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Eight weeks after Mexican soldiers
at a rural airport in the Yucatan
discovered 5.5 tons of cocaine onboard
an American-registered DC9 painted
to resemble aircraft from the U.S.
Dept of Homeland Security, Mexican
and U.S. law enforcement officials
seem no closer to publicly identifying
either the owner of the plane, or
the tons of cocaine.
Some suggest they may not be trying
very hard. If true, this is yet
another indication that suspicions
of CIA involvement in the drug flight
are on target. In fact, in the strange
brew of companies through whose
hands the twin DC9's have passed,
we will soon see even more unmistakable
signs of companies known to be CIA
fronts and people considered to
be Bush Family retainers.
Even so, our suggestion that CIA
involvement in an imbroglio over
5.5 tons of cocaine led to Porter
Goss’ surprise resignation as CIA
Director just a few weeks later
provoked someone to chastise us
for not offering proof.
CIA
involvement is the
proof that Porter
Goss, had been
placed in an embarrassing and ultimately
untenable position, and that he
was sacked for committing what is
regarded as the cardinal
sin...
Goss, a spook extraordinaire since
the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was (finally)
caught holding.
"Starting at power forward
for your American Drug Lords..."
Especially before the scandal potentially
grows out of hand, this seems grounds
for dismissal, even among the jaded
keepers of well-tended Cayman Island
accounts.
Losing 5.5 tons of cocaine on an
airliner traceable to your Government
Agency certainly does not appear
to have been, for Mr. Goss, an especially
good career move.
And there's potentially much worse
to come... A probe into the tangled
skein of companies and individuals
in what has clearly been a continuing
operation lasting at least
a decade has revealed glimpses of
what until now has been the
most elusive species on Earth:
The American Drug Lords.
How is it possible that the owner
of a DC9 airliner caught with 5
tons of cocaine can remain hidden
for two months?
The untimely bust came at a certain
low ebb for the owner/operators
of "Cocaine One."
This favorable conjunction of the
stars is about to allow a privileged
glimpse into corruption so vast
it can only
be what Prof Peter Dale Scott called
the "deep
politics" of
what sociologists refer to as
"state-sponsored crime."
Pull up a chair.
Going way way wrong at the
worst possible time
“The Feds have never wanted to clean
up the sloppy way airplanes are
registered,” one aircraft broker
told us. “Registering a plane with
the FAA is just a joke. They don’t
even make you use a tax I.D. number
or social security number to register
a plane. You don’t even have to
have your signature notarized."
"The
result is that
nobody can ever tell with any certainty
what
the hell is going on. Apparently
that's the way they like it.”
Since
April 11, the day things went way
wrong in a small town in the Mexican
state of Campeche, the mystery of
the plane’s ownership has only deepened.
Recently the last registered American
owner of the DC9, Frederic
Geffon of Royal Sons
Inc insisted he bore no
responsibility at all for the plane’s
recent misadventures.
In a May 5,
2006 interview with the Tampa
Tribune following up a story
they'd run the
previous day, Geffon said he
sold the plane 10 days
before it was seized by Mexican
authorities, to a man named Jorge
Corrales, who he identified as a
Simi Valley, Calif., aircraft broker.
But the
MadCowMorningNews has
learned that there is a problem
with Geffon’s explanation: The California
“aircraft broker” who Geffon says
bought the aircraft(N900SA)—for
resale to a client identified only
as a “Venezuelan company”—does not
appear to be in the business of
buying and selling planes.
Tangled Web City, Next Exit
A
LEXIS-NEXIS newspaper database search
yielded no mention of Corrales and
Associates. A Google search failed
to find an aircraft broker named
George or Jorge
Corrales, or a Corrales and Associates.
A
visit to the three major online
venues used to sell airplanes confirmed
the assertion…
We
could find no evidence indicating
that Jorge “George” Corrales is
an aircraft broker
A search for broker/dealers
selling McDonnell Douglas DC9’s
in California at The Controller,
for example, reveals just three
DC9’s for sale, from just two dealers.
An aircraft dealer at the Venice
Airport told us, “There is a very
small group of people involved in
the market for jet airliners world-wide.
If you had a party and invited every
DC9 buyer in the world you could
easily fit them all inside my hanger.”
OK
Aviation is the listing broker
for two of the three DC9’s
currently for sale in California.
So we called OK Aviation's
owner, Jack Kendall. He
knew the other DC9 dealers in the
state, he told us. No, he'd never
heard of George Corrales or Corrales
& Associates.
Maybe the paperwork is still in
the mail
A
search for aircraft brokers and
dealers in California
at Trade-A-Plane reveals no
listing for Corrales & Associates.
And it’s a free listing.
A check of ASO’s list of Southern
California aircraft brokers and
dealers turned up a Titan
Aviation in San Diego, we
were interested to learn, as well
as an Air America Inc.
But no Corrales and Associates.
Frederic Geffon told the Tampa Tribune
he sold “Cocaine One”
to an aircraft brokerage which apparently
doesn’t even exist.
The Tampa Tribune story quoted FAA
spokesman Roland Herwig stating
that the FAA received a copy of
a letter from Royal Sons, dated
April 7, asking that the plane be
exported to Venezuela and that the
FAA officially took Royal Sons'
name off the books three days after
the cocaine bust.
"We don't get involved with
the sale of aircraft, only their
registration or deregistration,"
Herwig told the Tribune.
Geffon himself, while insisting
that the plane with 5.5 tons of
coke wasn’t his, was otherwise suspiciously
close-mouthed.
Who you gonna believe...Me? Or
your lying eyes?
Apparently Geffon knows all the
words to the hit song “It
Wasn’t Me.”
But not much else... “Geffon provided
the Tampa Tribune with a copy of
what he says is a bill of sale he
turned over to his title company,”
the paper reported. “It had no information
about the purchaser.”
Corrales "did not want
me to know" who bought
the aircraft "and I didn't
care anyway," Geffon
said.
Corrales contradicted this statement.
He said that he did not know why
Geffon claims not to know who purchased
the DC-9. He said Geffon absolutely
knew who had purchased
the aircraft.
When people lie, its almost always
for a reason...
“It was a Venezuelan company,” Corrales
told the Tampa Tribune. “Royal Sons
got a crew that flew the aircraft"
to Venezuela, and obtained the permits
needed to fly the plane out of the
country.
Geffon denied it. He said he only
"hired someone
to find a flight crew to take it
down there."
Frederic Geffon was having no trouble
resisting the urge to fall all over
himself clearing up any misunderstandings...
'Men in Europe' may be difficult
to assemble all at once
"Geffon
would not identify that individual,
saying only that the man is in Europe
and unavailable for comment,” the
paper reported. “Corrales, who owns
Corrales and Associates, disagrees.”

Although the paper didn’t say so,
it was a classic Mexican stand-off.
And, as the Tampa Tribune’s Howard
Altman noted wryly, the Federal
Aviation Administration was
not about to untangle the knot.
Still, compared with the little
information which has
managed to trickle
out about the case, Altman's
story contains a major scoop:
“A man in Europe unavailable for
comment” has the answers to who
owned the massive cocaine haul.
All we need do to find the owner
of “Cocaine One” is
take all the males on the European
Continent, subtracting those who
are available for
comment, to give us the subset
of "Men in Europe"
in whose ranks today can
almost certainly be found the man
who knows who was using a DC9 tricked
out to resemble a U.S. Government
plane to smuggle tons of cocaine.
That was simple. All we need now
is a stadium big enough to sort
them all out.
I have no comment on my no comment
More
bad news for the now rapidly-emerging
official story: There
is no Corrales & Associates
in California.
The 'supposed' aircraft broker who
bought the DC9 in the nick
of time from people in
St Petersburg FL has
been “suspended” from
operation for several years by the
California Division of Corporations.
Thus, Corrales & Associates
cannot legally do business in the
state of California.
However, there is
a Jorge Corrales, or rather a George
Corrales, listed in the Simi Valley
phone books. We phoned to ask if
he had any proof that he buys and
sells airplanes for a living.
“Mr. Corrales, we’ve been unable
to find any evidence that you are
in the business of buying and selling
airplanes,” we began. “Can you point
to anything to prove you are?”
“I
have no comment at this time,” he
told us tersely.
Why is that? Who did you sell the
DC9 to in Venezuela?
“I
can’t comment on that.”
“Aren’t you leaving yourself open
to charges that you yourself
may be involved in drug
trafficking? If you get arrested
for running 5 tons of cocaine...will
you have a comment then?”
There was a loud click. The line
went dead. We thought:
How very rude.
A murky mystery; A "great deal
of concern"
Hovering at all times at the edge
of the 5.5 ton cocaine scandal is
the company responsible for painting
twin DC9's in what clearly appears
to have been a deliberate deception:
SkyWay Aircraft.
Next we will learn about the founder
of what became SkyWay Aircraft,
Miami attorney Michael Farkas.
But we can't resist teasing the
story a little bit now.
Farkas, as you might well imagine,
isn't just anyone...
For example, he currently owns a
North Miami company which wants
to market Israeli antimissile
defense systems to U.S.
aircraft manufacturers, after obtaining
rights to a system developed by
a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft
Industries, Israel's
biggest defense contractor.
But before engaging in the popular
sport of blaming the Jews
it might be useful to recall
that we've already seen Saudi billionaire
Adnan Khashoggi's involvement. Oddly
enough, fifteen of SkyWay Aircraft's
biggest investors are from Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait.
One of them even appears to be the
head of the Kuwaiti National
Guard.
While presiding over SkyWay’s bankruptcy,
Federal Judge Paul M. Glenn said,
"I have a great deal of concern
about this case. There is a great
deal we don't know."
Two years ago, Judge Glenn called
this case "murky.”
Since then, very little appears
to have changed.
NEXT (FINALLY): An ultra-nationalist
Israeli party & the head of
the Kuwaiti National Guard
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