Smatt-man!

My previous post (the one about shady Lebanese businessmen and their right-wing connections) made some readers eager to learn more about the colorful William Smatt. He's a Lebanese-born businessman frequently spotted in both Florida and Jamaica.

To recap our tale: In the 1980s, an FBI agent accused Smatt and his extended family of being major drug smugglers. The same agent said that the Smatt ring involved "Poppy" Bush and Jeb Bush. Instead of pursuing these allegations, the Reagan administration made this agent's life miserable; her extraordinary claims received very little media exposure.

The Smatt family now seems to have its paws all over the Jamaican tourist industry. So far, I have seen no evidence that their current operations are anything other than legitimate.

(If you visit Jamaica on one of those packaged tours, you will probably encounter a local gent who will tell you "I am de doctor, mon." Who, I wonder, supplies that "doctor" with his "medicine"?)

Smatt turned author, penning a book called Cocaine Encounters, which you can obtain via Amazon. (A used copy will run you about six bucks.) His most recent opus is The Messiah, which identifies the new Christ as none other than George W. Bush.

Them Smatts sure do love them Bushes!

This show of affection doesn't necessarily mean that the two families climbed into the drug business together. Still, one wonders why an FBI agent would fib about such a thing -- to the detriment of her career.

One also has to ask about the elder Bush's connections to Florida's Don Aranow, the man who supplied drug-runners with their ultra-swift smuggling boats. (When V.P., Bush made sure that Aranow also got the contract to supply slower boats to the Coast Guard. Pure coincidence, of course.) We must also ask questions about Bush family connections to Adler Barry Seal, Manuel Noriega, and a family named Bin Laden.

But those questions belong to another time. Right now, we must direct our gaze Smatt-ward.

A friend to this blog asks us to check out a potentially-interesting web page connected to a William Smatt, who may well be the Smatt -- the guy accused of drug-dealing, the one who thinks Dubya is Jesus 2. The site details a 1996 paternity suit adjudicated in Florida, involving a woman named Beverly Glover. The test appears to have cleared Smatt, although one wonders why Glover pursued the matter even after the lab delivered its results.

A comment affixed to our original post informs us that William Smatt also offers an official "Cocaine Encounters" phone card, which you probably want for your wallet. If that doesn't impress your date, I don't know what will.

Smatt runs something called the America Sevens Foundation, allegedly an anti-drug abuse program -- one which has, for some reason, received very little mention on the net. This page reprints an old Washington Post story which mentions that America Sevens used the mass-mailing approach, presumably to plead for donations. Did the little-known America Sevens Foundation actually do anything? Why, I'm sure the program has changed thousands and thousands of lives. We just haven't heard about that success story.

Any conspiracy buff will adore the official America Sevens logo. First we have the eye-in-the-triangle motif (falsely considered the symbol of the Illuminati) superimposed over the star of David. Then the eye radiates a golden seven (Malcolm X's favorite number), which is affixed to a United States flag.

Very droll. I like this guy. I really do.