By Anthony Fox - No Agenda News
In 2006, former US Treasury agent Leo Wanta, gave a series of interviews to Greg Szymanski. He claimed he was attempting to return trillions of dollars that lay in offshore accounts to the US Treasury.
This is his story, in his own words.
Part One
GREG: Investigative Journal is travelling to Switzerland today and my guest [is] Leo Wanta. Tell us how this all started for you.
LEO: Okay in 1980...But going way back prior to that, I was being mentored by the Chairman of the Senate Foriegn Relations Commitee, Senator Alexander Wiley. I was trained in financials and government, intelligence and so on and so forth.
So in 1980, when President Regan won the election he retained the services of William French Smith a[n] attorney in California who was going to be his Attorney General. So then we all got together with Casey and Colby, William French Smith and President-elect Reagan.
GREG: And you're sitting in talking with these guys correct?
LEO: Yeah, I was already known within a very tight group through Senator Wiley of my background and my management training and my engineering training.
Uncle Sam, arranged for me to get a 5 year apprenticeship in tool and die. When I'm in foriegn countries, I can kind of glance at it and know what they're doing. I didn't have to have blueprints. I can design my own blueprints, because I had an engineering degree as well.
So I was introduced to the future Attorney General Wiliam French Smith, and Bill Casey, which I'd already known through Bill Colby. We started having some meetings prior to him being elected on how he could control the east european environment.
So then, after a number of meetings and discussions, it was decided by the new Reagan administration that I should be the Inspector General of the Department of Defense because that would give me kind of a chance to review things. "Cap" Weinberger, who was now the Secretary of Defense said, "He's the last S.O.B. I need walking around me. He'll have my job in a couple of months."
So Pen James, who was the Director of Whitehouse personnel, and Rick Shelby, [who] was now a Senator, decided we should be doing some other stuff. So Bill Casey decided I should work hand-in-hand with him.
So they were all talking about Krushchev and the old days, and him pounding the desk at the United Nations. [How] they're going to bury us with our own shovels, and so on, and so forth.
President Reagan was a union guy in California. So they were looking at ways to get our country back through the apprenticeship programs and things of that nature; to rebuild infrastructure of the american people. The youth...Give them some skill trades training, education, and medical services; and things of that nature.
The biggest problem was the expenses [that] were always going out to fight the Cold War on the Soviet Union. They kept spending money for the military industrial giants and nothing for the average person. They agreed to my idea going back to Maynard Keynes, 'the best way to control a country is to control the economy and the currency.'
President Reagan, he was not a politician; didn't feel he should be a politician. He was a simple person and he wanted to undermine the USSR by destabilzing their military [and] their economy. And to get the people to understand that the rubles were only of value within the USSR.
President Reagan wanted to destabilize the USSR because they were a pain and he didn't trust them at all. He could not depend on anybody over there and he still had a lot of wounds from the past. So we decided, with William French Smith and a few other guys, how we could figure out a mission to destabilze the USSR so they couldn't buy anything. This is why you had the Star Wars [Strategic Defense Initiative] and everything. So President Reagan, started all kinds of development programs to spend a lot of money, but only on paper not in actual cash. That got the Soviets. Nobody understands a Soviets a Soviet; a Russian's a Russian. They're not the same.
After a number of meetings and discussions with people within the military and everything else, we agreed we would get a grant from the US Treasury for $150 billion. And we would start to destabilize their economy, their military, their GRU [Main Intelligence Directorate], and the like, by picking up their internal currency.
So we got together Mr. Kok [Kok Howe Kwong], who was part of the chinese intelligence group in Peking at that time. [We] were off to Vienna where we established New Republic/USA Financial Group, which was the security code of the Contra's way back when. [Vienna] was where the core of all the Soviet rubles were because they were not allowed to leave the USSR. They could not buy any food any refrigerators, any medicine, they couldn't buy anything. Anything you want to buy was all internal to the USSR and you couldn't take out the currency.
Yet, the Soviet Central Bank [Gosbank] said that every ruble is worth $1.20. Of course nobody's going to give you $1.20 because there's nothing to buy with a ruble.
So we were based in Vienna, in June 1988. We started to trade rubles through Brinks in Holland, into the the GRU?, military, the postal savings accounts, the manufacturing facilities in the USSR. We would give them hard currency for their rubles. They knew their rubles were worth zero.
We purchased Aneko Credit Pte Ltd. Singapore which was grandfathered to do these kind of things in Singapore. We would run all of these rubles through Aneko Credit and Asia-Europa Development Group and Trans-Asia Resources and New Republic/USA Financial Group in Austria. So I was sent to Austria in June 1988. I was a permenent resident of Austria.
We were starting through the KGB and the GRU, and anybody and everybody that was trying to make a fast buck, to gather up all of the rubles. So suddenly, we were getting all of the rubles. They wrote stories about this in major magazines and newspapers, that we were idiots in buying all these Soviet rubles. So more people came to us all the time and we we're negotiating between 18 to 28 cents a ruble. We would pay them off outside of the USSR in all the major banks; Hungarian banks as well. We had 109 accounts. If you got the rubles credited to our account we would would give you the hard currency of your choice. We had PROMIS software four units of [equ..s?]. It's a specialized banking center software, of Inslaw in Washington, DC. So people were bringing us rubles, rubles, rubles, left and right. In [to] Brinks in Holland, and other banks, and we were paying them in hard currency.
So here we are. We're all in Vienna. I speak very little German, but I'm there. We started to meet with a number of people within the Soviet bloc, and Hungary, and Iran, Iraq, so on, and so forth. And they're, shall we say, in an economic pinch because the USSR had no food, no meat, no nothing, no jet fuel. Because nobody would accept the ruble outside the country. So we used Brinks in Holland, and started to purchase rubles. Not purchase, say swap, you can't purchase currency but you can swap currencies. Something for something.
GREG: Okay. So basically, your job was to destabilize the ruble in an effort to bring the Cold War to an end, correct?
LEO: Correct. Because then they had no funds for the military. No funds for their intelligence. No funds for the KGB and the GRU and the like.
This is the first installment of an original series from No Agenda News.
Read part two here.
Subscribe to No Agenda News and get the entire series.
Read part two here.
Subscribe to No Agenda News and get the entire series.
