-Caveat Lector-
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-----
Subject: Duane Garret suicide
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gerhard Holford)
Date: 29 Jul 95 05:06:25 GMT
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9507282100.A6269-0100000@netcom14>
>
>
> Gore Aide Found Dead
>
> SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The body of an adviser to Vice President Al Gore
> and other prominent Democrats was found floating beneath the Golden Gate
> Bridge, and authorities said they are investigating his death as a
> suicide.
>
> Hours before his body was found, political adviser and commentator
> Duane Garrett told a local television station it would be impossible for
> him to make the next day's show.
>
------ snip -------
>
> Garrett, 48, co-chaired presidential campaigns for Walter Mondale and
> Bruce Babbitt, a gubernatorial campaign for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom
> Bradley, a congressional campaign for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and
> gubernatorial and Senate campaigns for Dianne Feinstein.
>
> Feinstein, D-Calif., spoke emotionally of Garrett in a telephone
> interview from her Washington office late Thursday and said she found it
> difficult to believe he might have ended his own life.
>
For those of you not familiar with the San Francisco scene, Duane Garrett
was VERY, VERY well known. He was the featured talk show host in the
most listened to time slot of the the highest rated radio station in the
bay area, KGO.
He was also VERY, VERY well plugged into the Washington scene and the
liberal establishment.
The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of his dramatic death
was the possible connection to a potentially massive scandal involving
Senator Dianne Feinstein and other politicians. I am not conversant in
the details because very little has come out yet, but the gist of the
allegation seems to be that the California legislature, under the
domination of Willie Brown, passed legislation authorizing the exchange
of some government owned land for land that Feinstein and others had a
financial interest in. The purported rationale for the deal was that it
would allow both the government and the private landowners to consolidate
their interspersed patchwork holdings into large contiguous blocks.
The real effect of the deal, though, was that the government would end up
with relatively worthless land, and the private interests would end up
with land with potentially enormous reserves of valuable minerals
(iridium?) worth BILLIONS of dollars.
Supposing that there is some element of truth to this land swindle, then
it is entirely conceivable that Garrett had some involvement in it and
saw that the "fertilizer was about to hit the ventilator". Garret could
very well have done some lawyering for Feinstein, or made some contacts,
or pulled some string, or simply just known about it. In any case, it is
conceivable that he saw himself about to be drawn into a very ugly
situation and saw suicide as a preferable alternative.
Or, he could have been "suicided" to keep him from succumbing to the
temptation to say more than would be prudent.
If anyone knows more about the land swindle, I would be very interested.
G. Holford
======
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
THE GREAT GOLD HEIST
by Karen Bixman
On October 8, 1994 the biggest gold heist in history
occurred, but this theft lacked the melodrama of a Jesse
James holdup or the excitement of a Brink's truck robbery.
Nary a word was reported by the media even though this
thievery was committed in the light of day. The citizens
that were being robbed tried to cry out for help but the
lawmen wouldn't listen because unbeknownst to them they
were helping the bandits gain their booty.
The 103rd Congress managed to accomplish more than a gang
of train robbers could achieve in a lifetime when they
approved the Desert Wilderness Protection Act. "Instead of
voting on the Desert Wilderness Protection Act, Congress
should be convening a criminal investigation," said Donald
Fife, spokesman for the National Association of Mining
Districts. Fife was commenting on recent infonges, Catellus
Corp., a subsidiary of Santa Fe Pacific, would receive land
that contains some of the richest gold deposits in the
world. In exchange the public gets seventy-four widely
scattered tracts of desert which have found no economic use
in more than a century. These will have to be maintained
at public expense, but Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbit,
says the National Park Service has the resources to
accomplish this.
Catellus owns over 400,000 acres of worthless land in the
California Mojave Desert. This land was obtained by Santa
Fe Pacific and its predecessor railroad companies as part
of the "checkerboard" railroad lands awarded for the
building of the transcontinental railroad. Santa Fe
transferred these lands which have been for sale for over
100 years, over to its subsidiary, Catellus Corp. In the
land swap, Catellus Corp. will receive land from
decommissioned military bases. One of the bases will be
the Chocolate Mountain gunnery range. Unbeknownst to the
public, inside the range is the world's richest gold rift
zone. Geologists estimate that the gold contained in this
zone is worth between $40 to $100 billion. These are
surface gold deposits which are more profitable to mine
than the one-mile deep gold deposits in South Africa.
In addition to controlling Catellus, Santa Fe owns and
operates the Mesquite gold mine located on the Chocolate
Mountain rift zone. The Mesquite gold mine is one of the
top ten mines in the United States and has some of the most
profitable gold deposits of any mine in the world. To the
north is the Chocolate Mountain gunnery range. The
Mesquite open pit gold mine literally stops at the fence
that borders the gunnery range.
According to mining engineers who work at the Mesquite
mine, the main gold ore body is north of the fence inside
the gunnery range. Engineers allege that in 1981 and 1982,
Consolidated Goldfields, which owned the mine at the time,
illegally drilled into the gunnery range area to determine
the composition of the ore body. The samples proved to be
of high quality. According to these same engineers,
beginning in the mid-1980s, military helicopters brought
high ranking military officers, Congressmen and Senators to
the area to examine these large gold deposits. Congressman
Bruce Vento (D-Minn.) was one of those who toured the area.
Engineers allege that the purpose of these tours was to
come up with a way to hand these gold deposits to
Consolidated Goldfields. No legal mechanism was then
available to transfer this land without alerting the public
to the existence of the gold. But around the same time the
California Desert bill was introduced into Congress by
former Senator Alan Cranston.
In 1993, Santa Fe traded all of it's coal mines for
several Consolidated Goldfield mines, including the
Mesquite. According to Donald Fife (spokesman for the
National Association of Mining Districts), "This
transaction effectively concealed a sales price that could
have drawn attention to the real value of Mesquite mine and
the riches north of the pit wall in the gunnery range.
If Catellus Corp. receives land from the Chocolate
Mountain gunnery range, the Santa Fe would control the
exclusive rights to mine the gold trend for nearly 50 miles
to the north. This would bypass any possibility of any
open appraisal of the gold deposits. Senator Diane
Feinstein, used language in the original bill that
specifically stated that Catellus Corp. should receive
preferential treatment in the disbursement of original
government properties.
Since evidence of the conspiracy emerged, rumors
circulating the Beltway said that the Chocolate Mountain
gunnery range could not be decommissioned because there
was too much live ordnance on the ground. This however,
was not true. Millions of surrounding acres were in
similar condition after George Patton and others trained
their entire armies there between 1942 and 1945.
In 1947 the entire region was made safe for civilian use.
Furthermore, the decommissioning of Chocolate Mountain will
be quite easy in comparison to the clearing of mine fields
in Kuwait.
The original version of the bill however, raised enough
red flags in Congress that a few lawmakers, notably Rep.
Michael Huffington (R-Calif.) got the Catellus provisions
stricken. Santa Fe however could actually obtain the bulk
of the gold even before the Chocolate Mountain gunnery
range is decommissioned.
A careful reading of the bill suggests that the map of
the range was altered in July 1993 to exclude a rectangular
parcel along the south end of the range. This land
comprises the immediate area north of the Mesquite gold
mine and included the bulk of the gold deposits and can
only be accessed through the private holdings of the
Mesquite mine. Now that the bill has become law, a new map
of the gunnery range will allow Mesquite to claim public
land adjoining it that could hold a billion to several
billion in gold. Therefore, even with the Catellus
provision stricken from the bill, the money would still be
routed to the same beneficiaries.
The California Public Employees Retirement System,
(CALPERS) is a nearly $80 billion pension fund whose
investment clout is heavily influenced by California
leadership which includes Sen. Diane Feinstein. Several
years ago, CALPERS made a $400 million investment in
Catellus. Shortly after CALPERS made its investment in
Catellus, the value of the stock collapsed 82%.
Dehnert Queen, a San Francisco businessman, filed a
criminal complaint in regards to this investment to U.S.
Attorney Michael J. Yamaguchi and Ms. Sylvia Scott of the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Queen states, in
his complaint that Sen. Feinstein "misrepresented facts to
defraud a public corporation (CALPERS), abused power and
conflicts of interest to defraud State and U.S. taxpayers.
In early 1993, CALPERS doubled its investment in Catellus
to 41 percent...Queen contends "that both former Senator
Cranston and Senator Feinstein acted to sponsor the Desert
Protection Act in order to preserve and protect the formal
agreement that then Mayor Feinstein signed with Catellus to
build the Mission Bay Project in 1984, updated in 1986 and
shepherded same through the City's (San Francisco)
departments and commissions."
The land swap as purposed in The Wilderness Act "will
generate the monetary value (approximately $500 million)
necessary to execute Catellus' large scale development
project located throughout the Bay Area." It has been
alleged that Senator Feinstein as well as California
Speaker of the House Willie Brown and a wide variety of
San Francisco special interest groups would therefore
benefit financially.
...The land swap will give Catellus Corp. thousands of
contiguous acres bordering the Salton Sea which lies west
of the gunnery range. Developing the arid hills and
cleaning up the polluted Salton Sea would require billions
of acre-feet of water. By coincidence, the Coachella Canal
runs right between the Salton Sea and the range, which is
about 20 miles wide and 60 miles long. Developers with
such a prize could readily bid water away from owners of
irrigated farms in the Brawley and El Centro areas.
Ed White, who owns a family mining business in the area
is one of many whose business will now be destroyed. "The
Sierra Club was just used, in my opinion, by Feinstein's
bankers friends and the railroad or their land company
Catellus, to create the public perception that these lands
are fragile and threatened by development," said White.
"The truth appears to be just the opposite. The scattered
railroad lands that could never be developed are to be
consolidated into a single block of 226,000 acres so they
can be developed by Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range Land
and Mining Development."
It is alleged that JLB Realty Corp. based out of Chicago,
is tied to Dick Blum, millionaire husband of Sen. Diane
Feinstein and that JLB allegedly will stand to make a huge
profit on this development. In the name of "re-wilding"
millions of acres of desert, grave financial and
environmental damage will occur once the land is closed to
the public.
97% of the U.S. rare earth mineral production comes from
the California desert. These minerals are used in high
technology and are essential to the production of lasers,
high-power magnets, super conductivity and pollution free
cars. The United States will now be forced to obtain these
minerals from foreign mineral cartels. 100% of the U.S.
production of boron is from the California desert and this
production which generates $500 million a year to the
economy will now be lost.
Several pension and health insurance funds have large
holdings in the area that now will be at risk. These
include the AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers, and California
State Teachers Pension Fund. The Wilderness Act includes
140,000 acres of National Forest found unsuitable for
wilderness by then California Senators Alan Cranston (D)
and Pete Wilson (R) in the 1983 California National Forest
Wilderness Act, including 12,500 acres of the Bighorn
Mountain Wilderness in the San Bernardino National Forest
that impact the AFL-CIO trust properties. The greatest
damage to union trust assets is the expansion of the Joshua
Tree National Park by 234,000 acres to surround their Eagle
Mountain Iron Mine on three sides with National Park
Wilderness. This will prevent the mine from ever producing
again. The steel workers health and pension assets are the
mines and highly mineralized lands acquired when the Kaiser
Steel's Fontana, California steel mill was forced into
bankruptcy by overzealous environmental regulations and
Japanese dumping of steel in the late 1970's...
...The 300,000 acres of Teachers Pension funds are the
unsold state school sections that were given by the Federal
government to the state more than 100 years ago. They have
been for sale for 100 years and because there is no water
they are not threatened with development.
Unlike the AFL-CIO pension and health insurance funds,
the State Legislature and the State Lands Commission
discouraged exploration on those lands for energy and
mineral resources. Their mineral value is unknown, but it
is not uncommon in that area that a single deposit of gold,
silver, boron or other minerals could exceed several
billion dollars in value. The closure of the lands will
generate a loss of 12,000 to 20,000 jobs and billions of
dollars of economic activity will be lost annually. Over
two hundred homes and private businesses worth millions of
dollars that will be taken and destroyed will result in
claims, lawsuits and payments of 5th amendment compensation.
One of the most insidious provisions of the act is the
creation of "Reserved Federal Water Rights." The
Wilderness Act will reserve federal water rights for 74
desert wilderness acres and three new national parks
totaling 8 million acres. This will create a precedent,
usurping state supremacy and local control of the Western
States precious water rights. This will be the "camel's
nose under the tent" because although the Wilderness Act
applies only to the California desert it gives special
standing to the Federal government in the adjudication of
any water rights where wilderness is involved. It could
affect all neighboring states that share watershed with
California: Arizona, Nevada, Oregon even including all of
the states that share the Colorado River.
The California Wildlife Federation and the Society for
Bighorn Sheep have headed the opposition to the act because
they say that thousands of animals will die now that the
bill has been enacted. In this arid, rocky region private
individuals developed and maintain water holes for the
Bighorn Sheep and other wildlife: now they will be
prohibited from doing so.
On October 7, 1994 at 2:00 a.m., Representative George
Miller (D-Calif.), representing the East San Francisco Bay
area, led the charge to ram the wilderness bill through the
House where it was passed by a voice vote. The next day,
Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.) valiantly filibustered the
Senate in an attempt to keep the bill from passing, but his
efforts failed. The Alliance of America, a coalition of
property rights groups says that a criminal investigation
should focus on the roles of corrupt politicians and
environmental racketeers in the biggest gold heist in
history.
Let the investigation begin.
++++++++++++++++++++++end+++++++++++++++++++++
=====
Subject: SF EXAMINER-Garrett's writings
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Warwick Hayes, iii)
Date: 30 Jul 1995 20:35:47 GMT
Message-ID: <3vgqf3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
S.F. EXAMINER
CLUES TO DEATH IN WRITINGS
Fri, July 28, 1995
Duane Garrett, the prominent Democratic Party
fund-raiser who died in an apparent plunge from the Golden
Gate Bridge, had complained recently of being under
financial pressure, amid accusations that he was selling
fake sports memorabilia at his San Francisco auction
business, according to documents and interviews.
Garrett, 48, a lawyer, radio talk-show host, confidant of
Vice President Al Gore and proprietor of Richard Wolffers
Auctions Inc., left behind "personal writings
indicating increasing and compounding stress," the
Marin County coroner said Thursday. The death was being
investigated as a suicide.
The Coast Guard found Garrett's body near the north tower
of the bridge at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. He had left his
Tiburon home about five hours earlier; his wife, Patty,
had filed a missing person report when he didn't return.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
Garrett, father of two daughters, was a self-made
millionaire who became rich trading in art and rare stamps
and then turned his financial skills to boosting the
fortunes of liberal politicians.
He once boasted that in his career he had raised more than
$18 million for a long list of Democratic candidates,
including former Vice President Walter Mondale, former
Gov. Jerry Brown and the late Mayor George Moscone.
"Duane mastered more worlds than most men enter in a
lifetime," Gore said.
In recent years, Garrett had donated more than $120,000 of
his own money to Democratic politicians - $60,000 of it to
longtime friend Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her failed 1990
gubernatorial campaign.
"If there ever was an unlikely candidate for this, it was
Duane Garrett," Feinstein said Thursday. "There's
nobody that viewed life . . . with more gusto or more sense
that there wasn't anything that couldn't have been done -
whether it was politics or stamp collecting or art trading
or baseball memorabilia or the law or telling stories."
But a sudden downturn in the sports memorabilia market, in
which Garrett's auction house specialized, had sharply
cut into his auction business earnings recently,
according to several sources who asked not to be named,
and in past months Garrett had told friends he was
financially overextended.
In addition, Wolffers Auctions was the target of repeated
complaints that it was auctioning off bogus collectibles
and falsely reporting that items were being sold at high
prices when they actually hadn't been sold at all - though
there is no indication the company or Garrett had come
under the scrutiny of law enforcement.
Phil Wood, a Washington, D.C., sports broadcaster and
baseball memorabilia expert, said Garrett's auction
house had repeatedly been confronted in recent years with
evidence that it was selling fake baseball jerseys and
gloves on consignment.
In 1991, Garrett sold - for a reported $85,000 - a Detroit
Tigers uniform that supposedly had belonged to Tigers
great Hank Greenberg, even though several experts and the
team itself said the uniform was fake, according to Wood
and Detroit sports collector Ed Budnick.
"The number on the back looked like it was cut out by a
blind person," Wood said. Garrett auctioned the uniform
even though Budnick sent him a letter with photographs of
Greenberg in uniform to prove the point, Budnick said.
The same year, Garrett also sold, for $10,000, a uniform
advertised as belonging to Baltimore Orioles Hall of
Famer Brooks Robinson.
"It was the wrong manufacturer and the wrong color,"
Wood said, but Garrett's house went ahead with the auction
despite the warnings.
For a time, Wood said, Garrett's house also sold the
so-called "Fred Lieb collection" - baseball gloves
supposedly owned by Hall of Famers including Ty Cobb and
Walter Johnson, and supposedly authenticated with
letters from Lieb, one of the greatest sportswriters in
the history of the game. All were proved fakes and the Lieb
letters were proved forgeries, Wood said.
"Right now I'm assisting a collector in trying to get
$5,500 back on (a fake) Al Kaline uniform" purchased from
Garrett's firm, Wood said.
Another sports collector, who asked not to be quoted by
name, said he had investigated a series of cases in which
Garrett allegedly had falsely claimed to have sold items
at record high prices.
In 1992, he said, Garrett announced that he had been paid
$363,000 for a jersey of New York Yankees star Lou Gehrig,
but the buyer later said he got the shirt for $70,000 and
an old uniform belonging to Ty Cobb.
In another case, Garrett said he had been paid $30,000 for
a baseball card of Tim O'Keefe, a New York Giants star of
the 19th century. The collector said he had later met the
card's owner, who said he got it from Garrett in a trade.
"Duane was very angry and outspoken that the hobby would
doubt the credibility of this reported sale, but all the
evidence suggested that the card was never sold," the
collector said.
Wood said that in the past 18 months the market for
baseball uniforms - one of Wolffers' specialties - had
"absolutely crashed."
At a recent show a jersey belonging to St. Louis Cardinal
star Stan Musial that had fetched $15,000 18 months ago
was on sale for $8,000, he said.
Howard Nemerovski, attorney for Wolffers, did not return
phone calls Thursday.
Speaking anonymously, a coroner employee said Thursday
that Garrett apparently had taken his own life, but a
final judgment could not be made until the results of
toxicology tests were available.
An autopsy was conducted, but the result has not been
released.
Prominent Democrat
Garrett, a San Francisco native, grew up in the Bay Area.
He graduated summa cum laude from UC-Santa Barbara and
UC-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. He became
involved in politics as a lawyer at the same firm as
Moscone.
He befriended and helped a generation of Bay Area
Democrats - Willie Brown, Barbara Boxer and especially
Feinstein, whom he backed through the losing campaign for
governor and her election and re-election to the Senate.
Garrett was national campaign co-chairman of Walter
Mondale's unsuccessful 1984 presidential campaign and
was chairman of then-Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt's failed
try for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.
An ardent salmon fisherman and environmentalist, he
served for several years as a member of the state Coastal
Commission.
He also advised such international leaders as Polish
President Lech Walesa, former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He
was also official historian of the San Francisco Giants
baseball team.
"He had a charmed life'
"I don't know of anybody who had more to live for than
Duane," said Democratic Party fund-raiser Bob McCarthy,
a San Francisco lawyer. "He had a charmed life. He was
able to pursue his loves. He was a Renaissance man - an
extraordinary person who will be much missed."
Callers to Garrett's radio station, KGO, expressed
shock, anger and sadness. One - "Mark from Daly City" -
wept as he described the time Garrett helped him arrange a
charity auction for a wheelchair rugby team.
Some callers also expressed doubt that Garrett had
committed suicide and offered a variety of theories for
his death.
KGO sportscaster Joe Starkey said Garrett had received a
number of death threats in the last two weeks for
objecting to the deal to bring the Raiders football team
back to Oakland.
Kevin O'Brien, general manager of KTVU-TV, where Garrett
did weekly political commentary, said Garrett had called
Tuesday to say he would not appear as scheduled Thursday.
KTVU producer Lorraine Howell said Garrett had left her a
message saying it was "impossible" for him to appear on
her "Mornings on 2" show.
"He hung up rather abruptly," Howell said.
Friends including KTVU weatherman Brian Copeland and Los
Angeles political consultant Bill Carrick said that in
recent weeks Garrett had surprised them by giving them
valuable autographed baseballs from his personal
collection.
Garrett's business venture
Under Garrett, Wolffers - which has offices at 133 Kearny
St. - become one of the nation's top sports memorabilia
operations. Garrett bought the firm in 1989 in
partnership with Madeleine Haas Russell and her
son-in-law, Bill Russell-Shapiro.
Garrett's plan was to turn Wolffers, which had been a
stamp auction house, into an operation specializing in
pricey music and sports memorabilia.
His biggest project was the 1992 "Treasures of the
Diamond" auction that brought in a reported $3 million
from bidders worldwide. The centerpiece was Gehrig's
1927 road jersey.
But the baseball strike slowed the memorabilia market. In
early June, Garrett acknowledged that business had
turned bad, saying of Wolffers' auctions in September and
December, "It was a really rough market. Those were the
two toughest sales we've ever had."
But he said he had noticed "a real vibrance, at all
levels" in Wolffers' May sale, after the baseball strike
ended.
Memorabilia shows
In recent months, the sports memorabilia market has come
under increasing scrutiny of federal prosecutors.
Last week former Brooklyn Dodgers great Duke Snider and
Giants star Willie McCovey pleaded guilty to failure to
pay taxes on unreported income from signing baseball
cards at memorabilia shows.
Sports collectors said Garrett had nothing to do with
baseball card shows, and Internal Revenue Service
Northern California spokesman Larry Wright said there
was no local investigation of Garrett.
suicide, politico told
friends he was
"overextended'
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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