Brent Wilkes' charitable foundation was managed by his brother, Gregory Wilkes. Greg Wilkes had another position as well:
...he was the Controller for an unfortunate "Bush Pioneer" named R.D. Hubbard, busted flying almost a dozen hookers by private jet in June of 2001 to a casino he owned to service men government documents have only identified as “48 wealthy guests.”Long-time readers may recall that this is not the first time the Wilkes circle was connected with a seized drug jet.
Back in the '80's Hubbard was involved in a number of Michael Milken-financed "greenmail" takeover attempts, partnered with Midland, Texas oilmen Wagner and Brown Ltd.
Strangely, in 2001 Wagner and Brown became the last known registered owner of the Lear jet which belonged to terror flight school owner Wally Hilliard until it was seized by DEA agents in Orlando who found 43 lbs. of heroin onboard.
Small world.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Remember the Skyway jet, found on a Mexico tarmac laden with 5.5 tons of coke? Skyway was a bogus company set up by a con artist named Brent Kovar, a self-proclaimed spook who bilked investors by peddling a fake data transmission technology. Skyway also happened to have strong ties to the Israeli far right.
Just when Skyway was about to go under, the Titan corporation stepped forward to bail it out -- even though they must have known that the whole operation was fishier than Prince Namor.
The Titan/Skyway deal appears to have been put together by Titan executive David Stinson -- at least, he was the fellow who announced it to the press. As noted on an earlier occasion:
This individual, Hopsicker found, was the executive vice president of another defense firm, called Intergraph. Intergraph is a genuine firm; they have provided software to some renown companies, including Mobil and Bechtel. Although Hopsicker says that Intergraph is based in Annopolis, Maryland, the company claims that their main office is in Huntsville, Alabama.As the earlier story details, Intergraph and ADCS had a long and complicated history together, a history involving yet another firm called Tomahawk, a document conversion firm (which is what Wilkes' ADCS was supposed to be). At this point, matters become insanely complex; the summary I offered once before will have to suffice here:
According to Hopsicker, this same Intergraph -- under the direction of Stinson -- helped Wilkes' ADCS get its start.
We know that TomaHawk and Wilke's ADCS somehow got hold of many a taxpayer dollar. We know that Intergraph, under David Stinson, was involved in their dealings. And we know that -- according to Hopsicker -- this same David Stinson moved to Titan and tossed a ton of money into Skyway, even though Skyway was running an obvious con.One more thing. Titan -- for whatever reason -- once employed Makram Chams (sometimes transliterated Meekram Chams), the strange Lebanese convenience store owner who was seen interacting in suspicious ways with Mohammed Atta. After 911, Chams left the country, abandoning his store. (At last report, the building remains unused.) Chams has now made lawsuit noises against Hopsicker, although I am not at all sure what the grounds for such a suit might be, since the Titan/Chams connection is independently verifiable. Besides, even if the claim were untrue, it isn't defamatory.
Chams also owned a Florida casino ship, just like the one owned by Jack Abramoff -- and visited by Atta's gang just before the "Big Wedding." Coincidence? Perhaps, but the network here overlaps with Abramoff's in a number of interesting ways.
Although a noted supporter of Israel, Abramoff did PR work for a Saudi billionaire named Saleh Abdullah Kamel, chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks -- and an alleged associate of Osama Bin Laden. (Kamel denies the allegation.) One of Kamel's companies paid an operative who, in turn, paid the rent for the hijackers lodging in San Diego. Earlier, I wrote
...of the mysterious, affluent Saudi who showed up at Chams' humble pad one night. An extremely heavy case was exchanged. Hopsicker thinks it contained gold.Perhaps your attempt to follow this skein of associations has caused your skull to seep boiling brain matter. I admit it: Tracking these connections ain't easy. At times, it involves some guesswork, and we must never hesitate to place those guesses into rewrite as new info comes in.
I offered the speculation -- and it is just that: pure speculation -- that this mysterious visitor might have some connection to Saudi billionaire Saleh Abdullah Kamel, chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks. He denies the oft-heard reports that he has provided financial help to Al Qaeda. Incidentally, Kamel asked none other than Jack Abramoff to provide some PR help, which is a little bit like asking Jack the Ripper for medical advice.
Let's bring the story back into more comprehensible terrain. Let's get to the sex.
According to Hopsicker's latest:
Consider: Brent Wilkes was pimping in Hawaii to win defense contracts at roughly the same time his brother Greg can be presumed to have been juggling the books of Texas wheeler-dealer and Bush “Pioneer” Hubbard to remove the embarrassment of having a line item that read, "Private jet to fly hookers cross-country."This pattern of activity also calls to mind a fascinating eyewitness report once sent to Laura Rozen:
This sort of pattern of activity is occasionally known as a continuing criminal enterprise.
I've toured the ADCS facility in Poway. It's like a corporate Taj Mahal, everything is super high-end. Lavish flower arrangements in the lobby, toilet paper in the bathrooms folded like a hotel room, marble everywhere. Weird thing is NO ONE seems to actually work there! Brent showed us his production floor and it was completely empty. Tons of huge, elaborate, obviously incredibly expensive equipment and no one using it. (Can you say "your tax dollars at work"?) This was when he'd just done the Panama mapping project and he was telling us about that. The only people I saw there were 4 or 5 20-something women wearing club clothes and fetching coffee and water for the all-male meetings. Every single one of them was in a tight-fitting, completely office-inappropriate outfit with major cleavage showing. It was so striking and so weird. They were like Bond girls, only not as classy. (Prediction: a sexual harrassment lawsuit or two in addition to his other problems. I'm sure those gals could tell some tales!)Indeed, it was just such shennanigans which helped bring about the downfall of R.D. Hubbard, the "other" employer of Brent Wilkes' brother Gregory.
Hubbard's transgression only came to light after two female employees of the casino filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. Apparently Hubbard's casino in Indiana had been transformed into Sodom and Gomorrah...And:
These guys all know each other. They interact. They play roles in an interlocking series of stories involving prostitutes, gambling, drugs, terror, and politics -- not to mention the bilking of the taxpayers.
One of the two women stated she'd been told to attend the Keeneland horse sale in Lexington. While there, “She should go to popular bars to pick up rich Arab men to bring them to the casino.”
Yet the mainstream media does not consider the network interesting. What more do these guys have to do?
6 comments:
I don't get it. The author, Hopsicker, makes the assertion that Greg Wilkes was the "controller" of someone tied into Atta. However, Hopsicker provides ZERO evidence that this is the case. He simply makes the assertion, and conveniently ties everything in together. What is a controller? What was the relation between Greg Wilkes and Hubbard? Where is the evidence? This is a WEAK WEAK piece of writing.
anonymous -
Would you accept a Talking Points Memo Cafe blog as being more credible?
The bios of the Wilkes Foundation board of directors are worth a read. The directors are Brent and his wife, Regina ("Gina"), Joel Galant Combs, Wilkes' nephew and Gregory E. Wilkes who I assume is Wilkes' brother. The website lists David Novak as a member of the board but no bio is provided nor was he ever listed in the 990s. . . .
Gregory E. Wilkes is the controller for R. D. Hubbard Enterprises, Inc. of Palm Springs. Wilkes played pro baseball with the San Diego Padres before joining the tax department of Price Waterhouse.
R. D. Hubbard, a Bush pioneer, owns casinos, race tracks and golf courses. He made the news a few years ago when one of his companies, Pinnacle Entertainment, was bagged for flying a bunch of hookers to a golf tournament held at an Indiana gambling resort. As Al Franken entertained the guests in one room, noisy sex could be heard coming from another room. Hubbard, Pinnacle chairman, was fined $750k and Pinnacle was fined $2.3 million by Indiana gambling regulators. Hubbard sold his interest in Pinnacle shortly thereafter. . . .
Speaking of race tracks, Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed Brent Wilkes as a board member of the Del Mar Race Track Board in 2004 and the State Race Track Leasing Commission last year after Wilkes donated $42k to his campaign. Wilkes must have a good reason for involved in the oversight of horse racing in California. I bet Greg Wilkes has the answer.
OK, we're getting there...but what is a "controller"???
A controller is a chief financial officer, more or less, i.e., the person controlling the finances of a business.
You can access the archived pages listing the Wilkes Foundation board here.
Dan Novak, who makes a brief appearance in 2003 and 2004, appears now to be a VP with Qualcomm. At the time he was apparently associated with the foundation, he was VP/GM of Channel 4 in San Diego, a sports-heavy, cable-only channel owned by Cox Communications.
They play roles in an interlocking series of stories involving prostitutes, gambling, drugs, terror, and politics
Well, most of the above - but has Hopsicker or anyone else ever found any evidence that any of the people in this vast network were involved in terrorism, particularly 9/11? You'd think there'd be tons of evidence, given how much Hopsicker has dug around down there in Florida, yet as far as I can tell there's absolutely none. Strange, no? Why no evidence of what was certainly a very complex operation? Why does it look like regular ol' organized crime - the kind centered around making money, not blowing things up to further an ideological agenda - was all these people were up to?
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