ABSTRACT
Peter Vallone was voicing the sentiments of countless state and local officials at the disclosures made in the press about the Swiss banks during World War II. Harry Dexter White very clearly knew what the Swiss banks were doing for the Germans during the war. He knew about the gold, the camouflaging of German assets, and the other misdeeds they committed. Stuart Eizenstat warned, boycotts and sanctions against Swiss banks could run afoul of our efforts to maintain open world markets in financial services. Alan G. Hevesi’s publication of New York City’s numbers and his call for meetings of an Ad Hoc Monitoring Task Force enlivened public debate over a nationwide disinvestment campaign like that used against South Africa and its then-apartheid regime. The State Commission was preparatory to George Pataki’s bigger announcement that the state would open a claims processing office in New York.
