiency of £1.5 million each, then you would pretty well have absorbed the entire £5 billion, and you would not have had the sore thumb stick out at that time; you would have taken £1.5 billion into each of three banks and you would have absorbed the lot. That would be a logical explanation-I do not know.
My noble friend Lord Strathclyde came up with a very different argument. He said that this cannot be right because these people said at the meeting with him that they were still effectively on the gold standard from back in the 1920s and that their entire currency holdings throughout the world, which were very large, were backed by bullion. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde came back and said to me that he had an analyst working on it and that this had to be stuff and nonsense. He said that they had come up with a figure

1 Nov 2010 : Column 1540

for the amount of bullion that would be needed to cover their currency reserves, as claimed, which would be more than the entire value of bullion that had ever been mined in the history of the world. I am sorry but my noble friend Lord Strathclyde is wrong; his analysts are wrong. He had tapped into the sources that are available and there is only one definitive source for the amount of bullion that has ever been taken from the earth's crust. That was a National Geographic magazine article 12 years ago. Whatever figure it was that was quoted was then quoted again on six other sites on the internet-on Google. Everyone is quoting one original source; there is no other confirming authority. But if you tap into the Vatican accounts-of the Vatican bank-you come up with a claim of total bullion-
[B]Lord De Mauley:[/B] The noble Lord is into his fifteenth minute. I wonder whether he can draw his remarks to a conclusion.
[B]Lord James of Blackheath:[/B] The total value of the Vatican bank reserves would claim to be more than the entire value of gold ever mined in the history of the world. My point on all of this is that we have not proven any of this. Foundation X is saying at this moment that it is prepared to put up the entire £5 billion for the funding of the three Is recreation; the British Government can have the entire independent management and control of it-foundation X does not want anything to do with it; there will be no interest charged; and, by the way, if the British Government would like it as well, if it will help, it will be prepared to put up money for funding hospitals, schools, the building of Crossrail immediately with £17 billion transfer by Christmas, if requested, and all these other things. These things can be done, if wished, but a senior member of the Government has to accept the invitation to a phone call to the chairman of foundation X-and then we can get into business. This is too big an issue. I am just an ageing, obsessive old Peer and I am easily dispensable, but getting to the truth is not. We need to know what really is happening here. We must find out the truth of this situation.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...undation-x

[Magda Hassan]

Quite extraordinary. In any case they don't invest money with out getting their pound of flesh. With that amount of money they could buy all of Britain. I look forward to more information.

[David Guyatt]

What a gem you've found Carsten.

I suspect I know the name of "Foundation X" and their history in the black gold market. I also suspect that the reasons the government will not advance on this offer are manifold, but one of the reasons would be that it would have to admit that gold (as with diamonds too) is far more plentiful than we are given to believe. The historic figures for mined gold have no "confirming authority", as Lord james states. It is all supposition and smoke and mirrors.

However, no one gives money away without expecting something in return and it is that unspoken "Devil's bargain" that would intrigue me.

There was an additional comment that Lord James stated:

[quoted]But if you tap into the Vatican accounts-of the Vatican bank-you come up with a claim of total bullion-[/quote]

Quite how does a Noble Lord "tap" into the Vatican bank accounts I wonder? Did "Foundation X" provide him with paper-work? Is there an internet cafe one can visit that has a direct and discrete dial-in to those accounts? Or was it, perhaps, his Bank of England connections where he got them from, as they certainly would have access to that sort of information?

Also, I have a conspiracy theory which is this: there is a conundrum about the use of gold bullion to underpin currency that the Lords of the Universe saw decades ago. The Lords wished to expand the global economy by a vast and unprecedented amount (let's say an "astronomical" amount). Historically the value of gold and other "valuables" have a high value because of their rarity. That value would diminish were greater reserves to come into being, thus making the use of bullion to expand the world economy counter-productive. Ergo, gold reserves had to remain limited to keep values high and to keep the unofficial (black) market in bullion effective -- and to keep those nations and families in the middle and far east who love gold happy and content.

But to astronomically expand the world economy requires nothing more solid than billowing smoke and a wilderness of mirrors. This is the hidden alchemy of actual gold.

[Magda Hassan]

I can't recall what the amount was exactly but I remember when I read what the total amount of gold mined in the world was supposed to be in cubic meters I was stunned. I'd seen at least that much in my travels in the back streets of Asia let alone what resides in the vaults of European banks. Row after row of shops selling nothing but gold or star sapphires or Siam silver Other girld friends talked about what was available in Saudi Arabia where they worked and they were hapy to send me some it was cheap (comparatively) and plentiful and high quality/carat. It's just got to be a good deal more than what was stated.

Sounds a bit like Foundation X wants to use Britain as a cover to launder their ill gotten proceeds.

I'm tired and sleepy so my historical recall is patchy tonight but what was the effect of Nixon dumping the gold standard in the 70s? Seems like the beginning of QE 1 and we're still dealing with the inevitable outcome of that now.

[David Guyatt]

I've just checked Lord James entry on Wiki. According to that entry (which must have been updated very quickly because there is a notation about his House of Lords speech 3 days ago on 1st November 2010!), the identity of "Foundation X" is probably the "Office of International Treasury Control" which is what I suspected. Interested readers may visit the wiki page for this curious group HERE.

Caveat Emptor!

However, there is something very odd about this organization. Many years ago I tried checking their alleged "UN Charter Control Number" with the UN. I was put through to various people, and to cut a long story short, never did get an authoritative answer. In fact I was left twisting in the wind.

The "officers" of this outfit are, by and large, nobodies. By which I mean they are uneducated, low-key types whose knowledge of banking and finance ranges from little to zero (imo). And Dam strikes me as being not much better. They also have a hidden occult/qabalistic connection via their "Dominion of Melchizedek" that claims its sovereignty on (literally) a piece of rock jutting up from the Pacific Ocean (see: http://archives.pireport.org/archive/200...6%2D14.htm

Back to Lord James previously known simply as David James "company doctor" (see:http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2309556). Intriguingly, David James was involved in the very smelly outfit called "Eagle Trust" - not a million miles away in name from the black bullion outfit known to goldbugs as "Black Eagle Trust". One might, therefore, argue that said Lord James has a historic connection with this subject? But even more intriguing still is the fact that it was the Eagle Trust was deeply embroiled in the Iraqi "Supergun" affair as one of its subsidiaries, Walter Sommers, manufactures the gun for Saddam (see: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busine...86437.html).

My analysis is that we are firmly in Spookland here. My guess is that Lord James is an intelligence "Mr. Fixit" in the style of Sir John Cuckney. For a far deeper background on this see Gerald James statement HERE.

According to Gerald James, one of the sponsors of Stephan Kock's UK citizenship (head of assassination squad Group 13) was Malcolm Rifkind. I seem to recall that it was Malcom Rifkind who had indirect connection to the Dunblane massacre and the horribly sordid paedophile network involved in that event? Didn't Rifkind, or one of his cronies, vouch for the gun license application of Thomas Hamilton, the known paedo who went on to fame by killing 16 schoolchildren in the Dunblane massacre? Or am I confusing events and mixing up his name with Lord Robertson, the late Minister of Defence and SecGen of NATO?

Oh, that's right, the various newspaper articles that outed these things have since been disappeared.

[Mark Stapleton]

Nice find, Carsten.

Won't Foundation X be annoyed with this turn of events. Lord James better watch his back. They have an amazing obsession with their own security, as Lord James pointed out.

Foundation X must think it's better to hand over some gold--to the right people of course--rather than let the whole stinking edifice collapse.

Smart thinking, Foundation X.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Fwiw - according to Tom Espiner, "technology reporter for ZDNet UK, covering all manner of security issues", Lord James of Blackheath has told him that there are "no links" between "Foundation X" and the Office of International Treasury Control.

Blogger Hopi Sen suggested in a blog post on Wednesday that the mysterious organisation could be the "United Nations Office of International Treasury Control" (UNOITC), which claims to be a sovereign entity formed after the Second World War.

James told ZDNet UK that he had not been approached by the UNOITC, and that there were no links between Foundation X and UNOITC.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/security-bu...-10020958/

Meanwhile, David Guyatt is surely right that we are in Spookland here. The House of Lords transcript contains one of the most outrageous passages ever uttered amongst the ermine-clad old reactionaries of the upper chamber:

Lord James of Blackheath: I have had one of the biggest experiences in the laundering of terrorist money and funny money that anyone has had in the City. I have handled billions of pounds of terrorist money.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Where did it go to?

Lord James of Blackheath: Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than £1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with north African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue. I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defence witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.

I beg your pardon, m'lud. But that is treason.

Lord James is admitting to laundering billions of pounds of terrorist money, including IRA money.

Lord James is further claiming that he did so with the knowledge and agreement of the Bank of England, and therefore cannot and will not be prosecuted.

Most researchers here at DPF know that these claims, in their essence if not their specifics, are true. However, City/Wall Street laundering of terrorist money is NEVER admitted by the powerful, and certainly not on the public record at an establishment bastion such as the House of Lords.

Again, this is not a slip of the tongue under pressure from an investigative journalist or ferocious lawyer. This is a considered statement from a peer of the realm and high-level City insider, entered into the Parliamentary record.

Wtf does Lord James think he's playing at?

[David Guyatt]

Interesting about the OITC - if his Lordship has spoken with a straight tongue.

Did he hint at who else it might be? I don't suppose he did. The question remains, of course, what foundation or entity would offer that sort of money on the terms his Lordship appeared to imply - free and gratis and out of the simple goodness of their hearts?

The only entity I know of who has ever offered this before (several times in fact) is OITC. It certainly is a glove that fits, although there may be others I am unaware of. On the other hand, if OITC is an SIS creature (which has been suggested by others a few years ago), then one can see why any association would be denied publicly. It's hard to know either way.

It's also an interesting point Jan that his Lordship didn't utter his comments through simple-mindedness. He seemed to me to be issuing a semi-veiled warning for having been spurned - and if that is the case, then one can assume it is what he didn't say rather than what he did, that underlies this threat (if that is what it is).

Might his comments about money laundering be the actual key to this enigma? Using bullion to launder drug money is a well established laundering technique.

Meanwhile I continue to be struck by the speedy timing of his Lordship's Wiki entry. Someone has gone to the trouble of posting the section about his "Foundation X" 3 days after that happened.

I wonder who and why? Smells like co-ordination to me.

[Linda Minor]

I find it fascinating, of course, that Lord Sassoon seems involved in the matter.

http://www.politics.ie/united-kingdom/14...world.html

The sassoon family
David Sassoon was born in Baghdad, Iran in 1792. His father, Saleh Sassoon, was a wealthy banker and the treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, the governor of Baghdad. (Thus making him the "court Jew" - a highly influential position.) In 1829 Ahmet was overthrown due to corruption and the Sassoon family fled to Bombay, India. This was the strategic trade route to interior India and the gateway to the Far East. In a brief time the British government granted Sassoon "monopoly rights" to all manufacture of cotton goods, silk and most important of all - Opium - then the most addictive drug in the world!

The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905, states that Sassoon expanded his opium trade into China and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the various major opium exchanges in China. According to the 1944 Jewish Encyclopedia: "He employed only Jews in his business, and wherever he sent them he built synagogues and schools for them. He imported whole families of fellow Jews. . . and put them to work."

Sassoon's sons were busy pushing this mind-destroying drug in Canton, China. Between 1830 - 1831 they trafficked 18,956 chests of opium earning millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000 chests and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic.

In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that it be stopped. He named the Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate.