Breakthroughs on the coke jet story

Wow! Two great investigators have done astonishing work on the former CIA rendition which jet crashed in Mexico roughly a month ago.

As you will recall, the Gulfstream II was carrying over three tons of coke aboard. No bodies were found inside the craft. Sketchy reports indicate that the pilot (who may have parachuted to safety) was captured by Mexican authorities. One account held that the pilot tried -- perhaps successfully -- to bribe his way to freedom.

A while back, I spoke to Jonah Meadows of Chicago Public Radio about the case. Jonah has compiled a well-produced radio documentary which takes the story into new realms. He has transformed a complex story into a gripping, easily-comprehensible linear narrative. This is as superb a piece of broadcasting as you are ever likely to hear.

At the same time, Daniel Hopsicker has taken the story into startling new areas. Tracking the moneymen behind the flight, Hopsicker has found connections between the crashed Gulfstream II and the Skyway jet scandal of 2006, in which a DC9 laden with 5.5 tons of coke was raided on a Mexican tarmac. (To this day, the aircraft's American owners have not been charged.)

Recently-released FAA records from the Gulfstream II business jet that went down in Mexico a month ago with four tons of cocaine reveal that before it was “parked” in the name of a New York real estate developer with ties to the Russian Mob, the plane was owned by a secretive Midwestern media baron and Republican fund-raiser, who had a business partner who, incredibly, owned the other American drug plane, the DC9, recently busted in Mexico.

[Stephen] Adams was in business with Miami attorney Michael Farkas, who founded SkyWay Aircraft, which owned the DC9 busted in Mexico 18 months ago with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard.

Moreover at the same time the Bush Ranger extraordinaire Stephen Adams owned the Gulfstream (N987SA) in 1999 and 2000, he was personally buying over $1 million of billboard ads for George W. Bush for his 2000 Presidential election bid.

According to SEC filings, Stephen Adams and Michael Farkas jointly controlled Holiday RV Superstores, Inc., which was used by arms merchant and CIA-fixer Adnan Khashoggi in a complicated securities fraud which stole as much as $300 million from investors and taxpayers.

(Emphasis added.) We now know more about who owned the Gulfstream II originally. Why, then, did it go through those complex ownership transactions before the drug run?

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Ownership passed from the afore-mentioned Manhattan real estate developer to a California charter air service to a shadowy Brazilian lawyer and his partner to the ultra-mysterious pilot Clyde O'Connor (proprietor of a charter Air Service in Fort Lauderdale, Florida) and his partner, pilot Greg Smith. For a couple of weeks after the jet's downing, O'Connor walked around free and unconcerned. After he found himself the subject of a major story in a local news journal, he made a quick getaway to the Azores.

Jonah Meadows, speaking to Hopsicker, sheds light on these complex ownership transfers:

Dan Hopsicker told me how you do it if you want to use a private plane for something shady...

HOPSICKER: You and I sign papers transferring the plane to me.

But instead of sending them to the FAA...

HOPSICKER: You hold them.

And if everything goes according to plan, as it normally does...

HOPSICKER: ...you tear up the documents. If however, I get busted in Mexico with the plane...

Then you send it in to FAA and there’s a 30 day window after the sale to receive the paperwork Then you’ve jumped the legal hurdles and muddied the waters for anyone trying to figure out what went down. And that’s exactly what the evidence suggests these guys did.

ROOT: They claim, hey we sold it, here’s the bill of sale, and the FAA says no we’ve never gotten that, and its sort of a he-said she said.

Unless there’s a random “ramp check” there’s never anyone to check if the pilot is licensed, let alone to inspect what’s in those hundreds of black duffel bags you’re carrying.

The Brazilian said that O'Connor purchased the jet for a cool $2 million -- a tidy sum, coming from someone whose businesses seem to be largely "on paper" affairs. (These days, no-one is picking up the phones at O'Connor's charter air service.)

Smith, who hasn't said much, let slip that the money came from Don Whittington, a convicted drug smuggler, tax evader and champion race car driver who has owned other planes named in stories about the rendition program. Whittington also sold a Lear jet to Wally Hilliard, famed for his role in the Mohammed Atta story; that jet was busted with 43 pounds of heroin aboard.

Oddly enough, on paper O'Connor paid only $100 for his Gulfstream II.

Let's turn our attention to the drugs. As we've seen earlier, we have reason to doubt the original McClatchy report that the coke in that jet belonged to Mexico's notorious criminal Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. (El Chapo tends to get blamed for pretty much everything down south; he is thus a convenient scapegoat.) Hopsicker believes that he has fingered a likelier suspect:

But all accounts agree that the plane’s journey began in Rio Negro, Colombia, which is the international airport for Colombia’s famous city of Medellin.

Medellin today is controlled by Colombia’s current President Alvaro Uribe, long suspected of “involvement” in the drug trade in the same way that New England Patriot’s quarterback Tom Brady is suspected of “involvement” in the NFL.

Uribe, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report, was once associated with the notorious Pablo Escobar -- and with no lesser personage than Adnan Khashoggi.

As noted earlier, Khashoggi was also involved in a shady deal with both the original owner of the Gulfstream II and the owner of the Skyway jet. Coincidence, no doubt.

Here's an interesting side note about Khashoggi: He first came to the attention of most parapolitical researchers in the 1970s, due to his involvement with a scandal involving the Lockheed corporation, now called Lockheed Martin.

Here's another interesting side note: One problem confronting investigators is that flight records -- which used to be available to journalists -- are now completely private, and thus exempt from FOIA-armed meddlers. Guess who is keeping those records? Lockheed Martin.

Back to Khashoggi. Here's one last interesting side note:

Adnan Khashoggi is the individual who owns Genesis Communications Network, famous for hosting such heavyweight radio personalities as Alex Jones, self proclaimed “Grandfather of the 9/11 Truth Movement,” and Jeff Rense.

As the man said: You been took. You been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray. Run amuck.