NOVANEWS
By Stew Webb Federal Whistleblower-Activist
Stew Webb Witness Al Martin Iran-Contra Whistleblower
After Publishing Al Martin’s book and agreeing to 10% of the profits for doing so and I have never recieved a dime I have made this portion of his book public on my website last year because it was used in U.S. District Court filings in 2012 against my former Father-in-law Leonard Millman The Denver Illuminati Zionist Connection to the Bush Organized Crime Syndicate. In 1995 after filing for a Grand Jury Demand in Denvers US District Court and testifying before a Federal Judge to warrant a grand jury. Judge Richard Matsch ordered the U.S. Attorney Henry Solano to hear us out myself Stew Webb, Al Martin and others. We were all nearly killed for doing so I was hit with anthrax, Al Martin was jailed illegally for 45 days under a fictious name Peter Kawaja was nearly killed the Grand Jury case number 95-Y-107 has never been heard or dismissed to date.
Millman was partners with George HW Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Norman Browstein, Allen Karsh, John Gotti, Larry Mizel, Phil Winn and many other Organized Crime Figures who have robbed and looted America.
I refiled against Leonard Millman in U.S. District Court Case No: 12-CV-2588 EFM/GLR Filed September 5, 2012 for Mortgage and Bank Bailout scams and injuctive relief for attempted murder on this Whistleblower October 2010 with a car roll over 3 times on a concrete barrier by FBI.
http://www.stewwebb.com/COMPLAINT_FOR_INJUNCTIVE_RELIEF_20120905.htm
http://www.stewwebb.com/Henry_Solano_Former_Denver_US_Attorney_Obstructed_Justice_20120414.htm
http://www.stewwebb.com/95Y107-Payment.JPG
http://www.stewwebb.com/Stew_Webb_Grand_Jury_Demand_vs_George_Bush_US_District_Court_95Y107_03202012.htm
http://www.stewwebb.com/Stew_Webb_vs_Kerre_Millman_Civil_RICO_July_31_1997_case_97_N_1498.htm
The Conspirators
Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider
By Lt. Cmdr. Al Martin (US Navy, Ret.)
Copyright 2000, Al Martin. All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Confidential File: Alexander S. Martin……………………………………………….…3
Chapter 2 The NPO and Operation Sledgehammer……………………………………………. 14
Chapter 3 Oliver North: The Money Laundering Drug Smuggling “Patriot”……. 26
Chapter 4 “Do Nothing” Janet Reno and Iran-Contra Suppression………………..….. 42
Chapter 5 Classified Illegal Operations: Cordoba Harbor and Screw Worm ……..50
Chapter6 The Don Austin Denver HUD Fraud Case …………………………………..….. 66
Chapter 7 Bush Family Fraud & Iran-Contra Profiteering ……………………………… 72
Chapter 8 Insider Stock Swindles for “The Cause”…………………………………………….89
Chapter 9 Corporate Fraud, Stock Fraud and Other Scams………………………………106
Chapter 10 The Tri-Lateral Investment Group – Bush Family Fraud…………………. 114
Chapter 11 Lawrence Richard Hamil: The US Government’s Con Man…………… 122
Chapter 12 US Government Narcotics Smuggling & Illicit Weapons Sales……… 136
Chapter 13 US Government Sanctioned Drug Trafficking ……………………………….. 141
Chapter 14 The Chinese Connection: US Weapons & High Tech Graft…………….. 156
Chapter 15 More Iran-Contra Stories: Both Humorous & Salient …………………… 171
Chapter 16 Chinese Money for US Weapons …………………………………………………….185
Chapter 17 US Government Narcotics Smuggling (Part 2) ……………………….… 192
Chapter 18 In Hiding Again ……………………………………………………………………………..209
Chapter 19 Corporate Fraud, Government Fraud and More Fraud……………………224
Chapter 20 The Real Story of Operation Watchtower…………………………………………234
Chapter 21 KGB & East German Activities in the US (1985-87)…………………………..240
Chapter 22 The Woman in Red (And Black)…………………………………………………………252
Chapter 23 Bush Family Corporate, Real Estate, and Bank Frauds…………………….260
Chapter 24 Iran-Contra Real Estate Fraud…………………………………………………………..277
Chapter 25 More Chinese-Military Connections…………………………………………………288
Chapter 26 ONI, CZX & Orpheus. ………………………………………………………………… 295
NOTE: To all reading this I suggest you buy Al Martin’s book:
http://www.almartinraw.com
The below is just some of Al Martin’s evidence to be present against Leonard Millman:
Exerts from The Conspirators by Iran Contra Whistleblower Al Martin
Trinity Oil and Gas purchased Argentine and Brazilian oil and gas leases for about
RE: Leonard Millman, Stew Webb’s ex-in-law
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$30,000 or $40,000 per lease from Gulf Oil Drilling Supply. Of course, these leases were effectively worthless. Gulf Oil Drilling Supply obtained these leases originally from Zapata. They bought these leases for a dollar each from Bush-controlled Zapata Oil, which had held these leases for some time. But they were tantamount to worthless.
Suddenly these leases are effectively given from father to son and they wind up in the hands of the Jeb Bush-controlled Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company. Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company hypothecated these leases, borrowed money from these leases with numerous Iran-Contra friendly banks in the Miami area, principally Capitol Bank.
Later they would default on these loans, and when Brazilian authorities got word that these leased areas were being used for fraudulent purposes in the United States, Brazilian authorities mounted an investigation. It was a half-assed investigation, but it was enough for Jeb Bush to disgorge. He didn’t want anything more to do with these leases, so consequently he sold them to Trinity Oil and Gas, which again made the same claims that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company had previously made. They said that these leases were, of course, fabulously valuable, when in fact, they were tantamount to worthless.
To further illustrate the Arkansas connection to Trinity Oil and Gas, it should be noted that the general counsels with the law firm of Rose and Hubbel — their bank was another infamous Arkansas Iran-Contra bank — the Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock, Arkansas.
The officer there, later a Director of the bank who handled the account was theinfamous Jonathan Flake. Flake was the one who helped Seal and Hamil put together limited partnerships and syndications, while the bank provided bridge loans.
Also, in general partnerships of oil production, proved up production (which they didn’t have, but they simply made it appear that they had), interests were sold by, of all people, Dan Lasater.
Flake, by the way, was an officer and Director of Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock — a key figure in Iran-Contra fraud in Arkansas.
Flake was involved in numerous oil and gas scams and bogus real estate limited partnerships that the bank also marketed and/or financed. He was also involved with numerous U.S. congressmen.
In all of these bogus oil and gas deals or bogus real estate deals that Congressman Alexander, Congressman Solarz, Congressman Dellums and others got hurt, the common factor is Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock Arkansas and its senior loan 110 officer and later Director, Jonathan Flake.
A precise example of Flake’s involvement would be that Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock was both was a submarketer through its securities division as well as a financier in terms of holding non-recourse and fully recourse paper on bogus limited partnerships.
However, Flake was directly involved in the marketing and subsequently financing of the fraudulent real estate investment trust known as the Boulder Property Limited Series of Partnerships.
It was through these partnerships that Congressman Alexander lost about $3 million.
Now Alexander didn’t actually lose the $3 million. He didn’t have it to lose. But he was forced to default on the debt and forced to declare personal bankruptcy because of it.
Later we will agains touch on Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and see how that bank is a key element in the so-called Denver Daisy Chain.
Through this bank, it will be possible to see that Neil Bush was a substantially larger Iran-Contra fraud and Iran-Contra profiteering player than the public has been led to believe because there is a direct connection between Silverado and the Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock.
That connection exists through Phil Winn of the Winn Group in Denver and his partners Leonard Millman and Steve Mizel, as well as Millman’s company, MDC Holdings, a publicly listed company and its then brokerage subsidiary, the National Brokerage Group.
These are all infamous Iran-Contra artifices, but we are going to explore in the Denver Daisy Chain and make the connection between the Denver frauds and how that filters through Arkansas. This is an area which has not been extensively researched in the past.
Moving on to the infamous Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company — this was Jeb Bush’s favorite oil and gas fraudulent artifice. Many of these Iran-Contra frauds would borrow names from large existing well-known corporations, such as “Gulf.”
You will see in virtually every oil and gas fraud in Iran-Contra the word “Gulf” is used.
However, it is commonly and correctly presumed that the word “Gulf,” as in Gulf Coast Investment Group and its subsidiaries refers to the southeastern United States region, meaning “Gulf,” which is the common presumption.
In the case of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply — Jeb Bush’s deal — that referred to the Arabian Gulf. This is not commonly known publicly. But it really should be.
It’s rather obvious when one looks where Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company supposedly did business.
Its principal foreign office was in Bahrain, which was headed by, of course, Richard Secord.
Gulf Oil Drilling Supply of Miami, New York and Bahrain was, I believe, a more sizeable fraud than has been publicly thought in the past.
When one adds up total losses taken by banks and security houses, it is in the $300 or $400 million range, so it is what I would consider to be a medium to larger size fraud.
The fraud was rather simple.
Richard Secord arranged through then Vice President George Bush Sr.’s old friend, Ghaith Pharaon, the then retired head of Saudi intelligence, for Gulf Oil and Drilling to purchase from the Saudi government oil and gas leases in the Gulf which were effectively worthless.
As you know, most Gulf Oil production is onshore and not offshore. The reason is that it is very expensive to extract offshore.
And, of course, these leases would be dummied up, then prettied up to make them look like they were just worth a goddamn fortune.
The leases again would be hypothecated or borrowed against in some other fashion, again, through Intercontinental Bank, Great American Bank and Trust of West Palm Beach which subsequently failed under the weight of unpaid Iran-Contra loans.
Marvin Warner, of course, was the chairman of that bank. Also, in the case of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, there was some moderately large international lending to that company.
As you would suspect, it was principally out of the old George Bush friendly banks – Credit Lyonnais and Banque Paribas, which, combined lent $60 million dollars to Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, which, of course was defaulted on later.
It has always been my personal opinion that the reason the Kerry Committee, the Hughes Committee, the Alexander Committee, and other Iran-Contra investigating committees on the Hill as well as some people in the media shied away from Gulf Oil Drilling Supply — and why there is so little known about it publicly — is because it directly relates to the great conundrum.
The minute it is seen that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply had relationships with Credit Lyonnais, Banque Paribas and others — that puts it in a whole different much higher realm.
The old George Bush connections of deep old fraud is something that everyone in the media and on the Hill is frightened of because — if you started with Gulf Oil Drilling Supply and investigated it to its logical conclusion, you get into that whole bigger 112 picture where there is multi-billion dollar fraud — something no one really wants to look at.
And Gulf Oil Drilling Supply is very difficult to segregate, to look at it as one individual company, or one individual fraud, or a series of frauds because it’s really much more than that — and it taps into a much larger pre-existing fraud.
However, I would certainly recommend that it be pursued, since I have substantial information about Gulf Oil Drilling Supply (I did business with them and with the Orca Supply Company).
In some cases, I repackaged the worthless leases into other partnership deals. But I do have substantial information about it.
There is a lot more information available about Gulf Oil Drilling Supply than is commonly presumed, because when Iran-Contra unraveled the day after Thanksgiving 1986, there was a big effort to classify documents concerning Gulf Oil Drilling Supply.
There wasn’t any effort made to hide them under correct analysis that no one would want to get into the deal and really pick it apart for fear of that big bugaboo — for fear of getting into the bigger picture of the deep old frauds.
It should also be noted that Gulf Oil Drilling Supply also retained banking relationships with the Bank of Greece, Union Bank of Switzerland, and Jarlska Bank of Copenhagen.
One need only look to see who was on the Board of Advisers of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply to see what the fraud was all about — essentially the old cast of characters.
Ghaith Pharaon was on the Board of Advisers. Andre Papandreou, the former Prime Minister of Greece was on the Board of
Directors. Marcel Dessault, Jr., the old man’s son, was on the Board of Advisers.
And, of course, we see these names again, again and again in Iran-Contra frauds as you saw these names ten and twenty years earlier in other type of Bush-orchestrated frauds.
To get back to Trinity Oil and Gas — I wanted to mention something that’s been completely overlooked. Trinity Oil and Gas was a publicly listed company for a short period of time on the pink sheets.
It was a deal that was done in part through Meyer Blinder (Blinder Robinson Securities in Denver) as well as Atlantic Securities, Balfour McClain Securities, Singer Island Securities.
All of these companies had the same ownership through the National Brokerage Group of Denver.
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Trinity Oil and Gas was backed into a shell which was then pumped up. The stock traded as high as a dollar before the deal collapsed.
But returning to Trinity Oil and Gas — a good example of what I would list as a passthrough fraud, that is, a nuts to bolts fraud.
The company is started as a fraud to legitimize flow of funds from Iran-Contra sympathizers to the hands of Oliver North and Richard Secord and others. Then it would pass into the hands of the political parties and the various members of the Bush family who had financial interest in Trinity Oil and Gas vis-a-vis the connection between Trinity and their own corporations.
What I mean by “pass-through” is not only was the oil-and-gas part of it a fraud (to defraud banks and securities firms), but you then back it into a public shell — start it out at three or four cents a share and pump it up to a dollar.
That is simply another way to exploit the fraud. We have taken an oil and gas fraud, moved it into a banking fraud, then into a
securities fraud. It’s called squeezing every last penny of fraud out of the initial fraud, which is not directed towards anything else.
In the Florida connections (during 1983 to 1986) I was friendly with Charlie Harper, then SEC Commissioner from Miami.
I used to see Charlie. Charlie used to go to a lot of Republican functions. Charlie was also a team player, and when I mentioned the Trinity Oil and Gas, and Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, Charlie said that those were on his “red flag” list — personally provided to him from his superiors in Washington. These were deals that he was not to look at or investigate.
Subsequently, in my 1987 testimony before the Kerry Committee, I had mentioned this to Jeff Goldberg, then Counsel for John Kerry’s office, and they approached Harper.
Harper immediately denied that such a list existed, and three weeks later, of course, Charlie was promoted to Regional SEC Commissioner in Atlanta.
Of course, at this time, Mr. Harper was also unable to explain where the money had come from for him to purchase a $350,000 vacation home in the out islands, and where the money had come from for his sailboat and his Cessna 210 airplane.
He had always claimed that he was an honest public servant, living on his salary of $ 68,932 a year.
It should further be noted that when the Kerry Committee attempted to ask then- Florida State Controller, Gerald Lewis (the cousin, by the way, of the infamous Marvin Warner) and later subpoena him as to why he had not investigated certain security transactions and businesses ongoing in Florida such as the Gulf Coast Investment
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Group, Trinity Oil and Gas, and the Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company, the comptroller promptly resigned his position and elected to take an extended vacation in his luxury Caribbean home, which he purchased for the equivalent of ten years his public salary.
10. The Trilateral Investment Group Fraud I’d like to discuss another infamous Iran-Contra cut-out — the Tri-Lateral Investment
Group, Ltd. This was another offshore corporation formed early in 1984 by Larry Hamil and included as either its officers, principals, or directors, of Richard Secord, Oliver North, Jeb Bush, Gen. Aderholt, and the infamous, sinister and dreaded Col. Robert Steele.
Steele, by the way, now runs a business in McLean, Virginia called Outsource Computers, Inc., whose soul contractee is the National Security Agency.
Anyway I wanted to use the Tri-Lateral Investment Group as a good example of one business which incorporated all phases of the old right-wing favorite frauds, i.e. oil and gas, real estate, gold bullion, aircraft brokerage, security and banking fraud, insurance fraud. They were all wrapped up into one.
What Tri-Lateral would in real estate, for instance, would be to form various fraudulent real estate investment trusts, which didn’t exist as anything more than paperwork in somebody’s file drawer. They would take out leases on the land, build a few models, get bridge loans, rehypothecate the bridge loans and so forth.
The net result is that in the end, the project would collapse, and $20 or $30 million would disappear.
But on the real estate end of transactions, Tri-Lateral is interesting for its involvements in a very infamous fraud — the Topsail Development, Ltd. Fraud of Pensacola, Florida.
This was the famous diversion of 22,000 acres in central Florida, which was financed
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by original bridge loans from the American Bank and Trust of Pensacola, Florida, which at that time was owned by BCCI.
It seemed odd at the time, but this was not known until some years later. People thought it was odd that BCCI would own a little nickel and dime commercial bank in Pensacola, but it was essentially to launder money and to provide bridge financing for Iran-Contra profiteering.
In 1988, the American Bank and Trust of Pensacola, Florida collapsed under the weight of unrepaid illicit Iran-Contra loans. The Topsail Development deal was the largest real estate fraud ever committed in the United States. It was ultimately bailed out by the Coca-Cola Corporation through those Belizian transactions. Tri-Lateral Investment Group had become involved in that transaction vis-a-vis the leases that Tri-Lateral held through Larry Hamil on 45,000 acres of coastal Belizian property.
All it ever was — was a first right of refusal and tenuous leases. The land was never actually owned by Tri-Lateral. The loans, by the way, the $9 million in bridge loans to purchase the lease on those lands, came from Great American Bank and Trust of West Palm Beach.
Marvin Warner personally approved the loans. I was involved in several meetings. I was sitting there, as a matter of fact, when Marvin Warner was there and Hamil and Secord and others to discuss the bridge loan.
Naturally, this $9 million was never paid back, but that was the intent. Simply transferring money from the bank into other people’s hands ostensibly for “The Cause” which we all chuckled about, as everyone knew that it was essentially going into other people’s pockets.
As history recounts, of course, Great American Bank and Trust also failed in 1988 under the weight of unrepaid illicit Iran-Contra loans, to the extent of about $156 million that wasn’t repaid.
In terms of oil and gas, Tri-Lateral also had an interest in Gulf Coast Investment, Ltd., which held a lot of marginal oil production and limestone production in Tennessee,Kentucky, and Oklahoma.
The old one-a-day pumper routine. In oil terms, what’s known as the Knox in Clay County, Kentucky that extends up around Olney, Illinois. These are all beat out one-a day pumpers, one-barrel-a-day, two-barrel-a-day pumpers that have been around for fifty years.
Hamil made them look like they were simply pumping thousands of barrels a day.What Tri-Lateral would do was to take its supposed proprietary interest in Gulf Coast
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Investment Group. Make it appear, in fact, this proprietary interest was worth a lot more than it was.
It would then hypothecate that interest to commercial loans, principally out of Citibank. It would then purchase with this money Citibank’s securities, mostly Citibank bonds.
I remember the large amount of the coupons in 1993 that Tri-Lateral held with money it was lent by Citibank.
The notes would then be held at Merrill Lynch, where they would be margined out. Then the money, again, would be put into something else, usually a bankers acceptances, often at Chase Manhattan.
What I’m trying to say is that you start with $100,000 and at the end of a series of frauds that $100,000 is essentially turned into a $10,000,000 house of cards, of which perhaps $5,000,000 in cash was actually extracted before the whole house of cards falls down.
As I’ve said before. what made this possible is that all the financial intermediaries, banks, brokerage houses, or security companies, were all determined “Iran-Contra friendly.”
Again, essentially it was transferring wealth from a bank, from a brokerage, from investors, from one pocket to another.
Another reason I wanted to mention the Tri-Lateral Investment Group is that it was deals concerning the Tri-Lateral Investment Group which eventually forced the downfall of Richard Hamil in May 1985.
When Hamil was transferring all that cash out of Union Bank of Switzerland (in so many of these frauds I was involved with or familiar with or marketed or whatever)
Union Bank of Switzerland was invariably the butt end of the fraud. In other words, it was the last place a fraud was hypothecated. It was where the final cash would be extracted.
You can pretty well see that the government of the United States admits that in its famous Lake Resources civil suit against Richard Secord, which was filed in 1991. The government makes the admission, that during this 1983 to 1986 time frame, that it had funded a variety of frauds on behalf of Richard Secord, and that Richard Secord was its authorized agent.
In fact, they admitted that the CIA had had a longstanding relationship with the Union Bank of Switzerland and that many powerful Republican interests also had a longstanding relationship with the Union Bank of Switzerland.
The problem was that UBS was always supposed to be made whole in the end. As I attempted to describe these frauds before, the last agent had to be made whole.
The last big agent in this case was UBS.
Unfortunately, Richard Hamil and Richard Secord did not make UBS whole — all that money that Hamil transported in physical cash they laundered through Zurich. Hamil would board a plane. He would fly to Curaçao. The money would get deposited at Banque Z in Curaçao, and then the money would be re-transferred to a Banque Paribas branch in Belize City.
People tried to trace that down before and they found out there isn’t any branch there. Well, yes there is. It’s not incorporated in Belize, however. It’s an offshore branch of Banque Paribas Panama Branch.
This was the ultimate deep repository for Secord and Hamil, where the money ultimately got skimmed off, which ultimately accumulated to about sixteen and twothird million dollars, as I later identified in a whistleblower complaint to the government and to the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department duly informed me that they had found about sixteen and two-third million dollars in the account.
I had known in 1985 the account had contained about eight million dollars. And I didn’t know what transactions had been committed after that time, or how much that account was ultimately worth.
I would add a personal note here. This was another whistleblower complaint that I got screwed out of. I had been promised and I still have the letter, as a matter of fact, from the Treasury Department’s FARCO (Foreign Asset Recovery Control Office) then under RichNewcomb that I would receive a $623,000 finders fee for the identification of that account, which the United States government subsequently froze.
However, I was then informed that under that 1986 Administrative Whistleblower Act, that there were pre-existing claims or pre-existing information, which of course the Treasury Department doesn’t have to tell you what they are or anything.
I have complained bitterly before about the holes in that Whistleblower Act that you could drive a truck through.
I’ve never known anyone who’s identified a surreptitious account that’s ever received a finder’s fee that they’re supposedly entitled to by the law.
The Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd. is also one of the deals (one of the very few deals, perhaps only a few dozen deals in that era by this group of guys) that you could connect Jeb, Neil, George, Jr., Prescott, and Wally Bush.
All five — you can put in the Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd.
You can put Neil in it vis-a-vis Tri-Lateral’s dealings with Neil’s Gulf Stream Realty. Then you back up a step and put Neil Bush into Tri-Lateral Investment Group’s dealings with the Winn Financial Group of Denver run by the infamous former Ambassador to Switzerland, Phillip Winn.
You can put George, Jr. in the deal vis-a-vis the Tri-Lateral Group Ltd.’s fraudulent relationship with American Insurance General (AIG) , of which George, Jr. was a part through the same series of fraudulent fidelity guarantee instruments issued on behalf of Harken Energy from American Insurance General. Tri-Lateral Investment Group then sold bogus oil and gas leases to AIG.
This is a direct fraud that George, Jr. profited to the extent of (not a lot) $1.6 or $1.7 million. But it was a clear out-and-out fraud. Finally, I want to make note of the Tri-Lateral Investment Group because I think it’s worth noting that it was allegations of receiving illicit campaign donations from the Tri-Lateral Investment Group which ultimately led to the defeat of Republican Senator Paula Hawkins in 1986.
Tri-Lateral Investment Group (in terms of gold bullion fraud, another old right-wing favorite for the generation of illegal, covert revenue streams) was also involved in that 20,000 ounce transaction that Larry Hamil and Richard Secord did.
I use Larry and Richard Hamil interchangeably but the man’s real name is Lawrence Richard Hamil. In various public documents and in congressional testimony, he is often referred to as either Larry Hamil or Richard Hamil.
Anyway, Hamil had in conjunction with Richard Secord (using a letter of recommendation from Jeb Bush) borrowed money from Citibank to buy 20,000 ounces of gold bullion from Deak Perrera in New York.
The said bullion was then transferred to the Royal Trust Bank of Canada, actually its branch in Nassau, the Bahamas.
The bank then issued a bonded warehouse receipt, as it is entitled to do. The Nassau branch of the Royal Trust Bank of Canada is authorized to issue bonded warehouse receipts. The said bonded warehouse receipts — at the price of gold at that time was perhaps $7 million worth of bullion.
The said bonded warehouse receipts are then rehypothecated back here in the United States through a variety of Iran-Contra friendly institutions. Ultimately, Hamil and Secord hypothecate the same 20,000 ounces of bullion thirteen times. At thirteen different lending institutions. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. The gold bullion trick.
I mean this was Jack Terrell’s original scheme. This was a scheme that had been used in the 1970s by the CIA. The hypothecation of gold bullion in ten different places.
Of course, those deals all fell apart in the end. By the end of 1986, all those deals fell apart. And as usual, the bank simply wrote off
the money — about 2.3 million dollars. It was about a 2.3 million dollar loan issued by Bayshore Bank and Trust of Miami, Florida and this was certainly one of the lynchpin loans which involved Jack Singlaub.
Gen. Jack Singlaub was the one that got the money. Of course, this was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back — which caused Bayshore Bank to fail.
The reason why the media doesn’t like to go after it because it is cumbersome and tedious. But you can see how one fraud started out with two Iran-Contra players – Larry Hamil and Richard Secord. And yet, you can see all the way through the transaction of these frauds how others benefitted.
In this case, Gen. Singlaub. And the common denominator in so many of these frauds, is Jeb, Neil, George, Jr., Prescott, and Wally Bush. There have been very few that have made a real effort to put all this together.
One thing that’s interesting to note here is why Lawrence Richard Hamil continues to be so hot today — to this day in fact?
Why is it he can never be found?
Why is it he is either in jail or out of jail?
When he’s in jail, there’s never any records that he’s ever been in jail?
Why is that he’s still both protected and punished by certain people in the government?
What are the texts of his old and deep relationships with the Department of Defense
and the Department of Justice and so forth?
The principal reason why?
Just examine his frauds.
Look at all the people involved (who are still in office today, or seeking a higher office, or in certain agencies who have been promoted) in Hamil’s principal group of frauds: Gulf Coast Investment Group, Tri-Lateral Investment Group, LRH Associates, Trinity Oil and Gas and a few others.
There’s perhaps six at the very top of the list of all the hundreds of corporations that he’s formed.
But look at the people who can be hurt, and, in some cases, who have been hurt. Look at those involved. Look at the number of Republican Congressmen and Senators that profited from these illicit deals within the Iran-Contra time frame of 1983 to 1986.
And look at how many of them are still in power today.
They are much more powerful than they were then.
Certainly Henry Hyde, now Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in recent years was quietly, non-publicly censured by the House and fined $835,000 as a final resolution to that Oak Brook, Illinois real estate scam and the hypothecation scam at Key Bank of New York.
That was directly related to his involvement in LRH Associates. Porter Goss was also quietly reprimanded by the House (secretly you could even say, since anybody that ever tried to obtain information about Hyde or Goss’ reprimand has never been successful in obtaining any documentation of it).
Goss was reprimanded and fined $365,000 by the House, by the Ethics Committee, the internal component of it. But Goss made a fortune.
It was in the millions that Goss made through the Destin Country Club Development Group, through the Topsail Development Group, through his surreptitious investments in Zapata, and Apache, and Tidewater, and Harken Energy. The Harken Energy stock fraud. It really is tremendous. And it is directly related to the reason why Hamil continues to be such a bone of contention and such a sore spot for the government and for many in the government to this day.
In late 1995, when I was in my most recent difficulty with the FBI and was incarcerated, Jesse Helms intervened on my behalf and pressured Janet Reno. Consequently I was let out of jail and not further pursued.
You don’t think Jesse Helms did that out of the goodness of his heart, do you? It’s because when I was in jail, I called Paul Rodriguez at the Washington Times and gave him more information that he had been pestering me about for a long time.
The Washington Times (Paul Rodriguez more specifically and his friend, Jamie Dettmer) had pressed Jesse Helms about all the money that he and Oliver North had skimmed out of those big series of 501c3′s in the mid ’80s – the National Eagle Forum, the National Freedom Alliance, and the whole panoply.
You’ll see it’s all common language that Oliver North used when he formed these things. But millions were taken out of these supposedly tax-exempt organizations illicitly and Helms profited by them, and Pete DuPont profited by them as did various members of GOPAC.
Helms didn’t help me out out of the generosity of his heart. It’s that I rattled his goddamned cage.
And I threatened to reveal more information about that. And to this day, when a reporter calls up Jesse Helms and throws up Oliver North or Larry Hamil’s name in his face, he turns white as a goddamned ghost.
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Now as we get into larger and more intriguing Iran-Contra frauds, I want to mention my involvement with the infamous Churchill Matrix Group, Ltd., which had operations in London, Paris, and Brussels.
Its United States operations were headquartered, of all places, in Columbus, Ohio. Churchill Matrix was supposedly engineering and industrial components. It had a relationship with the infamous TKF Engineering & Trading International, Ltd. of Santa Barbara, California. It also had a relationship with the equally infamous International Systems and Components (not to be confused with International Signals and Controls of Scranton, Pennsylvania).
International Systems and Components Corporation of McLean, Virginia, also had offices in Dallas, Texas.
In that Churchill Matrix deal, it was later discovered that the entire thing was an MI-6 British intelligence front, which unraveled in 1991 in those big series of trials in London, when that guy, Paul Anderson, was finally forced to admit he was a British Intelligence agent, and that in fact the whole deal had been an MI-6 operation put together at the request of the CIA during Iran-Contra to surreptitiously get certain components to Iraq, which the CIA wanted to be gotten to Iraq.
The only reason the deal fell apart and became public is that, in this country Mark Thatcher got listed as a co-defendant in the original indictment. Finally, his mother, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, decided to preempt the U.S. action by pulling the plug in London and forcing the MI-6 to admit what it was.
That’s the only reason, by the way, that the whole deal fell apart, was because of the Mark Thatcher angle.
What British Intelligence was trying to hide at the time was the connection between MI-6, the Agency, and Carlos Cardoen.
Had Thatcher been forced on the stand, he would have spilled the beans about Carlos Cardoen, and that was the link that both the Agency and MI-6 wanted hidden at the time.
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11. Lawrence Richard Hamil: The US Government’s Con Man Next I’d like to explore the background and various dealings of the infamous Larry
Hamil.
He was born Lawrence Richard Hamil in Rockville, Maryland on November 16, 1944, the firstborn child of Harry and Virginia Hamil.
Harry Hamil was a thirty-two year veteran of the Department of Defense, retiring as a senior policy analyst on their Southern Desk.
The Southern Desk was a military policy desk involving the Caribbean, Central and South America.
Virginia Hamil worked for many years as a secretary at the National Security Agency. It should be noted that before her retirement, Larry’s half-sister, Nancy, also was a secretary at the National Security Agency. And during the Iran-Contra years, she worked directly in the Director of the National Security Lt. Gen. William Odom’s office.
Larry Hamil has used so many aliases during his lifetime, that actually very little is known about his early life. He attended but did not graduate Georgetown University in the early 1960s. In 1966 he had a brief marriage which resulted in the birth of one daughter, Samantha.
The father Harry Hamil passed away in 1984 of natural causes. Hamil’s mother, Virginia, had left Rockville upon retirement and took up residence in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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The earliest of Larry Hamil’s business dealings comes from the late 1970s — when Larry and other parties, one of them being his longtime friend and associate, Martin Cohen, became involved in a scheme to smuggle American Express cards into Argentina.
In the late 1970s, a financial embargo was put on Argentina by Washington in an attempt to pressure the military junta there out of power.
The American Express Corporation turned to the CIA, who turned to all the players in the shadows of Washington, including Larry Hamil and his erstwhile sidekick, Martin Cohen, to conspire with American Express to smuggle American Express credit cards into Argentina contrary to this financial embargo.
Hamil got paid a hundred dollars per card.
They took the cards down there by the thousands. It was a rather large operation. The Washington Post finally discovered this operation and the CIA connection in 1980. American Express was rather severely fined and the CIA was substantially embarrassed, but, of course, denied all knowledge of it.
The next illicit business transaction — I am aware of — that Larry was involved in was only a year after, in 1980, during the infamous Dominican Sugar Embargo, when the United States was attempting to pressure the military government of then Raphael Trujillo out of office. One way of doing this was to embargo Dominican sugar. Hamil became involved in a series of transactions to surreptitiously transport sugar out of the Dominican Republic at a substantially reduced price, and to disguise that sugar through Jamaica and Haiti, where it was sold at a tremendous profit.
It’s sketchy. I don’t know all the people he was involved with in this conspiracy. I do know that one of the people he was involved with was the infamous Frank Snepp. Frank had just retired that year from the CIA and was looking for little things to get
himself involved in. I do know that Hamil made a substantial sum of money in this endeavor. I also know that he lost a substantial sum of money when the government froze some of his accounts in late 1981. I don’t know how much of the money he was actually ever able to retain.
The next illegal transaction Mr. Hamil got himself involved in was in 1982, during the so-called Falklands War.
It was a scheme where he and Marcel Dessault, the famous French industrialist, in conjunction with the famous Brazilian industrial shadow player and longtime CIA ally (and longtime George Bush friend) Amaro Pintos Ramos, attempted to smuggle into Brazil and to transport across the border and sell to the Argentinian government Exocet missiles which proved during that campaign to be the most effective weapon Argentina had against British warships.
The Argentinians were desperate during that conflict to get their hands on more of those missiles. They were willing to pay whatever it took — ten or twenty times the normal price of what one of those missiles fetched on the open market.
I don’t know what quantity of missiles were smuggled in. I think it was a very small number, thirty or forty missiles perhaps.
My impression though was that the profit was in the millions from that transaction. Later on during the Iran-Contra period, from 1983 to 1986, Hamil would continue to transact a lot of business with Marcel Dessault and with Pintos Ramos.
Pintos Ramos is one of the common connections that Hamil had with George Bush, Sr. And it was the common connection that he had with all the Bush sons. That’s how he knew the sons before Iran-Contra came along.
For a point of reference, Dessault Industries in France is the largest French defense contractor. It makes jet fighters and missiles for the French government and for export. If Larry Hamil were to be categorized, he would wear the label of one of the legions of quasi con men with government connections who wait in the shadows ofWashington for the next illegal, covert operation of state to come along from which he can profit.
And he’s not the only one. There are legions of these guys. It just so happens that Larry Hamil is probably king of the hill wearing this moniker.
Larry knew — prior to the beginning of Iran-Contra operations in 1983 — about Iran- Contra, or what later became known as Iran-Contra as early as 1981.
Larry actually had physical copies — voluminous, thousands of pages — of the original CIA white papers on Operation Eagle, as it was formulated in 1981 by Bill Casey.
It was always a mystery to people how Hamil obtained these documents.
How he obtained them was through Dewey Clarridge. Hamil and Dewey go back a long way into all sorts of fraudulent, shadowy mischief.
Hamil was subsequently became quite friendly with the infamous Clair George, who a few years later was became a Deputy Director of the CIA.
Other friends of Larry’s within the Agency were Assistant Deputy Director, Allen Friers, and Costa Rican Station Chief, Jose P. Fernandez.
The reason why Hamil was let in so readily to these operations and the reason he was allowed to commit fraud and to profit by it — he did serve some useful purpose in terms of money laundering and his absolute specialty: hiding money and secreting money.
Both were very valuable commodities and valuable skills for the Agency. He was looked on very kindly by Bill Casey. He knew Bill Casey. He had known Bill Casey most of his life. Bill Casey and his wife and Harry and Virginia Hamil had played bridge for years. They knew each other. And Bill Casey knew what Larry was, but he also knew that Larry could be helpful in certain ways.
Therefore, if Larry wanted to make a few million fraudulently in what was already an illegal operation of the CIA anyway, it didn’t make any difference to Bill Casey.
Of course, to say it didn’t make any difference to Bill Casey is rather a broad statement.
The actual quid pro quo between Hamil and the CIA always seemed to be to me (and Hamil pretty much said so) that he could pretty well do what he wanted providing he was helpful to them when asked and providing that his individual frauds did not expose or embarrass the CIA.
Of course, eventually by 1985, it was his frauds that did threaten to expose the CIA and did threaten to embarrass them.
So consequently Hamil’s position changed from being on the inside to being somewhere between being on the inside and being on the outside.
In August of 1983, when Operation Eagle was dusted off the shelf, reformulated as Operation Black Eagle, and put into operation, Hamil was involved almost from the get-go.
Hamil immediately set up a series of thirty to forty shell companies, both domestically and offshore domiciled, of course, mostly involving oil and gas, banking transactions, gold bullion, brokering transactions, real estate — all of the old right-wing favorites for the generation of illegal, covert revenue streams.
Hamil’s principal artifices were the Gulf Coast Investment Group and everything around it that had the word “Gulf” in it.
He had initially wanted to also pick up the old Gulf Realty out of west Florida, but Neil Bush wanted that for himself.
So Neil and his partners, Bill Waters and Ken Good, picked that up.
Hamil always felt kind of nicked on that. That’s why Neil, in order to smooth the waters, let Hamil get into Gulf Realty frauds via an artifice that Hamil had created called LRH Associates and Gulf Coast Limited Partnerships, which was his principal real estate fraud artifice.
And you will see that both Gulf Realty, Neil Bush’s Gulf Realty, and Hamil’s Gulf Realty Limited Partners too were involved in that fraudulent Destin Country Club development deal.
Subsequently, we’re involved in the fraudulent Boca Chica development deal. And ultimately we’re involved in the largest real estate swindle ever enacted in the United States, the Topsail Development Limited deal out of Pensacola, Florida, which involved the swap of that 26,000 acres here in Florida for that land in Belize.
The business commonality during this period of time between Larry and Jeb Bush came through Larry’s Gulf Coast Investment Group and Larry’s partial control, along with Barry Seal’s and Larry Nichol’s of Trinity Oil, as we have discussed.
But, the commonality between Jeb Bush and Larry was in a series of both onshore and offshore bogus oil and gas lease swindles, Also, there was some commonality in some of the banking fraud between Jeb and Larry, as you will notice in a careful study that both Jeb and Larry tended to do business at the same banks and tended to know the same Directors, all at the same banks, at Iran-Contra friendly banks.
Larry’s connections with George, Jr., have always been considered rather nebulous. People have never been able to really put it together. It’s not as obvious as his connections are with Jeb and Neil.
But the real connection is between American Insurance General (AIG) and that series of frauds instituted by Jack Singlaub in the World Anti-Communist League, when he had Mitch Mar and Barbara Studley acting as front people for him.
And that is the real connection with George, Jr, because George, Jr. got a piece of thatthrough an interest in a Dallas-based oil company that he controlled.
There is also some commonality between Larry Hamil and George, Jr. vis-a-vis Harken Energy and Zapata and Apache and Tidewater Corporations insofar that Larry was involved in various stock frauds surrounding those companies, of which George, Jr. and George, Sr. profited by.
And, of course, Larry was very close to the partners of the infamous Houston Energy Partners, and was friendly with Don Regan, James Baker, Lloyd Bennett, and John Tower. He had known these guys for some years because his father had known these men.
Larry was never short of being able to boast about himself. Part of his own downfall was his mouth.
But, he was never short to say how he was a member of the old Texas Republican drinking club, of which John Tower was the de facto leader.
But, it is really John Tower that introduced Larry to Walter Mischer and Bobby Corson.
So you can imagine that Hamil took those introductions to the biggest S&L’s in Texas and proceeded to rape and pillage them pretty good in a series of oil and gas and gold bullion frauds.
Later, he, Jeb and George, Jr., all participated in (I wouldn’t call it a swindle, but I would call it certainly) a marginal transaction in terms of borrowing money from those banks to short the stocks of those banks, and then defaulting on the loans.
Of course, the banks ultimately failed. Stocks went off the board almost for pennies. And, I wouldn’t call that an out-and-out stock swindle, but it was certainly a fraud.
We all benefited quite handsomely from it. Jeb and George, Jr. made a fortune from it. Neil had a substantial short position in Silverado. And when Silverado collapsed, Neil made $3 or $4 million out of that, and then of course, never repaid the loan.
He had borrowed the money in Silverado to begin with. They were in unique positions. They knew that these banks were failing, and were going to fail, under the weight of unrepaid Iran-Contra/CIA loans.
The CIA, as was later revealed in The Houston Post, had borrowed from and had used the three big banks in Texas — Allied Bancshares, Texas America Bank and Commerce, and MCorp. The CIA ultimately defaulted on about $350 million worth of loans in the end.
Others of Hamil’s close friends in the government at that time were National Security Adviser, Frank Carlucci.
Hamil used to meet Frank quite often in Florida at the Ocean Club for lunch. This is at the same time that Frank Carlucci exposed himself by being seated at the same table with the infamous CIA doper, Jack Devoe. And what a mistake that was. I don’t know how they allowed that to happen. Someone took the photograph.
Bobby Gates got wrapped up into the same problem with that townhouse, exactly the same deal when he allowed himself, the then Deputy Director of the CIA, to be photographed through a security camera in the lobby with the infamous Carlos Cardoen.
At the State Department, Hamil’s principal friend there was Larry Eagleburger. “Fat Larry” — we used to call him.
Larry Eagleburger had also known Harry Hamil for a number of years. As a matter of fact, it was Harry Hamil (this is a very little known fact) that got Eagleberger his first job in the State Department some years ago.
Of course, Larry EaglebUrger at this time rose to the position of Under Secretary of State.
Larry was also very friendly with the Assistant Secretary of State, the infamous Richard Armitage. Armitage would consistently act to protect him at the State Department.
Although Armitage was Assistant Secretary, he was also Chief of the Internal Security section of the State Department, which had consistently acted in concert with the CIA and other parties to authorize narcotics trafficking.
This has been mentioned in the press, and it’s been written about before, i.e. Armitage’s role in narcotics and his knowledge of it.
As you know, Carlucci and Armitage are now in business together at the Carlisle Group.
It was really because of Hamil’s personal friendship with Don Regan that he was able to commit all that securities fraud through Merrill Lynch.
Merrill Lynch would lend him real good quality securities (Citicorp bonds, things like that ) but they were actually financing the inventory of this stuff in his corporate accounts.
He wasn’t paying for any of this. He was paying for it with bogus cashier’s checks from the British American Insurance Trust Co. of the Bahamas, which was an offshore bank that he controlled, which was also bogus.
They would post bogus fidelity and guaranty instruments to Merrill Lynch, backed up by a standby letter of credit, which was actually a good standby letter of credit from American Insurance General.
Of course, it was all a fraud.
American Insurance General would never pay any claim. That was the deal. It was just to stand his collateral against a marginable position in Citicorp bonds and high quality securities that Hamil would then use to rehypothecate at other institutions.
Ultimately, Merrill Lynch had to write off some money because of this. It wasn’t much, $2 or $3 million. But they did ultimately get stuck with it. And, of course, Hamil’s relationship with Merrill Lynch fell apart when Don Regan left as Chairman and Ray Birk came in.
Another friend and business partner of Hamil’s was the infamous Marvin Warner. Marvin Warner and Larry Hamil were partners in a lot of bogus real estate deals being run through ESM. The bridge money for these deals was coming out of Marvin’s bank in Florida, the Great American Bank and Trust, which was headquartered in West Palm Beach. It ultimately failed as well with losses to the taxpayers of about $170 million.
But you will see them in partners in a whole variety of deals through ESM. As a matter of fact, it is one of the real estate deals financed through ESM through Ohio State Savings that gets rehypothecated at the Glen Brook Savings and Loan in Illinois.
This was the deal that Henry Hyde became involved in when Henry wanted his piece of the Iran-Contra pie.
The interesting connection is that Henry Hyde, subsequent to this, introduces Hamil to Key Bank of New York.
Hyde knew everybody at Key Bank because of his friendship with Alphonse D’Amato, and Alphonse’s brother, Louis, the lawyer, who was the general counsel at Key Bank.
Louis, you may remember, subsequently got himself into trouble, and was close to being charged with murder. He ultimately served eight months in jail.
Anyway, it was transactions at Oak Brook Savings and Loan in Illinois and Key Bank in New York, for which Henry Hyde was secretly censured by the House later on, wherein Henry Hyde admitted he had illegally profited to the tune of about $850,000 in certain bogus real estate transactions.
The connection between Hamil and Porter Goss was through Jeb Bush. Jeb kept letting Congressman Porter Goss into all of his deals — the crossover transactions that he had with his brother, Neil, in those bogus Gulf Realty Developments.
Porter consistently had an interest in all of these deals that collapsed. The difference was he actually got to sell his interests, before the deal collapsed, of course. Porter made a lot of money during the Iran-Contra period. Henry Hyde and Porter Goss are just two examples.
We could go on and on and on with Republican Congressmen and Senators who profited vis-a-vis Iran-Contra fraud. It’s not limited, by the way, to Republicans. There were some Democrats like Senator Graham who profited quite handsomely through that Swissco Management fraud, the tax-free land swap he arranged for himself with Carlos Cardoen and Swissco Management.
When the FBI finally raided Swissco offices, the Senator’s documents were conveniently missing from the evidence they collected. Anyway, that’s another whole story that will require another ten hours just on that fraud.
BY 1985, Hamil was violating the mandate that was given him and, by extension, given to me as his partner in 1984 from Gen. Secord.
The mandate was quite clear. Part of it was that Larry was not to commit frauds on individuals. That would become messy and hard to cover up, which is precisely what Hamil did. In his greed, he wanted to squeeze every dollar he could out of his perceived protection from Washington.
Hamil then proceeded to commit fraud on unauthorized individuals. The original Gulf Coast Investment scheme was supposed to be strictly an artifice that would legitimize the flow of funds from sympathetic Republicans to “The Cause,” as Oliver North calls it.
To “The Enterprise,” as Richard Secord called it.
To “The Government Within a Government,” as Assistant Secretary of State, Elliott Abrams would call it. That’s what we were doing.
Of course, being a private individual, you could not donate money to an illegal, covert operation of state. But you could have an intermediary.
You buy bogus oil and gas interests, which essentially become used as a laundering device to get the money to Oliver North and other parties.
The problem with Larry is that we were given lists of selected wealthy Republicans who wanted to do this. Larry went outside of that list and started to raise money from unauthorized people. And consequently, this created a problem.
By late April or early May, it was obvious that something had to be done about Hamil, and of course something was done. On May 5, 1985, Hamil was arrested by the FBI in Miami. He was on his boat, The Capital Delight, at the Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale.
Finally the much vaunted FBI agent of Miami office, Field Agent Ross Gaffney got his man.
But their incompetence frankly borders on hilarity. They went to the wrong boat and arrested the wrong man.
Hamil was right in the next pier, in the next dock, ten feet from them in his bathing suit looking at them, waving at them. And they didn’t realize it. Ross Gaffney didn’t have a photograph of Hamil and didn’t know what he looked like.
Larry’s last transactions that I knew about during this timeframe came in April of 1985, when he was at Union Bank in Switzerland, where he did a lot of business. He was delivering that $432,000 in cash to Banque Z in Curaçao and was depositing it into one of the accounts of the infamous Intercontinental Industries SA, controlled by OliverNorth and Richard Secord.
Before we go further in this, it should be mentioned that not all of Hamil’s dealings were with Republicans.
How Hamil got involved in Arkansas (this has been another question that people have always wanted to know) wasn’t just through the Trinity Oil and Gas deal. It also wasn’t simply through fraudulent securities transactions with Stephens Investment Group.
And it was not simply through bogus banking transactions at Twin Cities Bank of North Little Rock, Arkansas. In fact, Hamil acted as a Republican bag man in Arkansas. He used to transport money for the Agency for operations in Mena. He would transport a large amount of physical cash in a briefcase.
One of the things that Larry was often used for was a courier of cash. That’s how Larry becomes so involved and so intimately knowledgeable about Buddy Young because he meets Buddy Young.
He and Buddy and Barry got into Trinity Oil. They then, in turn, got Danny Lasater, and Patsy and Harry Thomasson into transactions.
Larry set up more bogus corporations in Arkansas, of course, through the Rose Law Firm — and Hubbell acts as general counsel.
As a matter of fact, Hillary, herself, was the counsel on several of these bogus corporations, including the sinister Trinity Oil and Gas deal.
Bruce Lindsay, then deputy to Governor Clinton, and Betsey Wright, then the Governor’s personal secretary, knew precisely what Hamil was doing in Arkansas.
They also knew his itine