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Michael J. Hand, a Vietnam war hero and later a CIA agent in Asia, disappeared after his founding-partner of the Australian Nugan-Hand Bank was found dead. Four Australian government investigations produced voluminous reports that do little to clear up the mystery of a financial operation said to have become a "giant theft machine."
Some of the Iran-Contra hearing's characters came under scrutiny: Gen. Richard Secord, the CIA's Tom Clines and Ted Shackley --- though Shackley denies involvement. Ed Wilson and all these former CIA officials! That's why the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry began its work after former U.S. government officials shredded Nugan-Hand records when the bank failed seven years ago. It owed unknown millions to investors who could not afford the publicity of pressing their claims.
The bank laundered money from the Southeast Asian drug trade. Profits bought arms to be sold to the world's trouble spots. Admiral Earl Yates, U.S. President of this odd bank, had been Chief of Staff for Plans and Policy of U.S. Pacific command. He says the group of former military and intelligence officers he helped attract to the bank were "true patriots." Gen. LeRoy J. Manor ran a major branch of the bank in a strategic center. He had been chief of staff for Pacific command. Gen. Erle Cocke Jr. ran the Washington office.
An Australian investigator said, "Here are all these patriots who have served their country faithfully, suddenly saying `let's all become criminals and commit crimes against the very country we've been working for.'" The biggest crime is the swamping of North America with dope on such a scale that today the problem, despite President Ronald Reagan's "war on drugs," is now the root of major crime and big-city street warfare. For what the Nugan-Hand patriots left behind, when their empire collapsed, was a well established method of operations.
Former chief of special operations for the U.S. Air Force, Fletcher Prouty, says it began when drugs were used to pay anti-Japanese tribesmen in World war II. Out of this sprang a drug trade that then became the means by which U.S. run guerrillas fought the secret wars of Indochina. This drug trade, he states, was the reason for starting the Nugan Hand Bank and "Michael Hand worked out of my office before going to Indochina."
The men who perfected the guns-for-dope traffic moved to the Middle East as experts in the sale of sophisticated arms, protected by officials at the top in the Pentagon and CIA. Richard Armitage, now the key Pentagon official in counter-terror and covert operations is named consistently by investigators as the man who helped the drug warlords market their crops.
Gen. Khun Sa, who governs the Shan territory of Upper Burma with an army that dominates the infamous Golden Triangle, the world's biggest single source of dope, testified recently that U.S. officials facilitated his business running funds through the Australian bank with Armitage's help.
Khun Sa repeatedly offered to stop producing opium if the U.S. government will help his people substitute other crops. He charges that the U.S. spends millions to destroy opium poppy felds. This is done by corrupt local officials who kill the village agriculture instead. His offer made directly to the White House, has been rejected on the grounds that he is a liar.
Lt. Col. "Bo" Gritz, highly decorated Vietnam vet, videotaped Khun Sa's statement. The Christian Broadcast (CBN) Network says media outlets were called by Armitage's lawyers and warned against running the story. The ultra-conservative Daily News Digest reports: "H. Ross Perot (the Texas billionaire and a super-patriot who drove drugs out of Texas) took the evidence to Vice President George Bush, the FBI and the White House and got a call from the new head of the National Security Counsel, Frank Carlucci, telling him to lay off Armitage."
Police detectives who specialize in Vietnamese mobsters say they have been frustrated by federal authorities. A presidential crime commission that looked into cases like that of Armitage blacked-out from its final public report all references to these delicate aspects.
Daily News Digest reports, "There is an enormous amount ofcoroborative material being sent to our office nearly every day. It supports the conclusion that a formal or informal organization of high CIA and military officers, some former, some present, exists which has for decades been a major, if not the major importer of heroin and cocaine into the U.S."
The most prominent name recurring in this connection is Vice President George Bush. While he was CIA director, much of these activities blossomed, but more serious charges are being made by former intelligence officers who believe passionately in the need for a powerful secret intelligence capability but who fear that their institutions have been corrupted by a few self-proclaimed patriots. After hearing Oliver North's patriotic rhetoric at the Iran/Contra hearings, Congressman Dante Fascell praised his sincerity and then said, "But... how come I don't feel good?"
Part of the answer is beginning to emerge in the work of such as Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny whose book, The CRIMES OF PATRIOTS, looks beyond Nugan Hand to its successor, another financial operation more shrewdly located in Hawaii, secure from nosy Australians and other foreigners. Having myself idled through the records of the Hawaiian project, I can assure Kwitny's readers that he's on the right track here, too.
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