-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
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 afire... 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.
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