spanned three U.S. administrations and ensnared politicians and business figures around the world. The Outlaw Bank shows how the BCCI was more than a bank with a portfolio of bad loans and nasty clients like Manuel Noriega and the Medellin cartel. With offices and agents in every corner of the world, the BCCI had become a clearinghouse for almost anything: political bribes, untraceable cash, guns, tanks - even nuclear weapons. Beaty and Gwynne tell the real BCCI story with all of its amazing detail and mysterious characters. They go inside the mind of Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI's messianic founder, whose vision of a Third World bank became twisted into a financial evil empire that moved effortlessly across national borders. They show how Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and others mounted a massive inquiry - in the face of opposition from the U.S. Justice Department - thateventually led to the indictment of both the bank and former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. They reveal how they unraveled the BCCI's labyrinth of connections in Africa, Europe, and the United States, and with the CIA - and how their investigation broke through the Wash