The coke jet mystery: Links to the Russian mob and Rudy Giuliani

A Kos diarist called NCDem has written a marvelous piece on the CIA-linked Gulfstream II which went down in Mexico laden with tons of cocaine.

In past stories, we've focused on the final owner of the drug plane -- the mysterious Clyde O'Connor. He was allowed to walk around free for two weeks after the crash -- and then was allowed to scoot off to the Azores after the media began to take note of him. But Clyde isn't the only interesting owner this jet has had. (He seems to have been just the designated fall guy; these planes always go through quick "on paper" ownership transfers just before a major drug run.) To recap:

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.

This same Adams once partnered up with a rather wild character named Michael Farkas. Among his many other noteworthy accomplishments, Farkas helped to found SkyWay Aircraft. SkyWay, you will recall owned that other coke-laden jet -- the DC9 captured in Mexico.

In that case, the pilot was allowed to get away scot free. In the more recent instance of the downed Gulfstream II, the pilot was captured, offered to bribe his way out of captivity...and we have not heard one further word as to his fate.

Such things do not occur by accident.

Both jets had Bush family connections; the Skyway jet spent a lot of time in a hanger owned by another Bush funder, Richard Rainwater. No owner of either jet ever has or ever will see the inside of a courtroom.

When I spoke to Jonah Meadows, the producer of this fine radio documentary on the Gulfstream II mystery, he advised further research into a fellow named Arik Kislin. Who is he, and how does he relate to this affair?

Kislin is a close associate of a man named William Achenbaum, a New York land developer, hotelier and horse race enthusiast. Achenbaum was the official owner of the jet between 2000 and 2007, the period when the craft was used by the CIA for rendition flights. (I have elsewhere argued that rendition flights also serve as smuggling operations.) Although Achenbaum may have been the owner of record, day-to-day operations of the aircraft fell to the CIA-linked (and appropriately-named) Richmor Aviation.

Kislin is an investor in William Achenbaum's Gansevoort Hotel in New York, as well as a partner in a soon-to-open major luxury hotel in Miami's South Beach. He's quite a noteworthy fellow in his own right:

In the early 1990s, a Manhattan company called Blonde Management, of which Kislin was chairman, co-sponsored a U.S. visa sought by a Russian named Anton Malevskiy. The FBI believed Malevskiy to be a professional assassin and head of one of Moscow's leading criminal gangs, according to a 1999 article by the Center for Public Integrity, which cited an FBI report.

Kislin later said that his signature was "forged" on the document used to procure the hit man's visa.

In 2005-2006, the news media published a number of embarrassing articles about the rendition flights. Around that time, the Gulfstream II left Richmor Aviation and entered the service of another air charter company, Air Rutter, located in Virginia and California. Arik Kislin is the listed owner of Air Rutter.

As far as I have been able to determine, the jet flew only legitimate flights during this period.

We return, finally, to the post by NCDem.

Arik is the nephew of Sam Kislan who was originally from Odessa, Ukraine. Well, the Kislan family has connections to the Russian mob, laundering money through American banks, and influencing politicians like our friend Chuck Schumer, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and our most favorite New Yorker, Rudy Giuliani. In fact, back in the late 1990's after the family had maxed out what they could give Rudy, they contributed $30,000 to the Liberal Party that Rudy heads up.

(I believe the misspelling of the Kislin family name here was accidental.) The links to Hillary Clinton strike me as fairly small potatoes -- a $4000 contribution from Arik, a similar contribution from another Kislin family member. I view these gestures as the sort of thing one might expect from a major hotel owner who hopes to gain the good graces of a senator.

The ties between Kislin and Giuliani are far more profound:

In May 1999, Sam Kislin co-chaired a Giuliani Senate race fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in New York. The gathering raised $2.1 million for Giuliani's aborted senate campaign.

Kislin also made $1000 contributions to the DNC and "Duke" Cunnigham in the 1990s. I can understand why any New York businessman would toss a few dollars at the Democratic Party -- but why Cunningham?

This remarkable investigation takes us into very deep waters:

A 1996 Interpol report claims that Kislin's firm, Trans Commodities, Inc., was used by two reputed mobsters from Uzbekistan, Lev and Mikhail Chernoy, for fraud and embezzlement. And a confidential 1994 FBI intelligence report on the Brooklyn, N.Y., mob organization headed by Vyacheslav Ivankov, the imprisoned godfather of Russian organized crime in the United States, lists Kislin as a "member/associate" of Ivankov's gang. It claims that his company co-sponsored a Russian crime boss and contract killer for a U.S. visa and asserts that he was a "close associate" of the late notorious arms smuggler Babeck Seroush, who later settled in Russia.

Seroush is a character out of a Brosnan-era James Bond movie. Formerly an Iranian communist, Seroush fled to Soviet Union, where he developed a talent for smuggling advanced military equipment into Russia.

Enter Arik Kislin, who was once Seroush's business partner. As Russia made the transition from communism to oligarchy, Kislin's firm, Trans Commodities Inc., played a major role in advancing the Chernoy/Seroush play for power. The company

had laundered millions of dollars and was used for fraudulent banking documents by the Chernoys in the early 1990s as the brothers engineered the takeover of much of Russia's metals industry, notably aluminum, through alleged embezzlement, money laundering and murder.

Kislin said he had been thoroughly investigated by the FBI and has never been charged with a crime. He acknowledged that Trans Commodities employed Mikhail Chernoy as the company's manager between 1988 and 1992, but said he knew Lev Chernoy only in passing. "Mikhail Chernoy is the best man I ever knew," he said.

The Chernoys, in short, were interested in the other type of coke -- the kind you smelt. Kislin has said that he severed ties with the Chernoys when the business became too dangerous. (More than one faction vied for control in what became known as "the aluminum wars." There was, I understand, quite a body count.)

American authorities have never charged Kislin, although he was once a target in an investigation by a U.S. Attorney. Like Michael Farkas, Kislin is a major supporter of Israel.

Interestingly enough, Kislin's one-time business partner, Babeck Seroush -- the former Iranian communist turned arms merchant -- was indicted in 1984 by none other than Rudy Giuliani. The charge was smuggling semi-conductors and night vision goggles to North Korea. NCDem offers this speculative note:

Although I haven't seen proof yet, my conjecture is that Rudy probably met the Kislin family through Babeck Seroush who Rudy prosecuted for crimes in 1984. You have to know that when you go after the mob, you have to infiltrate the organization and probably pick up a few habits and the wrong kind of friends. Just ask Kerik.

Giuliani's ties to Kerik are now well-known. It's time for investigators to pay more attention to Rudy's association with this unusual visitor from Russia.

Indeed, I would argue that many of our current problems -- including the attack on the World Trade Center -- can be linked to the criminal underground which rose as the Soviet Union fell.