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The Conspirators:
Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider
by Lt. Cmdr. Al Martin (US Navy, Ret.)
Copyright 2000, Al Martin. All Rights Reserved
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Confidential File: Alexander S. Martin……………………………………………….…3
Chapter 2 The NPO and Operation Sledgehammer……………………………………………. 14
Chapter 3 Oliver North: The Money Laundering Drug Smuggling “Patriot”……. 26
Chapter 4 “Do Nothing” Janet Reno and Iran-Contra Suppression………………..….. 42
Chapter 5 Classified Illegal Operations: Cordoba Harbor and Screw Worm ……..50
Chapter 6 The Don Austin Denver HUD Fraud Case …………………………………..….. 66
Chapter 7 Bush Family Fraud & Iran-Contra Profiteering ……………………………… 72
Chapter 8 Insider Stock Swindles for “The Cause”…………………………………………….89
Chapter 9 Corporate Fraud, Stock Fraud and Other Scams………………………………106
Chapter 10 The Tri-Lateral Investment Group – Bush Family Fraud…………………. 114
Chapter 11 Lawrence Richard Hamil: The US Government’s Con Man…………… 122
Chapter 12 US Government Narcotics Smuggling & Illicit Weapons Sales……… 136
Chapter 13 US Government Sanctioned Drug Trafficking ……………………………….. 141
Chapter 14 The Chinese Connection: US Weapons & High Tech Graft…………….. 156
Chapter 15 More Iran-Contra Stories: Both Humorous & Salient …………………… 171
Chapter 16 Chinese Money for US Weapons …………………………………………………….185
Chapter 17 US Government Narcotics Smuggling (Part 2) ……………………….… 192
Chapter 18 In Hiding Again ……………………………………………………………………………..209
Chapter 19 Corporate Fraud, Government Fraud and More Fraud……………………224
Chapter 20 The Real Story of Operation Watchtower…………………………………………234
Chapter 21 KGB & East German Activities in the US (1985-87)…………………………..240
Chapter 22 The Woman in Red (And Black)…………………………………………………………252
Chapter 23 Bush Family Corporate, Real Estate, and Bank Frauds…………………….260
Chapter 24 Iran-Contra Real Estate Fraud…………………………………………………………..277
Chapter 25 More Chinese-Military Connections…………………………………………………288
Chapter 26 ONI, CZX & Orpheus. ………………………………………………………………… 295
- CONFIDENTIAL FILE: ALEXANDER S. MARTIN
- Born 5-19-54, Oberammergau, West Germany, Federal German Republic.
- Mixed German and American parentage.
- Returned to United States 09-Aug-1957.
- Graduated Masconoma Technical School, 16-May-1972.
- Full ROTC training then available at high school level.
- Graduated with certificates in electronics and communications equipment, as well as a
Level 05 Certificate in Russian Languages. - Subject joined the United States Navy, 19-May-1972.
- Sent to China Lakes Naval Air Station to complete basic training and for further
training in electronics and communications. - Subject MOS – 16-Sep-1972.
- At subject’s request, TDY’d 03-Oct-1972 Naval Communication Center, Saigon, South
Vietnam. - Remained in South Vietnam theater until cessation of naval and air hostilities on 27-
Aug-1973. - On 04-Sep-1973, subject again, and on request, TDY’d Subic Bay, Pacific Theater of
Operations Naval Command Center. - Discharged honorably United States Navy 19-May-1976.
- Immediately thereafter joined United States Naval Reserves, Active Status.
- Rremained United States Naval Reserves active status doing two tours.
- Transferred and relisted, inactive service United States Naval Reserves.
19-May-1984, - Subject retires United States Naval Reserves 19-May-1988 at the Reserve Officers Rank
of Lt. Commander.
The Denver Daisy Chain Iran Contra
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After my discharge from active naval duty service in 1976, I moved to Cuzco, Peru,
and set up a business with a childhood friend, George W. Carver III, son of then CIA
Deputy Director, George W. Carver Jr.
The business dealt in alpaca, llama, and vicuna, but was actually a cover, as a “G” for
the State Department.
My assignment at the time was to gather intelligence on Russian military operations
in Peru.
At the time, Peru was officially pro-Moscow. It was armed by Moscow and had
about 4,000 Russian army advisors in the country.
I remained in the country until September 9, 1977, the coup of Gen. Hector Bermudez
and the installation of civilian President, Fernando Terry. At that time I returned to the
United States, initially settling in Miami.
While in Peru, I became acquainted with numerous CIA field agents and support
personnel, then being run out of CIA’s Lima station. These included Deputy CIA
Station Chief Eugene S. Barlow, more commonly referred to as “Buzz” Barlow, whose
claim to fame had been that he had secretly recruited Vladimiro Montesinos, a
Peruvian army officer, who then in turn developed an intelligence network that
informed on Russian Army and Soviet KGB movements within Peru.
An interesting footnote to this is that eight years later, Montesinos would become a
double agent working for the KGB. He was being run by then Assistant Deputy KGB
Director, Major Yuri Shvets, whose cover was Commercial Trade Attache for the Soviet
Embassy in Washington.
Barlow would play an important role in Iran-Contra, particularly in the post 1983
environment and would finally finish up his career as a senior FBI agent at the Tulsa
field office.
Subpoenaed before Congress in 1987, Barlow either refused to answer, or answered “I
don’t know” 117 times when asked about his Iran-Contra role.
In 1978, I met Lawrence Richard Hamil, a Department of Defense shadow player, a
hanger-on as many are, who wait for profitable covert operations.
His father was the well-known Harry J. Hamil, former senior Defense Department
policy analyst of their southern desk before his death of natural causes in 1984.
Hamil and I and others including Frank Snepp, Jack Terrell, Harry Aderholt, Landon
Thorme, Duke Rome, and a host of other players in the shadows of Washington,
became involved in a scheme in 1979 to traffic in American Express credit cards in
Argentina on behalf of the American Express Corporation.
I know the most about Jeb since I had more involvement with him. I raised more
money for his deals, a greater variety of deals. In some cases, I had an actual thirdparty
equity interest in them through Southeast Resources, Inc., interests in some of
Hamil’s deals, principally that Gulf Stream Limited Partner Associates, series III.
But let’s get on to George, Jr.
George, Jr.’s specialty was insurance fraud.
We all have our specialties. Jeb is sort of a mixed, what I always called a mixed
specialist, that is, Jeb likes any kind of fraud — banking, security, real estate, oil and
gas, gold bullion, aircraft brokerage.
The whole panoply of all the old right-wing favorites for the surreptitious production
of covert revenue streams.
Neil was much more in the real estate end of the fraud. But George, Jr — I would
classify as an insurance fraudster, in terms of his Iran-Contra profiteering.
By that I mean that he profited quite handsomely from all those bogus claims in that
scheme that was originally developed by Jack Singlaub for the so-called missing
aircraft and luxury yacht scam.
Singlaub started it under the auspices of the World Anti-Communist League, Inc.,
which as we’ve mentioned before, had its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, in the
offices next to J. Walter Bush Securities in the Lincoln Savings and Loan Plaza.
We’ve described this fraud before, how it worked. It wasn’t all that big of a fraud.
Frankly, I know AIG claims about $15 million, but I think it’s a little more, either $18 or
maybe $20 million.
AIG never made any effort to recover the money because this was AIG’s corporate
contribution to Iran-Contra. Look at who the Chairman was and the Board of Directors
of AIG at the time.
You know, we tend to look at corporate contributions as being very simple.
Oliver North goes to see Peter Coors and Coors gives him $2 million dollars in a
briefcase.
Or old Mrs. Graham of Texas gives him $2 million in a briefcase. And that’s their
contribution.
But corporate contribution is similar to Coca-Cola.
Republican-friendly corporations can’t simply give money for an illegal, covert
purpose of State. However, they can funnel money in other ways.
How does an insurance company do it? By paying off fraudulent claims of property
that is claimed to be stolen, which in fact has not been stolen.
It’s simply been moved to somewhere else. To an undisclosed location.
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I do have extensive documentation about it, mainly because I had marketed part of
this so-called tax shelter part of this thing for Mitch Marr.
Mitch was the national chairman for brokerage activities of the World Anti-
Communist League, and Mitch used to come to Miami and Fort Lauderdale all the time
trying to drum up people who were willing, sympathetic Republicans, who were
willing to donate expensive, private aircraft and expensive yachts and get ten times
what these things were worth as tax deductions.
And then, of course, the boats wound up in North Andros Island in a little facility
there with the names changed and the numbers changed. And the planes wound up at
hangars from Boca Raton to Joplin, Missouri with changed numbers and such.
But that deal, you know, it was a fraud envisioned to raise $20 million dollars or so,
which is about what it did. The principal insurer who took it on the chops, of course,
was AIG.
In some cases, insurance policies had to be switched to AIG. American Insurance
General (AIG) was the largest in the country then, and American Reassurance, more
commonly known as American Re and their subsidiary General Re, were all controlled
by very sympathetic Republicans.
There hasn’t been a lot written about George, Jr. in terms of his Iran-Contra
profiteering because it didn’t involve that large a number. He did have some direct
involvement and certainly profited from the Lone Star Cement fraud, the Sooner
Defense Development fraud, the MK Industries fraud, (that was the MK Trucking
Fraud deal that all the Bush family profited by).
But these frauds weren’t in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of
dollars. They were all in the tens of millions of dollars type fraud.
There was a much more limited number of people that got hurt by that. None of
these deals that George, Jr. was involved in ultimately really got charged back to the
American public, through some route, some public financing to which some guaranty
authority was obligated and so on and so forth.
As we had previously estimated, George, Jr.’s fraud during Iran-Contra only
ultimately cost the American taxpayer $10 to $13 million. dollars — nickels and dimes in
the greater scheme of things.
How George, Jr. can be more directly inculpated is because he is a much more
powerful functionary and is listed in many more documents for the Bush Family Trust.
He is the only one of the sons with an absolute and full power of attorney and this
includes their primary asset, which is not part of the Bush Family Trust.
Bush Family Trust has very little assets. The last public declaration in 1992 that
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George Bush, Sr. made was showing they only had $17 million in assets.
That’s because the crown jewels are not in it.
The crown jewel of the Bush family is their interest in the rather secret and gigantic
Houston Energy Partners, Ltd.
We only need to look at who the other partners are — ranging from the late John
Tower to the still-living Lloyd Benson to get an idea of just how large of an entity it is
and how big of a fraud it has been over the years.
Anyway, I would say something about George Jr., but I would stick to what I knew
about first-hand, which really isn’t much.
I would use him as an angle to develop insurance fraud. I’m breaking this down into
categories of Iran-Contra fraud within terms of a State-sponsored operation in terms of
Bush family and other powerful Republicans’ profiteering.
And that would be a good angle to get into insurance fraud. It was my interrogatory
that forced the government to drop the insurance fraud charges against Terry Reed in
I have a letter from Kathy Robinson who was the Assistant United States Attorney for
Kansas City indicating that it was, in fact, my interrogatories that made the government
make the decision to drop the case. Interestingly enough, they only dropped it if Reed
and others would agree to a seal not to discuss it.
But let’s get on to George Bush, Sr.
I probably have the most about George Senior, only because of my relationship with
his children in a legal and financial nature. I do have substantive documents on
George Sr.’s Lone Star Cement Fraud and his involvement. In other words, how he
profited. Also the MK Trucking deal. The Sooner Defense deal.
Within defense contracting fraud, I’ve never even bothered to organize all the
documents. I have so much of it, as a matter of fact, particularly within the Loral
Group, which as you know for years has been one of their principal holdings.
But I’ve got so much on the Loral corporate fraud and fraudulent transactions with
Martin Marietta and then how that bounces back to Sooner Defense that, frankly, I
haven’t even organized all of it.
They’re in bankers’ boxes and rough files. And I have banker box upon banker box
upon banker box full of documents describing their fraud.
I also have a lot of documentation pursuant to George, Sr.’s involvement in fraudulent
deals surrounding Zapata and Apache Energy.
I have a lot of stuff with him in Harken Energy, also including a lot with George, Jr.
in Harken Energy. That’s another possibility. But again, these weren’t large frauds.
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They were little security frauds, the fraudulent diversion of monies in those bogus
Bahrainian leases when they temporarily ensconced Richard Secord to be their Middle-
Eastern Director for Bahrainian Operations which existed in a file drawer.
What that Bahrainian deal came down to was George Bush, Sr.’s close friend, former
Saudi intelligence chief and major Iran-Contra figure, Ghaith Pharaon. That was just a
donation to Iran-Contra by the Saudi government. And that’s what the bogus
Bahrainian lease deal effectively comes down to.
It wasn’t much — $38 million, something like that.
Secord received about $3 million for his own pocket. Harry Aderholt was thrown a
bone out of the deal. It was no big deal really.
I also want to discuss an overview of Bush family fraud, ala Iran-Contra profiteering.
I want to mention other Republican fraud and Iran-Contra profiteering such as Henry
Hyde’s bogus deals with the Oak Brook Savings and Loan in Illinois, Key Bank of New
York — that was $800,000 of fraud.
Interestingly enough, Henry Hyde has within the last twelve months, quietly been
censured by the House, although that censure was not made public.
The House Operations Committee absolutely agree with my numbers, when I said
approximately $800,000 that Hyde had defrauded from those two institutions which is
exactly what they say in that censure.
I’d like to discuss Bob Dole but that’s not a lot of money that Bob made in Iran-Contra
profiteering, frankly, $3 or $4 million. It really isn’t a whole lot.
I’d like to stick to, let’s say, a dozen senior Republicans, who are still senior
Republicans, by the way. And the few millions they made here and there at the
expense of the public purse vis-a-vis their involvement in Iran-Contra fraud
Also, within this brief overview on Iran-Contra fraud, Bush Family and senior
Republicans, I’m going to blend into this the so-called “Control Files” that Richard
Secord once had in his possession.
You may remember they’re so named because of Secord’s famous comment, “If a
Democrat doesn’t have a problem that we can control him with, we’ll create one for
him.”
That’s an interesting issue that I’d like to delve into — the concept of an organized
control mechanism that was coordinated by both elements of the CIA and the NSC to
essentially set up senior Congressional Democrats, who might be a problem later on in
any subsequent Iran-Contra investigation.
And there are some notable instances.
How Henry Gonzalez got the arm put on. You know, his car was machine-gunned
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and the townhouse bombed.
How Ron Dellums got set up with that cocaine matter.
How David Boren got controlled in that 1984 agriculture trade mission trip to Cuba,
of which I have an affidavit from Bill Alexander insofar as he was a member of the
Agriculture Subcommittee at that time and attended the trip. And he knew quite a bit.
I was surprised at how much he knew about how the CIA had successfully
compromised Boren in that photograph, when Boren was attempting to keep his own
homosexuality quiet in a very heavily Christian district. A new conservative Democrat
in a heavily Christian district.
But I would like to delve into the Control Files more extensively.
How Steve Solarz got a control mechanism put on him the same way Bill Alexander
did.
It was a financial control mechanism. It was — either you’re going to be bankrupt, or
we’ll keep you out of bankruptcy.
Steve Solarz talked to me and Dinerstein (Dinerstein’s known him since they grew up
together). I really don’t know because I only met Steve Solarz a couple of times. You
remember that Steve Solarz, when he was still in Congress, was one of the guys who
substantially pushed the Iraqgate investigation in 1989 and you see how suddenly he
got turned off like a goddamn light switch.
He backed away from that and back-pedaled after pushing and pushing and pushing
it. The reason why is that some old recourse notes were dusted off of a shelf and stuck
in his face and said, “You’re going to pay these recourse notes or you’re going into
bankruptcy, or you’re going to keep your mouth shut.”
And he elected to keep his mouth shut. As a matter of fact, when he left Congress, he
was paid back. He was given some choice positions with six-figure lifetime incomes
and Steve’s just not interested in talking about it anymore.
Frankly, I don’t blame him. He’s had enough of it.
The final thing I’d like to mention is that I intend to incorporate the series of 501c3
tax-exempt foundations started by Jesse Helms and Oliver North, i.e. the bogus nature
of them.
Some of the fraud committed by these tax-exempt shells, controlled by Ollie and Jesse
— they really just lent his name to it and received some kickbacks. It wasn’t much, 4 or
5 or $600,000 a year for two or three years. But some of the transactions were so
blatantly illegal as to be humorous.
Next I’ll include salient highlights of the President’s brother, Prescott Bush, Jr.’s Iran-
Contra fraud activities.
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Also his son, Wally’s fraud, as well as an overview of the father Prescott, Sr.’s fraud.
Then I’ll include a compendium of fifty years of Bush Family fraud which will be
entitled “The Legacy of the Bush Family: A Vortex of Fraud.”
8 Insider Stock Swindles for “The Cause”
I would like to explore in further detail both Bush Family and Republican-related
Iran-Contra fraud and illicit profiteering and to give more specific examples.
In terms of banks, I would like to continue and use as an example three major Texas
lending institutions which were very prominent in Iran-Contra fraud and were, in fact,
taken down by this fraud.
These were Texas American Bancshares, then chaired by Bobby Corson, Allied
Bancshares of Texas, then chaired by the infamous Walter Mischer, and thirdly, MCorp.
They were the three largest savings and loans and/or commercial banks in Texas in
the mid-1980s.
The combined losses in these institutions totaled some $5 billion. By 1988-89, these
banks were, in fact, insolvent.
Mischer and Corson were later investigated by various Congressional committees as
to the nature of unrepaid Iran-Contra loans. In some cases, these were some of the very
few groups of institutions where the CIA was directly involved.
These institutions had lent money to the CIA in the past (which is against the CIA’s
mandate), but it was done, nevertheless, due to very tight Republican control of these
three institutions.
In fact, by 1989, it was determined that the CIA had borrowed for illegal, covert
operations some $350 million from these three institutions. It also failed to repay that
amount. These banks were involved principally in fraudulent Iran-Contra related
profiteering — real estate loans, oil and gas ventures, illegal securities transactions, etc.
I’ll give you an example of what we used to call the “double fraud scam.” It was late
in the game about 1987-88. Iran-Contra officially collapsed on the day after
Thanksgiving 1986, and certainly the entrails of its fraud continued and still continue to
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this day.
It became apparent that these banks were failing and the very same individuals who
were causing these banks to fail (by not repaying loans) were Jeb Bush and George
Bush, Jr.
We can cite specific examples of oil and gas loans and real estate loans in which they
were involved that were fraudulent to begin with — but in the so-called double scam,
this was essentially an inside stock swindle.
I will use MCorp as an example, wherein a corporate artifice could be formed by Jeb
Bush, let’s say.
Money could be borrowed from MCorp. The money would then be used to short (sell
short, in other words) MCorp’s stock.
When the stock plummeted, the shares would be bought back at a large profit, and
the original loan itself would be defaulted on through the marginal, corporate entity
that originally borrowed it, which most likely existed nowhere eexcept in an attorney’s
file cabinet.
The money garnered from both the defaulted loan and the profit from the short sale
of the stock would then be used for a variety of purposes: 1) for personal enrichment,
and 2) for Republican donations.
I will give you a specific example of this although it’s a very small amount of money
in comparison. In late 1987, it was obvious that MCorp was failing. MCorp common
stock was trading at about three dollars a share.
Unfortunately, you could not get any shorts off. In security parlance, that means you
could not sell any of the stock short, insofar as all the stock was out of the box, meaning
that the market-makers in said stock did not have sufficient shares to cover shorts.
However, you could still sell short MCorp preferred stock, which was then trading at
about eight and a half dollars a share. What I did, for example, and as a matter of fact,
Jeb Bush introduced me to the loan with certain provisos about where parts of the
proceeds were to go later on.
But I formed a separate shell known as Mar-Tech Industries. I borrowed $85,000
from M-Corp through Dean Witter. Through the accounts that Mar-Tech controlled at
Dean Witter, I was able to short 10,000 shares of MCorp preferred at varying prices
between $8 and $8.50.
Within three or four months, M-Corp preferred shares had fallen in value to $3.
I then covered my 10,000 shares between $3 and $3.50 a share, making approximately
$50,000 profit.
I then proceeded to dissolve Mar-Tech and defaulted on the original $85,000 loan,
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after having made two interest payments.
I now had $135,000 in total profits, as you loosely describe — $85,000 illicitly obtained
from a fraudulent bank loan, or a bank loan that I obtained under fraudulent
circumstances, plus $50,000 garnered through the short sale of said stock, essentially
using the bank’s own money to short the stock and then defaulting on the loan.
Now others did this in much larger quantity than I ever did. I was just given these
little trades because it got to the point you couldn’t consolidate.
Jeb Bush was particularly concerned — and I know that George, Jr. was concerned — I
don’t know that directly from George, Jr., but I do know in my discussions with Neil
that his brothers were concerned about the congestion of corporate artifices borrowing
money and shorting the stock.
Anyway, with $135,000, I was asked (and this was the original condition on which I
was given the trade) to donate one-half of my proceeds. And I did proceed to donate
some $65,000 dollars, which I have records of, to a variety of Republican-controlled
election/political institutions.
This is similar to what we had done in 1985-86. Now we were using a different type
of fraud, securities fraud, instead of the normal real estate, or oil and gas, or gold
bullion, or aircraft brokerage fraud.
Anyway, I donated $20,000 to GOPAC from these proceeds in 1988. This was when
Pete DuPont still controlled GOPAC, actually right on the cusp before Newt Gingrich
controlled it.
And, as we have described before, GOPAC was an infamous Republican artifice for
taking surreptitiously and ill-gotten monies and dividing them up amongst Republican
candidates.
I also donated money to several 501c3 tax exempt organizations, which had
previously been formed by Jesse Helms and Oliver North, which Jesse Helms still
controlled. These, of course, were illegally formed.
All of the money that went through them was illegally garnered, named The
American Enterprise Foundation, The American Eagle Forum, The American Institute
of Freedom.
Usually what happened with these monies is they wound up getting filtered into
other Republican-controlled entities, such as the giant Heritage Foundation.
In some cases, they went back to the 1988 Reagan-Bush re-election campaign through
The American Eagle Foundation.
The American Eagle Foundation was formed in 1984 for $10,000 contributors. That
was the scheme that we had previously talked about wherein you’ve got your little
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membership card for $10,000 a year with a 1-800 number that rang into a cubicle into
the White House basement. That was Oliver North’s deal. He was the one who came
up with the concept. He was the one that formed it. The girls who manned the phone
were actually NSC secretaries, including, by the way, Fawn Hall.
Anyway, these three institutions were extensively investigated by the so-called Tower
Commission in 1988, headed by Senator John Tower. The general counsel of the
committee was Hayden Gregory. I knew Hayden quite well and he had asked me for
certain materials that I had and I freely gave them to him.
Of course, it was like the fox guarding the hen house — John Tower being the leader
of the old Texas Republican club investigating Texas institutions wherein Republican
fraud had happened.
However, Hayden Gregory, the general counsel of said committee, had put together
very hard-hitting reports about these three institutions and the whole nature of Iran-
Contra Republican fraud and profiteering.
This was the report that was contained in that aluminum briefcase that John Tower
was carrying with him when his plane crashed outside the airport in Brunswick,
Georgia in 1988. And of course, the metal briefcase in question was never recovered.
It’s intriguing to note in this case that three hours after that crash happened, a socalled
team of FAA inspectors arrived from Washington — which actually turned out to
be and I have documentation regarding this incident — the FAA inspectors actually
turned out to be gentlemen from the Department of Defense.
Anyway, that report was history.
There was only one other copy, which Hayden Gregory had. Gregory was out of
town, in New York at the time. Before he was even informed that Tower’s plane had
gone down and Tower had been killed, the one other complete copy of the report he
had in his office mysteriously disappeared by the time he got back to his office the next
day.
There were some, as you know, excerpts — there were some portions of that report
that survived, that John Tower’s daughter, Penny, got her hands on and had begun to
leak some of the stuff out to the Atlanta Constitution, more specifically, to Scott
Shepherd.
That was very quickly stopped as Penny stopped leaking the material and disgorged
possession of the material.
I have a copy of the mortgage for Penny’s home.
The next day it was duly recorded in the Registry of Deeds of Norcross County,
Georgia where she lived, that the $85,000 balance on the mortgage on her house had
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been paid in full, from an off-shore entity, a Netherlands Antilles corporation.
It was the Netherlands Antilles Corporation duly entitled the Tri-Lateral Investment
Trust Group, Limited, with officers unknown.
Of course, during this time, both Walter Mischer and Bobby Corson had been
deposed by said Tower Commission. Mischer didn’t give up that much and invoked
the Fifth Amendment, or said he didn’t remember a lot of the time. But Corson did
give up a lot. He said far more than he should have.
Hayden Gregory, recognizing the sensitivity of it, immediately placed said deposition
under seal.
Of course, this means absolutely nothing because it wasn’t three hours later before the
White House had a copy of it.
When Corson was subpoenaed subsequently by the Hughes Commission to be asked
questions about his deposition regarding fraud at Texas American Bank of Commerce,
he died of a sudden and convenient heart attack three days before he was to arrive in
Washington to talk to Congressman Hughes.
Bobby Corson had maintained a file in the den of his own home, containing all the
records and notes and such that, to wit, formed the foundation of his deposition before
the Tower Commission.
His son, Bob, Jr., attempted to do the same thing that John Tower’s daughter had
done. That is, young Mr. Corson started to leak information to The Houston Post,
mainly to Frank Bass.
After a few leaks, Mr. Corson, Jr., of course, being a loyal Republican and a member
of the Texas State Republican Committee, duly disgorged the documents in exchange
for which the next day appeared a fifty-seven foot Chris Craft, in a marina, in the Bahia
Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale, with the title in his name indicating that there were no
encumbrances, liens or mortgages on said luxury yacht.
After some investigation by Mr. Dinerstein, it was discovered that said yacht had
been formerly a donation to the Charitable Educational Division of the World Anti-
Communist League, then still controlled and still in existence by General John K.
Singlaub.
Upon reviewing my notes, I want to interject at this point the infamous case of the
Peruvian Gold Certificate Scam engineered in 1988 by George Bush, Sr.
George, himself, was involved, and so was his counsel C. Boyden Gray. Helping in
this fraud was George’s personal friend and very loyal Republican scamskateer, then
Nevada Secretary of State, and still Nevada Secretary of State, Frankie Sue DelPapa.
Frankie, as a matter of fact, will probably be making a 1998 gubernatorial bid in
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Nevada, now that Bill Miller is out of the scene.
But this is the famous case of that Peruvian gold certificate which was one of the
unusual gold certificates issued by the Trans-Continental Agreement between the
United States and certain South American countries in 1875, wherein the United States
Government agreed to support certain South American countries that were then in
some financial difficulty, including Peru.
The United States Treasury issued a limited number of high-value gold certificates
based on its own deposits that were then hypothecated by South American central
banks which could then be used to borrow bullion against the U.S. Treasury — simply
put.
Almost all of these certificates were redeemed in 1913 and 1914. However, one
certificate was left outstanding, which it’s believed was an oversight at the time. These
certificates were compounded in perpetuity. That is, they had no limitation.
The interest was payable in gold and compounded in perpetuity. And the
compounding of said gold payment was accrued at a fixed price of twenty dollars an
ounce.
Now what happened, therefore, this one remaining certificate consequently became
worth a fortune.
Although it had been technically listed as canceled by the United States Treasury after
the expiration of the redemption period in 1914, George Bush was able to get a waiver
(as he knew he would, given his position) — a waiver from the U.S. Treasury, indicating
that this was still a valid and negotiable instrument.
Bush knew if he could get his hands on this instrument, it would be worth a fortune
to hypothecate, which is exactly what happened.
This certificate, through a long series of transactions, ultimately winds up in the
hands of a retired Secret Service agent, Mr. Durham, who at one time, as a matter of
fact, had worked with one of George Bush’s Secret Service security details.
Through some underhandedness, Bush was able to garner control of this instrument
through essentially out-and-out fraud committed by Frankie Sue DelPapa regarding a
Nevada corporation which had been formed by Mr. Durham and others to hold this
certificate and the rights thereunto, called the Cosmos Investment Corporation.
DelPapa essentially switched all the officers and principals and directors of the
Cosmos Corporation into another corporation that had been formed by George Bush
and some others known as the Hellenic Investment Holding Group, Limited.
It was absolutely a blatant fraud.
Durham subsequently died. His widow tried to pound the drum on this thing for a
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long time, but couldn’t get anywhere with it. Simply put the mainstream media that
had been interested in this thing considered it too old and too conspiratorial to touch.
But I have a lot of the documents. Dinerstein got involved in this, looking at this
thing later on, and discovered what had happened. It’s interesting the route that this
certificate takes once it gets in the hands of George Bush. It winds up getting
hypothecated at both Sumitomo and Daiwa Banks in Tokyo. It is re-hypothecated at
Jarlska Bank of Copenhagen. Re-hypothecated again through the Greek National Bank.
Papandreou was still in power. Papandreou and George Bush Sr. had been involved
in many marginal business transactions involving the surreptitious hypothecation of
gold bullion at the Bank of Greece through the Union Bank of Switzerland and Credit
Lyonnais in France and Bank Paribas.
Of course, I was not directly involved in any transaction relating to this. I was
subsequently asked — Dinerstein and I — to become involved for a certain fee on the
owner’s behalf in this matter.
A separate book would have to be written about it, for it goes to the very heart of the
great right-wing cabal — the way everything works and what it’s all about. It exposes
transactions that are decades old, that were frauds in themselves.
You can see through the continuation of this deal a pattern where new fraud has to be
committed to pay back old fraud and so on.
I think what frightened the mainstream media is the incredible sums of money that
are involved. And ultimately, a Peruvian gold certificate turned out to be the seed or
germination of a series of transactions that ultimately forced Daiwa and Sumitomo to
create fictitious trading losses in order to cover losses incurred in a series of
fraudulently obtained, politically related loans.
Anyway, this is simply so big — I would perhaps just briefly mention it, only because
I have such precise detailing of it. But I would not attempt to connect the dots into the
vortex of the way everything works and what it’s really all about.
It’s simply too big, and would immediately be looked at as something conspiratorial,
which, of course, has always been the Republican line in an effort to discredit anyone.
It was only in recent years, in 1995, that I was again retained by representatives of the
original owner, or his widow, should I say, in an effort to negotiate with Bush or to see
if they wanted to do anything about it insofar as they effectively absconded with said
instrument.
So I talked to an attorney who had previously represented me in Miami, Neil Lewis,
who is very closely aligned with Republican interests in Miami and is a personal friend
of both Neil and Jeb Bush. I told Neil the circumstances. And he said, “Give me a
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couple of days and I’ll get back to you.”
And he did, in fact, talk to Neil Bush. After a few days, Neil Lewis got back to me
and said that the Bush’s feel that there’s so many layers of protection between them and
this transaction that nobody will ever be able to uncover it and they simply did not
wish to deal.
So, that ended that — because it would obviously take enormous resources to fully
uncover this fraud. And to actually challenge the perpetrators of the fraud would
require resources certainly beyond that of the average individual.
In front of me, I have a banker’s box loaded with original lists of all of the clients of
Richard Hamil’s Gulf Coast Investment Group and all of the sub-clients of Southeast
Resources, Inc. which was my own company at the time. It has totals of all of monies
“invested” in fraudulent limited partnerships, both oil and gas, real estate and others,
along with the disposition of those sums, including certain sums that were paid to
GOPAC, and in some cases, certain sums that were paid through another corporate
artifice directly to candidates — $20,000 to then-Republican Governor Martha Lane
Collins of Kentucky 1986 re-election campaign, $20,000 in cash to one of then-
Republican Governor Thompson’s of Illinois election people.
I have details of when the money was given and things of that nature, although it
would be unusual for money to be given directly.
Normally, the money, as I said, was given to GOPAC. It was given to some
Republican-controlled, illegal, tax exempt artifices, or in other cases, monies directly
from the accounts of Southeast Resources were simply wired to the Costa Rican
corporation of Intercontinental Industries SA which maintained a bank account at the
Banco de Popular in Santo Domingo.
This was an account controlled by Oliver North and Richard Secord and was one of
the principal accounts that was used for the laundering and garnering of illicitly-gotten
monies through illegal transactions supposedly in support of the Nicaraguan Contras.
I would mention another $20,000 in cash donation to the 1986 failed re-election bid of
Paul Hawkins in Florida. Hawkins was essentially forced out of office under Iran-
Contra connected scandals.
Further in this box is substantial documentation regarding our transactions with
Swissco Management Group of Miami controlled by the infamous Carlos Cardoen. It
detailed his extensive illegal property transactions between Senator Robert Graham in
an illicit, illegal, surreptitious tax exempt foundation, then controlled by Swissco
Management.
Swissco Management’s offices were raided in 1992 by the FBI. Carlos Cardoen,
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despite being under indictment by the United States for Iran-Contra arms trafficking,
still lives comfortably in his home base in Chile.
When there was some Congressional demands for this material, particularly of what
remained of the Alexander probe (Congressman Charlie Rose and the Government
Affairs Sub-committee had demanded some of this documentation) it was discovered
that the Miami field office of the FBI had inadvertently mislaid the documents that it
had seized.
I also see some documents in the bottom of the box on the Sooner Defense case.
I think it was terribel that the Bushes attempted to lay blame for certain fraud
committed by the Sooner Defense Corporation onto the shoulders of one of its directors
(who I personally liked), the renowned retired four-star general, Wallace Nutting.
That was the Nutting Case in Tampa involving the Egyptian general and the
Egyptian colonel. It was a fairly well-covered case.
Nutting got out of it, though, when sufficient documents were garnered to prove
certain other involvements in said fraud involving Mischer, George Bush Jr., Jeb Bush
and others.
I would like to make note of a 1988 letter I have in my position sent from then-
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to then Attorney General Richard Thornburgh
wherein the Secretary of Defense asks the Attorney General to stop an investigation of
Loral Industries and E Systems.
Both are major defense contractors in Texas. Both are publicly traded corporations in
which the Bush family have substantial interests.
This investigation had been started by the Attorney General’s office under allegations
of Iran-Contra weapons-diversion programs involving both corporations.
I needn’t tell you the long affiliation that Loral and E-Systems — E Systems in
particular — has had with the CIA over the years.
There was a 60 Minutes piece done in 1993. 60 Minutes had contacted me about
information on the piece concerning an aircraft diversion scheme instituted by ESystems.
Actually it was instituted by the CIA, but E Systems had an involvement in it.
Next to the E-Systems properties was a little tiny corporation with some hangars,
known as CZX Productions, Ltd. 60 Minutes didn’t even know what CZX stood for, by
the way. This is a scandal where the CZX affair had been worked on extensively by one
of the best Democratic Congressional investigators, Tom Stryminsky.
This was during the time when Tom worked for the Government Affairs Subcommittee,
which Charlie Rose, Democrat of North Carolina had at one time chaired.
CZX, by the way, stands for Casey, Zumwalt, X Files and it is one of the deepest,
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darkest, most sinister and treacherous of all Iran-Contra operations.
Some of it has been made public. This was not only a diversion of weapons, but an
artifice where the names of problem people — people who knew too much — were kept.
It also involves a related operation, a cover-up operation ongoing at the time by the
Office of Naval Intelligence, this operation being handled by the infamous, sinister,
dreaded, and powerful Vice Admiral Lawrence Pauley.
It also involved Admiral Henderson, Admiral Garrett and others. Garrett later
became Secretary of the Navy.
Anytime that anyone has ever tried to press this issue, you see the powerful reaction
and the resources that are garnered to push them back, particularly through the Office
of Naval Intelligence.
When I mentioned and got involved in CZX because I happened to have some
material which I obtained through working on something else with Steven Dinerstein
(although I was aware of CZX at the time it was going on) it didn’t have anything really
to do with me.
I just happened to have some information on it. Admiral Pauley apparently was
distressed enough to come to Miami and engage in a quiet meeting with certain parties
regarding me. There was that level of concern.
And certainly after this time, things went worse for me. I was further discommoded.
Let’s put it that way. They sent me a signal to stay out of it.
But CZX Productions — and I will mention this in the book — about a dozen people
died because of it.
And to keep it quiet, I would guess, a dozen more are wrongfully incarcerated
because of it. “Wrongfully incarcerated” means they are incarcerated much less for
anything they did and much more for something they knew.
Chief among those wrongfully incarcerated is Ed Wilson — the infamous Ed Wilson.
You see, his former partners, Frank Terpil and Richard Secord, made out pretty well
because they knew enough to keep their mouths shut about it.
But what broke this thing was when suddenly six C130 Hercules transport aircraft
(formerly belonging to the United States government) wind up on a satellite
photograph taken over Lybia.
It relates back to the Sooner Defense case, as Sooner was used as a transit artifice
because of Sooner’s connections with the South African government. The connection is
made through the Egyptian army and this colonel and general who came to the United
States. They wind up getting themselves indicted. Anyway, this is a whole separate
story.
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As always, we get the problem, how in the hell do you condense all this in what’s
going to be a manuscript of a reasonable length?
I have so much material, and I’ve never really organized it all because it’s such a job.
And I’ve never really had to organize it all until now. And I am digressing certainly
from Iran-Contra fraud.
But I did want to mention more covert operations, more covert entities and
connections. I do intend to spend some time on what I feel has been an overlooked part
of Iran-Contra in terms of illegal, covert operations, and that is the involvement of the
Office of Naval Intelligence, principally through one of its cut-outs — the infamous
Evergreen Airlines, which was used in the so-called Iran-Contra Guns for Drugs
Program.
Evergreen Airlines principally flew in the western corridor. Its home base was in
Medford, Oregon and related to this, I will also mention the case of the Wa-Chang
Trading Company scandal of Albany, Oregon.
That was the so-called Zirconian Scandal which involved Dick Brenneke. He was up
to his ears in it. And it involved the infamous Roy Reagan of Hammit Valley Aviation.
Hammit Valley Aviation had formerly been a proprietary cut-out of the CIA. This
includes my knowledge of it at the time of my involvement (1984-86) and my
subsequent knowledge of it.
I have subsequent knowledge of it because often people who got hurt came to me
and/or Steven Dinerstein to get involved for a fee in helping them get some redress
which would garner further details on something I already knew something about.
Anyway, Evergreen was ultimately thrown into bankruptcy and there was a
bankruptcy-related civil fraud case against Evergreen which reveals a lot of
information that one of my old cohorts, Major Gary Atel filed.
Atel is probably the leading expert, not only Evergreen Airlines, but the ONI/CIA
connection as it relates to Iran-Contra, which has always been a very sensitive
connection.
Atel had asked me for certain information regarding Hammit Valley Aviation that I
gave him.
The only reason I had that was because of Richard Secord, because Secord had been
so heavily involved with Hammit Valley and personally knew Roy Reagan.
Consequently, I had some copies of letters between Secord and Reagan (Regan is how
you pronounce his name.)
Also, I would like to get this down as a matter of record. I intend to publicly reveal
for the first time all that I knew about Eugene Hasenfus and the circumstances
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surrounding the shooting down of his aircraft, something I have never done before.
Of course, I know much more about Hasenfus than Hasenfus does, especially what
Hasenfus was involved in. So does practically everybody else.
What Gene Hasenfus didn’t realize is that when the Soviets made him an offer of a
million dollars to defect, when he was sitting in that jail in Managua, it occurred to him
that the only thing he had ever done was kick stuff out of the back of airplanes.
So why was the Soviet government prepared to offer him a million dollars to defect
and prepared to get his wife, Sally, and his then three children out of the United States
quietly?
What Gene didn’t realize was that he was going to get used not only for propaganda,
which he suspected, but as a pawn, or a chip, in a much larger geo-political game at the
time.
Everyone seems to forget the timing of this.
Look at the timing when his aircraft was shot down.
Look at the timing of the Reykjavik summit in 1986.
Look at the allegations that Gorbachev was making. He was licking his chops at being
able to ram CIA narcotics trafficking down Reagan’s throat
That’s why they wanted Hasenfus so desperately — to back up information that had
been received by the KGB’s Washington station at their embassy.
My old pal, Major Yuri Shvets, who wrote the book Washington Station was muzzled
to a huge degree about writing this. He only mentions a little bit about what
Gorbachev had said at the summit regarding CIA narcotics traffic and Reagan’s
response about laughing and saying, “Oh, yes. We’ve been doing that for years.”
But the KGB knew that they had some steak.
The documents are the steak, but they needed sizzle. And Hasenfus would have been
that sizzle. A living, warm, breathing body standing up and saying, “This is what we
were doing. And these are who my superiors are.”
That’s why they were so desperate to get him. It was unknown to Hasenfus.
He will never have any idea of the desperate measures undertaken by Casey, North,
Elliott Abrams and others to get him out of that jail in Managua and back in the United
States.
I will reveal some of the desperation of those measures. But, again, this is a subject
matter I think more fitting for a whole separate book.
Elliott Abrams tried to act cool after Gene went down and Sally, Hasenfus’s wife, had
called Elliott Abrams and Elliot gave her $10,000 in a paper bag. This would later come
back to haunt Gene, when he attempted to proceed with that civil suit against Southern
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Air Transport et al. in 1990.
But Hasenfus and his wife and others of his defense counsel, and the defense counsels
of Cooper and Sawyer in that trial — they have no idea of what went on, the desperate
measures behind the scene, the people that died because of it, the documents that were
shredded because of it.
But I will reveal some of this. Not all. I don’t think it’s wise to reveal all, nor do I
have the space to do it.
After Hasenfus was shot down, in that two or three week subsequent time period, it
had been assumed (of course, I knew differently even at the time) that the earnest
measures taken by North and others, Casey and the panoply of people that were
involved in Iran-Contra — Assistant Secretary of State, Bernie Aronson and then under-
Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger, Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage
were all involved in this.
This really draws in the whole cabal. It was commonly assumed that the reason they
wanted to get Hasenfus back so badly was because he potentially threatened to reveal
the entire Guns for Drugs Operation a little earlier than they wanted it revealed.
They knew it was going to get revealed anyway. But they wanted time. They needed
another nine months or so to institute a good tight cover-up of it.
That wasn’t the real reason such desperate measures were taken. The desperate
measures were taken (not because of what he might say to the press in Managua or any
other international press) to keep him out of the hands of the Russians and to prevent
him from winding up in a press conference in Moscow.
That’s why such desperate measures were undertaken.
As we’ve discussed it, I feel sorry for Gene, but when he got back, he was naive and
thought that he was part of the team and that’s what he was told.
Elliot Abrams said, “We’ll take care of you. And monies owed you will be paid.”
That was all a lot of horse shit.
Gene should have known it. And ever since, Gene has essentially misplayed his
hand. And the reason he’s misplayed his hand is his timing. He has not revealed things
when they should have been revealed. He’s withheld information when it should not
have been withheld. And the reason this is all the case, by the way, is because Gene
never had an understanding of the bigger picture in which he had suddenly become
thrust.
If he had an idea of the bigger picture, and if he had the brains to handle things
differently, he would not wind up being now a member of the Iran-Contra fucked,
refucked and double fucked.
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Another connection, or crossover connection, when we cross over from weapons,
narcotics and fraud, I am going to discuss my knowledge of something that has not
been written about publicly.
That is the deep old Brazilian connection into George, Sr. and others — a very deep
and very dark connection of which very little has been mentioned. Only once publicly
to my knowledge, in an article in The Wall Street Journal, has George Bush, Sr.’s
connection ever been mentioned to a very sinister and very wealthy Brazilian financier
named Amaro Pintos Ramos.
Some of what I know involves the illicit transfer, not only of weapons, but also of
nuclear materials.
I imagine that’s one reason nobody’s ever wanted to to look at this. It involves a large
amount of fraud. All types of fraud. Oil and gas, bank and securities fraud. Everything.
It also involves the illicit sale or attempted illicit sale of nuclear materials out of Brazil
and certain transactions that — not only was the Agency involved in — but George Bush
himself was involved in.
And I don’t think anybody has ever wanted to link George Bush — although linking
him to Iran-Contra fraud, knowledge and profiting from cocaine and weapons
transactions — I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to link him to the transfer of
certain nuclear materials and components.
But that is something that I intend to do.
Further, I intend to reveal the connection between George, Sr. and Jeb, and these
Brazilian transactions through the International Signals and Controls, Inc. of Scranton,
Pennsylvania.
This was the infamous story with Mischer, Gerwin and Jacobson.
There was another corporation in Virginia which was a cut-out — not International
Signals and Controls — but International Systems and Components. Separate. A
different company altogether. They have often been mixed up.
But I will explain the difference and how certain materials left this country and went
elsewhere.
Anyway, let’s get back to Iran-Contra fraud. I had intimated previously that I would
like to spend more time on Prescott Bush, the Vice President and later President’s
brother, and Wally, his son and their Iran-Contra fraud.
So I will use the one example I am most familiar with, and an example that has been,
to some degree, publicly revealed.
That is Prescott Bush’s so-called $5 million Korean Swindle, which involved his
partner, Alphonse D’Amato’s brother, the attorney.
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That fraud, although small, is a good example of how Prescott used the family name
to commit his own little petty series of fraud. During Iran-Contra, it didn’t amount to
much — $20 or $30 million.
Wally’s ability to commit certain securities fraud, particularly at Merrill Lynch, and
get away with it was due to the control feature that existed at Merrill Lynch. Even after
Don Regan left to become Chief of Staff in the Reagan Administration, Ray Birk was his
successor, and Ray was very friendly to the old Republican cabal. He was also very
sympathetic to Iran-Contra.
Consequently, Merrill Lynch was used for certain illicit transactions. And this socalled
$5 million Korean swindle is a good example of that, of the use of power to cover
up something.
What makes it more sinister is the fact that somebody was murdered because of the
swindle.
Yes, the money was ultimately returned, but that wasn’t until after somebody in
Korea threatened to start to talk.
And someone in this side of the world got murdered because of it. As you may
remember, that murder got pinned temporarily on D’Amato’s brother.
And D’Amato was facing twenty-five year to life sentence.
Through a series of missing evidence and forgetful witnesses, he winds up spending
three months in jail.
Prescott specialized in Korean and Japanese fraud because of the old Republican
connections that existed between the Japanese conservative, and Korean and
Republican parties here.
I’m going to make a blind reference and use Prescott Bush to get into it — why it was
always necessary to have a Republican control guy as ambassador to both Japan and
Korea.
You see how quickly (after Donald Gregg was essentially forced out of his position as
Vice Presidential National Security Advisor because of Iran-Contra allegations) he
ultimately winds up becoming Ambassador to South Korea.
There’s no mystery as to why that happens. It really has only been in recent years
that that whole money connection between Korea and the Republicans here fell apart.
And I believe the former Korean President, General Ro Tae Woo is under a death
sentence. Of course, it will be commuted. But there are hundreds of millions of dollars
missing from the Korean Treasury because of it, which mysteriously wound up in
Republican coffers here.
Anyway, I will try to condense that into what I intend to say about Prescott and
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Wally. 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. Attorny 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.
Related from Stew Webb:
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.
- 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 agains 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 and Steve 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 passthrough
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.
- 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-aday
pumpers, one-barrel-a-day, two-barrel-a-day pumpers 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 twothird
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, 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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