It has all the makings of a major box office thriller: Texas Governor and
Republican Presidential contender George W. Bush and his brother Jeb,
allegedly caught on videotape in 1985 picking up kilos of cocaine at a
Florida airport in a DEA sting set up by Barry Seal.
An ensuing murderous cover-up featuring Seal's public assassination less
than a year later by a hit team the members of which, when caught, reveal to
their attorneys during trial that their actions were being directed by then,
National Security Council (NSC) staffer - Lt. Colonel Oliver North.
And a private turboprop King Air 200 supposedly caught on tape in the sting
with FAA ownership records leading directly to the CIA and some of the
perpetrators of the most notorious (and never punished) major financial
frauds of the '80s. Greek shippers paying bribes to obtain loans from
American companies that would never be repaid. An American executive
snatching the charred remains of a $10,000 payoff check from an ashtray in
an Athens restaurant Swiss police finding bank accounts used for kickbacks
and bribes.
Add to this mix the now irrefutable proof, some of it from the CIA itself,
that then Vice President George H.W. Bush was a decision maker in illegal
Contra support operations connected to the "unusual" acquisition of aircraft
and that his staff participated in key financial, operational and political
decisions.
All these events lead inexorably to one unanswered question: How did this
one plane go from being controlled by Barry Seal, the biggest drug smuggler
in American history, to becoming, according to state officials, a favored
airplane of Texas Governor George W. Bush?
-----------------------------------
Three months into an exhaustive investigation of persistent reports dating
to 1995 that there exists an incriminating videotape of current Republican
Presidential front-runner Bush caught in a hastily-aborted DEA cocaine
sting, the central allegation remains unproven.
But some startling details have been confirmed, amid a raft of new
suspicions emerging from conflicting FAA records. Those records, along with
other irrefutable documents, point to the existence of far more than mere
happenstance or dark "conspiracy theorist speculations" in the matter of how
George W. Bush came to be flying the friendly Texas skies in an airplane
that was a crown jewel in the drug smuggling fleet of the notorious Barry
Seal. Those documents reveal - beyond any doubt - that in the 1980s Barry
Seal, with whom the CIA has consistently denied any relationship, piloted
and controlled airplanes owned by the same Phoenix Arizona company, Greycas,
which in a 1998 bankruptcy filing, was revealed to have been a subsidiary of
the same company that owned the now defunct CIA proprietary airline Southern
Air Transport.
The investigation started with a lead into the history of the aircraft (a
1982 Beechcraft King Air 200 with FAA registration number N6308F - Serial
Number BB-1014). The handwritten tail number was found in records kept by
Seal's widow and later linked to other "hard paper" records left by Seal
after his 1986 assassination by "drug traffickers" who were subsequently
connected to Oliver North. Those records, including leasing agreements,
insurance policies and maintenance records, exhibit a deliberately-confusing
"paper trail" of convoluted ownership recalling the 'glory' days of the Iran
Contra hearings, where the machinations of American covert intelligence
operators were unmasked before a disbelieving public.
Combined with revelations in a 1998 CIA Inspector General's report of
Contra-era cocaine trafficking in which the CIA admits to "briefing" then
Vice President Bush on how it lied to Congress about cocaine trafficking by
its agents, it becomes clear that father and son have common secrets to
conceal from the American public. That report, Volume II of the CIA
Inspector General's report into allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking
can be viewed at
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/cocaine2/index.html. A detailed
discussion of that report, along with relevant excerpts is available at
www.copvcia.com.
Unraveling the plane's tangled and colorful history requires, first, a brief
look backwards at the momentous year of 1982, when President Reagan first
introduced the public version of "Project Democracy," in which he called for
a "crusade for freedom."
What it became instead was a license to murder, loot and steal. This climate
was the nursery into which N6308F was born.
"The War of '82"
The detonations had rumbled like Armageddon along the rocky course of the
Rio Negro in Nicaragua throughout the night of March 14, 1982... Concrete
bridges groaned suddenly under their own weight, crashing in avalanches of
black dust in a dark landscape seen through night-vision goggles. In
Washington D.C., it was time to break out the champagne. War was breaking
out in Central America. Just two days later Barry Seal took possession of
the first of many planes supplied to him through CIA Director Bill Casey's
"off-the-books" Enterprise.
There were more than 100 U.S. advisers in Honduras by March of 1982. In
April, the chief of the Honduran Army, General Gustavo Alvarez, said that
his country would agree to U.S. intervention in Central America if it were
the only way to "preserve peace."
"Up to March 1982 you could still change your policy," recalled a member of
the NSC Core Group In Charge as he spoke to reporters later. "The issue was
still the question of support for El Salvador's rebels. If that ended, so
could pressure on Managua. But once the first forces of Nicaraguan exiles
were trained and set in motion, any real negotiating became much harder. The
blowing of the bridges was an announcement."
Throughout 1982, Democrats, fearing that President Reagan was pushing the
United States into another Vietnam-style quagmire, tried to cut off aid to
the Contras. It was precisely at this time, the height of CIA Director Bill
Casey's frenetic efforts to ward off these Congressional efforts, that Barry
Seal acquired use of not one but several brand new Beech Craft King Air
200s. Ownership of the planes had been deliberately obscured through a
number of convoluted transactions involving Phoenix-based corporations
suspected of being "fronts" for General John Singlaub's "Enterprise"
activities. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Retired Major General Singlaub
organized in early 1982 an American chapter of the World Anti-Communist
League (WACL), called the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF),
with a loan from Taiwan. Funding for Seal's planes would come from sources
close to those efforts.
"Jack" Singlaub had a long history of involvement in covert operations,
beginning with service in the World War II Office of Strategic Services
(OSS). He had served as CIA Desk Officer for China in 1949 and Deputy Chief
of Station in South Korea during the Korean War, and during the Vietnam War
he commanded the Special Operations Group Military Assistance Command,
Vietnam--Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG), which participated in the
CIA's Operation Phoenix assassination program.
Singlaub's efforts, and Seal's as well, had been necessitated by the
shocking scandals of the 1970s combined with drastic reductions in
"official" CIA capabilities in the Carter years. Until then, the CIA. had
controlled a huge network of planes, pilots and companies for use in
paramilitary situations. But with the end of the Vietnam War and the public
revulsion at disclosures of out of control CIA covert operations, many of
those assets (such as the infamous Air America) were dissolved or sold off.
Consequently, when the Reagan Administration sought to expand covert
paramilitary operations in Central America and elsewhere, the Agency was
forced to rebuild much of its capabilities illegally, relying frequently on
outside assets, usually retained under contract, like Barry Seal. The Contra
war put everything into high gear.
The CIA and the Army jointly agreed to set up a special aviation operation
called "Seaspray," New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh revealed in 1987.
[This was old news to local and state police in affected areas. Cops had
already seen the cynical (and perhaps intentional) manipulation of this
operation flooding America with a river of drugs. When law enforcement
authorities debriefed convicted "drug smuggler" Seal in late 1985, one of
the cops present brusquely began by stating, "We already know about Seaspray."]
Everybody Will Be There.
The "boys" were getting ready to go to war in the Spring of 1982:
-- CIA agent Dewey Clarridge put a proposition to Contra leader Eden Pastora.
"He would become the star of the second revolution as he had been the star
of the first," -- John Hull, whom Congressional sources said worked for the
CIA since at least the early 1970s, rented a Contra safe house in San Jose,
Coast Rica at CIA request. -- Retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord
began managing an operation in which Israel shipped weapons captured in
Lebanon to a CIA arms depot in San Antonio, Texas, for re-shipment to the
Contras. -- Felix Rodriguez drew on his Vietnam experience and wrote a
five-page proposal for the creation of an elite mobile strike force, called
the Tactical Task Force (TTF), that would "be ideal for the pacification
efforts in El Salvador and Guatemala."-- And at this exact same time, in the
Spring of 1982, Barry Seal began flying private planes into a then-obscure
airport in the secluded mountains of western Arkansas known as Mena. He
moved his base of operations from Louisiana to hook up with the CIA, which
was anxious to use Seal's fleet of planes to ferry both legal and illegal
supplies to Contra camps in Honduras and Costa Rica.
Rodriguez dubbed the search and destroy units "Pink Teams" and advocated
using napalm and cluster bombs to give them "more destructive power."
Rodriguez's proposal included a map of Central America which indicated that
Nicaragua would be a target of Pink Team operations (based in El Salvador
and Honduras).
Favorably impressed, Vice President George (Poppy) Bush's National Security
Advisor Donald Gregg sent Rodriguez's Pink Team plan to then Deputy National
Security Adviser Bud McFarlane on March 17, along with a secret one-page
memo on "anti-guerrilla operations in Central America."
This was also, according to later Iran-Contra testimony of Medellin Cartel
money man Ramon Milian Rodriguez, when he began to launder, at Felix
Rodriguez' request, $10 million from the cartel for the Contras. In secret,
sworn testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Narcotics and International Operations, Milian Rodriguez claimed that he had
been solicited by his old friend Felix Rodriguez.
Also early in 1982 a new covert unit of the Armed Forces was set up by
General Richard Stilwell. Known as the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA),
it became a separate entity in the Army's secret world of special
operations, with its own commander, a Col. Jerry King. The army's
involvement in secret operations would first became known to the House and
Senate intelligence committees in early 1982, when they discovered a project
known as Yellow Fruit, which ferried undercover Army operatives to Honduras,
where they trained Honduran troops for bloody hit-and-run operations into
Nicaragua.
Through private front companies, like the ones that supplied Barry Seal with
his fleet of smuggling aircraft, Operation Yellow Fruit ferried weapons like
rapid-fire cannons to CIA operatives. It was these same operatives who later
mined Nicaragua's harbors and raided oil depots, all in violation of
Congressional legislation barring the Defense Department and the Agency from
taking any action aimed at overthrowing the Sandinistas.
The Army went to outside businessmen and arms dealers to make off-the-books
airplane purchases, with funds that had been "laundered" through secret Army
finance offices at Fort Meade, Md. More than $325 million was appropriated
for the Special Operations Division of the Army between 1981 and the autumn
of 1983. Had any of these operations become public then it would have caused
enormous political damage to the Reagan Administration's campaign in Central
America, according to a 1987 New York Times report by Seymour Hersh.
"Enter CIA Agent Adler Berriman Seal" The flight plans for Seal's drug
enterprise provided the perfect cover for the illicit resupply missions.
Seal's planes would fly from Mena to Medellin Cartel airstrips in the
mountains of Colombia and Venezuela, make refueling stops in Panama and
Honduras, and then return to Mena, where, en route, the planes would drop
parachute-equipped duffel bags loaded with cocaine over Seal-controlled
farms in Louisiana.
"His well-connected and officially protected smuggling operation based at
Mena accounted for billions in drugs and arms from 1982 until his murder
four years later," said Dr. Roger Morris and Sally Denton in their book
Partners in Power. They also reported that coded records of the Pentagon's
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) showed Barry Seal on the payroll beginning
in 1982.
"My investigation established a conspiratorial period, chronologically, with
a first overt act and a last overt act. The first overt act was April 12,
1982," stated Arkansas state criminal investigator Russell Welch, who was
charged, he thought, with digging into Seal's Mena activities. Between March
and December 1982, according to law enforcement records, Seal fitted nine of
his aircraft with the latest electronic equipment, paying the $750,000 bill
- as was his custom - in cash.
The effects of Barry Seal's efforts to take weapons one way and bring drugs
the other were soon visible, in ruined lives in the U.S. and in the maimed
bodies appearing all over Central America.
"Riding the Elephant Herd" Barry Seal was not alone. When small private
planes began to bomb the Nicaraguan capital, resulting in the crash of a
Cessna 404 at the Managua airport, an account of how three Cessnas were
secretly transported from the New York Air National Guard to Central America
for the raid on Managua reached the press. It was later learned that custody
of a number of additional planes were moved from the U.S. Air Force in a
top-secret Joint Chiefs operation code-named "Elephant Herd," on to the CIA,
via a Delaware aviation company where they were armed, and then transferred
to their ultimate destination, the Contras.
A senior administration official admitted that small noncombatant military
aircraft had been transferred from the Air Force to the Contras through the
CIA. One company involved, Summit Aviation, was doing regular business with
Barry Seal according to records in his widow's possession. In addition,
according to Congressional sources, Summit, known to do Contract work for
the CIA, had former CIA personnel on the payroll, and was linked through
ownership records to the Cessna that crashed while bombing Managua.
That aircraft, according to FAA records, was purchased by Summit Aviation in
October 1982 from Trager Aviation Center in Lima, Ohio. On the same day that
Summit purchased the plane, the company sold it to Investair Leasing Corp.
of McLean, Va.. Investair, which has an unlisted telephone number, does
Contract work for the CIA, according to Congressional sources. Bruce W.
Trager, who sold the Cessna to Summit for $308,872, says the deal was "put
together" by Patrick J. Foley, Summit's "military director."
In addition to its work for Investair, Summit maintained and modified planes
for Armairco, another company involved in covert government projects.
Armairco, organized in 1982, also bought several multimillion-dollar
Beechcraft King Airs, like Barry Seal's. Those aircraft were purchased
directly from Beech in a procedure normally used only for military projects,
according to Beech officials and aviation experts.
When asked whether Armairco's government work included activities in Central
America, an Armairco official said, ''That may well be.''
The Beechcraft King Air 200 has been in production since the mid 1970's. A
little less than seven hundred of them have been manufactured to date. The
twin engine turboprop has a pressurized cabin capable, with different
configurations of seating up to nine passengers. It has a cruising speed of
approximately 330 mph and a cruising range of more than 1,800 miles. New
plane prices in1982 started at around $1,700,000 based on equipment.
N6308F
The convoluted, pretzel-like paper history of the airplane that once
belonged to Barry Seal and is today used by Texas Governor George W. Bush
begins when the title to the brand new aircraft was first recorded by
Portland, Oregon dealer Flightcraft, Inc.
Flightcraft's President, David R. Hinson, a former military and commercial
airline pilot active in the Republican Party in Oregon, was, according to
The Oregonian, at the time under consideration to head the FAA. The paper
stated that Hinson had met with Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford
Dole to express interest in the job after travelling to Washington to
promote himself for the post. Helping Bill Casey subvert the will of
Congress, presumably, did nothing to hurt his chances.
N6308F was spoken for, several times over, even before it arrived at
Flighcraft's facilities in the Spring of 1982.
"I don't think we're going to help you - I mean "be able" to help you said a
nervous Phil Carrell of Flightcraft, Inc. when contacted for information by
FTW. Carrell, a sales executive who was working at Flightcraft when
"Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" was originally sold, told FTW that as far as he knew
any records of the aircraft were no longer in existence. He referred us to
the FAA title records for answers. We wish that answers were what we had
found.
According to records located by Dan Hopsicker in his investigation, a now
defunct Lake Arrowhead, California firm, Ken Miller Aircraft Sales, entered
into leasing agreements with developer Eugene Glick in February 1982, two
months before the manufacturer's title was transferred to Flightcraft. Ken
Miller Aircraft appears nowhere in the FAA title history of the plane. Ken
Miller Aviation is also no longer in existence. Nonetheless, in February
1982, Ken Miller Aviation entered into a leasing agreement with real estate
magnate Eugene Glick for the brand new aircraft. In that agreement, Glick
and his wife agreed to make eighty-four monthly payments of more than
$37,000 ($2,835,672) for the airplane which had a new purchase price of
$2,010,556. No record linking Ken Miller Aviation to Flightcraft is known to
exist.
On paper at least, according to Contracts dating from February of 1982, the
plane was owned by a Greyhound Bus Lines subsidiary, Greycas, which in turn
leased it to a mysterious Phoenix firm in close proximity to John Singlaub's
Enterprise operations named Systems Marketing, Inc." Systems Marketing then
leased it to Continental Desert Properties which was the firm owned by
Glick. In the final step, Glick leased the plane over to Barry Seal.
In a Contract dated March 21, 1983 N6308F was leased by Continental Desert
Properties to Seal's firm Baton Rouge Aviation . Insurance policies found in
Seal's private papers confirm that Barry Seal subsequently purchased an
insurance policy on the aircraft.
What, exactly, was the purpose of this convoluted ownership record? What was
it designed to conceal? The answer lies in the very definition of
"tradecraft," a term for what it is that spies and covert operators do to
operate in the dark. The "front" companies were in place to act as
"cut-outs," layers of insulation, between the spy agency -- in this case
Bill Casey's CIA--and the covert operative--, in this case, Barry Seal.
FAA ownership records show that Gene Glick, who lived on Hope Ranch near
Ronald Reagan's Rancho del Cielo in Santa Barbara, California, leased
"Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" as well as several of Barry Seal's other planes during
the same years that Seal was most active in drug and weapons smuggling
1982-5. Other documents located by Hopsicker confirm that Glick was also
actively helping Seal purchase ocean-going vessels for use in drug smuggling
activities and as stationary platforms for the CIA to use off the coast of
Nicaragua in covert operations.
An FBI agent had dismissed Glick's importance to Dan Hopsicker, which fueled
his suspicions early on. "He's just a money launderer," said Delbert Hahn,
who was the Special Agent in Charge of an Inter-Agency Organized Crime Drug
Task Force looking into Barry Seal's organization back in the middle 1980s.
At least in this case, Glick's behavior was consistent with Iran-Contra
"bust out" operations because the lease defaulted in two years. The plane
was repossessed.
According to FTW contributing editor Catherine Austin Fitts who, as a former
Wall Street investment banker and Assistant Secretary of Housing, served on
the Resolution Trust Corporation in the wake of the S&L scandal, "This could
have been a substantial cash pay-off to the concerned parties." Fitts, who
also served on the "clean-up" committee for BCCI (a bank with abundant
connections to CIA covert operations, financial fraud and drug trafficking)
observed that the pattern here is typical of those seen by enforcement
officials in that era.
"It is worth researching to see if there were substantial cash pay-offs to
the concerned parties," said Fitts. "If the lease were insured at or near
its full value and defaulted early as it did here in around two years; if
the total value of lease > payments were $2.8 million and if the lessor had
paid only $2.1 million for the aircraft then any insurance pay-off or "write
down" after only a year or two could have netted a profit of a half million
dollars or more for the covert operators. This type of insurance fraud was
used routinely during Iran-Contra to finance covert operations"
The CIA Gets Busted --Yet Again
The circle was completed with the discovery that "Zero-Eight-Foxtrot," as
well as several other planes used by Barry Seal, was in reality owned by the
same company revealed in 1998 bankruptcy proceedings to have owned the
notorious CIA airline Southern Air Transport (SAT). Congressional and public
records from the era establish Southern Air as a legendary CIA proprietary -
second only to Air America - and as being connected to Secord, Singluab,
Rodriguez, Casey and George H.W. Bush.
Among its long list of dubious "achievements," Southern Air had owned the
C123 used by Seal in the Nicaragua sting operation which made Barry Seal
famous. That same aircraft was later shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 and
the lone survivor Eugene Hasenfus was captured alive by Sandinista
soldiers.. That is what started the Iran-Contra scandal to begin with. No
one knew--or admitted knowing--just who owned Southern Air Transport back in
1986, although government officials all swore up and down that it wasn't the
CIA.
Southern Air's ownership by Greyhound Leasing, which became the entity
called Finova, was only disclosed after no one was looking, when SAT went
into bankruptcy in 1998. This is the first time the holding company, Finova,
has been revealed for what it clearly is, an Agency front, set up in Arizona
and headquartered in Canada to escape American financial disclosure
requirements.
Suddenly, on June 14, 1984, after passage of the second Boland Amendment and
the consolidation of Contra operations under Oliver North the plane was sold
twice in one day. According to journalist, producer and author Dan
Hopsicker, "This was at a period in time when Barry knew he was on the way
out." The plane went first to a mysterious Morgan B. Mitchell of Vale,
Oregon, and then to Chevrolet Dealer Merrill Bean of Ogden Utah. Bean,
curiously, gave the Dover, Delaware address of the "Prentis Hall [sic]
Corporation" on his FAA registration.
Students of the CIA have long been aware of the Agency's affinity for hiding
its assets in Delaware shell corporations. But, to be fair, many other
companies do so for reasons of convenience. In an interview Bean stated that
he had incorporated in Delaware as a legal necessity because of the needs of
his investors. "Delaware is a very convenient place for many kinds of
corporations to incorporate and many large corporations and multi-nationals
do so," Bean told FTW. "Because other companies I was in partnership with
were incorporated there I chose to do so also. It was much easier that way
and it was a requirement of the partners who were investing."
However, Delaware officials in the Secretary of State's office said that
Bean's company, Prentis Hall [not Prentice Hall], does not exist. And in the
FAA records connected to Bean's ownership of "Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" we find
yet another unexplained gap in FAA records. Whenever major mechanical
repairs are made on an aircraft, the involved mechanic is required to
complete an FAA Form 337. In December 1989, FAA certified mechanic Irvin
Strayer installed some routine de-icing equipment on the plane. The
mechanic, reviewing what should have been original ownership documents,
listed the owner as United Insurance of Ogden Utah. Nowhere in FAA title
paperwork does United Insurance appear as an owner. And a spokesman for the
Utah State Department of Insurance told FTW that there had never been a
United Insurance licensed to do business in the state.
"It was an insurance company that a group of car dealers had formed to
handle title and financing and other insurance for car sales," said Bean. "I
bought the other guys out of the airplane and had some repairs done before I
sold to Corporate Wings."
Someone should have told the FAA. Or perhaps someone changed the FAA's
records. Stranger things have happened. Bean does not recall if he changed
the records to reflect this or not.
A Likely Suspect
In what will become a long litany of links between Barry Seal's activities
and the financial fraud of the 1980's, Merrill Bean was also involved in
what The Salt Lake City Tribune called "the worst financial disaster in Utah
since the Great Depression." That disaster was the en masse 1980s failure of
Utah thrifts -- hybrid financial institutions that offered high interest
rates and consumer loans -- and the collapse of the insurance fund that was
supposed to protect their deposits.
Because Utah's thrifts were heavily underinsured, the actions of Bean's
thrift, Western Heritage Thrift and Loan, left a trail of broken hearts, and
broken people.
"We had just moved to Utah from California two years ago," 58-year old Irene
Culver told The Salt Lake City Tribune in 1986. "My husband Kent was an
aircraft mechanic but he has Parkinson's Disease. We put half our savings in
there [Western Heritage] and bought a little fixer-upper with the other
half. When the State closed everything, I thought, 'I suppose we're lucky.'
My Social Security should start in four years. We were going to put a new
roof on and install a gas furnace because the electricity's expensive. Now
we can't do it, so we've got half the house closed off."
Bean told FTW, "I was Director of that failed thrift. I came aboard when it
was almost going under. And I poured some money into it to try to save it
and it didn't happen. I was hoping that my $75,000 that I put into it would
help revive it." While admitting that he was on the Board of Directors of
Western Heritage, Bean stated emphatically that he was not "a Honcho."
FTW wonders how an obviously savvy businessman who owns several aircraft and
car dealerships believed that $75,000 would turn around a failing savings
and loan. In "The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush," Texas journalist Pete
Brewton documented how much of the S&L scandal was connected to Iran-Contra
operations and illegal covert operations of the CIA. In many of those
schemes a $75,000 or similar "buy-in" might have secured the mighty a seat
at a highly-lucrative but completely criminal feeding frenzy.
Disappearing' Money
Following the "paper trail" of Barry Seal's King Air 200 revealed
connections to some other unsavory perpetrators of the major financial
frauds that -- like the S&L scandal -- marred the 1980s. Greyhound Leasing,
or "Greycas" for short, was at the center of a huge and seemingly
inexplicable financial fraud that, like the half-trillion dollar S&L
scandal, no one seemed too concerned about unraveling. The corporation was
openly and eventually very publicly looted. Afterwards, company management
pretended to be "baffled" as to how it could have happened.
It went down like this:
Greycas Inc. and another Greyhound unit, Greyhound Leasing & Financial
Corp., were bilked of over $ 75 million by one Sheldon Player, a former
Vernal, Utah, resident assumed to be in the machine and oilfield equipment
sales business, who gained the money through fraudulently obtained loans
from Greyhound. Greycas then devised an elaborate cover-up scheme to prevent
disclosure of details about the loss.
This episode began at the beginning of the 1980's with one $ 600,000 loan.
Player and his companies would sell Greycas heavy machine tools, lease them
back and then pretend to sublease the expensive devices to end-users. In
most cases the machines, which were collateral for the loans, were
non-existent.
By 1984, Player had borrowed nearly $ 8 million from Greyhound in the same
scheme. That year he asked for $ 40 million in new loans to continue his
transactions. A total of $23.5 million had been disbursed by the time the
company first got suspicious and confronted Player. He was told the company
wanted to inspect the machinery that it was supposed to have owned.
Remember, this was a company owned by the CIA front Finova. Player resisted,
leading some company executives to wonder about the "integrity of the
transactions with Player."
Then, incredibly, despite the company's doubts about Player's credibility
and integrity, and in spite of Greycas' inability to make inspections of the
equipment, the company lent Player another $ 24 million. In the ensuing
months lucky Sheldon Player drew $66 million on the credit line authorized
by the company.
This was an Iran-Contra bust-out.
Nice Work if You Can Get It
Anyone who has ever borrowed money for a car or home must admire the
chutzpah of Sheldon Player, whom the business press took to calling an
"admitted con artist." Yet Player had no history of financial fraud that we
could discover before this, which took place at the same time that officers
of a Swiss-based subsidiary were defrauding Greycas of another $120 million,
in a purportedly unrelated scandal that sent shock waves from Athens to
Phoenix.
"Many borrowers failed to make even the initial monthly payment,'' court
documents state. The company's accountants wrote that "fraudulent and
dishonest acts . . . resulted directly in a loss of $119,684,598." Not so,
said the company's hapless General Counsel, who responded, weakly, that the
loss has been reduced to a mere $72 million.
The fraud included checks written as bribes on napkins in Swiss restaurants
and then set afireÉ the reported possibility that one of the participants
was blackmailing other participants and some mighty upset shareholders who
filed lawsuits in Phoenix urging the Greyhound board to take legal action
against top officials. The troubling question that puzzled business
reporters never were able to answer was this: Why were they giving money
away down at Greyhound during the 1980's?
Being Connected Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry The disposition of
the resulting criminal trial of Sheldon Player is an illustration of the
maxim that in George Bush's America, "Being connected means never having to
say you're sorry."
When Sheldon Player was sentenced, he received a five-year sentence. Yup.
Five years -- one year for each $13 million he stole. This is clearly a deal
that, if offered to regular Americans--as opposed to the CIA-related kind
who killed Barry Seal --would have people lining up around the Phoenix
Federal Courthouse to sign up. After receiving this draconian sentence Mr.
Player was given additional time to settle personal affairs before entering
prison. No one can say American justice is not compassionate. And prison,
for Mr. Player, consisted of the Lompoc Camp, a minimum-security facility
known as one of 10 to 12 "country club" institutions in operation around the
nation, according to Dick Murray, community programs manager for the U.S.
Bureau of Prisons in Phoenix.
Former Greycas official Robert Bertrand, who apparently covered up for
Player's fraud, lucky fellow, never went to prison. Instead he resigned his
position at Greyhound in 1986, and was soon appointed the new President and
Chief Executive Officer of Finalco Inc. [Sounds like Finova doesn't it?], an
equipment finance and brokerage company which just happens to be based in
McLean, Virginia, the home of the CIA.
(Back?) Into the Hands of the Guvnah
Merrill Bean, the Utah Chevy dealer who acquired "Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" in
1984 sold the plane in May of 1990 to Corporate Wings of Salt Lake City. Two
days later Corporate Wings sold it to Gantt Aviation of Georgetown, Texas,
which a month later sold it to the State of Texas Aircraft Pool where it
resides today. Johnny Gantt, President of Gantt Aviation told FTW that he
probably knew that the State of Texas had a bid out when he acquired
"Zero-Eight-Foxtrot". At the time the Governor of Texas was Bill Clements
and George "W", a good friend, was owner of the Texas Rangers.
A genial Gantt explained that he had probably been aware that the State was
"putting out a bid" for a King Air and scooped up the plane. Press clipping
show that Gantt Aviation is a large dealership with a long history of
providing planes to the State of Texas. It was a done deal within weeks and
Zero-Eight-Foxtrot found the home where it lives happily today.
At the beginning of this article we outlined briefly how a tail number in
Barry Seal's papers started this investigation. It actually began when
author Terry Reed announced at a Los Angeles public gathering in July, 1999
that a video tape might surface during the 2000 Presidential campaign
"showing George W and Jeb arriving at Tamiami Airport in 1985 to pick up two
kilos of cocaine for a party. Said Reed, "They flew in on a King Air 200."
Subsequent statements made by Barry Seal and recorded in Reed's 1995 book
Compromised recount how Seal bragged about how he had video of "the Bush
boys" doing coke. Other witnesses located by both writers of this story, who
were in relevant official positions in 1985, have confirmed that the
described Tamiami sting took place. All, in fear for their lives, have
refused to go on the record.
Does George "W" use Zero-Eight-Foxtrot? According to Jerry Daniels,
Executive Director of the Texas State Aircraft Pooling Board, "He used to
fly on that airplane all the time. He stopped when he became a Presidential
candidate because the State won't let you fly its aircraft for political
purposes." But FTW learned that if and when Dubyah is back in the state and
on state business, he probably will because Dubyah is a licensed pilot and
Zero-Eight-Foxtrot is one of his favorites though he doesn't get to pilot
much any more.
Said one savvy Pol of George W, "The last thing we need in this country is
another President with lingering drug scandals in his past--and maybe
present."
© Copyright 1999, From The Wilderness. No portion of this article may be
reproduced, resold or reprinted without express written permission.
Daniel Hopsicker is the producer of a business news television show airing
internationally on NBC called Global Business 2000. That is, he was the
Producer until Dan produced a 2-hour special on the CIA and drugs, Mena,
Arkansas and Barry Seal called "The Secret Heartbeat of America." Dan was
told by his biggest friend in Hollywood, "Your show will not air while
Clinton is President." When a subsequent attack in broad daylight on
Wilshire Boulevard outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles confirmed his
friend's judgment and prediction, Mr. Hopsicker began work on a book called
"Barry and 'the boys," due to be finished by the end of 1999.
Professional videotape copies of Dan's two TV specials-- a second one is on
the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers-- may be ordered for $19.50 plus
$4.50 s&h by calling - 941.416.3734.
Special Thanks - to From The Wilderness readers Mr. P., a lawyer from the
South, John Carman, and "The Goddess", who contributed critical pieces to
this story. You are living proof that no one is as smart as all of us and
that with the Net we can beat the major media every time!
FTW's mission for readers - This story, like Watergate will be broken in
increments. We need to find out how many times and on what dates
Zero-Eight-Foxtrot landed at Tamiami Airport in 1985 and who was piloting.
Freedom of Information Act requests need to be very specific. Think of
creative ways to find out.
"Mike
Ruppert is a one man crusade trying to expose America's bogus war on
drugs. From the time we met on the campaign trail in 1992 while filming
THE LAST PARTY, through his challenge to John Deutch, Mike Ruppert has
been on the front line trying to get the story out."
- Marc Levin, - Emmy award winning Director of
PBS's The Secret Government, THE LAST PARTY and Producer of Bill Moyers'
1998 series on Addiction.
Operation
Indigo Sky - Massive CIA heroin smuggling operation based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Heroin is grown and processed in Nigeria, then shipped for packaging to
Amsterdam, Netherlands. From there the heroin is shipped to Europe and
various points in the U.S., including bonded warehouses on the East Coast
and Boeing Field in Seattle.