Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Tom Delay appointee involved in drug running?

Daniel Hopsicker has dug up a remarkable story -- one which I have been trying to take a small step or two further:
One of the two owners of the DC9 (tail number N900SA) busted at an airport in the Yucatan last week after lumbering in from Caracas, Venezuela carrying an astonishing 5.5 TONS of cocaine was appointed in 1993 to the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee by then-Congressional Majority Leader Tom Delay, The MadCowMorningNews can exclusively report.

The plane's registered owner, “Royal Sons LLC,” a Florida air charter company, was at one time housed in a hanger at the Venice Fl. Airport owned by infamous flight school Huffman Aviation.
Interestingly enough, the DC9 was painted to resemble an official government aircraft.

The Delay appointee in question is Brent Kovar, owner of a firm called Skyway Communications Holding Corp. The firm ran into a few problems between 2002 and 2005 -- in fact, it lost $40 million and had to file for bankruptcy. (Note: On his site, Hopsicker mistakenly refers to Kovar as "Kovac." I am sure he will correct the typo soon.)

Despite this less-than-impressive performance, Delay decided to promote Kovak as a businessman par excellence:
"Congressman Tom Delay, Majority Leader, has appointed Brent C Kovar to serve as the Honorary Chairman, Business Advisory Council,” read the headline of an August 7, 2003 release from PrimeZone Media newswire and press release service.

The Business Advisory Council, explained the release, was part of the National Republican Congressional Committee, “dedicated to making sure that small business has a voice in Washington.”

Kovar was appointed “in recognition of his valuable contributions and dedication to the Republican Party,” and was "expected to play a crucial role in the party's efforts to involve top businesspeople in the process of government reform both at the state and federal levels."
Skyway, in a partnership with a firm called Royal Sons Motor Yacht Sales (otherwise known as just plain "Royal Sons"), purchased the DC9.

I suspect that we may see a variation of the "piano player in the whorehouse" defense: Kovar had no idea that so much cocaine had somehow found its way onto his airplane. Some observers may be reminded of John Delorean, another up-against-the-wall entrepreneur who turned to the cocaine trade when he could come up with no better way to keep his operation afloat.

Hopsicker believes that "Royal Sons" was itself a cover for the CIA. That may well be. But I would caution that the American intelligence community is large; there are many agencies and many semi-independent players.

This story appears to focus on the very same DC9 that hauled in the drugs. The name of the craft was -- prepare to chuckle -- Stars and Stripes. Skyway purchased the airplane pursuant to its stated goal of
...developing a unique ground to air in-flight aircraft communication network that it anticipates will facilitate homeland security and in-flight entertainment. SkyWay is focused on bringing to the market a network supporting aircraft-related service including anti-terrorism support, real time in-flight surveillance and monitoring, WIFI access to the Internet, telephone service and enhanced entertainment service for commercial and private aircraft throughout the United States.
Homeland security. Anti-terrorism. No doubt that explains the need for 5.5 tons of the white stuff.

The story gets more amusing. Despite its Chapter 11 status, Skyway assures investors on its home page that the company "is reviewing all possibilities related to operations and capital formation in order to get back on track to continue with its original business plan."

And in this very revealing article from the Tampa Bay Business Journal, we learn that Skyway planned to get out of its hole by relaying on certain "white knights." And who were these worthies...?
"A venture capital group is ready to do this," he said citing talks with some of the original Arab investors, and "the end result is it's going well," Kovar said.
Oh ho.

So let's get the chronology straight. Kovar's company hits bankruptcy court. He tells the judge that mysterious "Arabs" will soon bail him out. Next thing ya know, his DC9 is caught hauling in tons of nose candy.

Maybe that explains why (according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal) Skyway's own lawyers, handling what should have been a routine Chapter 11 case, decided to treat the company as though it were radioactive...

Incidentally, Hopsicker hasn't yet divulged any info about these "Arab investors." But he does connect the 5.5 ton coke shipment to the same milieu inhabited by Atta and company. In previous posts, we have discussed the likelihood that Al Qaeda-related personnel were involved in "protected" drug importation rackets.

You keep some interesting company, Mr. Delay. I'm curious: Just how did you and Mr. Kovar get to know each other in the first place...?

Postscript:
This story pictures the National Republican Congressional Committee's Business Advisory Council as something of a scam, in which "honorary chairmanships" are handed out in exchange for donations. However, this press release from Kovar indicates that the matter goes rather deeper, at least in his case.
Mr. Kovar was quoted as saying, "This appointment by Congressman Tom Delay will give SkyWay opportunities and direct contact to top decision makers within the executive and legislative branches enabling SkyWay to customize its homeland security and public safety products to the needs of the federal and state governments."
By the way, googling the names "Brent Kovar" and Tom Delay" resulted in one rather intriguing listing -- unfortunately, neither the link nor the cache go anywhere:
Featured Company - Our-Street.com
Brent Kovar really did it TO you here. the so called "duPont Trust" involved with ... Brent Kovar is a liar and con. I wish there was another way TO put it, ...
www.our-street.com/swyc.htm - 109k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
Hmmm. If I get time later today, I may check out the WayBack machine site. Unless a reader cares to help out....

(Yes, once again, we enter the world of weird internet companies that somehow seem not quite "real." For example, check out where this intriguingly-named URL heads off to: www.homelandsecurityenforcement.com/pnstocreleases.htm)

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

What no mention of Mena, Barry Seal, Air America etc etc etc

gary said...

http://web.archive.org/web/20050323055323/http://www.our-street.com/swyc.htm

(A lot of info on this page--and links to other pages.This company seems to be a total scam.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20050323101148/www.our-street.com/more_kovar_excess.htm

(Has photo of Kovar "bikini party.")

Joseph Cannon said...

Thanks, Gary. Those links are coming up for me...

HOO BOY! It's happening again! I LOVE these "internet only" psuedo-copmanies...

Can we establish a tighter connection between Kovar and Tom Delay? If we can do that, then we will be able to say "Brent K. is to Tom D. as Brent W. was to Duke C."

gary said...

I've got to take a closer look at this when I have time.

See: http://web.archive.org/web/20050305224229/www.skywayaircraftsecurity.com/

This press release is interesting:

"SkyWay Communications Holding Corporation to Provide Integrated Airport Security System to the State of Florida Department of Transportation."

The question is: just how much corruption is there in the Florida Dept of Transportation (see Clint Curtis' book) and in the Dept of Homeland Security?

gary said...

http://web.archive.org/web/20050305224229/www.skywayaircraftsecurity.com/

Link didn't copy right in last comment.

Joseph Cannon said...

I've read further...thanks AGAIN, Gary -- and it is obvious that the Kovars are scamsters. Oddly enough, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine fell for a similar scam (a company that promised ridiculously high wireless data transmission rates). Wonder if there's a connection...?

At any rate, there's an important facet of the story we should not forget: Kovar KNEW that his aircraft-ground data-transmission technology was fake. So why, then, did he buy the airplane? He didn't buy it to test the communications equipment, obviously.

Anonymous said...

and nothing moves in or out of Caracas without Chavez knowing about it.
me thinks
'He doth protest to much'.

Anonymous said...

ho man.

just that last link gary so graciously shared spawned numerous thoughts.

first of all, gary, i too recognized the FL DOT as clint's past employer. very fishy place, as he described it.

also struck with the number of FL references, e.g., clearwater, in addition to venice.

third, the only name on that website i had time to google was alan pellegrini. seems this guy not only was the commander of UN interim forces in lebanon (UNIFIL) as a major general, but the company he was working for before he joined and then left skyway was integrated media systems (IMS) out of (where else?) southern california.

fourth, but not finally (this story is clearly a motherlode!), anon, i doubt seriously that chavez knows everything that goes in and out of venezuela. the cia has been there forever, and no doubt they have found all manner of ways to get back and forth undetected. besides, there remain in that country hundreds of rich business folk who want chavez out and will do anything to accomplish that, including trafficking in cocaine.

but i still say the current pathetic state of republican affairs is causing a great deal of money panic, so they'll be stooping to any and everything to buy the next two elections. after all, they don't have their two sugar daddies delay and abramoff to channel funds to them anymore.

Anonymous said...

ok, i thought some of this sounded familiar, but it was a while back. about the time the 04 campaign coffers were filling up....

check this out by david lazarus of the sfc (via smirkingchimp):
http://160.79.147.121/print.php?sid=13147

yet another one of those ingenious corporate style scams the repugs used to raise money.

also, jeff wells has posted on this story over at rigorousintuition.blogspot.com. through a comment, i've directed his readers here for more 'dots' (cryptic apologies; read his post).

Anonymous said...

It seems they shut down that domain that you pointed to on the bottom of your post. Obviously, you've stepped on a *BIG FAT* nerve. Great job Joseph!!!!

DrewL said...

Interesting stuff. I checked out the archived web site of SkyWay and came across the patent they quote. I looked up the patent. Here is the link to it through the US Patent Office (via a tinyurl link):

http://tinyurl.com/ml2lx

It's quite long, and I haven't read through much of it yet, but it might be interesting to see what is included. It does have the Kovar name attached to it.

Anonymous said...

DrewL, this is something No QUarter could discuss.

There's a charter flight service to Tunica via Pan Am that includes runs from Puerto Rico.

Three days a week. Part time. For an airport using 727 in a state that didn't have larger than 2 lane highways until '84.

Think they're part of the traffic hub, probably part of the rendition paperwork covers, and most likely a set for the next Operation Northwoods.

-Mr.M

Anonymous said...

I Googled the tail number and found the following story. Enjoy.

Anonymous said...

A little more about Mr. Kovar can be found here; his connection to DeLay isn't as impressive as I might have hoped.

Still, the story I've linked shows how recklessly indiscriminate the GOP can be with its fundraising practices.

Anonymous said...

If I understand Mr. Kovars patent correctly, he simply explains that any particular data can be put into an array and being referenced by its position in the array. Forget all the brouhaha about the "rotating array matrix" and the vectory, in essence this is only about data arrays may be accessed, which is common knowledge since many decades, especially in the C languages.

Take, for instance, a simple 2*2 array (very simple chessboard. Put "crooks" and "liars" in the first line and "cronies" and criminals" in the second. Now you can reference "crooks" as "1/1"(line 1 pos.1) and "criminals" as "2/2", thus reducing the amount of bits used in transmitting the information (even computer illiterates do understand that "2/2" is shorter than "criminals", right?). If you want to go from one data dield to another, you can use a vector instead, like "criminals" to "liars" can be expressed as "-1/0" (2/2-1/2). Every C progammer knows those vectors as pointers, that's nothing ew, too. And of course you can build arrays in any form you like, 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, n-dimensional.

D'oh. Again, all of this is used in programming since decades. I really dunno how this could escape the attention of the patent office employee. There have been reports that the quality of patent office To say it cautiosly, Skyway will have some serious problems when trying to enforce this patent. It would be interesting to know if there is a law against fraudulent patent declarations. If there is, Mr. Kovar is in even more trouble.

Anonymous said...

Oops, sry for all the typos. And there's the second half of a sentence missing:
"There have been reports that the quality of patent office" has detoriated in the last years, this seems to be an extreme example for this.

Anonymous said...

Digging into the details of this patent, I'm astonished at the impudence of Mr. Kovar to declare this his invention. All of the components are common knowledge, the arrays, the pointers, even the idea of using a time tick to syncronize data and reduce the amount of data to be transmitted (this has been used in encryption for secure communciations long before). This begs the question, does Mr.Kovar have any serious background in programming or who coobled this mishmash together for Skyways?

And pls note that nowhere in the patent the special issues of using wireless ground to air radio transmission are addressed. Imho the problems that are asscociated with this (garbled transmissions may lead to loss of syncronicity, clock signals may be lost) will render this whole "invention" useless.

Anonymous said...

Mel Martinez tours Clearwater's Sky Way Global with Brent's father, Glenn Kovar.

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/08/12/State/Senate_candidates_cha.shtml

Skyway Communications owns Skyway Aircraft, Inc. which sells aircraft.

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2005/01/10/daily5.html

Other interesting info about Glenn Kovar:

Fired for lying about qualifications:

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/1997/06/30/story7.html

Gave lots of money in 2004 to NRCC

http://www.city-data.com/elec/elec-APOLLO-BEACH-FL.html

Anonymous said...

Maybe you wanna check who's financing this dubious company? Looky here:
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/people.aspx?cik=1128723

Anonymous said...

Ok, these are not necessarily the investors, but people who received the SEC filings of Skyway. I didn't want to suggest that Alan Greespan has any money in this "business"! :D

If someone wants to register with Edgar Online, he may view all the SEC filings of Skyway. I don't think there willbe somethink interesting in it, though, regarding the infos from the archived OurStreet pages...
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/default.aspx?cik=1128723

Anonymous said...

Also interesting: Thabo Stevens, who is named spokesman for Lantax Ltd, who allegedly invested 25 millions in Skyway, turn up in another story.
Scamorama.com is a site dedicated to tricking scam artists (ADVANCE FEE FRAUD), like the infamous Nigeria gang into lengthy, yet totally fruitless mail exchanges. A "Thabo Stevens" is listed here as a barrister who sides with the crooks in trying to persuade the victim to send an advance fee for a freight that most probably would never arrive:
http://www.scamorama.com/papadopoulos_williams.html

If this is the same guy, did the Kovars fall victim of a fraudster? Hehehe!

Anonymous said...

mr. m, just a quick aside on the flights to tunica. tunica has been for the past decade or so the site of possibly the largest emergence of gambling casinos in the country. it's huge. huge, i tell ya. might explain the flights into otherwise hodunk MS.

folks might also want to visit this somewhat odd site
http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200604121721
where we learn that this flight did NOT originate in venezuela but in bolivia; it stopped in venezuela for fuel, though the author tries to make the case that it was a ruse to pick up the dope.

on that note, you might also want to check out the site for the obvious insight it gives on the enemies of chavez. the wording of the article on the drug bust clearly attempts to pin it all on chavez, and a quick look around the site shows why. no wonder hugo is a bit skittish. one has to wonder where this site gets its cash.

Anonymous said...

Weird... this story kinda has a similar look and stink to this Gizmondo/Ferrari crash story:

http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=06/04/12/03205141;cid=15

Anonymous said...

Chavez has been letting the FARC operate in Venezuela. Farc has declared an alliance with Chavez against any foreign invasion. So it is probably theirs. This is good old organized crime and drug running.

Anonymous said...

Bush Clinton Cocaine
Octopus - evil deeds and Con men in very high places