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Jackson Stephens
Last Updated: December 05, 2008

Jackson Stephens exemplified the requisites for an unstoppable self-made billionaire. Visionary, charismatic, and intrepid pathfinder for those in power seeking, like himself, greater wealth and influence as sole moral imperatives.

He reached the status of global-power broker nearly a half century before his death in 2005 at the age of 83. His impact, however lives on, in the government insider firms run by his son Warren, and in weakened US security from the covert deals he arranged between US Presidents and foreign despots.

As head of the largest investment bank off Wall Street, he increased the personal wealth of three eagerly compromised Presidents, in exchange for nuclear and information control technologies.

From a small farm in Little Rock, Arkansas, Stephens joined his brother’s investment company in 1947, after graduating the Naval Academy with classmates Jimmy Carter and future CIA Director Stansfield Turner.

Successful ventures in energy, finance and media parlayed into mega scores, when he arranged the underwriting of Wal-Mart in 1970, then funded Tyson Food’s takeover of Holly Farms.

Along the way he covered his bets, as a financial problem solver for national politicians of both parties.
In the ‘80s, he was Arkansas Governor Clinton’s go-to fundraiser. In return, Stephens’ firm handle 70% of all Arkansas public-works bond issues.

He teamed up with China-born billionaire Mochtar Riady, who, along with his son James, would later be convicted of secretly funding Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns with $ millions from the Chinese government.

During those same years, equal opportunist Stephens also arranged Mideast bankers’ multi $million bailouts for George W. Bush’s failing oil ventures.

Stephens’ firm, Systematics, secured a US beach-head for the infamous Bank of Commerce and Credit International. Before its $20 billion collapse in 1991, BCCI laundered money for dictators, terrorists, drug lords and illicit operations of intelligence agencies, including the CIA (most notably the Iran-Contra guns/cash/drugs transactions).

The effort started in the late ‘70s. Stephens brought Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter’s soon indicted former budget director, together with BCCI principals including Agha Hasan Abedi, Ghaith Pharoan and Khalid Mahfouz (all later criminally charged as well). After 9/11, they and many of their Arabian banking colleagues were directly linked to, or themselves named Specifically Designated Global Terror financiers

After years of complex scheming to circumvent regulatory hurdles, Stephens’ and Lance’s labors paid off. BCCI gained entry into the US banking system and its safeguard systems, through clandestine control of Financial General Bankshares (FGB), a major DC-based banking institution.

At the same time, the BCCI tycoons bought Lance’s interest in FGB subsidiary National Bank of Georgia, from which he had loaned himself and Jimmy Carter several $million. BCCI set up “consultant “ contracts and new terms for the loans’ repayment, along with millions more donated to Carter’s chosen charities.

Stephens’ BCCI incursion, and his other ventures were represented by Hillary Clinton and her Arkansas law firm partners Vince Foster (later White House Counsel before death by reported suicide), and Webster Hubbell (later #3 in the US Justice Department before serving 20 months on multiple fraud convictions).
While Clinton was Arkansas Governor, Stephens’ billionaire buddies, the Riadys, bonded with Bill and Hillary through their global conglomerate (and Chinese government partner), the Lippo Group. James Riady moved to Little Rock to be closer to his new friends.

In 1983, the Riadys launched their first business venture in Arkansas: The Lippo Finance & Investment Inc. The following year, Lippo ,and everyone’s friend Jackson Stephens partnered to buy control of Arkansas’ Worthen Bank Corp. In 1991, a $2.5 million Worthen loan (never repaid), would rescue Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
Hillary and her law partners naturally handled Worthen, and other China-partnered Lippo matters as well.
In 1985, Worthen Bank was indicted for extending several million dollars' worth of illegal, preferential loans to companies owned by the Riadys and Stephens.

A fire of “unknown causes” broke out in the bank at 3am, destroying all the records sought by the prosecutors. Worthen and another Lippo-China bank were given “cease and desist” orders from making such “dangerous loans” in the future. The criminal case was settled, and the loans to Stephens and the Riadys were never repaid.
In 1987, Stephens’ ecumenical spirit helped arrange a $25 million bailout of George W. Bush’s floundering oil venture, Harken Energy, through his very same BCCI buddies, in partnership with the Union Bank of Switzerland.

Stephens gave $100,000 to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980, another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990, and was a Bush Ranger (minimum $200, 000) for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
But through the first half of the ‘90s, Stephens, and his China-tied Lippo partners’ favorite recipient was Bill Clinton. Stephens was Clinton’s 2nd biggest contributor over his political career.

Toward the end of his first term, over fierce Congressional and Defense Department objections, Clinton ended major restrictions against military technology transfers to China. The US-China trade imbalance grew enormously, and Chinese nuclear weapon espionage, as documented in Congressional reports, grew rampant.

This while Clinton’s re-election campaign received $ millions, which were later traced back to foreign sources, mainly China.
In 1993, Clinton appointed Lippo Sr.VP John Huang as Assistant Deputy Secretary of the US Commerce Department.

With only a perfunctory background check, Huang was given Top Security clearance, actually approved five months before he took office.
Congressional probes later revealed that while installed at Commerce, Assistant Deputy Secretary Huang spent most afternoons at Stephens’ corporate offices, and was in constant contact with the Lippo Group, as well as with Chinese government officials.
Stephens’ Systematics, meanwhile, reportedly utilized a cutting edge computer program named PROMIS, secretly equipped with “back door control” ability, in IT management contracts with banks across the country.

Systematics merged with telecom giant Alltel just before Clinton’s Presidency. Stephens data mining company, Acxiom, continued rolling in “sensitive” government contracts through the Clinton and George W administrations.

Acxiom was the aggregator of US citizens’ private information for the Bush Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, headed by John Poindexter, convicted of conspiracy in the ‘80s Iran/Contra scheme.

In a 2005 government contract, Acxiom, along with Alltel/Systematics’ major vendor Qsent, and Choicepoint (which falsely disqualified tens of thousands of Florida Democrats in the 2000 Presidential election), merged extensive private information about 100 million US citizens. They illegally gave the data to the TSA, which then transferred it to IBM. The TSA explained it all as an unfortunate series of mistakes.

*** Note – In 1997, IBM joined with a small new firm named Ptech, to create the “Unified Modeling Language” as the common parlance for integrated software coding.

Ptech, though known by FBI Bin Laden Unit Chief (later whistleblower) Robert Wright to be headed by a major Al Qaeda financier, and funded by Stephens’ former BCCI colleagues, was placed in charge of software management at every critical US Government agency- Defense, State, Justice, Energy, Transportation, the White House itself.

Ptech and a quasi government entity named MITRE, utilized PROMIS software to create the FAA’s National Airspace System, in control of operations on 911.

Stephens’ Acxiom Board of Directors reflected his cultivated Democratic Party dealings. The Board included former Clinton Chief of Staff “Mack” McClarty, former NATO Commander(and one time Democratic candidate) Wesley Clark and former Lippo Sr Exec Stephen Patterson.

When the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, both Alltel and Acxiom joined in formation to unfurl their primary team colors.

Within the same week in ‘07, each was acquired by TPG/Newbridge Capital, co-chaired by US Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum.

Senator Feinstein (D-Ca) is in perfect position to be of service. She is Chair of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, and member of the Appropriations Subcommittees for Defense and Intelligence.

The awful legacy of Jackson Stephens’ spectral empire, now controlled by his son Warren, seems secure.

Categories

International Finance | Information Technology | Functionaries | Homeland Security

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