Six years ago this week an American-registered luxury jet, a Gulfstream II—later dubbed “Cocaine 2”—crashed just before dawn in the middle of the jungle in Mexico’s Yucatan carrying four tons of cocaine. The event, and its aftermath, changed forever an official narrative of the war on drugs which has for years been pushing the notion that there is no significant American involvement in the global drug trade, and no American Drug Lords.
Cocaine2
When the Gulfstream's fuselage split into pieces on impact, spilling cocaine across an area the length of three football fields, a chain of events was set in motion that would prove that nothing could be further from the truth.
Several hundred miles away, and more than a year earlier, in May 2006, the Gulfstream’s ‘sister ship,’ a DC-9 which became known as “Cocaine1" because it was painted to impersonate an official US Government plane, had been caught carrying more than 5.5 tons of cocaine.
The two planes shared too many identifying characteristics, including interlocking owners and a shared base in the sleepy retirement Mecca of St Petersburg FL on Florida’s Gulf Coast, to be coincidence.
The twin events represented the biggest sea change in the global drug trade since the death of Pablo Escobar in 1992, or the assassination of Barry Seal in 1986. Today, despite the intervening years, new details continue to emerge about the case. What could YOU buy with $378 billion in laundered drug money?
wachovia-habitAlmost every news story that day, September 25, 2007, played bigger than the downed drug plane: The dozen people who died in a suicide bombing in Baqubaa Iraq. The report that 829,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana possession the previous year. And the Forbes magazine story announcing that there were so many billionaires in the world that 82 of them weren't rich enough to make the Forbes 400 List.
But none would have the eventual impact that the story of the Gulfstream crashing in the jungle did. During the course of the investigation which followed it became clear that the money used to purchase both planes—the Gulfstream and the DC-9—was laundered and funnelled through Wachovia Bank, and more importantly, that it represented just a tiny sliver of the more than $380 billion of drug money that had been laundered during the past six years through what was then America’s 4th largest bank.
Wachovia was fined a record $165 million. The sullied bank was forced to sell itself to Wells Fargo Bank in Salt Lake City.
Some observers found it ironic that America’s first full-service narco-bank was headquartered—not in New York or San Francisco—but in the conservative bastion of paleo-Republican Jesse Helms's North Carolina. The true meaning of "cartel du jour."
987SA-CRASH
At about three a.m. the normal quiet of the town of Tixkobob (pop. 17000), located an hour outside of the Yucatan capital of Merida, was disturbed by the deafening noise of a low-flying twin-engine jet circling overhead, and the whine and buzzing of several military helicopters in pursuit.
The noise went on for an incredible two hours until, out of fuel, the jet crashed three miles outside town on a plantation, Rancho San Francisco, identified by Mexican journalists as belonging to an American named Martin Wood.
Although remote, the crash site quickly drew a crowd. Slightly after dawn a Mexican Army unit from the Tenth Military Region deployed to the site, secured it, and then guarded it over the next 36 hours, repelling intrusions from other Mexican law enforcement agencies, as well as from the DEA, which flew six agents to the scene from Mexico City to reconnoiter, only to see them turned away from the site. The history of the flight.
cancun
Days earlier, the Gulfstream jet had begun its journey at Fort Lauderdale’s notorious Executive Airport, flying southwest across the Gulf of Mexico to Cancun. There the pilot made arrangements with the airport’s general manager that they would be able to land without incident at the airport on their return from Colombia laden with cocaine.
The next day, negotiations being successfully concluded, the Gulfstream took off for Colombia. Nothing unusual was noticed. The plane was on a well-worn path. The airport in Cancun was the busiest drug port in Mexico.
After loading its cargo of cocaine the following day, the Gulfstream took off from the international airport just outside Medellin, in Rio Negro Colombia, bound once more for the exclusive Mexican Caribbean resort of Cancun, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
Among the mysteries surrounding the flight, the one which looms largest is this: Why did authorities at the Cancun airport change their minds, renege on their promise, and refuse the plane permission to land?
At a press conference a year earlier after the crash of the DC-9, Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said officials from Federal security agencies in the Yucatan were known to be in collusion with drug traffickers. Curiously, with his next breath he mentioned Kamel Nacif, 69, a Lebanese businessman in Cancun who was in the news for alleged links to an international network of pedophiles.
knacif
On the off-chance the Mexican Attorney General was dropping hints, and not just free-associating, I did a quick search on Nacif, who I was surpised to learn is (or was) the biggest high-stakes gambler in Las Vegas, a “whale” who won and lost millions of dollars at a time.
In a Nevada Gaming Commission staff report questioning the association of Ted Binion, chairman and CEO of the Horseshoe Casino, with what the report called “certain individuals,” the report cited Kamel Nacif by name, chiding Binion for putting up $2 million to bail Nacif out of jail.
Nacif, the Commission staff reported, was associated with “narcotics, firearms sales, and money laundering.” Unsung heroes of the drug trade: The Americans
dba2) Today there is new information about many aspects of the case. As per usual when it comes to stories about drug trafficking, the really interesting bits concern aspects of the case that received something less than the full attention of the mainstream media.
An example is the matter of the Americn ownership of the downed plane.
Soon after the crash it was learned that the now-mangled drug plane had been used for at least a decade by the CIA, flying "extraordinary renditions “to the US base in Guantanamo which housed prisoners suspected of being Al Qaeda, as well as the DEA, ferrying extradited drug traffickers from Colombia to the USA.
During that time the plane was “parked” or “sheepdipped” in the hands of a motley crew of politically well-connected ‘straw’ owners.
With that in mind, I paid a visit (along with a pilot friend pictured, above) to the address, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL. that “Donna Blue Aircraft Inc” listed on FAA documents as well as with the Florida Dept. of Corporations.
What I found was an empty office suite with a blank sign out front, and no visible sign of any entity called Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc.
no-parkingWhat there was, however, oddly enough, were a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite.
Today documents from the FAA cast new suspicion on the story told by two Brazilian businessmen in Boca Raton who had—just weeks earlier—purchased the Gulfstream II, according to the FAA, through a dummy company they owned called Donna Blue Aircraft (DBA,"doing business as," get it?).
Joao Malago and Eduardo Dias Guimaraes both stated repeatedly that they were no longer responsible for the plane when it went down, having sold it to two pilots from Fort Lauderdale, the week before it scattered cocaine litter across the jungle floor.
They may not have been telling the truth. MalagoTwo very very lucky Brazilians
"We are not the owners of the plane," said Guimaraes, reached in Goiania in central Brazil.
He deferred most questions to his partner, Malago, who said from Sao Paulo that Donna Blue purchased the aircraft in July from a company that had owned it for 10 years. Then they quickly flipped it, reselling it to two Florida pilots who they said paid for it in full.
Malago, who said he'd been a pilot for 25 years and had bought and sold planes throughout Latin America, said he learned of the crash only after after receiving a phone call from an insurance company, had been unable to reach the new owner by phone and feared he was dead.
He stated that he knew nothing of the plane's history or what use it had been put to previously. "Generally, (when you buy a plane) you don't know the history of the plane," he said.
That was a red flag. Anyone with even limited knowledge of general aviation knows this statement to be untrue. Scrutinizing an airplane’s logbooks,which contain its flight and repair history, is one of the first things checked out by potential buyers.
Raising further suspicion was the company's website, which seemed a clumsy and half-hearted attempt to construct a plausible “legend,” or cover, for what was clearly a dummy front company. The company’s bogus phone number (415.555-5555) contributed to the effect. And when the site featured a quote from a supposedly satisfied Donna Blue Aircraft customer, it gave his name as “John Doe.” The FAA "weighs in"
N987SA1 On the FAA website, I discovered, on the final Deregistered Aircraft document for the crashed Gulfstream N987SA when its registration was canceled five months later, Donna Blue Aircraft was still named as the plane’s owner.
So I contacted an FAA spokesman at the Agency's home office in Oklahoma, and followed up with an email.
“As you know,” my note began, “when a plane is sold, the owner is required to report the sale to the FAA. Yet when it was deregistered in February, 2008, five months after crashing, the FAA still listed the plane's owner as Donna Blue Aircraft.
“The Brazilian owners of Donna Blue Aircraft said they'd sold the plane a week before its last flight South for $2 million to two pilots from Fort Lauderdale, Clyde O'Connor and Greg Smith. Smith wrote them a check for $2 million to purchase the plane, the Brazilians claimed.
“Yet within the aviation community in Fort Lauderdale Greg Smith is known to be so penurious that charter flight operators make sure to give him extra cash to take when he flies a charter for them, because he never has any money, and if the plane needs to refuel, they're stuck.
p3b “Moreover, no documentation was ever provided by the Brazilians to prove that the plane actually did change hands.
If a plane crashes after being sold to a new owner, but while the transfer of registration is still in progress, when the FAA delists the plane months later shouldn’t the new owner be listed as the owner of record on the plane’s FAA decertification?”
“Thanks for any guidance you can offer.”
The note I got back was terse, and perhaps more notable for what it does not say than what it does.
“N987SA is de-registered. The aircraft registration prior to de-registration was with Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc. I checked with the FAA Aircraft Registry; there has been no additional action."
The FAA wasn't throwing the two Brazilians under the bus, exactly. But they were clearly creating a bit of daylight between them. A Chupeta connection?
Abadian)On the Colombian side of the equation, there are indications that the nationality of the two Brazilian owners of the Gulfstream offer a clue to clearing up a few unanswered questions.
It may be that airport officials had a change of heart when they learned the plane had been tracked across the Caribbean from the US radar tracking station at Swan Island off Honduras, and was now being pursued by an Embracer jet from the Mexican Air Force, as has been widely reported.
In the drug trade, it is important to recall, the title “cartel du jour” is a designation which changes rapidly and without notice. Just ask the kingpins from the Medellin, or the Cali, cartels.
It turns out that when the drug traffickers on the Gulfstream lost their "get out of jail free" card, a drug kingpin who the DEA has called the biggest drug trafficker since Pablo Escobar had just been captured.
On August 7, just over a month earlier, a joint operation between forces including Brazil, the US, Argentina, Spain and Uruguay took down a drug kingpin who was recently profiled here. Before being caught, Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, known as “Lollipop” (El Chupeta), had been successfully holed up for more than five years in Sao Paulo Brazil.
Three weeks after his arrest, two Brazilians bought the Gulfstream.
Several weeks later, it crashed in the Yucatan with 4 tons of cocaine.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
A six-year long investigation into the drug trafficking operation in St Petersburg Florida that was exposed when two planes were busted in the Yucatan carrying a total of 10 tons of cocaine revealed the planes had all been “parked,” or “sheep-dipped,” in the names of straw owners to conceal the CIA’s involvement.
The composition of this group of straw owners, composed of a fascinating collection of people with often interlocking connections through various other enterprises, says a lot about the circles the CIA runs in.
Among the few who lent their names to the registration of more than one of these CIA planes is the granddaughter of Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who back in the 1930’s was known as the richest man in America. Hunt’s other singular distinction is having been accused by Russian newspaper Pravda of being behind the JFK assassination.
fleet A disquieting discovery The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers, and, of course, the CIA.
But unearthing new evidence about the CIA’s role in the drug trade for the past 50 years no longer provides much grist for the gossip mill. Time marches on. Gary Webb was right. Everybody knows it.
One sign of the times is that where once there was outrage over CIA involvement in drug trafficking, today many seem glad to see the Agency developing outside interests that don’t require access to a dungeon.
What is eye-opening however is the disquieting discovery that those involved in the enterprise, like Adnan Khashoggi and his lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, both of whom have long histories in past CIA operations, also used their ability to operate with impunity—their get out of jail free card—to act like the worst sort of double-dealing flimflam men, bunco artists and grifters.
r-k (1)They were doing the CIA “double-dip.” Keeping one eye on incoming flights at St Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport for news of a drug plane’s safe return to Florida, and one eye on the fine print in SEC filings.
Khashoggi and El-Batrawi used a slick financial stock scheme to game the system, and plunder hundreds of millions of dollars from investors and taxpayers in what became known as Stockwalk, which led to what was then (2004-2005) the largest brokerage bankruptcy since the Great Depression.
Khashoggi and El-Batrawi participated in the wide-spread looting of the American economy. But they were far from acting alone.
Was the plundering systematic? CIA-DOUBLE-DIPThe sheer number of clearly CIA-connected entities engaged in massive financial fraud, for example, by stripping companies of their assets and using bankruptcy laws to walk away, that I encountered while pursuing links to drug trafficking in St. Petersburg was astonishing. A big question today: Was the plundering systematic?
But first,today, a brief explanation of the overt role in the drug trafficking operation played by the two Saudi men. Khashoggi lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi supplied one of SkyWay’s twin DC-9’s.
Once I’d obtained the FAA registration records for the two DC-9’s, N900SA and N12ONE, it soon became obvious that both planes had been sheep-dipped through a number of owners of convenience to hide the identity of their true owners, the CIA.
Start here: Sometime in June of 2003 someone made the decision that SkyWay’s fleet of planes needed beefing up with a second DC-9.
Khashoggi and El-Batrawi had one. But there was a problem. Given the controversy over the massive fraud involved in the bankrupting of Khashoggi and El-Batrawi’s GenesisIntermedia, by 2003 El-Batrawi’s aviation company, Genesis Aviation, was not exactly the CIA’s most discreet aviation front company.
How can you tell if a plane’s been sheep-dipped by the CIA? sheepAn almost-always accurate test for picking a sheep-dipped CIA plane out of a line-up: Check out the previous owners. Why? Because when the CIA needs a specific make of plane, they don’t thumb through the “Planes for Sale” ads in Trade-A-Plane magazine.
They find the needed plane among the Agency’s own vast inventory. (Remember: the CIA at one time fielded the largest airline on the planet.) Once they’ve found the plane they want, they will very often sell it back and forth a few times between a few of the Agencies’ thousands of off-the-shelf dummy front companies to throw anyone snooping around off the scent.
vlcsnap-2014-08-19-17h20m09s147It makes for sloppy “tradecraft.” But hardly anyone ever looks. And the biggest enemy to the anonymity of the CIA’s air fleet in recent years have been the planespotters, who don’t pore over registration records, but intuit a plane’s function by tracking the routes it flies over time.
Okay. Preamble over. So on July 3 2003, the registration records of N12ONE shows it being sold by El-Batrawi’s Genesis Aviation to Finova Capital Corporation in Scottsdale Arizona. So already there’s a big red flag.
Briefly, while writing “Barry & the Boys,” I began tracing one of CIA pilot Barry Seal’s favorite planes, a Beechcraft King Air, which later turned up in the aviation pool of Texas Governor George W. Bush, where it was reportedly Bush’s favorite plane. It was curious.
An offshore CIA front company finovaThe Beech King Air 200, as well as several others used by Barry Seal, were owned by Greyhound Leasing of Phoenix, a subsidiary of Finova, a CIA front company set up in Arizona and headquartered in Canada to escape American financial disclosure requirements.
Then there’s notorious CIA airline Southern Air Transport (SAT), which owned the C-123 used by Barry Seal in the Nicaragua sting operation which made him famous. The same C-123 was later shot down over Nicaragua in 1986, and the lone survivor Eugene Hasenfus was captured by Sandinista soldiers, setting off what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
Back then, no one knew, or admitted knowing, who owned Southern Air.
tail_finovaBut when General Richard Secord’s airline went bankrupt a dozen years later, Southern Air was revealed to have been secretly owned by Finova.
So Finova’s presence is a big red flag. Another red flag: Finova doesn’t show up just once in the FAA records of the plane.
The original owner of the DC-9 (N12ONE) was Finova subsidiary Greyhound Leasing of Phoenix, who also owned some of CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal’s planes. The company registered the plane in Nov of 1976.
An exercise in sheep-dipping redYet another red flag, and a big one, is the record of what happened next in the history of N12ONE when Genesis Aviation sold the plane.
On the same day El-Batrawi’s Genesis Aviation sold the DC-9 to Finova, Finova turned around and sold the plane to Scott Aviation in Chicago, owned by a cement contractor with a hot temper named Anthony Aiello.
But apparently the day was still young, because also on July 2 Scott Aviation sold the plane to Anthony Aiello and Gregory Hodgson. In effect, Aiello was selling the plane to himself. While I was tempted to phone him and ask why, upon reflection I thought better of it.
The exercise in sheep-dipping is complete when Aiello sells the DC-9 to Skyway and Royal Sons Inc., a company owned by one of Skyway’s directors, Frederic Geffon. It was presumably designed to thwart anyone making a connection between the St Petersburg-based Khashoggi and El-Batrawi and the St Petersburg-based SkyWay.
Now things get really interesting. Because another now-bankrupt Chicago corporation, HW Aviation, co-owned by Geoffrey Hodgson, who as we’ve just seen also briefly owned N12ONE, also owned the other DC-9, (N900SA), the one busted in the Yucatan carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.
There are hundreds of DC-9’s still flying. The odds of one company owning both planes that ended up flying for SkyWay are pretty slim…unless there is a concealed entity moving both planes around.
Snapshot32 (29)Also, Anthony Aiello, Gregory Hodgson, HW Aviation, & Scott Aviation are all in the Chicago area. They appear to represent one entity; to be four different ways of saying the same thing.
This is not the only example of an owner which owned both planes. Recent owners of the St Petersburg FL-based DC9, for example, have interlocking partnerships with recent owners of the St Petersburg FL-based Gulfstream II business jet—whose owners we haven’t even addressed yet!—that crashed in the Yucatan in September 2007 carrying almost four tons of cocaine.
Revelation of the identity of another owner of both DC-9’s pretty much rules out coincidence as being the cause for the same people and businesses stumbling into ownership of two of the hundreds of DC-9’s still flying …while otherwise having nothing to do with each other.
Oil Tycoon's Granddaughter owned both planes huntTexas oilman H.L. Hunt founded Hunt Petroleum Corp. In 1930 he purchased an oil well in Rusk County, Texas, and 5,000 acres surrounding it which locked up control of what turned out to be the largest pool of petroleum in the Lower 48. By 1935 oil tycoon H. L. Hunt was known as the richest man in America.
His sons became famous after him. Nelson Bunker Hunt was famous for his far-right conservative views, and for one almost succeeding in cornering the silver market. Lamar Hunt, longtime owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, spearheaded the creation of the American Football League.
When Forbes magazine published its first list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 1982, the Hunt family claimed 5 of the top 10 spots.
alinda-huntH.L. Hunt’s granddaughter, Alinda Hill Wikert, has owned at various times both of the Dc-9’s made famous by SkyWay in St. Petersburg, through three separate companies, Wesael, JRW Aviation, and Express One International.
On November 20,1987, one of her companies, Wesael Corp of Dallas, buys the DC-9 N12ONE From Harrah’s Casino in Reno.
On the 31st of May 1989 another of her companies, Express One International, purchases DC-9 (N12ONE) from Wesael Corp, another of her companies.
On the 22nd of December 1997, JRW Aviation of Dallas, which she owns with her husband, aviation executive James Wickert, buys DC-9 (N900SA) from K.E.B. Aircraft.
On the 15th of November 2000, JRW Aviation buys DC-9 (N900SA).
What does it all mean? At the very least, the interlocking ownership of just these two planes speaks to a large operation.
There remain several pieces of information important to the story.
neilExpress One International was founded by Kenneth Good, who, with George Herbert Walker Bush’s son Neil Bush, got $100 million in loans from Silverado Savings which were never repaid.
Express One founder Ken Good was also in business with former CIA pilot Mark Shubin. Good’s airline supplied aircraft and crews to Sky Bus during his brief life an airline. In 1992, Express One supplied the campaign plane used by Presidential candidate Bill Clinton.
Bringing things roughly full circle, Mark Shubin was also partnered in several ventures and a hand-full of planes with Huffman Aviation flight school owner Wally Hilliard. Shubin’s Sky Bus, Inc. shared ownership of two planes, tail numbers N11UN and N111UN, with Wally Hilliard’s Plane 1 Leasing.
The ‘UN’ designation on the tail number seemed an obvious clue. And in fact Shubin owned a company called ‘International Diplomatic Courier Services,’ which apparently worked at the UN.
Being able to access diplomatic pouches must have been a great comfort.
Small world Today the president of Express One International is David Byers, at whose flight school Mohamed Atta trained at the Charlotte County Airport, according to Charlotte County Sheriff William Clements.
Finally, there is a little more possibly pertinent information to pass on about Alina Hill Wickert’s famous grandfather.
h-l-hunt-1In 1963, Dallas billionaire H.L. Hunt poured millions into a ceaseless anti-Kennedy radio campaign; it was the dawn of extremist radio in the nation. Hunt’s program, “Life Line,” reached 10 million listeners a day with scorching attacks against Kennedy.
Hunt also controlled a vast private intelligence network, that included the John Birch Society.
Hunt’s son purchased a full-page ad in the Dallas newspaper the day JFK arrived, accusing the President of betraying the Constitution. A leaflet appeared all over town that accused JFK of treason.
Immediately after the JFK assassination H. L. Hunt was rushed to the airport and taken out of the country by the FBI. Supposedly, they’d received notice of a plot to kill him. But instead of protective custody, they moved Hunt to a secret destination in Mexico.
Lyndon Johnson’s former mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown, told author Robert Gaylon Ross prior to her death in 2002 that Johnson was involved in the murder of JFK. The plot that had its origins in the 1960 Democratic Convention.
Johnson, according to Brown, colluded with oil tycoon H. L. Hunt to have Kennedy eliminated.
johnson-kennedy-37“It was a total political crime and H.L. Hunt really controlled what actually happened to John Kennedy — he and Lyndon Johnson,” said Brown. “It was a political crime for political power.”
On the night before the assassination Johnson allegedly said, “Those SOBs will never embarrass me again.”
The top Russian newspaper, Pravda, (which, for what its worth, means truth) announced that Texas oil man H.L. Hunt arranged JFK assassination.
Maybe it was just a lucky guess.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
