-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Vesco
Arthur Herzog©1987
DoubleDay
ISBN 0-385-24176-3
380 pps. – first/one edition – out-of-print
--[1]--
As always, Caveat lector and cui bono . . .
Om
K
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37
THE ROAD TO CUBA
The destination was St. Martin, normally about a three-hour trip, but which,
because of the storm, took most of the day. Instead of following the island
chain, as usually done, the Realitie, equipped with Satnav (satellite
guidance) and compass, went directly across in twenty-foot waves. The craft
was built for rough weather, but as it lurched into troughs with sickening
speed, Vesco's helpers were keenly aware that they could drown, ending the
fugitive's dreams as well as their own.
Vesco remained below, afraid of being spotted, though there were no other
vessels in the vicinity, peering through portholes for search planes, though
there were none. As they neared St. Martin, Vesco came topside and had an
altercation with Gray, the mustached ice man, about what course Potter should
follow. Gray won that and the subsequent battles.
The Realitie docked at Philipsburg—there was no customs check in the
duty-free port, though they were required—but Vesco, who had shaved his
beard, became agitated at the sight of cruise ships, convinced he'd be
recognized. Harley rented a car, for cash—nothing must be on paper—and
surreptitiously picked up Bob at the quay. All four went first to Little Bay,
as Harley remembers, to another hotel and then to Mullet Bay, where Vesco
burned papers he'd brought, flushing them down the toilet. They all lived and
ate in the same suites. Vesco would let no one out of his sight, perhaps in
fear he'd be turned in. At night he would nod fitfully, rise, pace, peer
through the windows—always on guard against the FBI, which he saw everywhere.
The fugitive spoke of people who would come from the States to aid him, but
only one did, a young man who left almost immediately. Vesco phoned Don Pepe
Figueres for help once more, without results. But on the evening of the
second day on St. Martin, a Mexican Gulfstream jet, whose pilot had some sort
of diplomatic status, arrived to fetch him. It has been supposed that the
plane was arranged for by Carlos Lehder-Rivas, the Colombian drug king. The
next morning, Vesco refused to fly on it. He was convinced that the FBI would
interdict him at the airport. He wanted to reboard the Realitie, but Gray
asked the raving man, "Where would you go?" At last, Vesco gave in and Harley
drove them to the airport. Vesco wanted to board at the end of the runway,
but the Mexican captain wouldn't—he taxied to the terminal—and Gray and the
fugitive, pretending to have been on board already, slipped through customs.
jumping into the plane with the sack of money brought from Antigua, Vesco hid
on his hands and knees in the aisle to avoid being seen until the plane was
ready for takeoff. "His spirit," said Gray, "was broken."
Vesco had his fall-backs as usual. The Salude was off nearby St. Barthelemy,
and a colleague flew in after the fugitive had departed to make sure he
escaped. Vesco always managed to muster loyalty because people felt sorry for
him, because he appealed to their sense of adventure, and because they
expected the supermillionaire to pay them well. He badly disappointed the
Antigua group as he had others. Harley, who expected $100,000 for his
services, received $3,000, and Gray only got the used Toyota, parked on an
Antigua street as a ruse, which he was somehow supposed to divide with the Rea
litie's owner. But everybody was glad to have the famous fugitive off their
hands.
Vesco's position was unenviable by any standards. He had no safe place to go.
He pinned his hopes on Costa Rica because of Jose Figueres and the hospital
in San Jose. Exacerbated perhaps by stress, his urinary problem had returned.
But whether the Ticos would accept him was unknown. The jet probably flew him
to Mexico from Colombia, and from there he employed two aircraft to confuse
the control tower at Llano Grande International Airport in the northern part
of Costa Rica, not too far from the Guanacaste finca. One plane landed
briefly at an airstrip, and Vesco was picked up by a car whose driver may not
have known who he was. After, perhaps, a short stay at the ranch, he was
taken to San Jose in early April. Vesco called Don Pepe, who summoned Enrique
Carreras. "Do you know who's here?" he asked. Carreras said, "Don't tell me.
Vesco." Figueres nodded silently, and Enrique groaned.
"Vesco was beside himself," Carreras recalled. "He complained of being ripped
off wherever he went. He needed a sanctuary for himself and Pat and a place
where Patrick would be in school. And his health was terrible." For the
moment, the question for the Costa Ricans was where to shelter Vesco. The
Figuereses had La Lucha, but everyone knew that Don Pepe hid people there—not
just political refugees, as frequently in the past, but those who had fallen
into trouble in the United States and other countries for white-collar
crimes. Vesco was lodged in safe houses, and, at one, was robbed of $25,000
but had no legal recourse since, in theory, he wasn't in the country.
Vesco stayed in Costa Rica until April 30, 1982, undergoing medical treatment
for the urinary blockage. The best time to bring him to the hospital was
during the rush hour, nine in the morning. He was treated as an outpatient.
The President-elect of Costa Rica, Luis Alberto Monge, had to be informed,
and Carreras went to his house. "I have news," Carreras said, in Monge's
bedroom, where Monge was dressing. "You don't mean. . . ." "I'm afraid so.
He's here," Carreras said. Monge fell back on the bed and gasped, "I felt
like a cathedral ceiling just dropped on me. What am I to do with Don Pepe?
Tell him I beg him to get Vesco out. The country is broke. The economic
problems are the worst in our history. The corruption is incredible. I can't
handle Vesco, too. Promise me Vesco will leave before the inauguration."
Enrique promised Vesco would be gone within seventy-two hours.
Figueres telephoned Tomas Borge, one of the nine Nicaraguan comandantes who
ran the government and Minister of the Interior, with whom he was
acquainted. Figueres explained Bob's background briefly. Borge said, "We're
not exactly sure who this Vesco is, but we'll oblige as a favor to you." To
avoid detection, Vesco and Carreras flew from a soccer field—leaves clogged
the landing gear and the Cessna had trouble taking off—and landed safety in
Managua, where they were lodged in a government guest house. Vesco stayed
there about two weeks, during which time Pat and some of the kids came from
Miami. Carreras brought his own family to make the Vescos, jittery in still
another environment, feel safer. A Costa Rican doctor came, and so did two
physicians from Cuba, a neurologist and a neurosurgeon. They determined that
Nicaragua lacked the necessary medical facilities or even a proper urologist.
Vesco by then suffered from uremic poisoning and ran a high fever. He would
have to visit Moscow, Budapest, or Havana—places safe from the U.S.
authorities—" or he dies," Borge said. Vesco demurred, claiming he was
certain he could remain in Costa Rica. "It was an empty hope," Carreras said,
"the hope of a desperate man." But Vesco insisted on returning. "The FBI will
catch you," the comandante warned Vesco, and Enrique said, "You'll get Don
Pepe in trouble. I want nothing to do with it." At the last moment, Carreras
agreed to be a passenger, though dreading the trip. "Don't worry," he told a
Nicaraguan official who accompanied them to the airport. "We'll be right
back."
On May 12, the Cessna landed at Llano Grande airport at Liberia, Costa Rica.
The Vesco attorney, Jose Maria Pla was alerted by Don Pepe, and rushed to the
airport. Vesco's plane landed at 9:30 A.M. Vesco descended, his arms, the
lawyer noted, "like those of a concentration camp victim. He was very pale."
He wasn't recognized immediately by customs and Pla felt obliged to identify
him.
A woman at immigration phoned her boss, the Minister of Security who,
unfortunately for Vesco, was attending the first cabinet meeting of the Monge
government. He whispered to the President who said, "Ministers, I have Robert
Vesco coming for an operation. What do you decide?" The answer, accompanied
by thumbs down, was "No! No! No!"
Pla told Vesco, "The answer is no. You have twenty minutes."
(The American Embassy was also notified and demanded Vesco's arrest. "There
are lots of doctors in the U.S.," someone there said. But Costa Rica replied
the fugitive hadn't passed through immigration and wasn't technically in the
country.) Vesco lay on his side on a bench and raved, "I'm sick. My wife is
waiting. My son's Costa Rican. I'm an Italian—I have an Italian passport. I'm
a Costa Rican income resident."
Pla said gently, "They've given you twenty minutes."
"Not twenty," Vesco snapped. "Five." On the plane, as it overflew his finca, V
esco looked down and wailed dramatically at what was past, passing, and to
come. He may have been delirious, or crazy, or both. He returned to Nicaragua.
Carreras recommended Budapest—an aspiring politician, he may have wanted Bob
as far away as possible—but Vesco chose Cuba, and on Saturday, June 12, Borge
having made the slow arrangements, Vesco and a companion left for Havana on
an Air Cubana Ilyushin. There were no formalities like visas. On the way, the
companion tried to soothe Vesco, telling him that although Cuba lacked fancy
supermarkets he'd find life tranquil and safe for himself and his family if
he decided to move there. "Look," Vesco said, "I'm nervous. I'm jumping over
the wall and there's no way I can come back to the other side of the wall."
The companion muttered something about dealing with both the Greeks and the
Trojans, as he called the United States and Cuba.
"No," said Vesco. "I have an enemy on the other side, and the enemy of my
friend is my enemy. This is a serious step."
Vesco was given a day to relax and a driver to tour Havana. On the next, he
was admitted to a military hospital, CIMEQ
His body made his poor psychological condition apparent. His feet had thick
calluses from having gone shoeless so long on the boat—in the Bahamas and
Antigua. His eyes were inflamed because he had been afraid to see an
ophthalmologist, his teeth rotten because of his terror of what a dentist
might stick into him. He refused to take more than a local anesthetic, and,
as an instrument was inserted into his penis, had to be strapped down. His
screams could be heard down the hall.
Vesco was released after a few days and returned to Nicaragua, though he
shuttled back and forth to Cuba. How bewildering the number of countries must
have seemed to Pat, who would have given practically anything to be in
Detroit: the Bahamas, almost completely North Americanized despite tough
black faces and a harsh political style; Costa Rica, striving to become the
Athens of Central America and a virtual U.S. dependent; tiny Antigua,
American—green to its soul; Nicaragua, wood-burning cookstoves in backyards,
buses only miracles prevented from collapsing under the weight of passengers
crowded even onto their roofs, masses of soldiers, shortages of everything,
even water. For the first time in Nicaragua, the Vescos saw real poverty
almost everywhere. It was inescapable.
Still, though isolated, the Vescos lived in their usual upperclass style with
the apparent blessing of the revolutionary Sandinista government. The first
residence was a provisional one that had belonged to a general during the
Somoza regime in a government compound located in the Planetarium district
outside Managua. They then moved to the luxurious Los Robles neighborhood
within the city. The house had been confiscated from a pro-Somoza sugarcane
grower, and Vesco bought it for about $60,000 from the hoard he always
carried. The residence was guarded by soldiers.
The fugitive's on-and-off presence in Nicaragua—he was there until the fall
of 1983—was unknown to the newspaper La Prensa, which had run stories on the
fugitive while he was in Costa Rica. The Ministry of the Interior, in charge
of domestic security among other things, was aware of his presence, however.
Jose Figueres, highly skeptical about Bob's assets, nonetheless hoped he
could attract investments, or so he told the Nicaraguans. They gave Vesco the
benefit of the doubt and a run-down DC-3 in which he toured the country for
several weeks with Enrique Carreras to inspect possible tourist sites. Vesco p
repared a plan, with charts and maps, for two hotels, one at a Pacific beach
site, Pone Loya, and the other in the mountain district at Matagalpa, the
site of fighting later between government forces and the Contras. His
proposal included gambling—in 1986, Nicaragua announced that a casino would
be built—but, as usual, nothing came of Vesco's schemes.
Fear was a constant feature of Vesco's life even if he had to interpret
reality to justify it. When the United States invaded Grenada in October
1983, he was convinced that the objective was himself because his yacht was
supposed to have been there—it was in Cuba by then, as was he. He believed
the Contras would capture Managua and turn him over to the Americans.
Although he'd expected to live in Nicaragua, he sold the Los Robles house to
the government for $9,000, and sought asylum in Cuba.
pps.310-316
=====
38
OF COKE AND CHICANERY
Don Pepe Figueres retained a caustic affection for Robert Vesco whom he
regarded as a victim of an overly strong case against him by U.S. authorities
plus personality defects that may have been a result. But one day the old
man, knowing I had researched the fugitive exhaustively, frowned and asked
me, "Do you think Bob has been involved in the drug trade? If so, I'd be
happy if he were shot."
I was aware, of course, of the narcotics allegations but doubted them as did
Vesco's former associates in the United States. For them, Vesco, the family
man, thief or not, would never sink to drugs. That would have seemed out of
character, as they recollected him. But the person they remember may have no
longer existed.
One reason I didn't give credence to the drug talk was that I believed U.S.
law enforcement officers deliberately spread unverified information to
advance their careers. For instance, in the early seventies, Frank Peroff
told a Senate committee that Vesco would provide $300,000 for heroin
smuggling. Stories appeared in the press even though investigators could find
no proof—a code-marked "secret" U.S. telex strongly disputed the Peroff
story. "I realize," said a straightforward DEA official at the time, "that
any attempt to connect the name of Robert Vesco to an international drug
investigation would make news." Said an other, "I can't find anything
indicating this guy is involved with junk."
"Who needs drugs?" Vesco told Ken Cartwright, the Nassau car dealer, as he
expressed concern about his children. Vesco obtained a letter under the
Freedom of Information Act from the Drug Enforcement Authority that seemed to
clear him of narcotics charges. He sent a handwritten letter to the Bahamian
Commission of Inquiry on the drug trade there denying he was ever involved.
Still, Vesco was capable of believing his own stories—even if false. And his
anger toward the United States was profound, disaffection deepening over the
years as he sought safety. Seldom would Vesco admit that he brooded about his
homeland-though he missed, he once confessed, stuffed turkey at
Thanksgiving—but just as spurned love can turn to hatred, Vesco may have
wanted to inflict harm on what he considered his former country, and his love
of money coupled with adventurism could have led him into uncharted seas. He
was increasingly cynical, and, considering the wildness of the past decade of
his life, nothing seemed impossible. Above all, he was reckless, as his
history with IOS amply illustrated.
In his letter to the Commission, Vesco said he had met only once with Carlos
Enrique Lehder-Rivas whose Bahamas drug-center island, Norman's Cay, was only
a few miles away from Vesco's hideaway, Cistern Cay. The Commission concluded
that Vesco had known. Lehder better than that. Still, the evidence, the
Commission decided, was "Insufficient to support a finding that Vesco was
involved with Lehder in the smuggling operation on Norman's Cay."
"Joe" Lehder was the son of a German engineer who had moved to Colombia and
married a Colombian. Macho, swarthy, and attractive to women, Lehder went to
New York at eighteen and was arrested for selling marijuana. He served time
in a state prison. He moved to Detroit, was arrested again, for involvement
in interstate auto theft, and served nearly two years at Danbury
(Connecticut) Correctional Institution. In 1975, he returned to Colombia to
become the reputed "narcotraficante numero uno." In 198 1, leaving the
Bahamas, he moved his operations back to Colombia, buying a farm outside the
town of Armenia, where he was born in 1947, and publishing a newspaper in
which he attacked U.S. and Colombian officials. He had political ambitions,
advocating the expulsion of the DEA. He called Adolf Hitler "the greatest
warrior in history" and insisted that Jews in Europe in World War II died
only working in fields and factories. He formed a nationalist party and
funded a right-wing paramilitary party, Death of Kidnappers, charged with
killing "dozens of leftists and labor organizers; it is also said to number
former police and military officials in its ranks," reported Vewsweek magazine
, but Lehder was supposed to have dealt with the Cubans. At his private
resort, he allegedly built a discotheque dedicated to John Lennon, with a
statue of the rock star, nude except for a helmet and guitar, with a bullet
hole through the heart.
In 1978, Lehder set up shop in the Bahamas on Norman's Cay, the island being
within nonstop flying distance of Colombian loading areas and a convenient
refuelling point for trips to the United States, although trips could be made
directly. Lehder seemed to have had a staff of thirty to fifty, including
seven or eight pilots. According to one of them, Edward Ward, a selfconfessed
drug smuggler, Lehder, from about January 1979 to January 1980, Hew to the
United States cocaine that cost in the neighborhood of $40 million In
Colombia and wholesaled for $150 million in the United States. (Federal
agents "estimated" his take at between $160 and $320 million—quite a spread).
Norman's Cay had been a favorite anchorage for yachtsmen, but, after Lehder
arrived, two large prefabricated hangars were erected and work was begun to
extend the runway. Lehder bought part of the island and treated it as a
private citadel. Residents were frightened into leaving, with no help from
Bahamian police. Visitors were discouraged by guards, Dobermans, and threats.
A professor who rented a diving business there found equipment and luggage
had been vandalized and fuel drained from his plane. Lehder's men forced him
to take off and he barely succeeded in making a forced landing on a beach at
a nearby island.
According to Willard Rose, mate on Lehder's yacht, the Fire Fall, on one
occasion Lehder and Vesco spent four hours together. To Lehder, whose hatred
of the United States was said to verge on the pathological, Vesco was as a
god because he had successfully defied Uncle Sam. (Vesco, no doubt, pushed
the fugitive image for all it was worth, gripped by his own peculiar
pathology.) The most famous of fugitives and the king of coke were both about
to be placed on the Bahamas "Stop-List," were being or about to be pursued by
police from several countries, and would shortly vanish—Vesco to Antigua,
Lehder to Colombia, following several ineffectual raids on Norman's Cay and a
1981 U.S. grand jury indictment, making Lehder a fugitive from U.S. justice,
too. Lehder was extradited from Colombia and brought on a DEA plane to
Florida in February 1987.
Vesco was repeatedly linked with Lehder in the narcotics trade, and Fortune ma
gazine, which refused to disclose its informant, declared in 1986 that he
helped Lehder get permission to use Cuban air space for drug overflights.
That Vesco was in a position, psychologically or politically, to help Lehder
in Cuba seems unlikely. Earlier, though, Vesco does appear to have been
active in the narcotics trade. The Drug Enforcement Administration denied it
has a warrant out for him and stated that he would not be arrested on drug
charges in the United States. Its NADDIS (Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
Information Service) computer does, however, tie Vesco and Lehder together in
at least one transaction, in the Bahamas,
I managed to find my own informant, who had participated in events about to
be described and has never been tapped by the United States. According to
him, Vesco's idea wasn't to engage in the drug trade but to manage the
traffickers' money, narcotics folks often being poor investors. No doubt,
Vesco engaged in hard sell about his proficiency with investments.
There is little or no doubt that at least one of Nicaragua's ruling comandante
s was aware of cocaine traffic there. Although Nicaragua dismissed the
allegations as "tonterias —nonsense—in 1984 Federico Vaughm, associated with
the Nicaraguan procurement agency SEBIMEC and an aide to Interior Minister
Tomas Borge, was indicted by a Miami Federal grand jury. That year, a Cessna
Titan with 1,452 pounds of cocaine aboard had been hit by Nicaraguan
antiaircraft fire and had to make an emergency landing at an airfield outside
Managua. The pilot, Barry Adler Seal, was allowed to return to the United
States and came back in a C-123 to retrieve the drugs, which Vaughm
personally helped load, receiving a fee of $1.5 million for providing "secure
facilities" in Nicaragua, according to the U.S. case. The United States had
photographs to back the allegations. Vaughm's face is visible and he was
identified to me by someone who knew him. The picture was taken by a camera
concealed by U.S. officials—Seal had become an informant and was murdered in
February 1986.
Another version of the Managua event came from Alvaro Jose Baldizon, formerly
Chief Investigator of the Special Investigations Commission of Borge's
Ministry of the Interior (MINT). Baldizon defected to the United States and
provided extensive information and documents on the activities of the
Nicaragua government. Given the unavailability of U.S. sources and the use of
propaganda against government opponents, the absolute truth is impossible to
determine, but in terms of drugs, Baldizon's facts seem consistent with those
of others.
In 1984, Baldizon's office received a report that linked Borge with cocaine
smuggling from Colombia to the United States. Borge's office told Baldizon to
investigate the report as a compromise of a state secret, which shocked the
informant, especially when he was told by his superior that the information
was known in the ministry only by Borge, his assistant Captain Charolotte
Boltodano, and a few others, plus members of the Sandinista National
Liberation Front's National Directorate, the heads of the government.
Boltodano told Baldizon that Borge had made contact with the Colombian
dealers through Captain Paul Atha, director of H&M Investments, which handled
business activities, as part of MINT, at home and abroad to obtain U.S.
dollars. Boltodano also said that MINT used the drug money for clandestine
operations outside Nicaragua. Baldizon was instructed to pass information on
cocaine trafficking to Borge and not to investigate.
Several months later, Baldizon watched a plane being fired on by antiaircraft
guns. He went to Borge's office on another matter, but the minister left for
Los Brasiles Airport. Boltodano later told Baldizon that Borge had ordered
everyone away from the plane, placed it under custody until he arrived, and
personally removed several bags of cocaine, which seems doubtful.
According to other testimony, Vesco had been associated the previous year
with Atha, Vaughm, and James Herring, Jr., who said, "Although I have been
previously engaged in narcotics smuggling and trafficking, I voluntarily,
with no charges or threat of prosecution, came forward to work as a
government operative." So incredible seemed the information Herring filtered
to U.S. officials that at first they refused to believe it, but he had
documents, photos, and the results of lie detector tests to back him up. Most
impressive, perhaps, in terms of veracity was Herring's command of details.
Bearded, dark haired, 5 foot 9, James Alexandre Herring, Jr., is from
Tallahassee, Florida. He was decorated for bravery for military service in
Vietnam. He managed a jewelry store and was vice president of an insurance
agency. He was an auxiliary deputy sheriff with the Leon County (Tallahassee)
Sheriff's Office—a plaque hangs on his office wall. None of this, it would
seem, was good enough, and, Herring succumbed to the lure of adventure and
supposedly easy money.
In 1979, when Herring was in his early thirties, he went into the
restaurant-bar business, and what he called a "gradual descent" began. He met
marijuana smugglers, and, a boat expert, did odd jobs for them like procuring
radio equipment and a generator. He was arrested in Florida and put in
solitary confinement for a month to persuade him to cooperate. He wouldn't,
and the charges against him were dropped.
Wishing to "straighten out my life and drop the underworld connections,"
Herring, in 1980, started Everything Goes, Inc., which would locate
hard-to-find items-gun collections, antique furniture, carousel horses,
prehistoric shark teeth, whatever. His brochure bent over backward to explain
Everything Goes wouldn't be stopped by legal or ethical niceties.
On his honeymoon in the Bahamas, Herring showed a local jewelry store owner
rubies he had as a loan collateral. He believed them fake and they were,
though high-class ones that had value. The jeweler, having perhaps read the
brochure, said he might have need of Herring and, a few months later, asked
him to come to Miami. There, the jeweler announced he had a wealthy friend
needing a British passport and an American green card. He was a fugitive but
he was not, as Herring suspected, Robert Vesco.
With ease, Herring found an Englishman who bore a good resemblance to photos
the jeweler provided and who, for $1,000, was persuaded to apply for a new
passport, his own having expired. Herring took the passport to the Nassau
jeweler who insisted on introducing him to the fugitive. He would pay $50,000
for it, the Bahamian candidly admitted, of which Herring's share would be
$15,000. Herring didn't object. On the way to the fugitive's house, they
passed a car containing the islands' other leading fugitive. Vesco had been
there to discuss the sale of his Costa Rican ranch but there hadn't been a
deal.
The man Herring was about to meet was the reputed hashish king of Europe and
much wanted by Interpol. If Herring, or anyone else, gave thought to benefits
the narcotics trade conferred, the man's then house was the utmost
confirmation. It sits atop a hill on Paradise Island facing the eastern part
of Nassau across the channel. Painted white, broken by two wide,
bronze-embellished metal gateways, behind one of which lurks a four-car
garage, the concrete wall is fully two blocks long. Ostentatious statuary
covers a bright green lawn. The house seems to ramble on, with covered
walkways joining various sections. The hashish king had a palace that made
Jim Herring's eyes pop.
Tall, with reddish-blond hair, in his late forties or early fifties, Dutch,
with a thick accent though he spoke several languages, Jitze Kooistra,
nicknamed Joeb, had arrived in the Bahamas with $6 million-Herring was led to
believe-and a common-law wife, Catherina Maria Dekker. Though Bahamian
pressure was making him desperate, the Dutchman wasn't pleased with what
Herring delivered; the jeweler had misunderstood; not an English—the Brits
were after him, too—but an American passport was what he desired. (The United
States had not yet indicted him, though it would.) Herring, the professional
finder, complied. He proceeded to get Kooistra a U.S. passport in the name of
one Walker, having paid Walker, who didn't have one, $1,000 or so to apply.
The likeness between Kooistra's photos and Walker's face were good enough to
work. Herring also obtained a new passport for himself-his having been
confiscated when he'd been arrested—in the name of Clint Hill, having paid
Hill a similar sum.
But Kooistra-Walker's American passport lacked a Bahamian entrance stamp.
Herring had a pilot friend fly from Florida and park at the edge of the
airstrip. He took a set of Kooistra's clothes to the plane, had Kooistra go
to it, change, and march through Bahamian customs, where his passport was
stamped. The Dutchman was then flown to the United States.
For Herring, Kooistra had "class," and he went to work for him on a per-job
basis—picking up a tape in Mexico, moving the family to Europe, looking at
boarding schools for Catherina's child from her marriage, bringing cash
provided by Wallace Whitfield, Kooistra's lawyer and a prominent member of
the government opposition. He also supplied the Dutchman, who had an
insatiable sexual appetite, with prostitutes. He became Kooistra's right-hand
man.
Herring and his wife cruised with Kooistra on his 85-foot, steel-hulled
yacht. About January 1982, Kooistra said, "I met Vesco again—in my last
meeting in the Bahamas I was introduced to Mr. Angelo by Mr. Vesco, who was
his personal assistant. [That is, Angelo was Vesco's assistant.] We exchanged
telephone numbers. I lost sight of both gentlemen for a while, till, in 1982,
in Antigua, accidentally I met Mr. Vesco again. He had the police department
raid my boat with my wife and child in jail—and while I was in Paris at that
time, he told me to call a number, and I called the commissioner of police. .
. . For a small donation and a promise to leave the island, I could leave."
Vesco regarded Antigua as his "private preserve," and "I shouldn't be there."
Kooistra may have held a grudge toward Vesco but money mattered more, and
some months later Kooistra met with Angelo at the Omni Hotel in Miami.
Angelo's real name was Adolph Loia—an American whose father was of Italian
extraction and whose mother was Costa Rican. A former jockey who had worked
in casinos, Adolph-Angelo was about fifty years old, short, fat, and married
to a Taiwanese woman they called the Dragon Lady. Angelo had run a
computer-games parlor in San Jose and worked for "Swifty," as Vesco was also
known then. (Loia was undoubtedly the man who took photographs of Skip
Wilson, who had come to Costa Rica at the behest of the United States to try
to nab Vesco, and delivered him to the fugitive.) In Miami, Loia had Vesco's
"shopping list" and the Dutchman, expecting to share in the profits, brought
in his man, Herring.
Angelo didn't quite specify where the goods on the typewritten, pages-long
list—which included computers, Caterpillar parts, medical supplies, and
toilet tissue—were supposed to go, but one item, a valve used in a sugar cane
distillery, convinced Herring that Cuba was the destination.
Trying to arrange such deals cost Kooistra, who, "kind of irritated," had
Angelo call Swifty to tell him, "Look, I'm out a hundred thousand already,
please, what do you want? We want a contract and we want to see some money."
Typically, Vesco failed to deliver.
Nonetheless, Angelo met with Federico Vaughm and both traveled to Europe to
see Kooistra. A trading company that would handle both Nicaraguan and Cuban
activity was to be formed in Brussels. They asked Kooistra if he could move
cocaine in Europe: "I said yes, simply, and we made arrangements to start
this business."
The Dutchman, fast running through this fortune, felt eager to return to the
narcotics trade, and Herring, through his previous drug contacts, said he
established a tie, in Bolivia, with representatives of the Suarez family,
well known in cocaine circles, and made a buy there, as a test, amounting to
some 20 kilos, for which Vesco and Kooistra put up roughly $50,000 each. The
cocaine, with street value of $1,200,000 in the United States, uncut, was
shipped by Herring to the Bahamas, hidden in a TV set, along with other
"family goods," mothballed to hide the coke odor. Angelo collected the
shipment and arranged for the drug's transportation to Florida, apparently by
air.
Shenanigans commenced at once. Vesco's man Angelo told Kooistra's man that
the Dutchman took him for a ride (Herring secretly agreed), and that Kooistra
and Herring-Hill would be cut out altogether unless Herring told Kooistra
that the shipment had been damaged and less than half could be salvaged.
Reluctantly, Herring agreed, he said, and Angelo gave him two keys
(kilograms) of cocaine to seal the deal. Herring sold Kooistra's portion,
plus his secret shares, giving some of his own take to Kooistra, because he
felt guilty. Angelo handled Vesco's coke on his own, moving it in California.
Vesco and Angelo probably got a return of ten times their investment.
In late '82-early '83, Herring went back to Bolivia by the route he had used
before—via the Bahamas and Panama—with Kooistra's second stake. Angelo met
him there with Vesco's $100,000 share. They compressed the cocaine into the
walls of a food freezer in place of insulation, and Angelo (Herring with his
lack of Spanish had had too much trouble before) shipped it to the Bahamas,
where, he claimed, Bahamian customs "popped" (confiscated) the freezer.
Herring, who received all of $5,000 for his efforts, was dubious—to him,
Angelo-Adolph was "stiffing" Vesco and the Dutchman, but there was nothing to
be done and Angelo dropped from sight for a month or two as if the heat were
on. (Herring was later convinced the cocaine had never reached the Bahamas.)
But Angelo emerged with another intriguing proposition, Herring was to
procure cocaine-processing materials and be presented in Nicaragua, whose
officials would participate in a transaction, as an expert on suitable
landing fields and sites for a cocaine refinery. With money from Angelo,
Herring went to New York City, where he obtained a hundred pounds of inositol
(powdered Vitamin B), Manatol (baby laxative), benzocaine, and procame (which
numb the nose, as does cocaine), plus assorted stainless steel mixers,
sealing machines, grinders—the tools for preparing uncut cocaine for market.
In Tallahassee, he packed them in a large trunk, adding a machine gun,
pistols, cigarettes, and Scotch—"toys for the boys." He awaited instructions
which soon came.
He and Angelo traveled from Miami on Aeronica, the Nicaraguan national
airline, to Managua where they were greeted by Federico Vaughm and Captain
Paul Atha. He also met, he said, Minister of the Interior Tomas Borge. "He
shook my hand and said thank you, we appreciate your help." Herring's "Clint
Hill" passport wasn't stamped and soldiers unloaded the trunk. He was taken
to inspect possible sites, like an old Somoza rice plantation with an
airstrip. It was decided that for the initial small batches of cocaine a
Managua location would be cheaper and easier.
Having returned after a few days, Herring was on his boat at Fort Lauderdale
when a panicky Angelo phoned him. He had been about to ship a Vesco-ordered
load of equipment from Islamorada, in the Florida Keys, but the captain
chickened out and Angelo didn't know where to find another. Did Clint? On
impulse, Herring volunteered.
A 44-foot Albine trawler, packed with equipment—electronics, batteries, and
various stuff—was docked at a small marina. The "ethical outlaw," as Herring
described himself, steered the trawler in high seas, without radar and with
faulty loran, to Varadero Beach for a rendezvous with a Cuban gunboat. The
trawler flew a diver's flag for identification. On the gunboat's bridge, like
commanders, were two men named Junco and Jesus, both of Cuban internal
security, or "DGI," Herring would learn, and Vesco who radioed, "Want us to
shoot a few rounds across your bow like we're stopping you?" Swifty seemed in
complete charge.
The boat was unloaded by what seemed to Herring "people from the intelligence
circles of Cuba and also some uniformed people who seemed to be something
like sailors or recruits of a sort-they wore blue uniforms. And we were
always escorted to government housing in the Varadero Beach area where we
were comfortably wined and dined and openly discussed the operation and any
future needs of the Cuban government." In a Greek fisherman's hat, Vesco,
described by Herring as graying, "weathered," and wearing a beard like
Castro's, took the trawler's contents to Havana and, returning with his son
Tony, whom Herring described as a "little slow," spoke of his contact with
the "Bearded One," who might have been Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, or
anybody else.
Herring (known to Vesco only as Clint Hill) sailed to Marathon Key, went to
his own boat, the Charisma, at Fort Lauderdale, and then to Miami where he
telephoned a friend to meet him at Tallahassee. This fateful friend, but for
whom Herring's activities might never have become known, had been selling
Herring's cocaine and was to deliver a small amount of cash. At the
Tallahassee airport, Herring, trained in such matters, was suspicious so the
two men drove in separate cars to a deserted spot. They had no sooner parked
than county deputies surrounded them.
They strip-searched both of them and all but undressed the cars looking for
coke. The friend, who had unwittingly sold cocaine to the Feds, was arrested
on federal and state charges. Nothing against Herring could be proved, and he
was let go. Out on ball, the friend insisted he wouldn't reveal Herring's
complicity but needed help. Herring agreed to supply information to him.
The owners of a northern Florida flying service, one an airline pilot, had an
arrangement to lease a jet Star and asked Herring to steal it, the notion
being to collect on the insurance. (The airline pilot was later convicted on
a similar charge.) Herring had only to arrange payment of $150,000—a third
would be his—and a plane worth $3-$5 million could be lifted under an
elaborate plan. The plane would be leased by a fictitious company called
Trufuflex by Angelo posing as a Miami businessman who wanted to look at land
in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. One member of the crew would be ignorant of the
plot, to add legitimacy. The jet Star would land in Nicaragua, where payment
by Angelo would be made, proceed to Costa Rica, where arms or drugs would be
placed on board, and go back to Nicaragua, which would seize the craft
because of the contraband. Nicaragua would detain the pilots briefly and then
expel them to the United States. The plane would be flown to Cuba, which
would refuse to release it.
A cashier's check, apparently for a two-day charter of The jet Star, was duly
paid. Angelo and Herring joined Vesco's Bahamas accountant, Fred Murray, in
Nassau (the flight would not be as well monitored from there) and the four
flew to Cuba via Cozumel or Cancun in a Hawker Siddeley, a small British jet
Angelo had chartered. Meetings were held at Vesco's two-story house on a
canal at the Hemingway Marina at Barlovento, outside Havana. A plan to
deliver 1,000 riot shotguns to Honduran guerrillas was discussed. (Later,
Herring, through his friend, notified U.S. authorities that Vesco, in
transit, would be in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, but they failed to
act.) Murray went over money matters with Vesco, and Herring says he saw, on
the plane, ledgers with multimillion-dollar entries. Herring presented the
jet Star scam for the fugitive's approval. "Vesco got up and shouted,
'Goddam! Me and the Beard [Castro] could stand up in that.' Vesco was pretty
fuzzy, but he did have great knowledge of boats and planes. He referred to
headroom," Herring said.
The jet Star, it would seem, was actually flown to Managua, but Angelo was
late with the money and the pilots returned to Florida, where the aircraft
was seized by a bank for nonpayment on the lease.
Herring's next mission to Nicaragua occurred in April 1983, where he learned
from Vaughm that Colombian dealers, in cooperation with the M-19 Colombian
insurgents, were to participate in a drug deal. "We help them, they help us,"
Vaughm said. Herring, the only one among the plotters who knew how, was to be
the official cocaine cutter.
Back in Florida, waiting for the shipment to arrive, Herring made several
trips to Cuba, this time in the Charisma. He brought supplies like toilet
bowls for a house Vesco was building on Cayo Largo. One of the Cubans, a DGI
man who went by the name of Nelson, attempted to persuade him to accept
cocaine instead of cash, but Herring declined. Nelson also suggested that
Herring deal with the Cubans directly, cutting out Vesco. Herring was paid
$8,000 per round trip in $100 bills which Junco, Vesco's DGI bodyguard, kept
in a canvas bag.
Herring considered the pay "bargain basement," but the purpose "wasn't to
make money so much as it was to gather intelligence," which Herring continued
to pass to his beleaguered pal whom the Feds wouldn't take seriously. They
wanted his source to appear in person. Herring furtively shot pictures with
an Instamatic camera of a Cuban gunboat and microwave communications
equipment. He seems to have been more concerned with "U.S. national security"
than with narcotics, and he would hold back certain items from shipments so
that merchandise couldn't actually be used by the Cubans.
With Colombian coke delivery imminent, Herring met with a Kooistra associate,
Core A. Cahuzak of International Marine Services in Amsterdam. Kooistra had
devised a scheme (Herring claimed he'd put the notion in the Dutchman's head)
to ship the cocaine to Europe inside a marine salvage winch. The front was to
be a salvage operation in Lake Managua. The winch, weighing four or five
tons, would arrive on Iberia Airlines. Herring and Cahuzak went from Miami to
the Bahamas, where Herring picked up Kooistra's $100,000 portion of the
investment—Vesco's was already in Managua—and continued to Nicaragua, again
on a private jet.
Herring checked into the Hotel Intercontinental in Managua. The winch was
taken by army truck to a government house controlled by Captain Atha, who,
like Vaughm, was associated with the Ministry of the Interior. The house had
a wall around it and uniformed troops were stationed at the front door and at
the gates. Herring's chemicals had been brought and the coke was already
there, along with two Colombians. (Later, in the United States, Herring,
shown photographs, identified them as Ricardo Ochoa and Pablo Escobar, both
indicted in Florida on drug charges.)
While Cahuzak removed the winch cover, Herring went to work in a rear
bedroom. The cocaine, in plastic garbage cans, weighed 25-27 kilos and was
95-97 percent pure. It was to be cut to 85 percent pure, about 33 kilos in
weight. With coke bringing $80,000 a kilo in Europe, the difference in price
before and after cutting was perhaps a half-million dollars. The whole
shipment had a street value of about $2.8 million. Actually, because of a
glut on the market, the coke brought only $30,000 a kilo, or about $1
million. Herring's pay was supposed to be $50,000 but he received only $8,000.
Herring skillfully separated the "rock," formed in the baking process, from
the "shake" or powder. His plastic gloves were coated with snow. He poured
each kilo into Seal-A-Meal bags. Needing scissors to cut the bags, he went to
Atha's office to look for a pair and found Robert Vesco.
Vesco was on the phone, and he sounded upset. "Why did they hold it?" he
cried. "Where is it now? Brownsville?" Herring eavesdropped momentarily
outside the door and heard mention of several arrests at Brownsville, Texas.
Herring labored late to complete the cutting and in the morning, in drizzling
rain, he and Cahuzak, assisted by armed Nicaraguan soldiers, put the
thirty-three bags inside the winch. The winch was shipped to Belgium, where
Kooistra took possession.
On the plane to the Bahamas, Herring mentioned Brownsville to Angelo. "Yeah,
it's equipment made by Rand. [Actually, a subsidiary of Ingersoll-Rand.] A
big deal with the Cubans. The stuff will be released," Angelo said
confidently. As soon as he could, Herring gave the information to his friend
to be passed on to the Feds in his struggle for leniency.
Kooistra's sales seemed unexpectedly slow and worry grew among the
Nicaraguans that the Dutchman was cheating them. Vaughm was dispatched to
Brussels, checking Into the Hotel Metropole. According to Kooistra, Vaughm
was given $100,000 and Dutch guilders worth $750,000. The bulk of the money
was said by "Dekker" to have been sent to Nicaragua by diplomatic pouch.
("Dekker" was the name used by Kooistra, then in prison in Tallahassee,
Florida, to conceal his identity when he testified before a U.S. Senate
subcommittee.)
Herring was scheduled to make still another run to Cuba. Equipment was stored
on a warehouse on 78 Street in Miami controlled by a family of Greek origin
named Yamanis, friends of Vesco, two of whom had gone to jail for long
sentences on marijuana charges. The goods were hauled to Cayo Largo. Included
in the cargo were North Star computers and a red Doberman for Junco. The U.S.
Customs had the Charisma under surveillance, and, perhaps tipped off by
someone at the marina and ignoring Herring's unlikely claim to be going
fishing, seized it. There were no criminal indictments but Herring talked to
an alert U.S. Attorney who assigned him to a special U.S. Customs agent.
Herring had become an official informant.
Herring had intended another trip to New York for more processing materials,
but Angelo wanted him in Nicaragua for the next job—50 keys of coke, he said,
and sufficient Manatol, benzocaine, and procaine were on hand for cutting it.
Herring suspected something was wrong, but he complied. Angelo told him a
ticket waited at the Aeronica desk at Miami Airport but none was there. He
had Angelo's Managua number, most likely at Vesco's house in Los Robles, and
Angelo said he'd forgotten that the ticket—one-way, it turned out—was in
another name, Edwin P. Wilson. (Edwin Wilson: the man subsequently sentenced
to sixty years in prison for selling arms to the Libyans.) Herring later
figured Vesco or Angelo had chosen a false name to hide his departure but had
no idea why that particular one was chosen.
Herring was collected in Managua not by Angelo or Vaughm but by guards who'd
escorted him to a government safe house used for dignitaries. He was greeted
by a Nicaraguan female official who kept an eye on him. His passport had been
taken, and he remained there for ten days in growing anxiety, having
concluded, learning Angelo had left, that he was a hostage to force Kooistra
to pay up. Vaughm finally appeared, having satisfied his superiors about the
money, and, when Herring demanded to leave the country his unstamped passport
was returned. He was able to leave on the next flight to Mexico, but his
passport had no Nicaraguan stamp. He contrived to slip through Mexican
customs undetected. At the Continental Airlines desk he learned that the next
flight to the United States was likely to be the last before a strike. But he
had no Mexican entry stamp. Herring spotted a Mexican customs official on the
phone, with his back turned. He crept up, stamped his own passport, initialed
it, and departed for Houston, a shaken man.
Herring received "use immunity --meaning that anything he told wouldn't be
used against him; anything the government turned up on its own could be-from
the U.S- Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, David McGee.
Information he provided led to the arrest, guilty pleas, and convictions of
numerous individuals charged with everything from airplane theft to passport
fraud to contract murders. He was obliged to report those who contacted him
with illegal deals, and among those he turned in was Jitze Kooistra who
foolishly entered the United States to see a girl friend in Pompano Beach.
Meanwhile the fugitive still had business to complete in Managua. He
presented a number of ideas to listeners, including Russians. He argued that
the Swiss were considering the disclosure of secret bank accounts after years
of negotiations with the United States. The U.S. government was concerned
that 20 percent of its currency was "hot" and outside its control and thought
seriously about changing the design and color of its currency to foil
counterfeiters and stop the laundering of cash. It would require an exchange
of the old money to force it into the open. (The Swiss, in a 1984 referendum,
voted against opening bank records to tax authorities. In 1986, the United
States announced a new type of dollar bill.)
Vesco's solution was the Delta Triangle. The three Caribbean nations of the
left-Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada-would organize what would be, in effect, a
new trading bloc. It would accept the "hot" money and issue new currency in
exchange, which would be backed by Russian gold and freely convertible. Vesco
believed other nations would accept the Delta currency, which could be used
for commerce and tourism in Communist countries and accepted in Western
Europe as well. It wasn't clear what would happen to the pool of old flight
dollars in Delta—Vesco spoke of forcing a devaluation of the dollar and said
they could pose the threat of economic warfare with the United States. Cuba
rejected the proposal as impractical and the Russians followed. Another
brainstorm had failed to materialize, and Vesco repaired to Havana.
pps. 317-333
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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