Читать книгу Letter to House Select Committee on Intelligence - Darryl Robert Schoon - Страница 3

Norman Thirion’s plan to get out of prison was brilliant. The fact that it didn’t work didn’t mean it wasn’t brilliant; it only meant it didn’t work. In fact, when Norman first told me what he was about to do, I thought his plan was very good. And, it was. It was just that Thirion’s plan was different than what I thought it was.

When Norman had discovered that his appeal had been turned down by the appellate court, he had taken me to his quarters, showed me some documents and asked if I would write down the story he was about to tell and keep a copy of it for safekeeping. Norman said he needed the story in the hands of a third party in order to ensure his safety because of what he was about to do.

At the time, the spring of 1987, the White House and the federal prison system were very much in the control of the Reagan inner circle, the very men Thirion believed responsible for framing him and sending him to prison. A presidential election was coming up the next year in 1988 and Thirion reasoned that the last thing the Republicans wanted was a scandal linking them to the disappearance of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars intended for the Afghan freedom fighters, a link he could easily provide if they didn’t use their influence to get him an early release and pardon.

Once Thirion knew I had written down his story, he wrote a letter addressed to Otis Chandler, the owner/publisher of the Los Angeles Times. In it, Thirion referred to the times, when in the employ of Howard Hughes, he had met Chandler and his wife on different occasions. He said the purpose of his letter was that he, Thirion, could shed some light on events that had recently been reported in Chandler’s L.A. Times. Events that included the discovery of a secret CIA Saudi fund meant for the Afghan resistance that Dr. Nake Kamrany of USC in the L.A. Times said never reached them.

I thought Thirion’s letter was wonderful for it would soon expose the corruption of the Reagan White House for all to see. The only trouble was, although Thirion had addressed the letter to Otis Chandler, he never intended to send it to him. Instead, Thirion had enclosed a copy of the Chandler letter with a letter he had mailed to a prominent Republican lawyer with close ties to the Republican Party hierarchy—a lawyer who knew Thirion from his days with Howard Hughes and one who could immediately inform the Reagan White House of what Thirion was threatening to do. Thirion’s letter to the lawyer also stated that the details of his story were now in the hands of a third party who would release the story to the press if anything unfortunate and unexpected should happen to Thirion while he was still in prison.

Thirion’s letter to the Republican lawyer had an immediate effect. Shortly thereafter, Thirion received a phone call from the lawyer telling him to do nothing with the information. He told Thirion to sit tight until he came to see him, which would be soon. Thirion’s plan was working.

Within a week, Norman was informed that he had a lawyer’s visit and to report immediately to the visiting room. When Norman returned, he was elated. There, he said, he had met with three men—the lawyer to whom he had written the letter, and two others, both relatives of high ranking and prominent members of the Republican Party. One was related to Paul Laxalt, Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign manager in 1980 and ’84, former governor of the state of Nevada, and soon to be candidate for the 1988 Republican nomination for the presidency. The other visitor was a relative of Orrin Hatch, ranking Republican senator from the state of Utah, and himself a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency some years later.

Norman said the meeting had gone well. He had explained to his visitors how he had fallen from grace. Once banker to Howard Hughes and now a federal inmate arrested in Monaco on trumped-up charges of accepting loan fees, Thirion recounted the story of his ill-fated involvement with Transglobal Productions and the men behind it—William Wilson, one of Reagan’s closest associates, and General Robert E. Cushman, former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and past deputy director of the CIA, etc.

Norman told the men he believed his arrest had been engineered in order to discredit him should he ever expose the diversion of money meant for the Afghan resistance. Thirion had been cut out of a deal where he had been promised 2% of all moneys raised, which amounted to $10 million. Those in the Republican White House knew Thirion would be angry and had taken preemptive steps to discredit Thirion should he ever tell what actually had happened.

The three men who listened to Thirion’s story knew exactly what could happen if the story got out. The Reagan White House was already under attack for its role in the Iran-Contra money-for-arms scandal. Now, a story that alleged the embezzlement of millions of dollars intended for the Afghan resistance could have a chilling effect on the Republican chances for the presidency the following year. The men asked Norman what he wanted. Norman replied, “I want justice.” They answered, “Give us some time. We’ll get you out.”

Norman’s plan indeed seemed to be working. I had hoped Norman’s plan was to include releasing details of the Transglobal story to the Los Angeles Times but it didn’t. The purpose of Norman’s plan was not to enlighten the American public about the covert world of politics and money. Norman already had an intimate knowledge of the Machiavellian world of the American political process. For ten years he had worked for Howard Hughes, a man who believed that buying influence and politicians was the cheapest way of doing business.

The Marina Del Rey project in Los Angeles had been a Howard Hughes project that Thirion had financially managed. Thirion said that Hughes’ partner in the deal was a group led by Herb Kalmbach, the personal attorney of Richard Nixon. It was Thirion’s opinion that it was not for the financing clout or real estate expertise of Kalmbach that Hughes had included the Nixon crowd in the lucrative Marina Del Rey development. No, Norman already knew too much about the real political process and his plan didn’t include exposing it. The only purpose of Norman’s plan was to get Norman Thirion out of prison as soon as possible. And, being there myself, I couldn’t fault him a bit.

The prison experience dashes many hopes, and Norman’s was to be among them. His elation was short lived. Although his prospects for release were initially high, the calls to the lawyer and Laxalt’s and Hatch’s relatives were not to bring Thirion the news he hoped for. As the weeks turned into months, Thirion realized the efforts of the three men were not going to get him out of prison. Confirmation of his fears came when they told him they had informed Wilson of Thirion’s plan to tell what he knew unless he was released from prison. Wilson had replied, “Let him tell. No one will believe him.”

The arrogance of William Wilson’s answer was to be unfortunately justified; not because no one would believe it, but because no one wanted the story told, not even Norman Thirion. Finally released from prison, Thirion later wrote me and asked me to forget the story. It was understandable. Thirion had been an international banker and had moved easily and naturally in the corridors of power, corridors where scandal is avoided like the plague because there, as in society, virtue is measured not by fact, but by reputation. Thirion had a life to rebuild and the less anyone knew of his imprisonment the better.

I, however, had no reputation to lose. I was a convicted drug dealer, a group the media vilified with the same fervor it had previously reserved for child molesters and traitors and now blamed for most of society’s ills. I, however, cared little if people knew I had been in prison. Being a prisoner in a police state is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing.

At the time, the San Francisco Chronicle had been running a series of articles written by a federal inmate and I thought the Chronicle would be interested in Norman’s story. I was wrong. I sent a letter detailing what I had been told to the editors of the Chronicle but heard nothing in reply. I next thought of notifying the U.S. Department of Justice about what I knew. But the Department of Justice was securely in the control of the Republican Party and writing them would be akin to writing Goebbels in Nazi Germany, informing him that a nice Jewish family in the neighborhood had disappeared and I believed the police were responsible. No, I thought, Norman’s story would have to wait until I was released from prison.

In the summer of 1992, I was released, and although still on parole, I was now free to tell what I knew. I figured that the Democrats would be interested in my tale of Republican corruption, so I went to the offices of California’s Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. Because I had served on Diane Feinstein’s China Committee when she was the Mayor of San Francisco, I figured my chances were better with Diane. I was wrong again.

During Diane’s tenure as mayor, I had been asked to give a talk to the San Francisco Port Commission on behalf of my Republican landlord and prominent local society figure, Ed Osgood. At the time, I was importing Chinese hand-knotted carpets, the import duties were 45%, and Ed’s duty-free foreign trade zone was the most cost-effective place to store them until sold.

I gave the talk before the Port Commission and ended up photographed on the front page of the S.F. Chronicle business section extolling the virtues of San Francisco’s China trade and the value of Ed Osgood’s Foreign Trade Zone. For that, I was rewarded with a seat on Mayor Feinstein’s China Committee and later accompanied Diane on a trip to Shanghai to speak before various Shanghai import-export corporations.

My previous relationship with Diane notwithstanding, my story about the Republican skim was to fall on deaf ears. I spoke with one of her aides who listened carefully to what I had to say. But during the conversation, I could sense this was a story they didn’t want to know. Barbara Boxer’s office, too, was solicitous but in the end declined to take any action.

I was learning a cold hard lesson in modern American politics that I had not been taught when getting my degree in political science at UC Davis years earlier; to wit, when it comes to the powerful, no one wants to point fingers. I thought because the story included politically powerful figures such as President Ronald Reagan, retired Marine General and former CIA Deputy Director Robert E. Cushman, and Ambassador William Wilson, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and covert agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, there would be a great deal of interest in the story.

I was wrong. Just the opposite is true. In America, as elsewhere in the world, everyone is afraid to accuse the powerful of wrongdoing. If the culprit had been a poor black woman selling crack to fund a black women’s uprising, the outcry would have been deafening. As it was, I couldn’t get a response.

Whether it was my stubbornness or stupidity, I continued intermittently to attempt to tell the story fate had so ungraciously given me. The next attempt was inspired by the vitriolic Republican attacks on the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. Surely, they could use some ammunition to defend themselves against the relentless rage of the Republicans.

Again, I was to be wrong. In the fall of 1994, I contacted Webster Hubbell, Clinton’s beleaguered associate and offered to send him what I knew. Hubbell, at least initially, was both eager and grateful, thanking me for the information and promising it would get into the right hands. If the information did, I was never to know. Hubbell’s thank you was the last thing I was to hear from him.

My attempts to tell Thirion’s story of Republican malfeasance grew fewer as the combination of repeated rebuffs and passing years convinced me that no one wanted to know. Only three more times would a spark of unfounded optimism cause me to once again send Norman’s tale out in the vain hope that someone, somewhere out there would care enough to investigate.

Information was sent to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Bill Kurtis of A&E’s Investigative Reports, and to the investigative reporters at the Los Angeles Times. If they didn’t care enough to investigate, then no one would. No one did.

The burden of hearing a tale as extraordinary as Thirion’s and realizing that no one wants to hear it has not been an easy one to bear. Carrying this story around since 1987 has been a bitter task and the lack of feedback and support has only fueled my cynical view of America and American politics and the American media.

Alexis De Toqueville predicted in 1835 in his extraordinary book, Democracy In America, that (1) the United States and Russia would someday represent opposing views on the world stage, (2) the United States could become a police state where the people lost the political will to govern themselves, and (3) the rebirth of freedom in America would come through the arts. Only De Toqueville’s third prediction hasn’t come true, the rebirth of freedom in America has yet to occur.

In an ironic footnote to Norman’s story, in June 2001, I wondered what had happened to Norman Thirion. My curiosity caused me to enter his name, Norman Bernard Thirion, into Google, the internet search engine. Because I had been disappointed so often in the past, I didn’t expect anything different this time. But this time I was to be wrong. This time another piece in the story told by Norman Thirion was to fall unexpectedly into place.

There, on my computer screen, the words, Norman Bernard Thirion, had taken me to the site of Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library’s special collection of Ambassador William A. Wilson’s papers spanning the years 1980-1992.

There, in box 1, folder 54, was noted the following correspondence, “@ Roger W. Hunt, Hunt & Haugaard, attorneys at law, South Dakota. Includes correspondence from the following re the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR: Norman Bernard Thirion, International Banking Services to W.A.W. (William A. Wilson). General Abdul Wali to W.A.W., copy, E.T. Barwick, E.T. Barwick Industries, Inc., Georgia, to Prince Bandar Ibn Sultan, copy*.”

Just as fate had unexpectedly given me Norman’s story fifteen years before, fate, now, just as unexpectedly had corroborated Norman’s story regarding his relationship with Reagan’s alleged bagman, Ambassador William A. Wilson. The names in Wilson’s file were familiar to me, told to me by Thirion years before—Roger Hunt was Norman’s attorney and had handled his appeal, General Abdul Wali had been the aide to the former King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, who headed the Afghan resistance that was to receive the Saudi money; E.T. Barwick of Atlanta, Georgia, was Thirion’s partner, and Prince Bandar Ibn Sultan received the proposal to fund the Afghan Government-In-Exile on behalf of the Saudi royal family.

William Wilson’s gift to Georgetown University revealed further evidence of Wilson’s participation. In box 2, folder 56 of Wilson’s bequest to Georgetown University, were papers sent by USC Professor Dr. Nake Kamrany to William Wilson and to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan regarding Afghanistan’s independence from the USSR.

Because Dr. Kamrany had been a central figure in the events recounted by Norman Thirion, I had always been curious about what Dr. Kamrany actually knew. So, two years after Google had unexpectedly provided proof of William Wilson’s participation, I decided in May 2004 to contact Dr. Kamrany directly.

I emailed Dr. Kamrany at the University of Southern California. I said I possessed information provided by Norman Thirion regarding a possible skim of Saudi funds intended for the Afghan resistance. My e-mail got an immediate response. Dr. Kamrany called back and launched into an emphatic denial of Thirion’s assertions.

He asked how I knew Norman and how I got my information. I told Kamrany I had met Norman in prison and was writing a book about my experiences. Kamrany then confirmed he knew Norman Thirion, William Wilson, Perry Morgan, and General Cushman. He did deny, however, any knowledge of Transglobal Productions or about a conspiracy to skim the funds. He did say that General Cushman had mentioned a private venture.

Kamrany also denied knowing Transglobal directors Dr. Jon Speller and Rabbi Morton Rosenthal (Rabbi Rosenthal was the Transglobal director who played a key role in the purchase of captured Soviet Syrian arms from Israel). Kamrany did admit he had seen the Soviet armaments used by the Afghan resistance in Afghanistan and personally had never received an adequate explanation about where the large supply of Soviet arms had come from.

Then Kamrany unexpectedly asked if I knew anyone in the movie business (I was to find out his son had an idea for a movie). It was a question that was to lead to our meeting in person. Rawson Thurber had written and directed a movie that was about to be released. and Marshall Thurber, his father, was my close friend from law school.

The movie, Dodgeball, was opening nationwide June 18th and Marshall had invited friends and family to a private showing in Los Angeles on the 17th. I obtained invitations from Marshall for Dr. Kamrany and his guests to attend.

There, I met Dr. Kamrany and we continued our discussion. After our talk, I had no doubt what Norman had told me was the truth, that Kamrany’s denial of a skim was based only upon his ignorance of its existence. The conversation confirmed that Kamrany had absolutely no knowledge of Transglobal Productions or any inkling of the conspiratorial designs of its principals.

Finally, now, after the revelations of the internet and my meeting with Dr. Kamrany, I was to get some closure to the extraordinary story I had heard during my first year in prison. And with it came a realization that has given me a measure of acceptance and peace: Two thousand years ago, the Pharisees and Publicans were in power. They still are today. A story isn’t going to change anything.

There is, however, an interesting detail that still remains unresolved. When I entered Norman Bernard Thirion into Google’s search engine, I also googled the names of others alleged to have participated in the skim. Transglobal director, Rabbi Morton Rosenthal and Transglobal vice-president Dr. Jon Speller in particular brought up interesting information.

When I googled the name of Dr. Jon Speller, a website connected Dr. Speller not only to Rabbi Rosenthal, but also to a company “Transglobal Resources” co-owned by the two men.

The weblink stated:

“The key link between the ADL [Anti Defamation League] and the Sikh extremists who murdered Prime Minister Gandhi runs through Rabbi Rosenthal a senior ADL employee and head of the league’s Latin American Affairs Division, who is directly linked to the man who ordered the assassination, Dr. Jagjit Singh Chauhan. It also runs through Rosenthal’s longtime intimate political collaborator and sometimes business partner Jon Speller. Speller is widely believed to be a high-level intelligence agent for British intelligence [with] documented links to Israeli, Soviet, and American intelligence services. One year before Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination, Speller sponsored a U.S. visit by Jagjit Singh Chauhan…After Mrs. Gandhi’s death, Rabbi Rosenthal and Speller, operating through a front company they had jointly established called Transglobal Resources, arranged a series of secret meetings in Washington, London, and Quito, Ecuador, which resulted in the Ecuadoran government offering Chauhan a large tract of land on which to establish a Khalistani homeland.”

But, by far the most interesting link occurred when I entered the name Ronald Sablosky into Google’s search engine. When Norman Thirion was fired as Transglobal’s banker, General Cushman replaced Thirion with Ronald Sablosky; and, in 2002, a search on the internet was to connect Ronald Sablosky directly to the office of President Ronald Reagan.

The name Ronald Sablosky led to a Google first page reference to the site of the Presidential Papers of the Ronald Reagan Library. There, in Box 92335 of the litigation files of Jonathan Scharfen, legal advisor to the National Security Council under President Reagan, was the case US v. Ronald Sablosky.

Advised by the Reagan Library to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to review the White House file, I did so in August 2002. I was informed it would take 22-24 months to process the request which included a 30-day notification to the representatives of President Reagan and current President George W. Bush. After processing, remaining national security information would be sent to appropriate agencies for classification review. I was told it may take more than a year for the agencies to notify the Library of their recommendations.

In April 2006, 44 months after the FOIA request was submitted, I have yet to receive the information requested; yet, two interesting changes have occurred. First, googling the name Ronald Sablosky no longer brings up the prominent reference to US v. Sablosky as it did in 2002. Secondly, by cross referencing “reagan” and “scharfen” on Google, I did again locate the case US v. Sablosky, now with the words “farm loan scheme” prominently in parentheses next to it.

What I find curious is that loan fees allegedly charged to farmers was the basis of the indictment used by the federal government to prosecute Norman Thirion in 1984, charges Norman maintained were patently false and designed solely to discredit what Thirion might divulge about the Reagan White House. Did Ronald Sablosky also run afoul of his White House masters, thereby causing National Security Council lawyers to fabricate and institute similar litigation against him?

Perhaps there are other reasons why Jonathan Scharfen, counsel for the powerful National Security Council under President Reagan, would file charges against a Ronald Sablosky regarding a “farm loan scheme”. Perhaps it’s not the same Ronald Sablosky chosen by former CIA Deputy Director and retired Marine Commandant General Robert E. Cushman to negotiate the transfer of the Saudi funds. Perhaps.

Irrespective of what the files eventually do reveal, I am now confident the story confided to me by Norman Thirion is true. I am also confident those in the Reagan inner circle who skimmed the Saudi funds of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars will never be brought to justice. For other than to preserve the common order, the majority of civil and criminal laws are written to protect the powerful, not to prosecute them.

Quis Custodiat Custodes? The Latin saying is as true today as it was in ancient Rome. Who Will Guard The Guardians? Certainly not you, certainly not I, and certainly not the courts and the U.S. criminal justice system.

Imperial Rome, Imperial America. In the past, some historians have blamed the decline of the Roman Empire on the decadence of its citizenry. If, however, the present is in any way a reflection of the past, it is far more likely it was a combination of corruption and greed that paved Rome’s well-greased path to entropy and decline.