It was front-page news when General Manuel Noreiga of Panama was linked to the Cocaine trade. Hell it's page one news when university students get busted for dope. But what happens when a dozen or more "Gringo Noreigas" get caught up in the drug business. As one might expect when it comes to our own governments drug dealing shenanigans media coverage is almost always suppressed or buried on page 20.
On rare occasions some elements of the so called "Liberal" mainstream news media manage to get it right. In regards to the Nugan Hand CIA Drug Bank the Wall Street Journal and CBS Evening News were the only top echelon news media to cover this vital information. In the early 1980's the big 3 Networks NBC , CBS, and ABC still dominated the televised News as CNN was still in it's infancy and FOX was still only a Hollywood studio. Yet the only TV Network that reported this extremely important news was CBS and only one time.
It's an important part of history that was stolen from the American People because it exposed the power elite who under the guise of national security commit all types of horrendous crimes throughout the world. If the Nugan Hand bank scandal had been the top story of every media outlet in America then Iran Contra would never have taken place because it involved most of the same secret right wing thugs.
This stunning clip from CBS hasn't been publicly aired in the 26 years since that broadcast.
Summmary
THE NUGAN HAND BANK
In early 1980 Frank Nugan, co-founder of the Australian-based Nugan Hand Bank, was found shot dead in his car at Bowenfels, near Lithgow, in New South Wales Australia which is about 100 miles due west of Sydney.
The Australian bank Nugan Hand Ltd. was run by former CIA and U.S. Military Officers. It served as a "laundry" for Illicit heroin and arms syndicates which it also helped to finance. The bank collapsed following Nugans death.
The bank's officials were made up of retired U.S. Military and CIA personnel. Admiral Earl P. Yates, former chief of the Navy's Pacific strategies; General Leroy J. Manor, former chief of staff for the U.S. Pacific command; General Erle Cocke Jr. and General Edwin F. Black; Walter MacDonald, former CIA deputy director; William Colby, former CIA director; and Nugan's co-founder, Michael Hand, a former Green Beret-CIA operative who worked with Oliver North in VIETNAM and LAOS.
Nugan Hand Banks , Michael Jon Hand, a former Green Beret-CIA operative in Laos, disappeared shortly after the bank collapsed. The investigation showed strong links between the bank and Hand's CIA superiors in Laos—Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines—as well as with former CIA and Navy Intelligence agent Edwin Wilson.
Wilson's long-time partner, Frank Terpil, explained Nugan Hand's role in the CIA drug wars in a 1983 interview: "Where do the drugs come from? Laos. Who is the boss of Clines? Shackley. Where do they come from? Laos. The pilot...was Secord. What was on the plane? Gold. He was going...to pay off the warlords, the drug lords. Now what do you do with all the opium? You reinvest it in your own operations. Billions of dollars—not millions—billions. Where did the money come from? Nugan Hand."
Mr. Hand was also one of Oliver Norths good buddies. Colonel North was also involved with the Nugan -Hand Drug milieu.
The one person who deserves the most credit for this story ever making into the US mainstream media is the late Jonathan Kwitny who for 2 decades was the Wall Street Journals top investigative reporter. In August 1982 the Wall Street Journal ran three consecutive front page articles by Kwitny. Then the story laid dormant for a month until CBS ran this video. It was Kwitnys series that compelled CBS to cover the story in the first place. It was Kwitnys series that compelled CBS to cover the story in the first place. In 1987 after Kwitny turned his files into a book he was quietly forced to resign from the Wall Street Journal.
So when agents steal, when they facilitate drug deals, how far does the patriotic cloak granted by national policy stretch to cover them? Should any act, no matter how wrong, be covered up to avoid embarrassing our national security program?
Who decides—the very people who run the program? And by what measure? Is the cover-up really to protect our country's security—or just to protect the politicians and bureaucrats who should be held to account?
Kwitny, Jonathan. The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987. 424 pages.
There is a growing tendency towards self censorship in mainstream American Journalism that I have viewed with alarm for a long time. It has been especially dangerous since 9/11 but even before that tragic day our media has been somewhat restricted. It's quite obvious that the murky world of the CIA is one of endless drug smuggling, dealing in arms, coups, coverups, and murder-for-hire.
Iran Contra (Cocaine) wasn't the only US Intelligence illegal Drug and Arms smuggling scandal to emerge in the 1980's in fact it wasn't even the biggest. That honor belongs to the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank Ltd. which occurred in 1980. It actually involved most of the same right wing team that were behind sending arms to Iran and Cocaine into the US.
It should also be noted that Jack Anderson covered this story in 1984 after he uncovered a similar CIA-DRUGS BANK in Honolulu operated by some of the same people.
Besides Jack Anderson the only other mainstream US newsman that covered the Kwitny series was Fred McGunagle a top investigative reporter based in Cleveland OHIO. He actually felt this was the story of the year unfortunately he had taken a high paying job at a medium sized paper after working 25 years at The CLEVELAND PRESS and The CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER. McGunagle was the main reporter on the Dr. SHEPPARD MURDER CASE which was the basis for the TV series and movie THE FUGITIVE.
Chronicle-Telegram
NOVEMBER 14, 1982
CIA involved in Australian Watergate?
FRED McGUNAGLE
A combination of journalistic jealousy and indifference has kept most Americans from learning about what has to be the most fascinating story of the year.
More significantly, it has allowed American intelligence agencies to stonewall about their role in what appears to be an export version of Watergate. The story has been Page One news in Australia for two years and it was detailed by reporter Jonathan Kwitny in a Wall Street Journal series in August. It has been largely ignored by other news agencies.
It appeared to be closely involved with drug suppliers in the "Golden Triangle" of Indochina and their dealers in the United States. Police even found a link to the contract murder of three drug informers.
I was fascinated by Kwitny's series and looked forward to seeing the story picked up by other newspapers and TV networks. I didn't, So this week I called Kwitny, who is now back in New York. He said CBS News had carried a brief segment and United Press International had sent out a story quoting the Wall Street Journal, That's all he's aware of. "I'm not surprised," he said. "There's a very unfortunate tradition among the major newspapers not to give each other credit. We do the same thing to them. The reader is the loser."
ONE EXCEPTION to that tradition occurred 10 years, ago. Nixon Administration officials were able to ignore the first Watergate stories in the Washington Post, but when the New York Times, CBS and Time Magazine started chipping away at their coverup, they were forced to go along with investigations.
So far there's been little pressure on the Nugan Hand case, though Kwitny said he is still working on the story.
"There are unanswered questions," he said. "There are people in Washington who could shed light on them if they were made to talk, if there was enough heat put on them."
Nugan Hand Bank was established in 1973 in Australia to launder the CIA's Heroin profits and fund CIA covert operations around the world. When it collapsed in 1980 it was worth 1 Billion dollars which is about 3 Billion today. Nugan Hand was covered quite extensively by the world press who didn't bury the story like nearly all of the mainstream American media did. I have several articles in this diary from quite a number of Australian and United Kingdom newspapers that cover this story in great detail.
FRANCIS JOHN NUGAN a member of one of Australia's wealthiest families (Nugan Group) chairman and half-owner of the bank; shot dead in his Mercedes.
Sun Herald
CIA LINKED TO COLLAPSE OF US SMALL BANKS
Frank Walker
13/10/1990
THE CIA may have secretly ripped off US banks and used the money to finance illegal schemes such as the Iran-Contra affair and covert operations in South-East Asia.Reports are surfacing of shadowy figures, involved in the more bizarre covert actions of the CIA, being linked to the collapse of several banks and the disappearance of billions of dollars.
Leads to the missing millions have taken reporters and investigators to deserted airstrips in Central America, empty hangars in Kansas City and through the maze of the Iran-Contra affair to sordid kickback deals to mobsters, lawyers and politicians. Weaving through it all is a shady collection of secret agents, adventurers, crooks, super patriots and mercenaries whose names crop up time and again in the strangest places.
If readers in Australia think this sounds familiar, they need only hark back to the torrid days of the failed Nugan Hand Bank.
Several names associated with Nugan Hand have surfaced in the recent bank collapses in the US. The pattern of plundering depositors' funds and laundering money seen in the Nugan Hand case has been repeated in the US banking crash.
Among the strange CIA links raised by the investigators:
The principals of EATSCO were CIA agent Edwin Wilson (later jailed for 57 years for running guns to Libya) and three men who also popped up in both the Nugan Hand and Iran-Contra affair - Thomas Clines, Ted Shackley and General Richard Secord.
Clines directed some covert operations for the CIA and was an associate of Michael Hand, the former CIA agent who made up half the Nugan Hand Bank. He is awaiting sentencing on a tax fraud conviction.
Shackley was a top CIA official who frequently dealt with Hand. Secord had links to the Nugan Hand people and was the chief organiser of Oliver North's scheme to sell weapons to Iran and use the money to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
Houston Post reporter Peter Brewton says he found evidence that 22 small banks had been looted of hundreds of millions of dollars by figures with ties to the CIA or the Mafia, and in many cases both.
MICHAEL JON HAND Bronx-born Green Beret war hero, CIA operative, vice-chairman and half-owner of the bank, pal of dope-dealers and of retired and not-so-retired military-intelligence officials; now one of the world's most wanted men.
Sydney Morning Herald
NORTH ROLE IN SECRET NETWORK SCRUTINISED
By PAUL SHEEHAN
11/03/1987
WASHINGTON, Tuesday: Congressional investigators now believe Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North was part of a secret right-wing network whose operations stretched all the way to Australia. "He's part of a network that has been operating for years," said a congressional investigator who insisted on anonymity.
Mr Julian Weiner, an aide to Senator John Kerry, told the Herald: "We were investigating Ollie North long before this scandal (the Iran arms affair)broke. He's been into a lot of things."
Mr Weiner said investigators now knew the covert activities of Colonel North and his associates went well beyond the secret arms sale to Iran and the channelling of funds to the Nicaraguan Contra guerillas.
For years, a network of right-wing operatives, mostly present and former CIA agents, have secretly pursued their own objectives outside congressional scrutiny. Much of the financing has come from US conservatives.
Investigators are working back through Colonel North's association with former Air Force Major-General Richard Secord to the activities of the failed Australia-based Nugan Hand Bank.
Sydney Morning Herald
NUGAN HAND LINKED TO NORTH
Author: By KEITH SCHNEIDER
09/03/1987
WASHINGTON, Sunday: A US Senate committee is examining a link between the failed Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank and several former military and intelligence officers who helped Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North ship weapons to Iran and Central America. The committee also is examining whether bank officials acted as US intelligence agents while conducting legal and illegal operations for profit.
The collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank in 1980 came amid charges that it had laundered money earned from weapons and illicit drug sales.
During the seven years it was in business, according to the Joint Task Force study, the Nugan Hand Bank was engaged in a wide range of legitimate and illegal activities conducted from offices and mail drops in 13 countries, including the US, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The report named 26 reputed drug dealers and provided a schedule of drug traffickers.
Hand and his bank, the report said, also took part in the movement by the US Navy of a "spy vessel" to the Iranian Navy in 1976.
Hand was said to have taken part in both of these transactions with Edwin Wilson, a former CIA agent and head of a secret naval intelligence group called Task Force 157. Wilson was arrested in 1982 and later was convicted of selling arms and plastic explosives to Libya.
WILLIAM COLBY Retired as Director of CIA after a long career in clandestine services, top lawyer for Nugan Hand Bank. Colby ran the Phoenix program which murdered 20,000-40,000 Vietnamese and neutralized another 80,000 for this he was awarded the top job at the CIA which he held from 1973-1976.
ADMIRAL EARL YATES chief of U.S. strategic planning for Asia and the Pacific; president of the Nugan Hand Bank.
There has been no proof that any of us were involved in, or knew about, any traffic in drugs, illegal sales of arms, or money laundering. . .. We are the true patriots, and our only imprudence was to have trusted in a colleague. To stir up this matter further, voluntarily or involuntarily, would benefit the interests of the Soviet Union and the disinformation services of the KGB.
Rear-Admiral Earl P. Yates
President of Nugan Hand Bank
GENERAL LEROY J. MANOR Was chief of staff for U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Government liaison with Philippine President Marcos, ran Nugan Hand Philippine office.
GENERAL EDWIN F. BLACK Was colleague and pal of CIA bosses Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, boasted of being involved in "right-wing" groups, ran the Nugan Hand Hawaii office.
GENERAL ERLE COCKE JR international management consultant headed the American Legion, ran the Nugan Hand Washington DC office.
SUNDAY AGE
Perot pursues the Nugan Hand link
Author: Roger Franklin
Date: 06/06/1992
TO the long list of those who would like to see the mysteries of the Nugan Hand bank revealed once and for all, add the name of maverick US presidential candidate Ross Perot.
Although Mr Perot has never spoken on the record about what is evidently a deep fascination with Nugan Hand's labyrinthian world of ex-CIA agents, drug smugglers, gun runners and missing millions, friends say that the Texan billionaire has been quietly collecting information about the rogue bank since its collapse more than 10 years ago.
According to published reports in two American news magazines, Mr Perot sees Nugan Hand as part of a much larger conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of successive US administrations _ a conspiracy whose tangled threads he believes may well lead all the way to the George Bush.
Mr Perot became interested in Nugan Hand via his self-financed campaign to find and free the captured US servicemen he believes were abandoned by Washington in Laos at the conclusion of the Vietnam War.
The lack of co-operation, he believes, is part of a wide-ranging cover-up he attributes to a desire by elements of the US intelligence community to conceal their long and profitable relationship with the warlords and opium growers of the Golden Triangle.
If Washington applied pressure, the Perot theory asserts, the drug growers and shippers would undoubtedly reveal the full and sordid story.
With its proven drug connections and board initially composed entirely of men with close ties to Air America, the CIA ``airline" that regularly shipped opium out of the Golden Triangle for the Hmong tribesmen who produced it, Nugan Hand fits perfectly into his theory.
And since George Bush was once head of the CIA, Mr Perot believes that he must be part of the cover-up.
Americans have a right to the truth. If the United States is to survive as a Democracy it's citizens must know their own history and only then will they realize what the people in power have done. Kwitny was correct about these self proclaimed Patriots who used War on Communism , War on Drugs, and now the War on Terror to inflict more harm than what they claim to be at war with.
A $4 billion-a-year urine-testing industry, a trillion dollar failed drug war with 1.5 million people in prison on drug offenses alone. Hell it wasn't even as issue during the debates even though we lock up more people than any other regime in histroy yes that includes Hitler and Stalin.
The American people are being screwed under the banner of the war on drugs. It has been estimated that we the taxpayers pay an average of about 1500 dollars each year on this charade. The cost doesn't cover the imprisonment of 1.5 million drug offenders. This is a travesty because that 1500 could be used for something positive like a national healthcare system for those who can't afford the insurance.
Sadly since the end of World War II the US Government is largely a Counterfeit Structure and it's motives have nothing to do with what's good for it's citizens. I would even go as far to say that those currently in control of the US government are the biggest threat to the American people. The most sinister act of all in my opinion is those who claim to be on global crusade against terrorism to save us when in fact they through violent self-righteousness and suicidal arrogance,are leading us to our eventual Doom.
