Democratic-Republican Crime Family's
Since I, Stew Webb was instrumental in the publishing of this book and never was paid,
it is time to make these pages public.
Exerts from Al Martins book "The Conspirators"
as it relates to the Bushes, Millman's and Clintons.
The Democratic-Republican Crime Family's
Page 105 The Conspirators:
I also want to make note of my knowledge of the Republican and Democratic
party crossovers into certain transactions and to certain artifices, particularly some
large foreign banks. The Industrial Bank of Indonesia, for instance. The Hong Kong
and Shanghai Bank, their branch in Hong Kong.
And of course, I will bring in the whole Arkansas matter, and I will build the bridge.
As I've always said, Arkansas is where political liability vis-a-vis Iran-Contra crosses
party lines. And I intend to show that bridge, both in context of narcotics, weapons,
and money transactions.
Next I am going to build that bridge into Republican/Democratic political liability
crossovers in Arkansas, vis-a-vis Arkansas-related Iran-Contra weapons, narcotics, and
monies operations.
I will talk about my knowledge of Governor Bill Clinton, Betsey Wright, Bruce
Lindsay, Buddy Young, Patsy Thomasson, Dan Lasater, Web Hubbell, Hillary and Rose
and Hubbell Law Firm, and Stephens Investment Group.
I did a lot of business with Stephens. I did business with Lasater. I was familiar with
what was going on at the time.
I have extensive 1985 tape recordings of gubernatorial aides, Bruce Lindsay and Betsy
Wright discussing Oliver North's operations in Arkansas.
They can't say that they didn't know about them -- and their efforts to manipulate the
Arkansas State Police on behalf of the Republicans.
And we will discuss, of course, my knowledge of then U.S. Attorney, Asa Hutchison,
Republican U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, and the cover-up that was instituted by them
and the Little Rock Office of the FBI, vis-a-vis Iran-Contra operations.
We'll talk about everything in Arkansas from Barry Seal to Max Mermelstein and their
connections. “Fat Max” Mermelstein is certainly an overlooked connection in
Arkansas.
But although the focus of this book is principally Republican in nature, it has to be
because that's what was going on when I was involved. I would also like to mention
the Democratic crossover.
Some people may consider this news old, but I would like to draw the entrails to this
day. How some mysterious deaths on the Democrat side of the ledger are directly
related to the entrails of Iran-Contra operations.
This would be a good point in the book to show that certain things that happen today
had their genesis in Iran-Contra activity in the mid-1980's and that certain entrails of
that activity are still ongoing to this day.
I think in this Democratic/Republican liability crossover using Arkansas would be an
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excellent way to portray the relevance of said information today. How people are still
dying because of this information. How people are still being incarcerated because of
this information in an effort to discredit them.
I will also mention here the extent of my knowledge insofar as I was involved with
so many, both Republican and Democratically controlled investigating committees in
the 1987 to 1996 time frame.
Also to use several illustrations where Republican-controlled committees were dying
to get into Arkansas and use Iran-Contra activities in Arkansas against Clinton and
others, but could not do so because they could not gerrymander out Republican
liability and, therefore, they couldn't use it.
I have a tape-recording of a very interesting conversation I had with Bob Dole's
campaign manager about this subject in the last Presidential campaign.
You can easily see the Republican reaction in attempting to use this kind of
information.
I also wanted to mention that I have been assembling a condensed compendium of
Israeli involvement in Iran-Contra, principally centering around my knowledge of the
activities of the infamous Michael Harari with subsections about Ari Klein.
It would be principally about Harari and certain meetings Harari had with both
Oliver North and Manuel Noriega, and even one meeting with George Bush himself
and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, and then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State Michael Kozak.
These are detailed transcripts of meetings involving the Panamanian G2 and security
for narcotics shipments and weapons trans-shipments through the South African
corridor which Harari arranged.
I'm going to mention a little bit about the US/South African/Israeli connection into
Iran-Contra and how that worked through South African military intelligence which
was then under the command of General Magnus Milan.
But I'm not going to dwell on this because -- where does it all stop?
I do want to mention an important weapons and narcotics channel, so you can clearly
see the involvement of the Israelis in Iran-Contra, which I think has been much
overlooked.
People talk about Israeli involvement in Iraqgate, but there was substantial
involvement, not only through Michael Harari, but others and even the influence of the
great Rafi Eitan, himself, during Iran-Contra and how this related to the liquidation of
Amir Nir and others.
It's important to show the relationships and to show that a lot of people died to cover
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this thing up and to cover up the knowledge of this relationship.
Essentially it was to cover up Michael Harari’s activities.
I'm also going to reveal for the first time much more extensive knowledge than what
people have commonly presumed about Amiram Nir, in terms of that July 29, 1986
meeting at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which George Bush attended and how
that sealed Nir's fate.
Also to be discussed will be how Nir's wife, who is an American, was treated by
Israeli intelligence after Nir's death.
9. Corporate Fraud, Stock Fraud and Other Scams
So far, we have attempted to illustrate Iran-Contra vis-a-vis the breakdown of three
specific areas -- namely, narcotics, weapons and fraud. Returning to fraud, we will
examine individual transactions and individual companies, as they related to the
overall pattern, an organized pattern, of State-sponsored fraud under the guise of what
is now known as Iran-Contra.
The first deal I would like to speak about is the infamous Trinity Oil and Gas
Corporation, founded in 1984 by the infamous Barry Seal, Lawrence Richard Hamil
and Larry Nichols.
Trinity Oil and Gas was designed to be a fraud similar to all other oil and gas frauds
at that time.
Not unlike Jeb Bush's Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company.
Not unlike Larry Hamil's Gulf Coast Investment Group and LRH Associates, etc.
We will examine what these frauds had in common, how these frauds related to each
other, and ultimately where the money went.
Trinity Oil and Gas was perhaps a little different. Its purpose was perhaps a little
different. It was not only designed simply to be a fraud, but also as a vehicle to
launder Barry Seal's money -- money that Barry Seal was earning from his narcotics
activity.
Barry Seal, of course, has been extensively discussed in public before, but usually
only in the context of narcotics. His involvement corporately, or in fraud, is really an
overlooked area.
Anyway, Trinity Oil and Gas -- to get its base of operations, similar to Gulf Coast
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Investment Group -- purchased a bunch of old, beat out, one-barrel-a-day pumpers,
two-barrels-a-day pumpers.
These were principally in the sand tar pits outside of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Most of the assets that Trinity Oil and Gas started with to construct the fraud were
assets that it had purchased from the old Sterling Oil of Oklahoma and the old Lyric
Energy of Oklahoma, both which had been publicly traded companies on the NASDAQ
prior to this time and had unfortunately busted out with the decline in oil prices in the
early 1980s.
Again, the scheme was similar.
You take the one or two-barrel-a-day, fifty-year-old pumpers that are given a shot of
acid every three months, and you make it appear that they're pumping four hundred to
eight hundred barrels a day.
Of course, how you make that appear is by your runs and logs. In this case, Hamil,
once again, turned to Hess Oil, a division of Marathon Oil, then owned by Armand
Hammer.
We have discussed before how Armand Hammer allowed certain divisions -- oil and
gas divisions, suppliers, distributors -- that he owned to be used to commit fraud.
I guess, you could say this was his contribution to Iran-Contra and to Republican
sources.
Anyway, as they had done with Gulf Coast Investment Group and with Gulf Oil and
Drilling Supply Company, Hess had given false runs and logs, making it appear that in
fact Trinity Oil was pumping five hundred times the oil that it was actually pumping.
And one would say, “Where are the cash deposits? Where is the cash flowing
through Trinity Oil and Gas accounts to match this supposed oil production?”
Of course, where it was coming from initially was Barry Seal.
Barry Seal was simply using this as a device to launder money.
After July-August 1984, Trinity Oil and Gas, under the auspices of Larry Hamil,
became something larger, a newer entity, and an entity to actually defraud people.
As we have said before, we're using the term "defraud" loosely.
Actually people invested in Trinity Oil and Gas Limited Partnerships, who wanted to
contribute to “The Cause” as Oliver North referred to Iran-Contra.
But obviously a private citizen could not simply contribute to an illegal activity of
government, ergo another artifice steps in, namely Trinity Oil and Gas.
Monies are siphoned off accordingly. It was very similar to the way monies were
siphoned out of Gulf Coast Investment Group and Gulf Coast Oil and Drilling Supply.
You would notice that all three of these companies tended to use either Hess or
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Marathon as their pickup agents in the field.
They also tended to use the infamous Orca Supply Company of Coral Gables, Florida,
supposedly to purchase oil well equipment.
Orca Supply Company was a CIA cut-out that had been dormant. It was picked up
again and was run through the Iran-Contra period by the infamous Lt. Col. Jack Terrell,
aka “El Flaco.”
What was different about Trinity Oil is that it is one of the very few Iran-Contra deals
one can point to wherein money was siphoned off in both directions, politically
speaking.
Not only did money go to Republicans, but it also went to Democrats in the State of
Arkansas.
Trinity Oil and Gas is an excellent example to illustrate how important the State of
Arkansas was (and the Democratic substructure in Arkansas was) to overall Iran-
Contra operations.
For instance, Trinity Oil and Gas was legally formed and its general counsels were
the Little Rock Law Firm of Rose and Hubbel. As a matter of fact, it was one of Web
Hubbel's own accounts wherein he was counsel.
You will see that others within the Board of Directors of Trinity Oil are Dan Lasater
and Raymond "Buddy" Young. Invoices, by the way, would be faked to make it appear
that Trinity Oil and Gas was actually purchasing materials from the infamous Brodex
Manufacturing and Global Associates.
Certainly, we remember these artifices from the past. Freddie Lee Hampton, Calvin
Edwards, George Rebb -- all of the Mena players.
Also, what should be mentioned -- and I think it’s very unique to Trinity Oil and Gas
was its relationship with Seth Ward of Ward Manufacturing.
Same old scheme. Faked invoices for materials that were supposedly purchased, that
were in fact never manufactured or delivered.
Brodex Manufacturing, Global Associates, Ward Manufacturing and so forth were
receiving $20,000 - $40,000 a month. That type of thing. It was essentially money being
bled out of Trinity Oil and Gas.
Of course, records subsequently revealed that Trinity Oil and Gas was making
substantial contributions to GOPAC, as well as individual Republicans. It had also had
contributions to the Democratic State Party Committee in Arkansas.
Regarding Trinity Oil and Gas, there was Jeb Bush's involvement with it vis-a-vis his
own oil and gas fraud, the Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company.
Trinity Oil and Gas purchased Argentine and Brazilian oil and gas leases for about
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$30,000 or $40,000 per lease from Gulf Oil Drilling Supply.
Of course, these leases were effectively worthless.
Gulf Oil Drilling Supply obtained these leases originally from Zapata. They bought
these leases for a dollar each from Bush-controlled Zapata Oil, which had held these
leases for some time. But they were tantamount to worthless.
Suddenly these leases are effectively given from father to son and they wind up in
the hands of the Jeb Bush-controlled Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company.
Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company hypothecated these leases, borrowed money from
these leases with numerous Iran-Contra friendly banks in the Miami area, principally
Capitol Bank.
Later they would default on these loans, and when Brazilian authorities got word that
these leased areas were being used for fraudulent purposes in the United States,
Brazilian authorities mounted an investigation.
It was a half-assed investigation, but it was enough for Jeb Bush to disgorge. He
didn't want anything more to do with these leases, so consequently he sold them to
Trinity Oil and Gas, which again made the same claims that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply
Company had previously made. They said that these leases were, of course, fabulously
valuable, when in fact, they were tantamount to worthless.
To further illustrate the Arkansas connection to Trinity Oil and Gas, it should be
noted that the general counsels with the law firm of Rose and Hubbel -- their bank was
another infamous Arkansas Iran-Contra bank -- the Twin Cities Bank of North Little
Rock, Arkansas.
The officer there, later a Director of the bank who handled the account was the
infamous Jonathan Flake. Flake was the one who helped Seal and Hamil put together
limited partnerships and syndications, while the bank provided bridge loans.
Also, in general partnerships of oil production, proved up production (which they
didn't have, but they simply made it appear that they had), interests were sold by, of all
people, Dan Lasater.
Flake, by the way, was an officer and Director of Twin Cities Bank of North Little
Rock -- a key figure in Iran-Contra fraud in Arkansas.
Flake was involved in numerous oil and gas scams and bogus real estate limited
partnerships that the bank also marketed and/or financed. He was also involved with
numerous U.S. congressmen.
In all of these bogus oil and gas deals or bogus real estate deals that Congressman
Alexander, Congressman Solarz, Congressman Dellums and others got hurt, the
common factor is Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock Arkansas and its senior loan
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officer and later Director, Jonathan Flake.
A precise example of Flake's involvement would be that Twin Cities Bank of North
Little Rock was both was a submarketer through its securities division as well as a
financier in terms of holding non-recourse and fully recourse paper on bogus limited
partnerships.
However, Flake was directly involved in the marketing and subsequently financing
of the fraudulent real estate investment trust known as the Boulder Property Limited
Series of Partnerships.
It was through these partnerships that Congressman Alexander lost about $3 million.
Now Alexander didn't actually lose the $3 million. He didn't have it to lose. But he was
forced to default on the debt and forced to declare personal bankruptcy because of it.
Later we will again touch on Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and
see how that bank is a key element in the so-called Denver Daisy Chain.
Through this bank, it will be possible to see that Neil Bush was a substantially larger
Iran-Contra fraud and Iran-Contra profiteering player than the public has been led to
believe because there is a direct connection between Silverado and the Twin Cities
Bank of North Little Rock.
That connection exists through Phil Winn of the Winn Group in Denver and his
partners Leonard Millman (Federal Whistleblower Stew Webb's former father in
law)
Steve Mizel, Larry Mizel as well as Millman's company, MDC
Holdings, a publicly listed company and its then brokerage subsidiary, the National
Brokerage Group.
These are all infamous Iran-Contra artifices, but we are going to explore in the
Denver
Daisy Chain and make the connection between the Denver frauds and how that filters
through Arkansas. This is an area which has not been extensively researched in the
past.
Moving on to the infamous Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company -- this was Jeb Bush's
favorite oil and gas fraudulent artifice. Many of these Iran-Contra frauds would
borrow names from large existing well-known corporations, such as “Gulf.”
You will see in virtually every oil and gas fraud in Iran-Contra the word "Gulf" is
used.
However, it is commonly and correctly presumed that the word “Gulf,” as in Gulf
Coast Investment Group and its subsidiaries refers to the southeastern United States
region, meaning “Gulf,” which is the common presumption.
In the case of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply -- Jeb Bush's deal -- that referred to the Arabian
Gulf. This is not commonly known publicly. But it really should be.
It's rather obvious when one looks where Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company
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supposedly did business.
Its principal foreign office was in Bahrain, which was headed by, of course, Richard
Secord.
Gulf Oil Drilling Supply of Miami, New York and Bahrain was, I believe, a more
sizeable fraud than has been publicly thought in the past.
When one adds up total losses taken by banks and security houses, it is in the $300 or
$400 million range, so it is what I would consider to be a medium to larger size fraud.
The fraud was rather simple.
Richard Secord arranged through then Vice President George Bush Sr.'s old friend,
Ghaith Pharaon, the then retired head of Saudi intelligence, for Gulf Oil and Drilling to
purchase from the Saudi government oil and gas leases in the Gulf which were
effectively worthless.
As you know, most Gulf Oil production is onshore and not offshore.
The reason is that it is very expensive to extract offshore.
And, of course, these leases would be dummied up, then prettied up to make them
look like they were just worth a goddamn fortune.
The leases again would be hypothecated or borrowed against in some other fashion,
again, through Intercontinental Bank, Great American Bank and Trust of West Palm
Beach which subsequently failed under the weight of unpaid Iran-Contra loans.
Marvin Warner, of course, was the chairman of that bank. Also, in the case of Gulf
Oil Drilling Supply, there was some moderately large international lending to that
company.
As you would suspect, it was principally out of the old George Bush friendly banks --
Credit Lyonnais and Banque Paribas, which, combined lent $60 million dollars to Gulf
Oil Drilling Supply, which, of course was defaulted on later.
It has always been my personal opinion that the reason the Kerry Committee, the
Hughes Committee, the Alexander Committee, and other Iran-Contra investigating
committees on the Hill as well as some people in the media shied away from Gulf Oil
Drilling Supply -- and why there is so little known about it publicly -- is because it
directly relates to the great conundrum.
The minute it is seen that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply had relationships with Credit
Lyonnais, Banque Paribas and others -- that puts it in a whole different much higher
realm.
The old George Bush connections of deep old fraud is something that everyone in the
media and on the Hill is frightened of because -- if you started with Gulf Oil Drilling
Supply and investigated it to its logical conclusion, you get into that whole bigger
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picture where there is multi-billion dollar fraud -- something no one really wants to
look at.
And Gulf Oil Drilling Supply is very difficult to segregate, to look at it as one
individual company, or one individual fraud, or a series of frauds because it's really
much more than that -- and it taps into a much larger pre-existing fraud.
However, I would certainly recommend that it be pursued, since I have substantial
information about Gulf Oil Drilling Supply (I did business with them and with the
Orca Supply Company).
In some cases, I repackaged the worthless leases into other partnership deals. But I
do have substantial information about it.
There is a lot more information available about Gulf Oil Drilling Supply than is
commonly presumed, because when Iran-Contra unraveled the day after Thanksgiving
1986, there was a big effort to classify documents concerning Gulf Oil Drilling Supply.
There wasn't any effort made to hide them under correct analysis that no one would
want to get into the deal and really pick it apart for fear of that big bugaboo -- for fear
of getting into the bigger picture of the deep old frauds.
It should also be noted that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply also retained banking
relationships with the Bank of Greece, Union Bank of Switzerland, and Jarlska Bank of
Copenhagen.
One need only look to see who was on the Board of Advisers of Gulf Oil Drilling
Supply to see what the fraud was all about -- essentially the old cast of characters.
Ghaith Pharaon was on the Board of Advisers.
Andre Papandreou, the former Prime Minister of Greece was on the Board of
Directors.
Marcel Dessault, Jr., the old man's son, was on the Board of Advisers.
And, of course, we see these names again, again and again in Iran-Contra frauds as
you saw these names ten and twenty years earlier in other type of Bush-orchestrated
frauds.
To get back to Trinity Oil and Gas -- I wanted to mention something that's been
completely overlooked. Trinity Oil and Gas was a publicly listed company for a short
period of time on the pink sheets.
It was a deal that was done in part through Meyer Blinder (Blinder Robinson
Securities in Denver) as well as Atlantic Securities, Balfour McClain Securities, Singer
Island Securities.
All of these companies had the same ownership through the National Brokerage
Group of Denver.
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Trinity Oil and Gas was backed into a shell which was then pumped up. The stock
traded as high as a dollar before the deal collapsed.
But returning to Trinity Oil and Gas -- a good example of what I would list as a
pass through
fraud, that is, a nuts to bolts fraud.
The company is started as a fraud to legitimize flow of funds from Iran-Contra
sympathizers to the hands of Oliver North and Richard Secord and others. Then it
would pass into the hands of the political parties and the various members of the Bush
family who had financial interest in Trinity Oil and Gas vis-a-vis the connection
between Trinity and their own corporations.
What I mean by “pass-through” is not only was the oil-and-gas part of it a fraud (to
defraud banks and securities firms), but you then back it into a public shell -- start it
out at three or four cents a share and pump it up to a dollar.
That is simply another way to exploit the fraud.
We have taken an oil and gas fraud, moved it into a banking fraud, then into a
securities fraud. It's called squeezing every last penny of fraud out of the initial fraud,
which is not directed towards anything else.
In the Florida connections (during 1983 to 1986) I was friendly with Charlie Harper,
then SEC Commissioner from Miami.
I used to see Charlie. Charlie used to go to a lot of Republican functions. Charlie was
also a team player, and when I mentioned the Trinity Oil and Gas, and Gulf Oil
Drilling Supply, Charlie said that those were on his "red flag" list -- personally
provided to him from his superiors in Washington. These were deals that he was not to
look at or investigate.
Subsequently, in my 1987 testimony before the Kerry Committee, I had mentioned
this to Jeff Goldberg, then Counsel for John Kerry's office, and they approached Harper.
Harper immediately denied that such a list existed, and three weeks later, of course,
Charlie was promoted to Regional SEC Commissioner in Atlanta.
Of course, at this time, Mr. Harper was also unable to explain where the money had
come from for him to purchase a $350,000 vacation home in the out islands, and where
the money had come from for his sailboat and his Cessna 210 airplane.
He had always claimed that he was an honest public servant, living on his salary of $
68,932 a year.
It should further be noted that when the Kerry Committee attempted to ask then-
Florida State Controller, Gerald Lewis (the cousin, by the way, of the infamous Marvin
Warner) and later subpoena him as to why he had not investigated certain security
transactions and businesses ongoing in Florida such as the Gulf Coast Investment
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Group, Trinity Oil and Gas, and the Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company, the comptroller
promptly resigned his position and elected to take an extended vacation in his luxury
Caribbean home, which he purchased for the equivalent of ten years his public salary.
10. The Trilateral Investment Group Fraud
I’d like to discuss another infamous Iran-Contra cut-out -- the Tri-Lateral Investment
Group, Ltd. This was another offshore corporation formed early in 1984 by Larry
Hamil and included as either its officers, principals, or directors, of Richard Secord,
Oliver North, Jeb Bush, Gen. Aderholt, and the infamous, sinister and dreaded Col.
Robert Steele.
Steele, by the way, now runs a business in McLean, Virginia called Outsource
Computers, Inc., whose soul contractee is the National Security Agency.
Anyway I wanted to use the Tri-Lateral Investment Group as a good example of one
business which incorporated all phases of the old right-wing favorite frauds, i.e. oil and
gas, real estate, gold bullion, aircraft brokerage, security and banking fraud, insurance
fraud. They were all wrapped up into one.
What Tri-Lateral would in real estate, for instance, would be to form various
fraudulent real estate investment trusts, which didn't exist as anything more than
paperwork in somebody's file drawer. They would take out leases on the land, build a
few models, get bridge loans, rehypothecate the bridge loans and so forth.
The net result is that in the end, the project would collapse, and $20 or $30 million
would disappear.
But on the real estate end of transactions, Tri-Lateral is interesting for its
involvements in a very infamous fraud -- the Topsail Development, Ltd. Fraud of
Pensacola, Florida.
This was the famous diversion of 22,000 acres in central Florida, which was financed
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by original bridge loans from the American Bank and Trust of Pensacola, Florida,
which at that time was owned by BCCI.
It seemed odd at the time, but this was not known until some years later. People
thought it was odd that BCCI would own a little nickel and dime commercial bank in
Pensacola, but it was essentially to launder money and to provide bridge financing for
Iran-Contra profiteering.
In 1988, the American Bank and Trust of Pensacola, Florida collapsed under the
weight of unrepaid illicit Iran-Contra loans. The Topsail Development deal was the
largest real estate fraud ever committed in the United States. It was ultimately bailed
out by the Coca-Cola Corporation through those Belizian transactions.
Tri-Lateral Investment Group had become involved in that transaction vis-a-vis the
leases that Tri-Lateral held through Larry Hamil on 45,000 acres of coastal Belizian
property.
All it ever was -- was a first right of refusal and tenuous leases. The land was never
actually owned by Tri-Lateral. The loans, by the way, the $9 million in bridge loans to
purchase the lease on those lands, came from Great American Bank and Trust of West
Palm Beach.
Marvin Warner personally approved the loans. I was involved in several meetings. I
was sitting there, as a matter of fact, when Marvin Warner was there and Hamil and
Secord and others to discuss the bridge loan.
Naturally, this $9 million was never paid back, but that was the intent.
Simply transferring money from the bank into other people's hands ostensibly for
“The Cause” which we all chuckled about, as everyone knew that it was essentially
going into other people's pockets.
As history recounts, of course, Great American Bank and Trust also failed in 1988
under the weight of unrepaid illicit Iran-Contra loans, to the extent of about $156
million that wasn't repaid.
In terms of oil and gas, Tri-Lateral also had an interest in Gulf Coast Investment, Ltd.,
which held a lot of marginal oil production and limestone production in Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Oklahoma.
The old one-a-day pumper routine. In oil terms, what's known as the Knox in Clay
County, Kentucky that extends up around Olney, Illinois. These are all beat out
one-a day
pumper's, one-barrel-a-day, two-barrel-a-day pumper's that have been around for
fifty years.
Hamil made them look like they were simply pumping thousands of barrels a day.
What Tri-Lateral would do was to take its supposed proprietary interest in Gulf Coast
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Investment Group. Make it appear, in fact, this proprietary interest was worth a lot
more than it was.
It would then hypothecate that interest to commercial loans, principally out of
Citibank. It would then purchase with this money Citibank's securities, mostly Citibank
bonds.
I remember the large amount of the coupons in 1993 that Tri-Lateral held with money
it was lent by Citibank.
The notes would then be held at Merrill Lynch, where they would be margined out.
Then the money, again, would be put into something else, usually a bankers
acceptances, often at Chase Manhattan.
What I'm trying to say is that you start with $100,000 and at the end of a series of
frauds that $100,000 is essentially turned into a $10,000,000 house of cards, of which
perhaps $5,000,000 in cash was actually extracted before the whole house of cards falls
down.
As I've said before. what made this possible is that all the financial intermediaries,
banks, brokerage houses, or security companies, were all determined “Iran-Contra
friendly.”
Again, essentially it was transferring wealth from a bank, from a brokerage, from
investors, from one pocket to another.
Another reason I wanted to mention the Tri-Lateral Investment Group is that it was
deals concerning the Tri-Lateral Investment Group which eventually forced the
downfall of Richard Hamil in May 1985.
When Hamil was transferring all that cash out of Union Bank of Switzerland (in so
many of these frauds I was involved with or familiar with or marketed or whatever)
Union Bank of Switzerland was invariably the butt end of the fraud.
In other words, it was the last place a fraud was hypothecated. It was where the final
cash would be extracted.
You can pretty well see that the government of the United States admits that in its
famous Lake Resources civil suit against Richard Secord, which was filed in 1991.
The government makes the admission, that during this 1983 to 1986 time frame, that it
had funded a variety of frauds on behalf of Richard Secord, and that Richard Secord
was its authorized agent.
In fact, they admitted that the CIA had had a longstanding relationship with the
Union Bank of Switzerland and that many powerful Republican interests also had a
longstanding relationship with the Union Bank of Switzerland.
The problem was that UBS was always supposed to be made whole in the end. As I
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attempted to describe these frauds before, the last agent had to be made whole.
The last big agent in this case was UBS.
Unfortunately, Richard Hamil and Richard Secord did not make UBS whole -- all that
money that Hamil transported in physical cash they laundered through Zurich.
Hamil would board a plane. He would fly to Curaçao. The money would get
deposited at Banque Z in Curaçao, and then the money would be re-transferred to a
Banque Paribas branch in Belize City.
People tried to trace that down before and they found out there isn't any branch there.
Well, yes there is. It's not incorporated in Belize, however. It's an offshore branch of
Banque Paribas Panama Branch.
This was the ultimate deep repository for Secord and Hamil, where the money
ultimately got skimmed off, which ultimately accumulated to about sixteen and
two third
million dollars, as I later identified in a whistleblower complaint to the
government and to the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department duly informed me that they had found about sixteen and
two-third million dollars in the account.
I had known in 1985 the account had contained about eight million dollars. And I
didn't know what transactions had been committed after that time, or how much that
account was ultimately worth.
I would add a personal note here. This was another whistleblower complaint that I
got screwed out of.
I had been promised and I still have the letter, as a matter of fact, from the Treasury
Department's FARCO (Foreign Asset Recovery Control Office) then under Rich
Newcomb that I would receive a $623,000 finders fee for the identification of that
account, which the United States government subsequently froze.
However, I was then informed that under that 1986 Administrative Whistleblower
Act, that there were pre-existing claims or pre-existing information, which of course the
Treasury Department doesn't have to tell you what they are or anything.
I have complained bitterly before about the holes in that Whistleblower Act that you
could drive a truck through.
I've never known anyone who’s identified a surreptitious account that's ever received
a finder’s fee that they're supposedly entitled to by the law.
The Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd. is also one of the deals (one of the very few
deals, perhaps only a few dozen deals in that era by this group of guys) that you could
connect Jeb, Neil, George, Jr., Prescott, and Wally Bush.
All five -- you can put in the Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd.
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You can put Neil in it vis-a-vis Tri-Lateral's dealings with Neil's Gulf Stream Realty.
Then you back up a step and put Neil Bush into Tri-Lateral Investment Group's
dealings with the Winn Financial Group of Denver run by the infamous former
Ambassador to Switzerland, Phillip Winn.
You can put George, Jr. in the deal vis-a-vis the Tri-Lateral Group Ltd.'s fraudulent
relationship with American Insurance General (AIG) , of which George, Jr. was a part
through the same series of fraudulent fidelity guarantee instruments issued on behalf
of Harken Energy from American Insurance General. Tri-Lateral Investment Group
then sold bogus oil and gas leases to AIG.
This is a direct fraud that George, Jr. profited to the extent of (not a lot) $1.6 or $1.7
million. But it was a clear out-and-out fraud.
Finally, I want to make note of the Tri-Lateral Investment Group because I think it's
worth noting that it was allegations of receiving illicit campaign donations from the
Tri-Lateral Investment Group which ultimately led to the defeat of Republican Senator
Paula Hawkins in 1986.
Tri-Lateral Investment Group (in terms of gold bullion fraud, another old right-wing
favorite for the generation of illegal, covert revenue streams) was also involved in that
20,000 ounce transaction that Larry Hamil and Richard Secord did.
I use Larry and Richard Hamil interchangeably but the man's real name is Lawrence
Richard Hamil. In various public documents and in congressional testimony, he is often
referred to as either Larry Hamil or Richard Hamil.
Anyway, Hamil had in conjunction with Richard Secord (using a letter of
recommendation from Jeb Bush) borrowed money from Citibank to buy 20,000 ounces
of gold bullion from Deak Perrera in New York.
The said bullion was then transferred to the Royal Trust Bank of Canada, actually its
branch in Nassau, the Bahamas.
The bank then issued a bonded warehouse receipt, as it is entitled to do. The Nassau
branch of the Royal Trust Bank of Canada is authorized to issue bonded warehouse
receipts. The said bonded warehouse receipts -- at the price of gold at that time was
perhaps $7 million worth of bullion.
The said bonded warehouse receipts are then rehypothecated back here in the United
States through a variety of Iran-Contra friendly institutions.
Ultimately, Hamil and Secord hypothecate the same 20,000 ounces of bullion thirteen
times. At thirteen different lending institutions. This is one of the oldest tricks in the
book. The gold bullion trick.
I mean this was Jack Terrell's original scheme. This was a scheme that had been used
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in the 1970s by the CIA. The hypothecation of gold bullion in ten different places.
Of course, those deals all fell apart in the end.
By the end of 1986, all those deals fell apart. And as usual, the bank simply wrote off
the money -- about 2.3 million dollars. It was about a 2.3 million dollar loan issued by
Bayshore Bank and Trust of Miami, Florida and this was certainly one of the lynchpin
loans which involved Jack Singlaub.
Gen. Jack Singlaub was the one that got the money. Of course, this was probably the
straw that broke the camel's back -- which caused Bayshore Bank to fail.
The reason why the media doesn't like to go after it because it is cumbersome and
tedious. But you can see how one fraud started out with two Iran-Contra players --
Larry Hamil and Richard Secord. And yet, you can see all the way through the
transaction of these frauds how others benefitted.
In this case, Gen. Singlaub. And the common denominator in so many of these
frauds, is Jeb, Neil, George, Jr., Prescott, and Wally Bush. There have been very few
that have made a real effort to put all this together.
One thing that’s interesting to note here is why Lawrence Richard Hamil continues to
be so hot today -- to this day in fact?
Why is it he can never be found?
Why is it he is either in jail or out of jail?
When he's in jail, there's never any records that he's ever been in jail?
Why is that he’s still both protected and punished by certain people in the
government?
What are the texts of his old and deep relationships with the Department of Defense
and the Department of Justice and so forth?
The principal reason why?
Just examine his frauds.
Look at all the people involved (who are still in office today, or seeking a higher
office, or in certain agencies who have been promoted) in Hamil's principal group of
frauds: Gulf Coast Investment Group, Tri-Lateral Investment Group, LRH Associates,
Trinity Oil and Gas and a few others.
There's perhaps six at the very top of the list of all the hundreds of corporations that
he's formed.
But look at the people who can be hurt, and, in some cases, who have been hurt.
Look at those involved. Look at the number of Republican Congressmen and Senators
that profited from these illicit deals within the Iran-Contra time frame of 1983 to 1986.
And look at how many of them are still in power today.
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They are much more powerful than they were then.
Certainly Henry Hyde, now Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in recent years
was quietly, non-publicly censured by the House and fined $835,000 as a final
resolution to that Oak Brook, Illinois real estate scam and the hypothecation scam at
Key Bank of New York.
That was directly related to his involvement in LRH Associates.
Porter Goss was also quietly reprimanded by the House (secretly you could even say,
since anybody that ever tried to obtain information about Hyde or Goss' reprimand has
never been successful in obtaining any documentation of it).
Goss was reprimanded and fined $365,000 by the House, by the Ethics Committee,
the internal component of it. But Goss made a fortune.
It was in the millions that Goss made through the Destin Country Club Development
Group, through the Topsail Development Group, through his surreptitious investments
in Zapata, and Apache, and Tidewater, and Harken Energy. The Harken Energy stock
fraud. It really is tremendous. And it is directly related to the reason why Hamil
continues to be such a bone of contention and such a sore spot for the government and
for many in the government to this day.
In late 1995, when I was in my most recent difficulty with the FBI and was
incarcerated after Stew Webb filed a Federal Grand Jury Demand
Jesse Helms intervened on my behalf and pressured Janet Reno.
Consequently I was let out of jail and not further pursued.
You don't think Jesse Helms did that out of the goodness of his heart, do you? It's
because when I was in jail, I called Paul Rodriguez at the Washington Times and gave
him more information that he had been pestering me about for a long time.
The Washington Times (Paul Rodriguez more specifically and his friend, Jamie
Dettmer) had pressed Jesse Helms about all the money that he and Oliver North had
skimmed out of those big series of 501c3's in the mid '80s - the National Eagle Forum,
the National Freedom Alliance, and the whole panoply.
You'll see it's all common language that Oliver North used when he formed these
things. But millions were taken out of these supposedly tax-exempt organizations
illicitly and Helms profited by them, and Pete DuPont profited by them as did various
members of GOPAC.
Helms didn't help me out out of the generosity of his heart.
It's that I rattled his goddamned cage.
And I threatened to reveal more information about that.
And to this day, when a reporter calls up Jesse Helms and throws up Oliver North or
Larry Hamil's name in his face, he turns white as a goddamned ghost.
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Now as we get into larger and more intriguing Iran-Contra frauds, I want to mention
my involvement with the infamous Churchill Matrix Group, Ltd., which had operations
in London, Paris, and Brussels.
Its United States operations were headquartered, of all places, in Columbus, Ohio.
Churchill Matrix was supposedly engineering and industrial components. It had a
relationship with the infamous TKF Engineering & Trading International, Ltd. of Santa
Barbara, California. It also had a relationship with the equally infamous International
Systems and Components (not to be confused with International Signals and Controls
of Scranton, Pennsylvania).
International Systems and Components Corporation of McLean, Virginia, also had
offices in Dallas, Texas.
In that Churchill Matrix deal, it was later discovered that the entire thing was an
MI-6
British intelligence front, which unraveled in 1991 in those big series of trials in
London, when that guy, Paul Anderson, was finally forced to admit he was a British
Intelligence agent, and that in fact the whole deal had been an MI-6 operation put
together at the request of the CIA during Iran-Contra to surreptitiously get certain
components to Iraq, which the CIA wanted to be gotten to Iraq.
The only reason the deal fell apart and became public is that, in this country Mark
Thatcher got listed as a co-defendant in the original indictment.
Finally, his mother, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, decided to preempt the
U.S. action by pulling the plug in London and forcing the MI-6 to admit what it was.
That's the only reason, by the way, that the whole deal fell apart, was because of the
Mark Thatcher angle.
What British Intelligence was trying to hide at the time was the connection between
MI-6, the Agency, and Carlos Cardoen.
Had Thatcher been forced on the stand, he would have spilled the beans about Carlos
Cardoen, and that was the link that both the Agency and MI-6 wanted hidden at the
time.