The full report is about 583 pages when converted into PDF format. To save reading time, regarding BCCI's activity during the Carter administration, relevant sections include Chapters 1-3 with the Executive Summary and overview of BCCI's early history, Chapter 13 on Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, Chapter 16 on BCCI and Georgia politicians, and Chapter 17 on BCCI's lawyers and lobbyists.
The key development documented here that I was alluding to occurred during the 1977-1981 period. It began in 1977 with BCCI's initial approach to Bert Lance. Lance had manipulated loans at the National Bank of Georgia to finance Carter's election and had been forced to resign as Carter's OMB Director as a result. BCCI's approach to Lance alerted banking officials and regulatory authorities early on about BCCI's predatory intentions, blocking an early BCCI attempt to take over Financial General Bankshares.
To counter this early alert, BCCI then recruited Lance's lawyer Clark Clifford in February 1978. Clifford subsequently helped convince regulatory authorities that BCCI was not behind a follow-up takeover attempt that employed a front company, CCAH. Authorities suspected CCAH was a BCCI front, but Clifford convinced them otherwise by recruiting a group of key Democratic Party insiders for an April 1980 CCAH shareholders meeting and follow-up lobbying, to give the appearance that CCAH was controlled by individuals of known reputation and not BCCI. The final review filing for the takeover was submitted in November 1980 and completed in April 1981.
These key developments were completed during the tail end of Carter's administration and the transition to the Reagan administration, and it is quite just to lay some of the blame on Carter's doorstep (along with many others too numerous to list in this brief summary--BCCI was a more tangled web than I care to try to unravel in one post). Lance, Clifford, other Carter officials, and Carter himself subsequently received various forms of compensation from BCCI. Lance, who continued to remain a key Democratic Party financial figure into the Walter Mondale and Jesse Jackson campaings, put BCCI's Agha Hasan Abedi in direct touch with Carter as well as Andrew Young after Carter left office. As the report summarizes in Chapter 16 on BCCI and Georgia politicians:
President Carter was used by BCCI to enhance its credibility around the world and particularly in developing countries. President Carter travelled to a number of these countries with BCCI's president, Abedi, increasing Abedi's status and helping Abedi gain access and entry to political leaders from those countries. At the same time, the former President became beholden to the bank for its generous contributions to his charities. While President Carter did not show sufficient interest in establishing the bona fides of the bank, the CIA, which had substantial negative information on BCCI, failed to provide him with that information. When a President of the United States becomes a private citizen, it is obviously his choice with whom he associates. Nevertheless, former Presidents are afforded physical protection, and should be afforded, to the extent possible, protection of their reputation. As a result of his own lack of diligence in seeking information on BCCI's poor reputation, and the CIA's lack of diligence in telling President Carter what they knew, President Carter became closely associated for a decade with a bank that constituted organized crime. This outcome was not in the interests of the United States.
While the summary here tries to portray Carter as a witless dupe, it is difficult to reconcile this with Carter's full history of involvement in similar activity, which was evident in Billygate and continued up through the Oil-for-Food scandal at least. But that is another story.
bflr