Are world leaders being incarcerated without anyone knowing, or are we being primed for another clever disinformation ploy?

A very interesting article was making the rounds of the conspiracy forums in February of 2007. It was dated February 10, and its title was certainly bombastic enough: "INTERNATIONAL WARRANT FOR THE ARREST OF TONY BLAIR - GRAVE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS NOW SLIDING OUT OF CONTROL."

I hadn't actually recalled seeing any mention of this in the various international and local newspapers at that time, which I still make sure to peruse a couple of times a week. But maybe the story was so explosive that it was simply covered up by the mainstream press, as we do know has happened a couple of times in the past? It surely looked intriguing enough to invite a closer look. But the article opens with a very curious statement: "The state office of Mme Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has authorized the reissuance of warrants issued last December by the 'ad hoc Tribunal' of three European Justices in Germany in accordance with the subpoena of the International Court of Justice … "

This precluded the need to read any further, as anybody with the most basic knowledge of International Law and Relations can immediately discern that something like this can never happen. Firstly, because the International Court of Justice only handles disputes between nations, and does not have any authority to arrest the political leaders of these nations.

Furthermore, the ICJ is a United Nations organization, and even if they had arrest powers (which they do not), the German Chancellor would not be empowered to authorize their arrest warrants for anybody - certainly not for a foreign Prime Minister. If that weren't enough, an "ad-hoc Tribunal" is a temporary judicial body, usually convened hastily and on the spot (when there is no time to erect a special court through due legislation) - often when victors of a war want to try the leaders of the losing side. This is certainly not the situation in Europe today.

The author of this article [www.worldreports.org] is listed as "Christopher Story", who states on that website that he's an expert on world finance and economics with decades of experience, an occasional advisor to Margaret Thatcher, and the editor of the "International Currency Review" since 1969.

That certainly sounds prestigious enough and above-board, a fact difficult to reconcile with the patently ridiculous claims made in that article, which any second-year Law student could immediately recognize as false.

If true, the facts Story presents would have certainly resounded all over the Internet, if not in the mainstream news. A quick search for the above headline however, revealed that this issue is so far being discussed only on a few conspiracy forums, and is getting no mention anywhere else, certainly not in any mainstream publication.

Assuming Christopher Story's biography to be true, I decided that his above article must be some kind an elaborate joke. This is evidently a man of an eloquent satirical mind, who writes his sophisticated political satire in the form of "genuine news", while making it obvious to any semi-educated reader that he's merely expressing his own wishful thinking. As a Thatcher advisor, he probably does honestly think that Blair should be jailed for his "crimes" - and writes funny essays about it. Everybody understands that it's all just for fun, like the various "spoof headlines" one often sees in humor magazines.

Just for fun though, I thought it would be interesting to check how the public had received some of Story's previous satirical tales. According to the article archive on his World Reports site, he has been posting them there since October 2005, with most of the action occurring since July 2006. I decided to check on the very interesting claim he makes in the second paragraph of the above article, namely that "Last December [2006], the US Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was arrested on such a warrant." Surely we would have heard about something like that by now.

My search quickly showed that the only reason there weren't too many mentions of the "Warrant for Tony Blair" article, was merely because it hadn't had time to accumulate momentum yet. Because Story's article about Paulson's arrest had been republished on dozens of "respected" conspiracy websites around the Internet, and presented not as a political satire, but as God's Own Truth.

The article is titled "U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY HENRY M. PAULSON HAS BEEN ARRESTED IN EUROPE", published by Story on December 30, 2006 at www.worldreports.org (the page includes several updates). A search for the above title on Google produces hundreds of exact matches, which show that this article has been linked or reproduced on nearly every conspiracy site around the Internet, including such known stalwarts as Godlike Productions, Rumor Mill News, and Educate-Yourself, and also in many popular blogs.

Perhaps the most curious appearance of this story is on the "Elections 08" website of US Presidential contender, John Edwards (at blog.johnedwards.com). The comments accompanying it show that the site's readers take this information seriously and not as wishful thinking or satire - which makes it seem doubly strange that Mr. Edwards does not either clarify this for his readership, or remove the silly article from his site altogether. (NOTE: That page was subsequently taken down from Edwards' website, probably as a result of the earlier publication of the current work.)

Paulson was in Germany in December of 2006 for some high-level financial talks, actually involving the "hedge funds" of President Bush, and was thus conveniently on the spot of the alleged arrest. He was seen later at Gerald Ford's funeral, reportedly arriving late and disheveled.

And yet it should be obvious to anybody with a minimal understanding of International Politics, that an active member of the US Administration simply CANNOT be arrested anywhere in the world today - unless the arresting parties want to cause another World War. So what exactly is the writer of such plainly bogus "news" trying to achieve?

Having taken a good look at what the various websites have to say about this, it was quickly becoming obvious that Christopher Story does not in any way think he is publishing satire - quite the contrary. He appears to be taking his statements very seriously himself, vehemently defends his preposterous assertions as the One and Only Truth, and is furthermore threatening to sue for libel anyone who questions his factual statements:

"Instead of asking us such crude questions [such as, "where do you get this information" - SA], may we suggest that people who, without a cause, suggest we are liars, are laying themselves open to risk, since such allegations can be addressed in the English Court, where the laws of libel are much more stringent than in the United States." (See "January 1 Update" at the above link on World Reports.)

One of his books

So who exactly is this Mr. Christopher Story? His "World Report" website says that he is "a former occasional adviser to Lady Thatcher, has over 35 years' experience of specialist intelligence and financial publishing. Mr. Story has testified on several occasions before US Congressional Committees on international affairs issues. He is a very well-known independent currency, economics, finance and current affairs specialist, and is also a conference speaker on dimensions of the World Revolution that are swamping and confusing the West." (www.worldreports.org ) Story is further described there as being "among the longest-serving editors of any publication in the world," having edited and published the "International Currency Review" since shortly after it first appeared in 1969.

Story's credentials certainly sound prestigious enough to inspire confidence, and a person with such a track record should surely know his world politics. The information he provides about himself is routinely used in reply to people questioning his material on the various forums, by showing that he is indeed a "legitimate" (albeit dissenting) voice in economic reporting and whistle blowing. And yet it's very difficult to reconcile Story's alleged experience in this field with the preposterous and patently absurd claims about some international "ad-hoc tribunal" arresting English and American governmental figures on German soil. It was obvious that this matter warranted further research, if I were to resolve this little inconsistency.

It seems reasonable to expect that a man of Story's experience and credentials would be mentioned many times on the Internet in his advisory capacity, offering his learned opinions to world leaders and such. Looking for him is by no means an easy task - because simply plugging "Christopher Story" into Google turns up many millions of hits. However, knowledge of various Google tricks and parameter-strings allows to narrow it down to a manageable several thousand.

Taking a good look at the top few hundred entries, one is stunned to discover that Story's name is conspicuously absent, in fact nearly nonexistent on the Internet outside several scant mentions from some notable rightist groups, like the John Birch Society (fourwinds10.com from September 2004). (Link no longer works)

He begins to appear more frequently only since around late 2005, when his articles about the "Federal Reserve money scam" from the World Reports website had begun to be syndicated on various conspiracy sites. The vast majority of his mentions refer to his articles from the past two months, mostly the one about Paulson's arrest.

Furthermore, Story's apparently prestigious publication "The International Currency Review", which sells a subscription for a no-nonsense $525 a year and claims to have existed since 1969 - is also not afforded hardly any mention on the Internet, outside of Story's website and its affiliates. A lone dedicated researcher and blogger James Bennett from Washington State was also surprised by this and has spent some time looking into it - and did find copies of this periodical in the University of Washington Library - but only up to the year 1995. (thechiefbrief.blogspot.com) It seems that from the early 1990s, the magazine began focusing on "paranoid Cold War/Illuminati/Vatican conspiracy theories", and the writer guesses that the library considered it a waste to continue spending money on it.

An unusually intelligent reader from the James Randi forum has conducted a thorough investigation of a claim from Story's articles from February 2, 2007, of this year, "U.S. HOUSE BILL TO ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE" (www.worldreports.org_). The article says that "the US House of Representatives has a Bill to abolish the Federal Reserve (see previous postings) which had been expected to be approved on 1st February" - yet we are shown that the bill was introduced in 2003 and hadn't been heard of since. It becomes apparent that the writer of such words is either deliberately lying, or does not know the first thing either about the US legislative process, or how to find his way around a congressional website. (See forums.randi.org)

Once again, the incongruities were piling up here. What was exactly the story with this Story, who claims to be an economic and political expert with 35-year experience - but makes absolutely ridiculous assertions about International Law and names sums of money which he should well know that do not exist, and also purports to be an advisor to governmental figures and bodies in England and the US - yet is mentioned largely on websites of the neo-fascist fringe? Despite my natural aversion to reading such nonsense, it seemed that there was nothing for it but to take a much closer look at what Mr. Story is actually saying in his (needless to say - horrifically long, drawn-out and repetitive) articles.

Right at the top of his "Paulson Arrested" article, Story says this in the "January 4 Update": "All details of the Paulson arrest scenario and the contents of the Diary coverage on this website, together with all the previous Wanta postings, are pre-approved by Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., Treasurer and Executive Vice President, AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc, and by Ambassador Leo Emil Wanta."

A closer look at the article, as well as Story's "previous Wanta postings", show that evidently the most vital player here, and indeed the SOURCE of all of Story's information about this very puzzling international affair, is this Leo Wanta. Although for some reason he prefers all his statements to be made by his "treasurer" Cottrell, Wanta seems to be the origin of the information and the foremost player in this drama, and if we want to get to the bottom of what is happening here, he would be the first person to ask. When I began looking for information about him, however, it quickly became apparent that Wanta is an extraordinarily strange and elusive character.

Leo Wanta

Christopher Story refers to Wanta as the Somali Ambassador to Canada and Switzerland. Curiously enough, the Somali nation does not exist as a recognized sovereign state and has no central government or any other feature associated with it - such as the office of "Ambassador" to foreign countries. Story has repeatedly stated on his website that he will not be replying to any inquiries questioning Wanta or his information - and we must therefore search other sources for proof of the latter's credibility.

A thorough scan of the information available on the Internet about this man shows that he is a most slippery character, a convicted con-man on one hand, yet persistently appearing in various shadowy governmental and conspiracy contexts, invariably dealing with very large sums of money.

His earliest mention on the Internet is in some Usenet postings from 1997 (now "Google Groups"). At that time a man by the name of "J. Orlin Grabbe" posted a series of articles about him on the alt.conspiracy group, some of which were said to have been written that year by Sarah McClendon, a well-known and respected Washington DC reporter, who died in 2003 at the age of 93. (See for example at (groups.google.com)

The original source of McClendon's articles is not provided, and it is thus impossible to check whether she had indeed written and published them (she would've been 87 in 1997). But the article states that Wanta "is credited with bringing down the Soviet Union in the Cold War" with his "purchase of huge sums in Russian rubles".

These assertions are routinely used by all subsequent writers to prove Wanta's involvement with the vast sums of money, which he is purportedly negotiating the return of (which number in the TRILLIONS of dollars.) McClendon's reputation seems to prove that Wanta is indeed real. For example, the most prominent promoter of Wanta's story in recent times, the "alternative reporter" Greg Szymanski has this headline on his website from October 9. 2006: "Even famous White House reporter, Sarah McClendon, put pen and paper to the Wanta story in two 1997 articles". (www.arcticbeacon.com )

A large amount of information about Wanta, including reprints of McClendon's articles and others, is collected on the website of APFN (American Patriot Friends Network), at www.apfn.org . It's not clear whom provided that site with the various original documents reproduced there, and one wonders whether the mentioned J. Orlin Grabbe may've had a hand in this as well.

Be that as it may, the 2001 book "Tragedy of Russia's Reforms", states that Wanta had some dealings with the government of President Boris Yeltsin, and also notes that he was wanted for credit-card fraud by US authorities (Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy, 2001, Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, p. 276)

Wanta was evidently a resident of Wisconsin, and was convicted of tax-fraud there. Two very interesting articles from the Madison Capital Times from 1995 describe Wanta as a "delusional con-man", who was tested by the court for sanity. The articles disclose that Wanta was later convicted of non-payment of taxes for the years 1988-89, and sentenced to eight years in prison. The Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General claimed for the State that Wanta made $500,000 in a scam where people got to invest in a currency-exchange deal, but did not declare these earnings, or paid tax on them.

He further said that Wanta is an international con man, who was arrested in Switzerland in 1993 for attempting an $81 million bank fraud, was deported to the US, where he was arrested on the Wisconsin tax charge. (The two Capital Times articles are reprinted verbatim on a forum thread at www.quatloos.com. For the serious Wanta researcher, this page also has reprints of several revealing court decisions involving Wanta. ) (UPDATE: Unfortunately, that entire thread with invaluable information about Wanta and reprints of all the court documents, has been removed from the Quatloos Forums.)

Comparing the above information with Sarah McClendon's articles, we see that the latter are inaccurate at least in their date - because we're led to believe by their accompanying date that they were written in 1997, while the Wisconsin tax court-case to which they refer had already ended in November 1995. One wonders therefore whether the rest of what is attributed to McClendon in this case is likewise "inaccurate".

Wanta's name is afforded mention by political-conspiracy journalist Tom Flocco. In an article from September 2004 on Financial Terrorism, whose subtitle is "Documents point to attack on America by White House crime families" (www.tomflocco.com) Flocco says that "According to an internal memo sent to Vice President Richard Cheney from former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Leo Wanta, an FBI special agent-in-charge and a CIA intelligence contractor met with an associate of Osama bin Laden (OBL) in Manila, Philippines 30 days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center." (Now available at www.tomflocco.com).

These allegations seem to firmly link Wanta with the US Government and its various shady deals, and they have been reproduced as proof of such complicity on several other websites - yet aside form a memorandum with all the names are blanked-out, Flocco does not provide a serious substantiation of this claim, and we are left with little choice but to take his word for it.

In the past couple of months, the publications covering this affair report Wanta himself moving into the background, while all of the information is now reaching Story and others only through his spokesman and associate, Michael C. Cottrel. This man is apparently a relative newcomer on the international money-scam scene, an entirely unknown name until it started to appear in Story's and Szymanski's articles.

Cottrell is described by Story and others as "Treasurer and Executive Vice President, AmeriTrust Groupe", his academic degree of MS (Master of Science) emphasized at nearly every opportunity. An amusing research into his background was conducted by James Bennett of the Chief's Blog (thechiefbrief.blogspot.com), who has been nearly single-handedly yet very diligently covering the Wanta Caper for over a year now.

Cottrell is listed on the Internet as running a small investment firm out of his house in Erie, Pennsylvania, and his resume is available online at www.mscmc.org.

In one of his articles, Story calls Cottrell's Master's thesis titled "Elite Power and Capital Markets", a "classic study". Bennett wonders how a thesis submitted a mere five years ago in February of 2002 to the Administration of Justice Department, Mercyhurst College, has already had time to become a "classic". But despite Cottrell's alleged masterful understanding of high international finance, he seems to know little about how actual compound interest works - for example, he repeatedly claims that it's possible to have a few billion dollars grow into tens of trillions in little more than a decade, at interest rates at 14%. Apart from the fact that such high percentages have not been heard of since the mid-eighties, that interest rate won't let a few billions grow anywhere near the sums he names, in fifteen years.

Logo of the Idaho Observer

Despite the fact that aside from wild speculations, all of the "real" available information about Wanta seems to show unequivocally that he is a con-artist who relies on people's gullibility and fraudulent representation of facts… he is certainly not treated as such today by several prominent conspiracy researchers. The stalwart "Idaho Observer", long known to be a mouthpiece for outrageous claims by right-wing conspiracy writers, has a very interesting article 2007 issue, titled "Following the money backwards leads to President Reagan, Russian rubles and Ambassador Leo Wanta" (www.proliberty.com)

The stalwart "Idaho Observer", long known to be mouthpiece for outrageous claims by right-wing conspiracy writers, had a very interesting article in its January 2007 issue.

The Idaho Observer article is actually a very interesting study in how utterly absurd and baseless theories get disseminated and promoted as factual truth in forums and publications of such nature. Despite everything written above about Wanta, all of which is in the public domain - such as the simple fact that Somalia does not have a post of "Ambassador" - the article does not refer to the man as anything but Ambassador Wanta - evidently working under the assumption that anything repeated endlessly becomes the truth. The article further states its most preposterous claims as fact, without offering a single shred of evidence for them - such as, for example, "Wanta … not only held diplomatic immunity but was also a U.S. Secret Service/Treasury, CIA, and FBI agent".

The Observer article does state that "irrefutable evidence" for all of its claims has been presented in our familiar International Currency Review, whose writer Christopher Story is presented there as "exhibiting a determination to honor the truth", who loves America despite being English. All of the Observer's information apparently comes from Story - but one of them seems to have gotten their facts wrong, because the article mentions that Wanta "received an "Illuminati" 22-year prison sentence in Wisconsin", due to the "illegal incarceration and persecution due to the bogus charges levied against him". Leaving aside for the moment of the possible bizarre ramifications of what an "Illuminati prison sentence" may mean, a look at the provided court-transcripts clearly shows that Wanta received only an eight-year sentence, and evidently not entirely based on "bogus reports".

A most stunning assertion is made in this article, for which no proof of any kind is provided: "Virginia District Federal Judge Gerald Bruce Lee declared Ambassador Wanta to be the "Principal" and Trustor [sic] of the $27.5 trillion in funds obtained via the financial implosion of the Soviet Union." Leaving aside for the moment that nothing of this sort is evident from the court record referred to above, this is still an absolutely preposterous statement, which seems to fly with the editorial board and the readership of this publication only because they don't seem to have any idea not only about their politics, but also about their math.

27.5 trillion dollars is an absolutely STAGGERING amount of money, even in today's terms, the kind of sum which is not readily available to anyone, not to people like Bill Gates, not to the Queen of England or to the "Russian Industrialist Mafia", and also not to any country in the world today.

For example -the total Gross Domestic Product for the entire world for the year 1990 was only $22.722 billion (adjusted for inflation), as reported by the International Monetary Fund. That same year of 1990, the entire federal budget of the US was "only" $1,253 trillion dollars. This is less than five percent of the sum which we are asked to believe was entrusted to the care of a SINGLE INDIVIDUAL - the unknown "CIA and FBI agent" (but known fraud and convicted felon) Leo Wanta. It is a simple and obvious impossibility that something like this could ever happen. Yet there is no denying that such a large sum certainly sounds very alluring.

Szymanski patriot stamp

According to the Idaho Observer, "The Wanta story was recently revived on the Investigative Journal by Greg Szymanski (sic) through interviews with Ambassador Wanta broadcast on the Republic Broadcast Network." In an article from January 3 of this year on his Arctic Beacon website, Szymanski himself states that "Besides the British outlet at World Reports, the Arctic Beacon has been the only U.S. outlet covering the Wanta story" (www.arcticbeacon.com).

Our Internet search had revealed earlier that Wanta's name indeed was virtually unknown outside fringe conspiracy groups, until Szymanski began shouting about it last year. His first article on Wanta was published on March 23, 2006 (www.arcticbeacon.com), and in it, Szymanski also introduces us to Christopher Story for the first time, as a man whose work "shines a brilliant light on the Illuminati's shady and dark financial underworld."

According to this article, the information about Wanta allegedly comes from another dedicated researcher, a "European bank fraud investigator named Marco Saba", who also says that Story is a "brilliant light … [in] this universe of darkness". Saba himself was an entirely unknown entity until introduced for the first time on Szymanski's website a convenient three days earlier, in an unrelated article about "The Strange Case of Dr. Francesco Pazienza Donato" from March 20 (www.arcticbeacon.com). Curiously, this Marco Saba is not mentioned by Christopher Story at all.

Unlike the newcomers Story and Saba, Szymanski has been a well-known voice around the conspiracy circle for several years, his articles routinely reproduced on most of the conspiracy websites on the Internet, including such relatively discerning portals as "Red-Ice Creations". A look at Szymanski's own website [www.arcticbeacon.com] reveals that he is a most prolific writer, publishing sometimes several lengthy articles a day.

Szymanski's work on this subject is a very interesting lesson in how information (or in this case, MIS-information) gets disseminated across the Internet. After the first mention of Wanta in March 2006, the Arctic Beacon websites now boasts scores of articles about him and his multi-trillion dollar affairs. Szymanski called Wanta "The 27.5 Trillion Dollar Man" in his second article about him, from three days later on March 26, and stuck with this title in his third piece from the 29th and the subsequent ones. Szymanski's articles on this subject have also won a wide circulation on conspiracy websites, and today, two years later, the name "Leo Wanta" in connection with these vast sums of money appears over tens of thousands of times on the Internet.

The fact that Szymanski's articles themselves carry glaring inconsistencies even with each other, does not seem to cause his fans to question his facts. For instance, in his first piece above from March 23, he says that Wanta has recently been released from "a 20-year jail term", but in the third article from March 29, he says that Wanta was "sentenced to 22 years" (for the "bogus Wisconsin tax-evasion charge".) Never mind the fact that the court records and articles from Wisconsin newspapers clearly show that Wanta was given "only" eight years…

Szymanski doesn't seem to mind when he disagrees even with himself. Interestingly, he did repost one Wisconsin article with Wanta's correct sentence in a later piece - but did not recant from his earlier statement about the "22 years", evidently preferring to stick with the largest number. We have seen that this number has been republished by the Idaho Observer in January of this year as The Truth, and we can assume that it will henceforth be treated as such by its many readers.

Szymanski tends to be popular on websites such as the "The American Free Press" (), and his articles get reprinted in places like "The Denver Spiritual Community" - which carries for example his piece from January 2006, this time surprisingly a relatively truthful account about a Democratic Congressman's call to impeach Bush and Cheney (www.denverspiritualcommunity.org). (UPDATE: The above article was taken down, and as of March 2007 the Denver Spiritual Community has no mention of Szymanski on their website.)

The above website formerly provided a short biography, which named Szymanski as a law-school graduate from Glendale University College of Law. Well, he has either forgotten everything he had learned, or this school gives diplomas to people without verifying that they actually understand any law. Because as a law-school graduate, he should certainly know that no "ad-hoc tribunal" could be convened by the International Court of Justice, which would have powers of arrest over senior members of world governments, and nor does the German Chancellor have any authority to order that court to do anything. He should also be able to read court documents, and thus understand the decisions of the Wisconsin court that sentenced Wanta to 8 years in prison, and the decision to reject Wanta's subsequent appeal.

Yet Szymanski works hard to demonstrate again and again, that he does not understand these simple facts. And as noted earlier, Christopher Story, who claims "35 years" of expertise in international finance and economics, should likewise be well familiar with international law, and understand the above, as well as the fact that the sums of money he talks about simply do not exist in the world - yet curiously he also persists in spouting absurd information which is much more reminiscent of the absurd anti-political ranters on the crazier conspiracy forums, and not of a serious financial analyst.

Many conspiracy websites and forums have been flooded with Wanta's tale for the past ten months. A look at some of the on-going discussions about it on these forums today reveals the result of this interesting trend: most people questioning its truthfulness now are either referred to reprints of Szymanski's articles as "proof" - or are told, in so many words, that this information is all over the Internet, and therefore simply "must" be based on solid facts.

If Christopher Story and Marco Saba really wanted their Leo Wanta tale to catch hold in people's minds and imagination, they could've hardly picked a better troubadour than Szymanski, who is regularly hailed as a "real American Patriot" on many of the websites where he appears. What we have here then, is another real-life proof that what they teach to every beginning Communications student in "Information Age 101" is true: that simple repetition in the public media causes something to become The Truth in people's minds, regardless of the subject matter's actual veracity. Are these people any better than the ones they blame for spreading lies?

A poignant point is made, about how bogus researchers like Szymanski suddenly appear on the scene of a serious investigation into the very real horrors perpetrated by our governments, in order to cloud the issues and shift the focus of attention to moot points - thus causing confusion among honest researchers, as well as painting the entire alternative news scene as a lunatic fringe who shouts ridiculous accusations without checking their facts. We urge our readers to take a look at a typical Szymanski article, and compare it with the WingTV piece above, and decide for themselves which of the two speaks in a saner language.

A reader from a conspiracy forum asks this very relevant question: "With so much real scandal happening in the Bush Administration, WHY does anyone bother making this [expletive deleted] up?"(www.digg.com/politics) Well, anybody who understood the message of the WingTV article knows why: these preposterous fictitious scams are invented in order to confuse any would-be researcher about what's going on, and divert everyone's attention from the real scandals.

It should be noted that in his articles from January 10 and 28 and February 16 of 2007 about the Wanta case, Szymanski is apparently beginning to disagree with Christopher Story whom he had earlier praised so highly, and brings evidence which seems to place Wanta's credibility in a very negative light. And yet this new evidence serves merely to confuse the issue still further, while Szymanski is making absolutely no effort to recant his earlier assertions about the unimaginable sums of money he named. As far as he is concerned, that story still stands.

In an article from February 16, 2007, (www.arcticbeacon.com), Szymanski ties Wanta's dealings with those of a very real personage Marc Rich, whose last-second pardon by Clinton caused not a little consternation in diverse circles of political commentators. Rich's dealings and machinations really ARE a conspiracy of vast global proportions, and connecting Wanta with it surely lends credibility to the latter.

The association between the two comes from another researcher who suddenly appears on the scene, one "Alf Mendes". It should be noted that Mendes published his article in November 2006, long after Szymanski first mentioned Wanta in March 2006. And Mendes evidently got his own information straight from Szymanski and Story, because in his quoted article he refers to the "22-year sentence" which Wanta received from the Wisconsin court for his tax-evasion. This factotum is patently false, because the court records plainly reveal that Wanta was only given eight years, but it would seem that none of these researchers had actually looked at those records.

ADDENDUM March 2008: It should be noted that after the original publication of this article in February of 2007, Szymanski has evidently very much cooled off towards the Wanta story, and has no more than two or three other articles for the entire remainder of 2007 and until now. It is hoped that it was the publication of refuting research like this, which has made him see the light here.

From the website of J. Orlin Grabbe

Another interesting name in this affair, who, as noted, was solely responsible for disseminating all of the earlier information about Leo Wanta, is one J. Orlin Grabbe. He posted the original article about Wanta, supposedly by journalist Sarah McClendon, on Usenet, as well as several other messages which are still accessible, about his shadowy government involvements. One finds no mention of him in connection with this affair afterwards.

Grabbe's website at www.aci.net is a sunning array of articles on most of the "alternative" subjects one can think of - from quantum consciousness to the Oak Island treasure and hallucinogenic medicine, all interspersed with many "soft porn" images of highly inviting naked women from the pages of Playboy and Penthouse magazines.

Outside of his very strange and not entirely explainable website, Grabbe seems to be an above-board economist, who has written a book on International Financial Markets (www.amazon.com )

A diligent poster on the popular "Above Top Secret" forums has done a thorough search and found an interesting correspondence about Grabbe, between Brian Redman, editor-in-chief of "The Conspiracy Nation" publication, and Gerald Carroll, the author of the book "Project Seek", about the JFK assassination. Mr. Redman writes: "after Grabbe admits to having fed you disinformation, you continue to publish his material? If a person admits to being a disinformation artist, how can you trust anything he says?" (www.theconspiracy.us), to which Carroll replies that Grabbe is a Harvard Ph.D. in economics and an expert in areas of finance, education and technology, who had written a "silly piece of satire", and later admitted this (www.theconspiracy.us).

Grabbe says this about himself: "My professional background is in international finance, and my textbook *International Financial Markets, 3rd Edition* is still the leading text in international finance at an MBA level. Copies are found in central banks around the world, and it is widely used in bank training programs and at leading universities - including the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where I taught, and Harvard, where I got my Ph.D. in economics." (groups.google.com)

We are thus led to believe that Grabbe enjoys making sophisticated jokes, which other people evidently take seriously (as Redman had apparently misunderstood the intent there). Perhaps his postings about Wanta were of the same satirical character? Story's recent articles about Wanta certainly seem like a fancy bit of satire, as noted above. And yet Story himself (as well as the people parroting his tale across the web) seems to take his information with the utmost seriousness. Did Grabbe merely misjudge the intelligence of his audience with his satire - or was his intent really to seed a piece of misinformation in the grapevine? This remains to be discovered.

An amusing sideline about Grabbe is that one of the reviews of his book on Amazon was done by a person giving his address as "Laissez Faire City Interim Community, Costa Rica". Grabbe also provides his address as being in Costa Rica, and furthermore has several articles on his website extolling the virtues of the place (for instance at www.aci.net/).

Laissez-Faire City is an interesting affair in itself, evidently the initiative of people dissatisfied with the taxation system of the US and seeking a shelter (and perhaps also a country where goods and services are somewhat cheaper than on the mainland). According to an article from 1999, "Update on Laissez-Faire City" at, the place clearly lacked level-headed vision or even people you could have a normal conversation with, which evidently caused the more serious Libertarian organizations to sever their ties with it. One wonders how an apparently educated and intelligent man like Grabbe would get involved in that affair. In any case, the virtual city was dissolved in 2002 (see "Laissez-Faire City is no more" from SCAMDOG).

(UPDATE March 2008: the website "libertariannation.org" unfortunately no longer carries any of its former articles, and instead links to something called hirewayne.com , where one is invited to hire an Internet programmer named Wayne with 28 years experience, currently residing in Costa Rica…)

In his early 2007 articles about the Wanta affair, Greg Szymanski introduced a new and intriguing character into the tale. On January 10, 2007, he published a piece titled, "www.arcticbeacon.comJury Still Out on Wanta's Credibility, According To Wife Of Murdered U.S. Army Colonel", (), where we meet this widow, named "VK Durham", and are shown her version of the story.

The article begins by stating that "the jury is still out" on whether Wanta is serving "the good side or the bad" - but Durham says that he is not "the 'white knight' portrayed in many internet articles". She accuses him and Christopher Story of "arrogance", and says that he is "one of the good old boys", and not a "true" American patriot. Her correspondence with Wanta dated January 6 and 7 2007 is reproduced, where she refers to having spoken with Wanta on the telephone.

A careful reading to the above article leaves the reader in the dark as to what precise issue Durham has with Wanta's credibility, and why exactly she chooses not to believe him. In addition, nowhere does she directly call Wanta a liar. Quite the contrary - she talks of the same sums of money as real (and in still larger numbers, claiming that Wanta has only "half" of the money), talks primarily not about him but about what the US government has stolen from her personally.

It is necessary to remember at this point, that we have absolutely no other proof that the current persona of Leo Wanta, as the person claiming to possess all that money, even exists - other than the writings of Szymanski, Story et al. For all any seriously discerning reader knows, somebody else may be using a name of a known con-man with recorded shadowy CIA involvement, in order to perpetrate some sort of a con or deception here.

In such an atmosphere, Durham's apparently negative message about Wanta serves in fact to strengthen the fact of his very existence - after all, we have a "reproduced e-mail" from him from several days previous, and Durham's statement that she had spoken with him on the telephone. Her apparent anger at Wanta is in fact used to give us more evidence here that he is real. And since Durham also reaffirms the sums of money he allegedly has - we walk away from this article with a feeling that Wanta's story is essentially true, though his own motivation in it may perhaps be suspect. All of this only from the words of a previously entirely unknown player in this drama, and with no additional verification.

Durham is evidently becoming a regular participant in Szymanski's coverage of this affair, as she appears in his next one on the subject, from January 28, titled "Wife Of Slain Army Colonel Continues To Question Leo Wanta" (). Here Durham, who is now described as "the wife of a slain Army Colonel" calls Wanta "an old pro at the psy-ops game", once again links him with organized crime and the Russian mafia and generally disparages him. Like in the previous article, we are shown not a shred of proof for this other than Durham's words (which focus largely on her own personal story) - yet Szymanski makes sure to remark again that Durham has received e-mails from Wanta and has spoken to him.

His article form February 16, 2007 (www.arcticbeacon.com), continues the above trend, in that Durham's words are once again used to disparage Wanta. This piece pretty much the last of Szymanski's spate of articles about this man, who as noted was mentioned no more than twice for the entire remainder of 2007, where the year preceding that saw over 50 articles prominently featuring him on the Arctic Beacons.

In that last piece, Szymanski finally gives the apparent reason for his sudden disagreement with Wanta- namely that the "Wanta camp" (consisting of Leo Wanta himself, his treasurer Cottrell, and the primary disseminator of their words, Christopher Story) "never wanted to seriously probe and the Vatican issue and even stated [that] the Queen of England was on the good side", while in fact every "true American patriot" should know that "the Queen works together with the Vatican evil-doers and is a part of the Vatican-led New World Order."

As noted earlier, a serious researcher of international conspiracy can do little but smirk at this ridiculous and baseless statement - but it has nevertheless become the daily slogan on most of the political conspiracy websites around the Net. While surfing through those websites, one gets struck by the vehement regularity of the venom leveled at anybody daring to question these claims. The prevalence of this belief makes it look almost as if "somebody" out there seems to have a stake in pushing this notion across the collective psyche, and seems to be doing this very successfully all around.

Yet a very curious hint is given from Durham's mouth in this article, as in the one from January 10, namely that Wanta isn't "the White Knight" he pretends to be. This had a strange sound, till I remembered that "White Knights" was a common title used by various factions in the famous "Nesara Scam", which made big waves around the conspiracy circle a few years ago. (http://www.quatloos.com/NESARA.htm). The big conflict there was painted to be between these "White Knights" who were disseminating this "truth" to the American People, and the "Dark Agenda" of those who would oppose or object to them in any way.

Taking a close look at VK Durham's website, at , one sees that she is indeed intimately related to several key figures and websites from the Nesara story, and makes repeated references to them. For example, this very interesting article (www.theantechamber.net) purports to show the "Lies of Bellringer, Dove & Jennifer" - all players in the Nesara drama. The article itself was written by someone claiming to represent the "Principality of Camside" - whose leader is one David R. Siminton, a well-known perpetrator of the Nesara scam.

The very idea and philosophy of the Principality of Camden, as well as its dissemination across the Internet, and the personality of its creator Siminton, are all gems which should be studied in propaganda school, and surely warrant a closer look. The Nesara scam itself and its claims are even more intriguing and deserving of a closer look.

We shall not confuse issues further by trying to analyze that subject in the present monogram, but one thing surely deserves mention: at the basis of the Nesara scam lay simply vast sums of money, counted in the tens of trillions of dollars, which were supposedly due to arrive in the pockets of the American People at any second now. Messages about this flooded the conspiracy forums on a nearly daily basis at one time. The sums mentioned certainly seemed ridiculous to any discerning reader back then - but now we're suddenly re-introduced to nearly very same numbers, by the new arrival of the "Wanta Story".

One wonders if this is not a more elaborate replay of the same fraud. It's strange that more readers of that material don't see this - but this promise of immediate vast sums of money is actually very similar to the "African spam scam", in which our mailboxes get flooded daily by proposals to receive ten million dollars just by agreeing that we want it.