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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
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