The sophisticated military operations of ISIS, Al Qaeda and their affiliates require significant financial resources. It is common sense that cutting off terrorist access to money will dramatically reduce their ability to procure weapons and support their mercenary fighters, and will quickly cripple their global Jihadi movement. And where does Hillary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State during President Obama’s first term, fit in?

Donald Trump has stated facts about the “dark banking channels” which most politicians refuse to acknowledge. When asked on April 28, 2016 on The O’Reilly Factor about ISIS and black market oil, Trump responded: “Because that's their source of wealth. Now, they also have a lot of wealth through the banking channels. You have [to] comb the dark banking channels. And they're getting a lot of wealth through them. People don't even know about it but they are…” The dark banking channels referenced by Mr. Trump are nothing new, and these criminal financial networks have aided and abetted the rise of radical Islamic terror for decades.

Many Americans will recall the scandal involving the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in the 1980s and early 1990s. But most Americans are unaware of the connection between BCCI and Hillary Clinton when she was working for the Rose Law Firm.

Billionaire Little Rock Arkansas Clinton-supporter Jackson Stephens, with Bert Lance, would bring BCCI to America with the legal representation of the Rose Law Firm, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and C.J. Giroir. Also involved were Clark Clifford (the former Defense Secretary under Johnson and lawyer for BCCI), Robert Altman (attorney for Bert Lance and Clifford's partner), and Kamal Adham (the former director general of Saudi Arabian intelligence). Rose was the law firm for the Arkansas financial group Stephens Inc. As stated by Martin Waller in The Guardian (March 24, 1994): “Stephens Inc. and the Rose law firm helped BCCI creep into the US banking market through its purchase of shares in Financial General.”

As reported by the Wall Street Journal in an article, “A Whitewater Chronology: what really happened during the Clinton years,” May 28, 2003:

1977: Hillary Rodham Clinton joins the Rose Law Firm. Jackson Stephens joins with former Carter administration budget director Bert Lance and a group of Mideast investors--later identified as key figures in the corrupt Bank of Credit & Commerce International--in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Financial General Bank shares in Washington, D.C. Amid the legal maneuvers surrounding the takeover attempt, a brief is submitted by the Stephens-controlled bank data processing firm Systematics; two of the lawyers signing the brief are Hillary Rodham and Webster Hubbell.

1981 Aug. 25: The Federal Reserve approves a new bid--by largely the same group of BCCI front men--to acquire Financial General Bank shares.

1982: Financial General changes its name to First American and Democratic Party icon Clark Clifford is appointed chairman. BCCI fronts begin acquiring controlling interest in banks and other American financial institutions.

BCCI was created in 1972 by Pakistani bankers Swaleh Naqvi and Agha Hasan Abedi. Criminal investigations by U.S authorities uncovered that BCCI was laundering money for Middle Eastern terrorists including BCCI account holder Osama bin Laden. CNN.com Europe reported on September 26, 2011, “Bin Laden linked to BCCI”:

New details of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden's finances emerged Wednesday in a Senate Finance Committee hearing on money laundering. Among other things, the committee learned of a bank established by bin Laden with links to banks around the world and bank accounts at the fraud-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was closed in the early 1990s.

This tidbit of information had been in the possession of U.S. investigators as long as a decade ago, but overlooked, a senator testified. This is because bin Laden had not then been identified as a focus of U.S. terrorism concerns.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who conducted an investigation into the fraud-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International, said bin Laden held a number of accounts with BCCI.

Osama bin Laden used BCCI as a main conduit for financing his operations in Afghanistan. Bin Laden founded Al Qaeda in 1988 and, as history records, Al Qaeda would engage in horrific acts of terrorism against American citizens, to include:

· Training and arming Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993;

· Bombing the New York City World Trade Center in 1993, killing 6 and injuring 1,042, including 88 firefighters and 25 police officers;

· Bombing the U.S.-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh, killing 5 Americans and 2 Indians in 1995;

· Bombing the U.S. Embassy Nairobi, Kenya in 1998 killing 213 and injuring 4,500;

· Bombing of the U.S Embassy in Tanzania in 1998 killing 11 and injuring 85;

· Attacking the USS COLE in Yemen in 2000 killing 17 US sailors and injuring 39; and,

· Attacking the World Trade Center, Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, killing 2,977 people and injuring thousands.

Senator John Kerry, the current Secretary of State, led the investigation into BCCI and released a report entitled “The BCCI Affair.” The report revealed:

BCCI's support of terrorism and arms trafficking developed out of several factors. First, as a principal financial institution for a number of Gulf sheikhdoms, with branches all over the world, it was a logical choice for terrorist organizations, who received payment at BCCI-London and other branches directly from Gulf-state patrons, and then transferred those funds wherever they wished without apparent scrutiny. Secondly, BCCI's flexibility regarding the falsification of documentation was helpful for such activities. Finally, to the extent that pragmatic considerations were not sufficient of themselves to recommend BCCI, the bank's pan-third world and pro-Islam ideology would have recommended it to Arab terrorist groups.

It is time to connect the dots. By August 1981, the terrorist banking syndicate BCCI was successful in its efforts to penetrate the U.S. banking industry—thanks, in part, to legal assistance by the law firm employing Hillary Rodham Clinton. No evidence has emerged of her direct involvement in wrongdoing related to BCCI. But it is notable that a number of the firm’s attorneys were proven, to put it delicately, to be willing to cut corners and enter into unsavory deals.

It is incumbent upon Clinton to explain that chapter of her career—and to offer clear assurances that none of the people she worked with on the BCCI matter had anything to do with her career development, her decision-making as Secretary of State, or the rapid growth in funding for the Clinton Foundation from Middle Eastern donors. Some of those associates ended up in prison for their actions, so this is no small matter. Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do.

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Charles R. Kubic served worldwide for over 32 years as a Navy Seabee, and retired in 2005. He served as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House, and was appointed in March 2016 as a National Security Policy Advisor to Donald Trump.

Image: Hillary Clinton in 2007. Photo by Marc Nozell, CC BY 2.0.