Drugs and thugs

Daniel Hopsicker has the latest on the drug jets saga, which is now a much wider tale. A power struggle between warring cartels has led to a string of busts -- including the largest drug seizure in the history of the planet:

An incredible 33 tons of cocaine were discovered in cargo containers offloaded from the cargo ship Esmeralda which sailed to Mexico’s Pacific Coast port of Manzanillo from Buenaventura in northwestern Colombia.

I would remind folks that -- by coincidence -- the same Delaware incorporation service used by Clyde O'Connor (who figures in the drug jet saga) was also used by a couple of Al Qaeda-related characters who owned -- wait for it! -- cargo ships. (Remember? Here.) I mention this because no-one seems to know who owns the good ship Esmeralda...

Back to Mexico, and to Hopsicker:

Kamel Nacif and Jean Succor, prominent Lebanese businessmen in Cancun, are widely reported to be major figures in the dominant drug cartel in the Yucatan whose cocaine was seized on the two American planes.

The two men are also at the heart of a scandal involving a huge child molestation ring which has been providing children as young as five to a clientele of wealthy Mexican and foreign businessmen.

This blog has previously focused on what I call "the seedy of Lebanon." Time and again, these stories lead to a small but tight-knit group of wealthy right-wing Lebanese expatriate "businessmen." (Lebanon was and is a major center of the drug trade: See, for example, here.) The Skyway drug jet was housed in a hangar owned by Richard Rainwater, another Lebanese businessman who happens to have strong ties to Bush.

A previous post discussed Nacif and Succor. A Mexican journalist named Lydia Cacho wrote a book called The Demons of Eden on the Succor child exploitation ring. Succor's buddy Nacif arranged for Cacho's rather severe legal harassment.

This piece (translated) in the Mexican press tells us that Nacif has strong ties to former Mexican president Vicente Fox. Which brings us to Hopsicker's bottom line:

An officially 'protected' drug cartel associated with now-former Mexican President Vicente Fox is no longer being protected. Apparently, the message has been a little slow to sink in.

Replacing it on the route is it's main competition, apparently favored with Fox’s successor, current Jefe-in-Chief Felipe Calderon.

Elsewhere, Calderon is receiving high marks for establishing a new record in drug seizures.

And while we're on the subject of new drug rings, feast your peepers on this little-known tale -- Arizona National Guardsmen are involved in running coke.

There were so many Arizona National Guardsmen eager to run cocaine from the border of Arizona and Mexico to Tucson and Phoenix, that the FBI had to shut down its sting, Operation Lively Green.

While those soldiers were being sentenced in recent months in Tucson, the Arizona National Guard announced its soldiers would be commanding an armed drone in Iraq by remote control from Tucson.

And:

Arizona National Guardsmen ran cocaine in uniform in official vehicles, and even flew loads of cocaine in planes, to avoid being noticed, according to court documents.

The cocaine runners included a recruiting officer working in Tucson public schools.

The utter lack of national media attention given to the AZ National Guard scandal leads me to suspect that this operation ties in with the new drug importation routes being established down south.

Every time the media trumpets progress in the drug wars, a larger view reveals that one criminal organization has lost official sanction while another has gained it. This is the thesis of Kruger's classic The Great Heroin Coup. Back in the 1980s, the (too few) readers of that book were the first to ask why the American media focused on the Medellin cartel while ignoring the Cali cartel.

On the CIA coke trail: Doubtful doings in Delaware

Many thanks must go to those readers who have tried to solve the strange case of the cocaine-laden crashed jet -- the one with the CIA history. (For earlier stories, see here and here and here.) Friends to this blog have done some remarkably good Sherlock Holmesing. Now I must play the part of Dr. Watson, as I transform their sleuthing into a linear narrative. Toward the end, I'll describe my own recent detective work.

As you may recall, on the very day that our now-infamous Gulfstream II flew off to destiny, ownership was transfered one Clyde O'Connor -- a rather wild Florida businessman who started a multi-million dollars aviation firm after declaring bankruptcy. His very silent partner is a guy named Greg Smith. O'Connor's firm is, or was, called Execstar; it is, or was, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Smith runs something called Global Jet Solutions.

According to Palm Beach reporter Bob Norman, O'Connor was allowed to walk around free for a couple of weeks, even though Mexican authorities found three tons of coke in the wreckage of his jet. His liberty stunned everyone else in local aviation circles.

Norman's piece appeared on October 11. The very next day, O'Connor flew off to Canada, and from there to the Azores. I suspect that if Norman had never published, O'Connor would still be enjoying the sights and sounds of Spring Break City.

Think about it. Suppose you loan your car to your nephew, and suppose that the cops stop him and find a few ounces of weed. You stand a good chance of having your vehicle impounded, don't you?

Yet nobody stopped O'Connor from flying away in his Cessna.

Over three tons of coke, folks.

When O'Connor landed in Halifax, border guards asked him if he had any firearms. He said no. They checked anyways, found two handguns, and gave him a fine. A Canadian border services spokesperson says that O'Connor was "very cooperative" -- and that he was traveling with an unidentified woman. (I suspect that the lady may be a wife named Raisa.)

Incidentally, his partner Greg Smith refuses to talk to reporters. No word, yet, as to whether the cops consider him worthy of interest.

One of this blog's commenters, a man who calls himself LoganCale, contributed this rather startling information:

It appears Clyde O'Connor's Cessna 210 is N210TM, which flew from Halifax Int'l to St. Johns Int'l on Thursday night, and then Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, the next morning.

N210TM is registered to Mellon Investments Corporation, located at 3511 Silverside Road, Suite 105, Wilmington, Delaware. This is the address of Delaware Registry, Ltd., a company that sets up Delaware corporations.

In 2003, N1116G, an aircraft owned by One Leasing, a corporation with the same address as Mellon Investments, crashed in Columbia with 4 people on board that were allegedly CIA employees.

That Guatemalan crash was, you may recall, a rather big deal, since the CIA guys fell into the hands of FARC guerrillas.

Mellon investments is, of course, a rather fragrant name. The most notorious member of the ultra-rich Mellon clan is Richard Mellon Scaife, the Darth Vader of the anti-Clinton movement. Scaife has long made hazy claims of a CIA association.

This interesting confluence of data prompted me to research that address: 3511 Silverside Road, Suite 105, Wilmington, Delaware. Lots of companies have used this service to set up corporations in a state where the tax-man is less welcome than elsewhere. Many of the companies using this mailing address appear to be benign.

And quite a few are not.

This article about the planespotters who uncovered the rendition scandal tells the tale: A surprising number of aircraft used in the CIA's program belonged (on paper) to businesses "headquartered" at that same office in Wilmington: 3511 Silverside Road, Suite 105.

And guess which other noteworthy organization used that address?

Al Qaeda.

This Romanian-language story connects that address to a shady pair named Dimitros Kokkos and Riffat Mahmoud. I wasn't able to decipher much from that article, since there are no good free online Romanian-English translation services. (My Romanian is, er, a little rusty.) But Googling on those names brought forth a wild tale of nefarious doings on the high seas back in 2002. (Note: There are several ways to transliterate "Riffat Mahmoud," and "Dimitros" probably should read "Dimitrios.")

These guys ran cargo ships, and stood accused of transporting Osama's operatives.

These incidents suggest that Kokkos and Muhammed are chiefs of al Qaeda's maritime operations. Kokkos has links with Greek crime syndicates and is purely driven by commercial interests while Muhammed is an al Qaeda operative in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. Their modus operandi is simple: al Qaeda operatives posing as seamen are flown in from Karachi, embark on vessels to support cells, collect/disburse/disseminate cash, addresses, instructions and identity papers. Besides, the strategy involves using small, weather beaten, rusty cargo vessels that change names and flags at sea. Before arriving at a port, the vessels rendezvous with another ship, offload the operatives who then masquerade as stowaway/ distressed immigrants.

Of course, a cargo ship run by crooks might be used to transport more than just people.

Would I be out of line to suggest that the fact that Al Qaeda owned a "fleet" of cargo vessels may have some connection Jack Abramoff's decision to go into the casino ship business? As I have noted previously, Osama Bin Laden was a man with heroin to sell -- and nobody inspected those casino boats when they returned to port.

La Repubblica published this lengthy report on Kokkos and Mahmoud. Riffat Mahmoud, we learn, has two passports and holds dual citizenship in America and Pakistan. He was still doing business in the United States after 9/11, and after suspected Al Qaeda operatives were found aboard his ships.

DEBKA (widely considered a Mossad front) has a story on the pair here.

On can go further down that trail, but I think the point is made. One small office in Delaware -- just a stone's throw from the Brandywine Country Club -- has played host to at least one suspected coke smuggler, a good portion of the CIA's air fleet, and Al Qaeda's navy.

When I contacted the firm in question, Delaware Registry Ltd., the very nice lady who answered the phone seemed surprised to learn that so many shady businesses had used the company's incorporation and "mail drop" services.

"Do you give a free set of steak knives to spooks?" I asked. She laughed, and said no. (One of the differences between blogging and mainstream journalism is that bloggers have greater leeway for levity.)

But she also confirmed that there is a lot of competition in this line of work. Delaware Registry Ltd. is far from the only firm offering such services.

And yet -- as near as I can tell -- the addresses of competing firms do not show up in story after story about drugs, the CIA, and terrorists.

Odd.

Added note: Clyde O'Connor appears to be married to the Raisa O'Connor who runs Global Jet Charters, a subsidiary of "Aero Toy Store, the world's largest pre-owned private jet aircraft sales company." They're based in Florida, but they have a branch in Canada.

According to published accounts, Greg Smith (the other owner of the coke jet) runs something called Global Jet Solutions. The same company...?

(Many thanks to readers starroute and Logancale for their outstanding help.)