=> Where is Carlos Lehder Rivas...? - Bu$h Family Narco-trafficer

[=> Vox Populi ©]

a.. Medellin Cartel Co-Founder Carlos Lehder A Free Man in Gov't. Charade? --
Wife of Drug Lord Speaks
b.. American International Group, Arkansas, ADFA, Contras, Carlos Lehder and
Coral Reinsurance
c.. Connections to 1996 Dark Alliance Series by Gary Webb
Carlos Lehder

[Part One of a Multi-Part Series]

by

Michael C. Ruppert

----------

-- This series is dedicated to Mark Swaney of the Ozark Gazette for his
intellectual courage and tenacity; to John McGlaughlin, the straightest and
toughest man who ever honestly carried a badge; to Celerino Castillo III, with a
heart bigger than his beloved Texas; to all the young men and women, mostly
minority, who are serving up to life in prison for crimes that don't remotely
compare to those of Carlos Lehder, and to all the innocents in Colombia who
stand at the brink of the next Vietnam War.

-----------

But perhaps most importantly it is about the lies that the American people tell
themselves each day as they drown in a sea of denial, worried about their
pension plans, investments and careers, needing to deny the fact that the
so-called war on drugs is a flimsy house of cards that consumes millions of
innocent lives every year. It is a story about the lies told by the major media
that chooses to ignore the reality of hard documentation about CIA involvement
in the drug trade. If there is a common thread to this story it is the fact that
lies make us all hostages of our own fears and failings. Eventually these lies
entangle us to the point where even the slightest movement becomes impossible
and, being unable to move, we sink and we drown - all the while looking for
someone else to blame.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, aka Carlos Lehder, is the stuff of which legends
are made. Legends are sometimes good, sometimes bad. As is the case with most
legends there is a beautiful woman involved. There is also intrigue, crime,
violence, corruption and betrayal. But legends, when examined closely, almost
always tell more about the civilizations that create them than they do about the
one who carries the name. Carlos Lehder is not a Colombian legend. He is an
American legend. It is America that created him. America that made him rich.
America where he began his criminal life. America where he was imprisoned and
America that, it now appears, has set him free. It is America's shame that
Lehder's freedom, if established, and alleged employment by the U.S. Government,
are hidden behind lies told, not by Lehder himself, but by the American
government to its own people.

In 1979-80, reportedly with the assistance of the CIA and legendary drug
smuggler Barry Seal, Lehder co-founded the Medellin Cartel with Pablo Escobar
and brothers Fabio and Jorge Ochoa. As celebrated on CNN and by recent books
like Killing Pablo (Mark Bowden, 2001), Pablo Escobar was gunned down in a hail
of Colombian bullets directed by U.S. intelligence in December, 1993. The Ochoas
have faded into the jungle-like vortex of Latin American lore although an
October 1999 Reuters story indicated that Fabio Ochoa had been arrested (again)
in Bogota. Word of his promised extradition to the U.S. has been hard to find.
Carlos Lehder remains the only cartel head to have ever been extradited to, then
tried, convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years in, the United States.
Prosecutors agree that Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega -
against whom Lehder testified in return for a reduced sentence of 55
"non-paroleable" years in 1989 - was merely one of Lehder's employees.

Other new material indicating that Lehder, after his 1987 arrest and
extradition, provided information to the DEA that assisted in Escobar's downfall
has been characterized by his prosecutor, former US Attorney Robert Merkle, as
nearly worthless. "That's BS. We didn't need his help to get Escobar," says
Merkle.

As disclosed in this first of a series of special reports, I have now amassed a
sizeable body of documents, records, witness statements and even a tape
recording of Lehder's alleged wife indicating that Carlos Lehder is a free man
who has kept his money, who travels the world freely and who makes a mockery of
any notion that he might be a federally protected witness - hiding to ensure his
safety or the safety of his family. One telling clue to Lehder's apparent lack
of fear is the fact that he is listed by name in 411 directory assistance in La
Fayette, California, just outside San Francisco. My researcher, while looking
for other information, came across the listing and sent it to me. I was able to
confirm it as a listing for the Carlos Lehder - not a coincidence - through
confidential sources who know Lehder's self-professed wife, Coral Marie Talavera
Baca Lehder. And I have spoken to Coral by calling her at that number myself.
Mrs. Lehder was, until June 22, a manager for the insurance giant AIG in San
Francisco. [Subsequent segments of this special series will focus on
investigations into allegations of money laundering by AIG with and through the
Arkansas Development Financial Authority in 1987 - the same year Lehder was
originally captured].

I had lunch with Coral two days before she resigned. When I called her San
Francisco office the following Monday, June 25, a company receptionist told me
that she had, "Gone to Cuba."

Coral's reported flight to Cuba cuts off several interesting avenues that
warrant further investigation. Just prior to press time for Part I of this
series, a defense source connected to Lehder's appeal for sentence reduction
told me that their experience indicated clearly that Lehder was still in prison
and that no one named Coral was connected to Lehder in any legal paperwork. Of
all the journalists, experienced investigators and direct witnesses interviewed
for this story, only those who have worked to prepare his appeals have raised
the suggestion that Coral Marie Talavera Baca (Lehder) is a fraud. The rest have
stated that they have long suspected that Lehder is a free man. So do I. And the
possibility that the woman who has represented herself as his wife for many
years has staged an elaborate hoax, while working for a company long connected
to the CIA, only raises an equally troubling set of questions. Why? For what
purpose? To whose benefit?

Just hours before this issue needed to be at the printer's, an e-mail arrived
indicating that Lehder's current attorney (I do not know the name) had just
stated that Lehder was definitely in prison, answered the phone promptly when
called there, had never been married and had allegedly stated that he had never
heard of Coral Baca -- by any name. She was a fraud. At the same time I have
been told that the attorney may not identify himself to me and probably will not
make Lehder available for an interview. This possible attempt by unnamed sources
to delay publication of this story will be thoroughly investigated for Part II
of this series.

"I've been speculating for years that Lehder was freeÉ Why am I not surprised?
If Lehder is out of jail I would be extremely disappointed. It would send some
very bad signals. It's pretty tragic. There's a lot of kids in jail for the rest
of their lives -- I'm talking kids -- and a lot of them are minorities for
insignificant drug offenses compared to what he did," says Lehder prosecutor and
former US Attorney Robert Merkle. According to various news sources at the time
of his arrest in 1987 Lehder, then 37, was reported to be worth between $2.5 and
$3 billion. Throughout the early 1980s his airstrip at Norman's Cay in the
Bahamas was receiving cocaine flights from Colombia, every hour on the hour, and
transferring the loads to smaller planes for distribution throughout the US.

Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reporter Bill Moushey, who has perhaps spent more time
tracking Lehder than any American journalist, wrote in 1996, " In it [a 1987
federal detention order] the U.S. government says Lehder and others were
responsible for assassinating Colombia's Justice Minister in 1984; for the 1985
armed attack on Colombia's Supreme Court building that killed 11 justices and 84
other people; for assassinating two newspaper editors in Colombia and 26 other
journalists; for shooting the Colombian ambassador to Hungary in 1987; and for a
long list of murders of police officers, informants and other government
officials."

Moushey's trail of Lehder grew cold in 1996. "Within weeks of sending that
letter [of complaint regarding the government's alleged failure to honor terms
of secret plea bargain] last fall [1995], Lehder was whisked away into the
night, several protected witnesses at the Mesa Unit in Arizona say. No one has
heard from him since." However he has since indicated that, as of late 1995, he
believed Lehder to be in prison.

I have since talked nearly a dozen reporters, prosecutors and others connected
to the case. At the same time that they protest that they have received
Christmas cards, letters and even phone calls from Lehder indicating that he is
still in prison they all - every one of them - have confessed their secret
suspicions of a charade intended to fool them and hide a very dark secret. And
all of them, without exception, agree that if Lehder is walking free it is time
to find him and tell the American people about it.

Days of Glory - Days of Shame

I first became aware of Carlos Lehder's possible freedom in the Spring of 1997,
not long after I had confronted CIA Director John Deutch on television and
stated that there was direct proof of CIA involvement in the drug trade. Dick
Gregory, the comedian, later told me that he had learned first hand that my
confrontation with Deutch, and Deutch's poor handling of the situation, had cost
Deutch a certain appointment as Secretary of Defense the following month. I was
something of a small-time celebrity afterwards. At that time, however, those of
us like retired DEA Agent Celerino Castillo, a Bronze Star recipient from
Vietnam who has devoted his life to exposing CIA drug connections in the
eighties, stood downstage from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb whose
August 96 Dark Alliance series in The San Jose Mercury News had inflamed the
nation with its allegations of direct CIA connections to the Contras in
Nicaragua and drug trafficking in LA.

In late 1996 I was approached by the publisher of the magazine Prevailing Winds,
Patrick Fourmy, a young Canadian videographer who was also perennially
scrambling to raise money. In several of our meetings Patrick talked openly of
how a woman named Coral Baca had instigated Webb's investigations by providing
him with secret federal grand jury transcripts. [Although widely ridiculed or
ignored by the mainstream media, many of Webb's allegations were later
corroborated in detail by a CIA Inspector General report released on October 8,
1998 and by a Department of Justice report released almost a year earlier.] On
various trips and a meeting where Fourmy videotaped an interview with me, he
almost boasted about the fact that Baca was engaged to Carlos Lehder. He claimed
to have been the one who "introduced" Baca to Webb by giving her Webb's office
phone number. It bothered me. But I was broke, unemployed due to an injury, and
unable to do anything but ask, "Doesn't that bother you a little?"

I met with Patrick maybe three times between then and the summer of 1998. At one
time he told of having actually met Lehder whom he repeatedly said was out of
prison. Other confidential sources, close to the Lehders, have told me that
Fourmy actually visited "the house" and videotaped an interview with Carlos
Lehder. I didn't see Patrick much after that. Contacted with written questions
for this story by e-mail and fax at his Santa Barbara offices, Fourmy has not
responded to my requests for comment. I have been unable to locate a working
phone number for him.

On June 28, 1998, just about two weeks after Webb's book Dark Alliance had been
released I was invited to attend a fund raiser at the Beverly Hills home of
Producer Jamie Otis and organized in part by Patrick Fourmy who did the
videography and arranged hotel accommodations. The purpose of the "gala" event
featuring Webb as a speaker, was to raise funds for "citizen's tribunals" to be
conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. I had just
finished reading Webb's book and found it to be ground-breaking and well
documented. In the first pages of Dark Alliance Webb wrote about his first
meeting with Coral Talavera Baca, the woman now known as Mrs. Carlos Lehder. In
retrospect Webb's description of her seems ponderous.

"I turned, and for an instant all I saw was cleavage and jewelry. She looked to
be in her mid-twenties. Dark hair. Bright red lipstick. Long legs. Short Skirt.
Dressed to accentuate her positive attributes. I could barely speak.

'You're Coral?'

She tossed her hair and smiled. 'Pleased to meet you.' She stuck out a hand with
a giant diamond on it, and I shook it weakly." - (p.6).

Earlier, on page 4, Webb had written that Coral worked for a law firm. What he
did not report was that the law firm was solely devoted to legal work for AIG
and that AIG had long standing ties to the CIA. Rather than reporting that
Talavera was engaged to Lehder -- which he claims he could not establish -- Webb
wrote in Dark Alliance that she was the "girlfriend" of convicted San Francisco
Bay Area drug dealer Rafael Cornejo.

The night of June 28 and the following day can best be described as surreal.
Coral and Webb arrived together and she stood by him as he spoke that night. She
looked more elegant than Webb had described and she was truly stunning. Fourmy,
who was busy with cables and cameras kept pointing her out and saying, "she's
engaged to Carlos Lehder. I introduced them." Fourmy spent much time that night
with crime writer and author Joseph Bosco who made a strange statement to me
towards the end of the evening. "Gary Webb should be ashamed of himself for what
he did to Coral." I have been unable to find out what Bosco meant.

Fourmy, Bosco, Castillo and Coral were all staying at the Beverly Garland Howard
Johnson's in North Hollywood California. Although I was briefly introduced to
Baca [I use the names Talavera and Baca interchangeably to reflect how she was
addressed in various settings] just before she left the event in a taxi cab, and
didn't quite know what to say, it turns out that she was more forthcoming in a
conversation with Castillo. Just days after the event Castillo called me and
told me what she said that night and the following day. He has since reconfirmed
those statements for this story.

"I remember that I was introduced to her by Fourmy," says the retired DEA agent
who has served in Peru and Central America. "She said, straight out, that she
was engaged to Carlos LehderÉ I couldn't believe it! What was she doing here? I
asked her, 'What's Carlos doing now?' and she said, 'Oh, he's out of jail and
selling drugs to the Russians for the CIA.'

"I mean it just knocked me for a loop. It scared me. And then the next day she
was out by the pool. Patrick [Fourmy] was there. Joe Bosco was there. She came
down and sat with us. She was quite open and she said that her company -- a
company she owned that I later found out was Capital Investment Group -- was
owned by five of the largest drug dealers in South America. She was very
agitated at the government and she said that the government had contacted Carlos
and told him to 'put that bitch on a leash.' That, said Castillo, was probably
because of her openness in talking about the fact that Carlos was out of prison
and her public appearances with Webb. I have confirmed that Baca made at least
one other public appearance with Webb at a book signing in Los Angeles.

Contacted at a New Orleans phone number, Joe Bosco has not returned a call
requesting comment.

Maxine Waters -- From the web site of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D),
California:

"I also had numerous telephone conversations with Coral Talavera Baca, the
girlfriend of Rafael Cornejo, who was a relative and part of Norwin Meneses'
drug trafficking organization, as well as a long-time business partner of Danilo
Blandon, another central figure in the "Dark Alliance" series. I received
information from Ms. Baca and Mr. Cornejo who were connected to Carlos Lehder, a
Colombian drug dealer and co-founder of the Medellin Cartel. It was through
Lehder's private island that the Medellin Cartel moved massive amounts of
cocaine to Miami and the United States. Ms Baca had visited Carlos Lehder's
private island and have [sic] information regarding the connection between Mr.
Lehder and Norwin Meneses." -- http://www.house.gov/waters/31698pr.htm.
Contacted for comment, Waters' office had not responded at press time.

"The Units also housed one of the most sought after drug Kingpins in the world.
Carlos Lehder Rivas, leader of the Medellin Cartel. Lehder admitted to ordering
hundreds of killings, including a member of the Colombian Supreme Court,
politicians, and reporters. His net worth is over $3 billion yet only $2 million
in assets were ever seized. I reviewed Lehder's plea assessment, he was
convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years with no chance for parole. And
then he joined the program by agreeing to testify against Manuel Noriega, who in
effect worked for Lehder. Federal officials immediately cut Lehder's sentence to
55 years with eligibility for parole. [This eligibility is disputed by a member
of Lehder's defense team who spoke on condition of anonymity]. Further sentence
reductions made him eligible for deportation to Germany, his homeland. I have
been told that Lehder is already in Germany.

"While in the Unit, Lehder developed new drug smuggling plans for after his
release. He talked of a new frontier in the former republics of the Soviet
Union. He and [convicted Gambino crime family Capo Sammy the Bull] Gravano
talked of forming a partnership in a new cartel using money given to them by our
government. They asked me to join them and I turned them down.'

Gary Webb -- Contacted for comment Gary Webb responded: "Coral's relationship
with Lehder, if there was one, was not very pertinent to what I was looking at."
Webb said he saw correspondence suggesting that she and Lehder may have had a
relationship a long time ago but whatever the nature of that relationship was or
is, it was her private business and had no bearing on his inquiries as far as he
could tell.

Robert Merkle -- "I know that Lehder, right after he was arrested, tried to cut
a deal directly with [then Vice President George H.W.] Bush and the FBI - which
conversations I was excluded fromÉ There's a lot of stuff that went on that was
questionableÉI've been speculating for years that Lehder was free but I figured
he'd be in Germany or some tax haven with his money, which he still hasÉ One of
the major things that was a red flag in terms of indicating that he made a deal
was that Lehder wasn't required to turn over his assetsÉ There was essentially
nothing seized in that case and the guy made millions of dollars. If I'm a U.S.
Attorney or an Attorney General and the only member of the Medellin Cartel to be
prosecuted in the US, facing life plus 120 years in jail, wants a deal, the
first thing he's going to talk to me about is money. What banks? Where are they
located?"

Texas is a One-Party State

Far and away Celerino Castillo's allegations are the most outrageous. They
demand a level of scrutiny beyond the denials or silence of the other parties
involved.

Under Texas state law, unlike Maryland where tape recordings of phone
conversations unauthorized by both parties proved the undoing of Monica Lewinsky
and resulted in legal action against Linda Tripp, Texas is a state where only
one party to any telephone conversation need grant permission before recording a
call. As a result of a number of investigations connecting to the CIA in which
he was then involved, Castillo had his telephone set up to automatically record
all incoming calls. This proved fateful when he received a call from Coral in
April of 1999. Castillo and Baca had been in touch infrequently since the June,
1998 fund raiser. Baca had been suggesting that she might be able to get
Castillo work as an investigative consultant on a legal case connecting to the
CIA in San Francisco and had even paid one phone bill for him in the preceding
months as a partial expense payment for that case. Castillo's early retirement
had resulted from his efforts to expose CIA involvement in Contra-connected drug
trafficking during the eighties and has been documented in his 1994 book
POWDERBURNS - Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War.

In June, 2001 I traveled to San Antonio Texas where I met Castillo and obtained
a copy of one of his "Baca" tapes. He says there are others he is holding as
"insurance against any challenges against me" and that the one he provided me
has had certain sections of the conversation removed for the same reason.
[Beginning in August 2001 I will place selected excerpts of this tape, converted
to MP3 format, on the From The Wilderness web site at www.copvcia.com. -- See
Investigation Notes at the end of this story.] Having spoken to her on the phone
several times since January 2001 I instantly recognized the voice on the tape.
It was definitely the Coral that I had met.

Following are excerpts from the forty-plus minute conversation: (CC designates
Celerino Castillo. CB designates Coral Baca. Certain segments of the tape have
been edited to protect innocent third parties and to save space.)

CB: WeÕre living in both places now. WeÕre in Florida now. We did have, we still
have the house in Boca Chica. But weÕve also got one in Coconut Grove.

CC: Oh. Good.

CB: So it works out really, really nicely. IÕm here three days a week.

CC: Then youÕre flying back.

CB: ÉSo it works out really, really nicely actually. I thought it was going to
be exhausting but itÕs not. ItÕs really kind of nice because when IÕm here I
really have some time to myself, you know, running the business [AIG]. I
shouldnÕt say that, running the office.

CC: Oops.

CB: TheyÕll turn that [laughs]. That is a great one.

CC: [Laughs] Ooh - running the business.

CB: IÕve got to be very careful what I say, you know. Yeah, but um, itÕs really
nice. If you ever get down there youÕre more than welcome to come and visit and
stay. I love Florida. It's really beautiful.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CB: You know because I hear things, like there are going to be hearings on this
mess [The Gary Webb Dark Alliance series]. Let me tell you something. IÕll tell
you something and IÕve heard it from people who have been informed by very
reliable people in the government. No there wonÕt. No there wonÕt be any more
hearings.

CC: But even if there were any hearingsÉ

CB: ItÕs just going to be a joke.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CB: I've read such ugly articles lately. We attended some benefit. And somebody
wrote an article and they titled it Beauty and the Beast. Is thatÉ

CC: God Damn...

CB: Is that fucking cruel? I mean like he is like the nicest man, the most
generous man I have ever met. And to call him a beast?

CC: What newspaper was that?

CB: Oh, who the hell knows. I don't even know. I get so upset that people keep
these things from meÉ. How about all the money he gave me to start an orphanage
in Mexico.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CB: He was out of jail before I went to Gary.

CC: Oh yeah, well I know that was in, we know, during the Panama thing.

CB: Well no. He was released in 95. In March of 95. I didnÕt go to Gary until
June - or July - of 1996. [NOTE: This date is disputed by both Webb and me. It
would have given him roughly six weeks to write the entire Dark Alliance
series.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CB: Do you know a DEA Agent named Rafael Salcedo or Armando Medina.

CC: Yeah, those names sound very familiar.

CB: Those guys used to moonlight for the CIA all the time.

CC: Yeah, thereÕs a lot of them. The last one I heard was Juan Perez who was a
CubanÉ

CB: I know who he is, of courseÉ

CB: We just saw Robert Vesco.

CC: Who?

CB: Vesco, Robert.

CC: What about him?

CB: We just went and saw him when we were in Cuba.

CC: Is he under house arrest? Cause thatÕs what I heard.

CB: What a great man. A Sweetheart.

CC: [Laughing] HowÕs Fidel doing?É

[CB: We had gone down once maybe a year or so ago and I met him [Vesco] for the
first time then. And then when we

went back this time I met him againÉI mean heÕs old and he walks with a cane.
HeÕs just a sweetheart though.

ThatÕs what Fidel did for him. He took him in because the United States was
ready to just nab him. I mean you know how the United States is. They kidnap
people and they call it extradition.

CC: So, is Carlos still playing ball withÉ?

CB: He has nothing to do with the business.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CB: In fact weÕre having a birthday party this weekend. What are you doing this
weekend? IÕm 29 - again. [Laughs] A little party. Just a hundred of our closest
friends. It's going

to be really, really fun. I think Julio Iglesias. He's going to sing. He's like
my all time favorite. He's in Florida anyway.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Baca enters into a lengthy discussion regarding a suspect who had allegedly
burglarized her e-mail accounts. Because these are criminal allegations and I
have been unable to ascertain the validity of the charges I have omitted
references to the named suspect.]

CB: Because of Carlos' situation the State Department called in the FBI to find
out who was doing thisÉ And then he got into my e-mail account, my Coral Lehder
e-mail account, and they were e-mailing Carlos from my e-mail accountÉ

CB: He got into our e-mail account and was reading all of my correspondence
with, back and forth between Carlos and me.

CC: How did he do that?

CB: Well itÕs not too hard if youÕre close to somebody. ItÕs not too hard if you
know what words are important É

CC: Oh my God. So, what did the FBIÉ Are they going to bring any charges?

CB: See, thereÕs another point of contention. My other half is very pissed off
and me, no, IÕm not going to do that. He has to live with the fact that what he
did [was] wrongÉ

CC: So the FBI came and theyÉ

CB: The State Department, once I found out that my e-mail was being broken into,
I told Carlos. And Carlos said,

"You know what, it makes sense "Because I knew that some of my e-mails just
werenÕt right." HeÕs like, "I knew somebody had looked at them." So he called in
I guess, whoever he has to report to, itÕs a matter of his national security
status, that his security might have been jeopardized. And the Feds got
involved, you know, because they called in the Feds. - It was an ugly ordeal. Do
you know that we had to go to a safe house, because they didnÕt know who it was?
É

CB: There were never wedding invitations... I never sent out wedding
invitations. What was sent out after was like notifications... You got the one
that said, "Please extend her every courtesy as my wife..."

."I had several conversation with Coral," says Castillo. "There is no doubt in
my mind that Lehder is out of prison. None whatsoever. I received an e-mail from
Carlos personally, in the summer of 1998, that invited me to come to the wedding
that fall. Carlos had taken her out of the country for personal reasons. I also
received an e-mail from Coral under a separate account. The address was
snow...@hotmail.com. I can't get to those e-mails now because my old computer
is broken and I don't have the money to fix it. But she was clear on many
occasions that Carlos was out. She talked about travelling all over with him.
Why would they have invited me to the house, or to visit them in the Bahamas if
it weren't true? What if I had said yes? They were going to pay for it but I
didn't go. I didn't want to compromise myself.

"I think Coral is really against the government and the war on drugs. She has
family in jail and she spoke to me I think because of the price I paid for what
I did. I believe that she hates the CIA."

Asked about the possibility of an elaborate ruse by Baca, Castillo replied,
"Look. You almost have to go to more trouble to justify the notion that he's in
prison than you do to justify the position that he's out. What could Coral
possibly have gained from all this effort to make certain people think so? They
both hate the government and would love to make it look bad. She had a powerful
position at AIG that would be jeopardized if she were exposed as making this up.
Why would someone go to all this trouble to make people think she's his wife?
It's not something you would put on a resumé. It has drawn attention to Lehder
rather than steer it away. What does she gain by that? I know that some people
insist he's still in jail but why won't the government just say so? Instead you
have this big mystery that only deepens the legend. Who benefits from that? Who
profits from the confusion? And the government would have found out about it.
That's why I think the government went to Carlos and said to put a leash on
her."

A Paper Trail

Far from being silent about Talavera's relationship with Lehder I had written
about it in January of 1999. I had been puzzled as to why no one in "the
anti-CIA drugs movement" seemed to think it noteworthy. It was known to at least
a dozen people that I was aware of. It was "sticky" to me, oozing with a kind of
dysfunctionality found in families that conceal child abuse.

Information developing around the then pending Clinton impeachment had led me to
suspect an alliance between the Medellin Cartel's genius of transportation and
Arkansas' genius of money and political power, Bill Clinton. [See Parts II and
III of this series.] My writing on this subject (available at www.copvcia.com)
had drawn an angry January 7, 1999 letter from Talavera's attorney. I made a
correction stating that at the time of the Dark Alliance stories Talavera was
probably not married to Lehder when she went to Webb but that she was indeed his
fiancée. What I found interesting in the letter was that Baca's attorney, David
Secrest, had written, "We also demand that you immediately take all steps
necessary to respect Ms. Baca's privacy and anonymity, as did the Dept. of
Justice and the CIA in their respective reports." Why were those agencies been
deferential to her? If she was a fraud, couldn't they discover it? My only
error, since scrupulously corrected for this story, was in not seeking her
comment before writing. I could have.

I stand by that story and no lawsuit has ever materialized. [The letter may be
viewed at www.copvcia.com.]

Shortly after that my fax machine began to hum. On six occasions over the next
twenty months an unknown source, being careful to disguise the point of origin,
sent anonymous faxes to me containing a variety of documents ranging from news
clippings and magazine stories, to supposed surveillance photos and reports, to
official U.S. government documents all pertaining Lehder and Baca. All of the
purported news clippings lacked publication names and dates. I had decided to
write about these documents in the summer and fall of 2000 and began checking
them out. It turned out that many of those documents were fakes, elaborate
fakes, which someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare. Several
purported to be from an unspecified "Office of the U.S. Attorney." After
learning that some of the documents were faked I contacted many government
agencies in attempts to verify the authenticity of the rest. The results were
inconclusive. One document, allegedly reporting that the Lehders received 24/7
overseas security at their home in Salinas Equador from the State Department's
Office of Diplomatic Security, had drawn an angry, "I can unequivocally tell you
that we have never protected either one of those people. Sounds more like CIA to
me," response from Bob Franks. Franks was qualified to give the statement. At
the time he was (and is) the Director of Protection for the State Department's
overseas security operations.

Other documents, in particular an undated two-page "Report of Investigation (Law
Enforcement)" from the U.S. Treasury Special Agent In Charge, San Francisco
District Office (possibly the IRS), appeared credible but remained unverified.
The "Treasury" report, which was later to become very important to this story
was, in November 2000 -- after seven phone calls, a fax, a Fedex package and
much delay, evaluated by Treasury Dept. spokesman John D'Angelo. He told me, "I
have not been able to figure out what this report is. I can't figure it out.
Things don't matchÉ It looks like something that was used at one time." That
decidedly unsatisfying response had come after Treasury spokespersons had
advised that I contact each of Treasury's component agencies (IRS, Customs,
Secret Service and the ATF) for comment. Of course, each of those agencies had
referred me back to where I had started.

What was so compelling about the Treasury report was that it contained a wealth
of information on the Lehders that was to be subsequently confirmed by Talavera
herself. More damning is the fact that in June 2001 I secured confirmation from
a confidential source close to the Lehders that the document was authentic.
Then, a former senior paralegal who had worked on Lehder's appeals efforts
(speaking on condition of anonymity) found it to be possibly authentic and
"consistent with other government documents I have reviewed in the case." Just
to be sure I asked the paralegal for a place to check the paralegal's
credentials vis a vis Lehder. That was instantly provided and credible
confirmation was instantly given. "Kincaid," as I have named the source, had
worked for a law firm representing Lehder and knew him personally.

The Treasury report stated that in 1987 (when she was 23) -- the same year that
Lehder was captured and would have begun hiding his assets -- Talavera had
founded a "Bohemian" company called Capital Investment Group (CIG) with an
initial capitalization of $10 million. By 1997 the estimated worth of CIG was
listed as $132 million. In financial parlance a "Bohemian corporation" is a
company founded by two parent companies, located in two different countries, in
yet a third country. This is usually done for the purposes of avoiding
regulation by tax or legal authorities. The first thing I had done after receipt
of this document in the summer of 1999 was to ask my researcher to pull the
files on Capital Investment Group at the Secretary of State's office in
Sacramento and send them to me.

Among other things, the Treasury report says that Carlos Lehder was an employee
of the Treasury and a free man.

Another document, typeset like a news story but well sanitized to remove the
publication name or date was titled "Beauty And The Beast." It read, "Just three
days after the birth of her son, Carlo Rafael, the lovely Coral Lehder, adorned
the arm of her husband, one-time Medellin cartel cocaine kingpin Carlos Lehder,
during St. Jude's Children's Hospital annual benefit where Mrs. Lehder was
honored for her exemplary work with underprivileged children.

"When asked to comment on the recent birth of his son, Mr. Lehder coyly
remarked, "Once again it appears I have received a lot of quid [gesturing to his
wife] for very little pro quo. America, where anything is possible. Even a
beauty like that loving a wretch like meÉ," The quid pro quo statement rang a
bell. I checked my files and found a June 15, 1996 story by reporter Bill
Moushey that quoted prosecutor Merkle as stating that Lehder "received a very
large quid for a very small quo." Sources familiar with Lehder and his speech
patterns have indicated that he has never been this eloquent and never uses
Latin. But could he have been taking a subtle, mocking swipe at the man who had
tried to put him away? In the quote the Latin grammar was butchered. He should
have said quo, instead of pro quo.

On the lower right hand portion of the page a photo of a reclining Coral bore
the caption, "There's a lot more to being good looking than make up and
prettiness. There's a lot more to being a woman than that. When I look in the
mirror, I just want to like myself. And if I like myself, then I look good." --
Coral Lehder.

One of the things that made the document suspect was a heading at the top of the
page that read, "Commentary." This term is usually used in journalism to
designate a serious editorial piece. This was pure society page stuff. The
clipping had either been camouflaged to disguise its source or else this was
another fake. Before becoming aware of the Baca tape in Castillo's possession I
had attempted to locate the source of the story without success. St. Jude's
Regional Director Paul Withraw told me in November 2000 "Anyone here now was not
here then [early 1999]. We do not have an annual awards banquet." He denied
knowing anything about Mr. and Mrs. Carlos Lehder.

Trying again, after hearing a reference to the story on the tape in June, I was
able to locate a receptionist at St. Jude's regional offices named Gladys who
was a little more forthcoming. "Oh, that was probably the Miracle Cup in Miami.
It was a formal in March of 99. I remember it well. Julio Iglesias sang there.
He's great. I'll have someone call you."

I'm still waiting for the call. However, knowing that Coral's birthday party in
1999 was held on Saturday, April 17 [her actual birthday, as confirmed by her,
is on the 18th] I called Anchor Marketing, the Miami management company
representing singer Julio Iglesias, and asked what he had been doing that day. A
woman named Myra told me that he played at Cesar's Palace in Las Vegas but could
not confirm that he did not privately attend another function (like a birthday
party) either before or after.

Still the faked documents forced me to put the investigation on hold. It was not
until January of 2000, when the fax machine received an unsourced newspaper
photo caption stating that Talavera had served as a technical advisor on the
movie Traffic, that I reached out to Talavera directly to find out what the hell
was going on. The Traffic clip had particularly offended me because I had been
meeting and talking during the preceding weeks with the personal manager
(Patrick Dollard of Propaganda Films) for Traffic's director, Steven Soderbergh.
I knew that Coral had nothing to do with the film. Arriving with the Traffic
clip was another document the government already knew I had and knew that I knew
was a fake.

So, in January I contacted Coral to ask about the documents. I wanted as much to
know who had sent them and why as to find out whether they were real. That
contact led to a number of private conversations in which I was satisfied that
the sender had intended personal harm to Coral and possibly to me if I published
them. Lacking the ability to further authenticate those documents that I
believed to be accurate, I assured Coral that I had no intentions of going to
press or discussing personal information she had revealed in helping me check
them out. I have since learned that several other journalists had received many
of the same documents and withheld them for the same reasons. Curiously,
however, none seem to have received the Treasury report.

It was during this period that I first learned of Talavera's employment by the
American International Group (AIG) in San Francisco. She had given me contact
numbers at her San Francisco office and sent e-mails and faxes so indicating.
Included was a February 13, 2001 fax sent unsolicited to me and author Peter
Dale Scott, PhD, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. The cover sheet had a
letterhead in the name of Coral Marie Talavera Baca and showed a street address
at Two Rincon Center. This is the address of the AIG building in San Francisco.
The cover sheet showed a return e-mail address of Coral.T...@AIG.com. The
heading read, "RE: Penthouse article re: Carlos/Atlantic Monthly article."

The message on the cover sheet said, "Dear Peter and Michael: Attached please
find The Atlantic Monthly article regarding the CIA, which I am passing along
for your pleasure. I got a good chuckle out of itÉ hope you both do also. It's
nice to know that others find humor in the CIA's incompetence. -- Regards,
Coral."

[NOTE: This document, the Treasury report, and other on-the-record e-mails
concerning this investigation and confirming a June 20 lunch date for Talavera
and me can be viewed on my web site at www.copvcia.com. Go to the section for
this series of special reports and, from the Table of Contents, click on
"Support Documentation."]

Coral Reinsurance

In the Spring of 2001 I was checking my e-mails when I opened one from a
colleague that immediately caught my attention. It was titled "Google Search for
AIG + Goldman + Harvard." Several themes immediately sprang to mind. First, I
was aware that Coral was a manager at an American International Group (AIG)
legal office in San Francisco. Coral's name was the same as the subject of the
story attached to my e-mail. Secondly I had, through my newsletter From The
Wilderness (FTW), been writing for many months about the roles played by Goldman
Sachs, its past President, Robert Rubin (former US Treasury Secretary) and The
Harvard Endowment in the massive looting of Russia -- to the tune of as much as
$300 billion -- during the 1990s. [This tragedy has been compellingly documented
by journalist Anne Williamson. Information on Williamson's writings can be found
at www.newsmakingnews.com. Her forthcoming book on the subject, Contagion, is to
be published in serial form by SRA Associates in London.]

The extract attached to the e-mail described a suspicious relationship in 1987
between AIG, the Arkansas Development Financial Authority (ADFA) and Goldman
Sachs, then headed by Rubin, to found an offshore (Barbados) reinsurance company
named Coral Reinsurance. (Reinsurance is simply the insuring of one insurance
company by another to spread risk).

According to a confidential Goldman Sachs stock placement memorandum dated
December 1, 1987, which I have since obtained, Coral Re, as it is known, was
founded by AIG. All potential investors, including the State of Arkansas' ADFA,
were bound to return or destroy the memorandum if they did not participate.
Coral Re was clearly an AIG progeny and ADFA has been voluminously linked to
allegations of drug money laundering in the 1980s. Moreover, there are also
longstanding published links, some confirmed by CIA documents, between drug
smuggling, Barry Seal, the Contras and the Medellin Cartel. All of those links
joined at the Mena (Arkansas) Regional Intermountain Airport. [These subjects
will be discussed in detail in Parts II and III of this series.]

This was something I had to investigate. I was aware of AIG/CIA ties dating back
to the early fifties. From reading the full text of a 1995 story entitled Gray
Money by journalist and mechanical engineer Mark Swaney I learned that the CEO
of AIG, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg had also been a candidate to become CIA
Director in 1995. Greenberg is also the former Chairman of the New York Federal
Reserve Bank.

In a number of e-mails, phone conversations and one face to face meeting
Talavera consistently denied that she, her husband Carlos Lehder, or their good
friend, fugitive financier Robert Vesco, had any connections of any kind to
Coral Reinsurance. Notwithstanding that my investigation into that possible
connection continues. If she is officially labeled as a fraud what then does one
make of her denials about Coral Reinsurance? Of AIG as her confirmed employer?
On June 12 she e-mailed, "Carlos is in no way, shape or form had/has anything to
do with Coral Reinsurance and or AIG's involvement in same.

"Let me save you the next question. Robert Vesco had/has nothing to do with the
above either. [I had never mentioned to her that I knew about Vesco.] Let me go
one step further. No one that I know had/has anything to do with Coral
Reinsurance and/or AIG's involvement in same.

Coral later agreed to meet me for lunch on Wednesday June 20, across the street
from her San Francisco office. Before leaving for San Francisco I had occasion
to speak to an AIG spokesman, Michael Murphy of Bermuda, said by many in the
insurance business to be Hank Greenberg's right-hand man. To my question
regarding Coral's status as the wife of Lehder Murphy responded, "I asked her
the question whether that was her past and she said that she really preferred
not to discuss her personal affairs in a company situationÉ I didn't want to pry
into her life."

The Russians Are Here

I went up to San Francisco a day early. With the Secretary of State documents in
hand I went to see what I could find out about Capital Investment Group (CIG).
Its address, 601 Gateway Blvd. is a new, large, approximately ten story office
building near the San Francisco airport. The incorporation papers showed that
CIG had been there for at least three years until their corporate filings ceased
in 1997. I poked around until I found someone on the building staff who had been
there in the mid 90s.

"Oh yeah," said the building employee who asked that I not use his name. "I
remember the Russians. There was Boris and Vladimir and Natasha." He laughed.
"Real thick accents. They treated the eighth floor like it was Russian
territory. Everyone knew about the Russians. The FBI came and were investigating
them. They said they might be KGB."

The employee remembered one other thing. "They had so many extension chords
running into so many computers that they blew the fuses in the building six
times a day. Everyone was complaining about them. They left in 96 I think. I
have no idea where they went after that."

Doing Lunch

Don't laugh. The name of the restaurant where Coral and I had lunch was The Red
Herring. I stood waiting for her out front at noon. She came across Steuart
Street wearing a black dress and pearls. She was and remains every bit as lovely
as I had remembered. But during the lunch, I found her to be more elegant than
vixen, more intelligent than bimbo, more loyal to her husband Carlos Lehder and
much more "savvy" than Gary Webb's description had led me to expect. She
declined to answer any on-the-record questions about the status or current
activities of her husband or her family. The purpose of the lunch was to thank
me for not publishing the faked documents and to discuss Coral Reinsurance.

Coral repeated all of her earlier categorical denials of any involvement with
Coral Reinsurance. The same went for Carlos and Vesco. She stressed that Lehder
had absolutely nothing to do with the drug business any more. A question about
Capital Investment Group's possible involvement got her agitated after I told
her what I had discovered at Gateway Blvd. the day before.

"The last thing I need is to be connected with any Russians!," she said. "My
Capital Investment Group is in the Bahamas. I fund an orphanage with it. That's
all," she said. I produced a copy of the Treasury report and she went through it
line by line looking for information about CIG. While not confirming that report
was authentic she did not dispute any information it contained with one
exception. She confirmed that the aliases of Coral Marie Talavera, Coral Marie
Baca and Coral Marie Lehder were correct. The date of birth was correct. The
relationship with Lehder (the employee) and Talavera (the subject) was at least
18 years old. She breathed a sigh of relief to read the information showing
Capital Investment Group having been founded by her in 1987 and agreed with the
statement that she and Lehder were the only shareholders. An entry indicating
that in 1995 she had been instrumental in negotiating Lehder's release from the
Bureau of Prisons drew a nod. She made no comment about the fact that the report
showed that she had been investigated by the FBI, Department of Justice,
Department of Defense and the CIA by means of traditional investigation,
"wiretaps" and informants." She also did not question the fact that the report
showed her and Lehder as having multiple residences in Oakland California; San
Francisco; Boca Chica, Florida; Salinas Ecuador; and Great Exuma, the Bahamas.
Her net worth was conservatively "estimated" at $7,369,024.

The only item on the report she disputed was a statement indicating that she
might possibly be Lehder's adopted daughter. That made her angry.

Turning back to Capital Investment Group she said, "Capital Investment Group is
my company. But I work for AIG. My company has nothing to do with these
Russians. This Coral Reinsurance is a good story. You should go after it." I
remembered that in an earlier conversation where she was giving me on-the-record
quotes about her non-involvement with Coral Reinsurance she had said that
reinsurance was a great way to launder money.

Coral told me that she was planning on leaving AIG in December. That, she said,
had nothing to do with my work on Coral Reinsurance. We then talked about the
painful experiences I had had many years ago when, as a young policeman in 1976,
I had fallen in love with a female CIA agent and come across evidence of CIA
involvement in the drug trade. My refusal to go along with her work cost me the
relationship and my attempts to expose CIA wrongdoing had cost me my career. I
remarked that my lover had been every bit as beautiful as Coral. I had been left
with an obsession that had lasted for many years. As we left the restaurant
Coral turned to me sympathetically and said, "Who knows. Maybe one day there'll
be a knock at your door."

As I shook her hand goodbye I answered, "I've worked through that... I would be
immune now."

During the lunch I mentioned the fact that someone connected with Carlos'
defense (Kincaid) was trying to reach him and I mentioned the name. This is the
senior paralegal who has given me information for this story. After the lunch I
sent an e-mail to Coral saying that I had given the paralegal Coral's office
number and that she would be calling. I had no wish to interfere with
attorney-client privilege.

The following Monday Kincaid called me at my Sherman Oaks office and told me
that Coral had resigned on Friday, two days after our lunch and gone to Cuba. An
immediate call to the receptionist confirmed this. Coral was gone.

Official Responses

The FBI -- A spokesman for the San Francisco Office of the FBI stated that he is
unaware of any such (wiretap or e-mail) investigation."

The Department of Justice -- Asked on June 28th to state whether or not Carlos
Lehder is still in prison and/or a member of the Witness Security program or
whether he was an employee of the U.S. government, spokeswoman Susan Dryden
stated that she would look into it and have someone call me back as soon as
possible. As of press time a week later, no one has called me back.

The Treasury -- After three phone calls and voice mail messages resulting in no
response, Treasury spokesperson Tasia Scolinos stated on June 29th that she did
not know the John D'Angelo whom I had spoken to last November and did could not
find the material I had sent him then. I found this strange since she gave me
the same phone number I had used to reach D'Angelo and she had replaced him. She
asked me to write a detailed request for the information I was seeking (which I
did) and send her another fax of the document (which I did). She then suggested
that, because the document had been stamped "Sealed by the Court" that I visit
each court house in the San Francisco Bay area to see if I could find the file.
She would consult an attorney at Treasury and get back to me. As of press time I
have received no further response.

Question: If, after this story breaks, the Department of Justice holds a press
conference and invites CNN and TIME into a prison to interview and photograph
Carlos Lehder, will anyone believe that he will still be there the next day?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: - Special thanks to: Mark Swaney, Al Giordano, Lois, Lara
Johnson, Linda Minor, Dave Hendrix, Marc Harris, Kincaid, and Peter Dale Scott.

COMING NEXT MONTH: The Hunt for Carlos Lehder Continues * ADFA, Arkansas and
Mena * The Medellin Cartel and The Contras * AIG * Coral Reinsurance

A.I.G.

[Part Two of a Multi-Part Series]

by

Michael C. Ruppert

----------

This series is dedicated to Mark Swaney of the Ozark Gazette for his
intellectual courage and tenacity; to John McGlaughlin, the straightest and
toughest man who ever honestly carried a badge; to Celerino Castillo III, with a
heart bigger than his beloved Texas; to all the young men and women, mostly
minorities, who are serving up to life in prison for crimes that don't remotely
compare to those of Carlos Lehder; and to all the innocents in Colombia who
stand at the brink of the next Vietnam War.

------------

There are mounting holes in the story of a woman, Coral Talavera Baca
(henceforth referred to by her maiden name Talavera), who has claimed to be the
wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder, Carlos Lehder, deepening the mystery about
relationships between her, Lehder himself, the insurance giant American
International Group (AIG), and the Central Intelligence Agency. These new
discrepancies, including her prior confirmation of the authenticity of documents
now suspected of being forged, have raised the possibility that the U.S.
Government, in partnership with AIG, has been deliberately planting false
information in the press to support the woman's claims about Lehder's reported
freedom and activities. Talavera has been simultaneously described as either
Staff Counsel for AIG's in house San Francisco law firm or as its office
manager.

In Part I of this series we reported that other journalists, who have asked not
to be identified, had received the same documents we continue to examine here.
Some of those documents purport to be official reports from the U.S. Treasury
and U.S. Attorney's offices. As FTW moves deeper into its multi-part
investigation - inspired by revelations of possible 1987-92 drug money
laundering involving AIG, Goldman Sachs and the Arkansas Development Financial
Authority (ADFA) - attention now focuses on Talavera's employer, AIG. These
events increased my interest in the 1987 founding of Coral Reinsurance (Coral
Re) by AIG, Goldman Sachs (whose then Vice Chairman Robert Rubin served as
Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration) and ADFA. Lehder, arrested in
1987, was allowed to keep almost $3 billion in assets in a move severely
criticized by Merkle. Where did that money go? Was it hidden it in a major
insurance company with cash flows large enough to conceal it? This question,
more than any other, except establishing Lehder's current status, prompted me to
begin this investigation.

What is known about the firm which employs Talavera, who is not a lawyer, and
permits her to represent herself as "Staff Counsel" for its San Francisco legal
office while simultaneously representing herself as the wife of a one-time
cocaine cartel head? On June 22, just two days after I had lunch with her and
confirmed that I was writing a story, a receptionist at Brown and Boland, AIG's
San Francisco in-house counsel, told me and others that Talavera had fled her
employment and gone to Cuba. Yet the firm, located in the AIG building and using
AIG e-mail addresses, is currently announcing in new, dated voice mail messages,
that she is still the office manager.

FTW has also conducted an extensive investigation into AIG and its predecessors,
including the C. V. Starr Insurance Companies, revealing deep connections to US
intelligence dating back to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War
II. These connections include documented CIA operatives connected to drug
smuggling from Southeast Asia and a current board member, Frank Wisner, Jr.,
whose father was a key figure in the creation of the CIA. History, as well as
AIG's current operations, suggest that these relationships continue unabated
today.

These connections may go a long way toward explaining the behavior of Talavera,
a woman whose education, work experience and history apparently do not qualify
her to manage a legal office which, according to AIG spokesman Michael Murphy,
specializes in the international operations of a company operating in 130
countries and with year 2000 revenues of $46 billion.

While the mystery deepens about the woman claiming to be his wife, the key
question as to whether or not Lehder is free remains unanswered.

In Part I of this series I reported that through a number of vehicles including
correspondence, e-mails, a telephone listing in the name of Carlos Lehder, tape
recorded conversations and in-person statements Coral Talavera had represented
to a number of people, including a retired DEA agent, me and others that she was
the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder. In an on-the-record
interview and a legally tape recorded conversation she has also vouched for the
authenticity of documents that have either been shown to be forged or are now
seriously suspected of being forged. She additionally made it clear that Lehder
was out of prison, working for the United States government and directly
connected to the CIA and the U.S. Treasury. This scenario was circumstantially,
but well supported by statements from a number of credible sources, including
reporters, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Lehder's prosecutor (former U.S.
Attorney Robert Merkle). Their independent statements gave credibility to many
of Talavera's assertions. And suspicion or belief has been widespread that
Lehder is, in fact, free -- regardless of Talavera's actions. All this is in
spite of the fact that Lehder has been officially serving 55 non-parolable years
in prison after giving testimony of questionable value in the 1990 trial of
former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega's prosecutor, Robert Mueller,
who put Lehder on the stand, has just recently been confirmed to head the FBI.

During a lunch meeting with Talavera on June 20 of this year, she went on the
record with me stating that she had worked for AIG since 1994 and that she also
owned a currently existing company named Capital Investment Group, Ltd. (CIG) in
the Bahamas. She had earlier written me, speaking for Lehder, stating that
neither she nor Lehder had any connection to Coral Re. In a 1999 tape recorded
conversation she had discussed her marriage to Lehder and e-mail notifications
allegedly sent by him introducing her as his wife. My investigation since that
time has proven all of these assertions, and many others allegedly made to
colleagues or social contacts, are lies at worst, or seriously suspect, at best.

One of the critical documents discussed in Part I of this series was a U.S.
Treasury "Report of Investigation," the authenticity of which I had been unable
to ascertain despite repeated contacts with Treasury. Since publication of Part
I have received communication from "Kincaid," a confidential legal source, who
has obtained an evaluation of that document from Lehder's current legal team,
that the document is not authentic. This was the same document that, at the June
20 lunch meeting, Talavera went on the record to evaluate, line by line, and
state was a real document that had been filed in a court case that she would not
disclose to me.

The purpose of this portion of the on the record interview was to clarify
Talavera's relationship with a Bahamian investment company known as Capital
Investment Group, Ltd.

Although Bahamian law provides great secrecy for corporations, I was able to
learn in late July that CIG in the Bahamas was "not listed" on government
records. Through a confidential source with Caribbean banking connections, I was
told that a banking official offered four possible explanations for CIG's "lack
of registry." They include: the company was never formed; the company failed to
pay dues; the file was lost; and, the file was lost intentionally at the request
of the Prime Minister or the Attorney General. Coincidentally, the largest
single shareholder in AIG, the Starr International Company (SICO), owning 13.62%
of AIG stock, is also headquartered in the Bahamas.

Information, developed while looking further into Talavera's background now
casts suspicion on the 1999 reported birth of a son, allegedly fathered by
Lehder, as well as her employment history, education and qualifications to
manage a legal office. So, with the exception of the statement that neither she
nor Carlos Lehder had anything to do with the founding of Coral Re, almost all
of Talavera's statements regarding her history have been shown to be false. This
now calls the Coral Re denial into question as well.

All of this begs the question as to why AIG would protect and employ a woman
engaged in these and other behaviors and with a history that could only damage
the company's reputation. The one fact of Coral Talavera's life that has not
been called into question by any of the sources I have contacted is that Coral
knew and had a relationship with Carlos Lehder in the 1980s. The suspicions of
many that Lehder is free have not yet been allayed. So these disturbing
developments also drive home the importance of a question that the US government
still has not answered. Where is Carlos Lehder and what motive could the
government -- or AIG -- have for wanting some people to believe, or know, that
he is free? If I am so patently wrong in what I have reported in this
investigation, including the publication of the tape- recorded conversation
wherein Talavera openly talks about Lehder's freedom and says that she is his
wife, why doesn't the government just deny it, produce Lehder, discredit
Talavera and state that the rest is pure bunk? Is there a legend -- a cover
story -- that the CIA and AIG are trying to protect for the benefit of unknown
third parties in other parts of the world?

Why would AIG spokesman Michael Murphy have stated, after speaking with me and
learning of Talavera's representations regarding Lehder, that he mentioned them
briefly to her but did not pursue them because he, "didn't want to pry"?

Deconstructing Coral

Coral Talavera's life has improved dramatically since 1995, the year that she
provided San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb with documents including
federal grand jury transcripts that started an investigation which subsequently
established, through government records and a CIA Inspector General report, that
the CIA was a hands-on player in the drug trade during the Contra war years of
1982-88. According to records filed in a protracted and contentious 1994 divorce
case involving a previous husband -- which I obtained from the court -- Talavera
was working as a legal secretary for the Oakland law firm of Hanna, Brophy et
al. Her salary was approximately $26,000 per year and, according to a
spokesperson for the firm which I also visited recently, she was employed there
for two years until February, 1994. Hanna, Brophy specializes in Workman's
Compensation defense of insurance companies in California.

Confidential sources familiar with Talavera led me to another law firm, Schmit,
Morris, Bitner and Schmit where she reportedly worked throughout 1995 and into
1996, also as a secretary. Representatives of that firm refused to disclose any
information unless I presented written authorization from Talavera for them to
do so. Schmit, Morris is also a law firm exclusively devoted to Workman's
Compensation defense. It may be a single-client firm representing AIG which may
explain Talavera's "promotion" to the in-house firm but I have been unable to
confirm this.

Briefs and petitions filed in Talavera's divorce also indicate that she was the
mother of one female child whose paternity was ultimately questioned and later
verified as being of Talavera's then husband. In a dispute over the property
settlement it was alleged that she had stolen the seal of a notary public and
forged a deed giving her sole title to a piece of real estate that was later
judged to be community property. This fact lends credibility to allegations made
by a number of people, who asked not to be identified, that she was the likely
source of the forged documents. Those include forged newspaper stories and
magazine articles, alleged memoranda from an unspecified U.S. Attorney's Office,
a faked custom printed invitation to a birthday party allegedly sent by Lehder,
photographic surveillance reports (including one purporting to be of her newborn
son, Carlo), and the Treasury report which was described as "consistent with
similar reports" by a source familiar with Lehder's case. [Some of these
documents are posted on the FTW web site at www.copvcia.com. ]

It was also alleged in the divorce settlement that Talavera had deliberately
placed the name of someone other than the real father, her then husband, on the
birth certificate of her daughter. Even though she told me, during a 1998
unsolicited phone call, initiated by her, that she was going to have a child by
Lehder, people who knew her during the period state that she was never pregnant.
As Talavera's story fell apart I checked birth records in two Bay Area counties
and found no recorded births listing Talavera as the mother aside from the 1992
birth of her one known daughter. Yet, in the 1999 taped conversation with
Castillo, Talavera specifically referred to a purported news story entitled
Beauty and the Beast which described a society function which Talavera and
Lehder allegedly attended in 1999, "just three days after the birth of her son."
During the conversation with Castillo, Talavera did not dispute this reporting
about the birth. Instead she went to lengths to castigate the mean-spirited
people who had written the story for calling Lehder, her husband, a beast. Asked
by Castillo what paper had written the story Talavera stated on the tape, "Aw,
who the hell knows?"

One document that seems beyond Talavera's ken, however, is a completely
rewritten and re-typeset article from the August, 2000 issue of Architectural
Digest, in which the 1,000 word story about the Ixtapa, Mexico home of a Levi
Strauss executive was completely rewritten with copy about the new home of Mr.
and Mrs. Carlos Lehder. In numerous conversations and in written correspondence
I found Talavera to be a good communicator, at times very good, but her writing
did not reach the style and skill of the professional journalist who had to
rewrite the story and make the copy fit exactly into the same photograph-filled
layout before faxing it to me. Indeed, there is nothing in Talavera's
educational or employment background, that I have found, to indicate such skill.
In fact, her statements to colleagues about her education also reveal more
glaring holes in her story.

Acting again on information from confidential sources who have worked with
Talavera, I learned that she had allegedly told people that she had BA and MBA
degrees from St. Mary's college in the Bay Area. Lacking the ability to quote
these sources by name I cannot confirm whether she made the representations or
not. However, a check with the registrar at St. Mary's has revealed that she
earned a BA in Liberal Arts in 1988 but has subsequently earned no advanced
degrees of any kind. The registrar's office also stated that Talavera was
currently enrolled in a graduate program but that it is not an MBA program.

All of these revelations prompted me to recontact Coral's "former" employer on
August 3 to see what I could learn about her employment at AIG. It was then that
I heard the voice messages informing me that she was still there. These
messages, recorded within the last three weeks by senior attorneys Robert Brown
and Larry Kloenhamer, both specifically refer callers to Office Manager Coral
Talavera if the caller needs immediate assistance. A switchboard operator also
confirmed Talavera's current status with AIG. Another interesting fact is that,
on his current resume with the California State Bar Association, Robert Brown
states that he is a Vietnam-era veteran of U.S. Army Special Forces. There is
abundant evidence linking Special Forces to covert CIA operations and drug
smuggling during the Vietnam War.

Credible sources with longstanding legal and business experience are perplexed
to explain Talavera's apparent meteoric professional rise between 1992 and 1996.
Asked about the transition from legal secretary at a Workman's Comp defense firm
to office manager for the firm handling some of AIG's international operations,
a legal expert with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of law offices
summed up general reactions to Talavera's rise saying, "It's unprecedented."

The question as to what AIG knew and when it knew it gets stickier with the fact
that, in no less than ten e-mail messages to me, Talavera had a signature block
reading, "Coral Talavera, AIG Staff Counsel, 121 Spear Street, Suite 410, San
Francisco, CA 94105. [An example of this can be viewed on my web site at
www.copvcia.com]. The legal expert told me that this practice would be illegal
in the state of Florida. A spokeswoman for the California State Bar Association
told me on August 5 that the use of the term was, at best, misleading. She
referred me to the San Francisco County District Attorney's office which
subsequently stated that the action could be a violation of California's
Business and Professions Code. Although Talavera was quick to point out in a
number of conversations that she was not an attorney, the use of the term in
official correspondence, might give AIG's overseas clients a different
impression.

I have left three messages at AIG's law offices in San Francisco seeking
clarification. At press time no calls have been returned. The current voice mail
messages refer to Talavera as the "office manager."

So what is known then about the firm which employs Talavera and permits her to
represent herself as Staff Counsel for its San Francisco legal office while
simultaneously representing herself as the wife of a one-time cocaine cartel
head?

Is it possible that AIG's CEO Hank Greenberg, a legendary stickler for detail
and hands-on manager, would permit such activity, including the representation
about owning an offshore investment company that might compete with AIG? In a
June interview, AIG spokesman Michael Murphy, head of AIG operations in the
Bahamas and reported to be Greenberg's right-hand man said, "Whenever there's
the slightest hint of anything improper or of misuse of funds, [AIG CEO Hank]
Greenberg is the first guy to lead the posse and clean house." I placed one
follow-up call to Murphy's office for further clarification but it was not
returned.

I was able to locate two sources in the insurance industry who were familiar
with AIG and ask them if Talavera could be doing all this without Greenberg's
knowledge. One response was short and direct, "The possibility that this is
going on without Greenberg knowing is less than zero."

The second source was a bit more diplomatic. "M.R. Greenberg is a legendary
leader. All current and former AIG employees know he is not only a visionary but
a detail oriented person on all aspects of the firm's business activities
worldwide. The General Counsel of AIG, Ernest Patrikis, was the senior legal
officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and given the scrutiny AIG is
subject to, it would surprise me if Mr. Greenberg was not aware. Sometimes,
however, in a big company things slip by, but when he becomes aware, the
situation is addressed quickly."

Deconstructing AIG

The seemingly mundane insurance business is, in fact, one of the primary weapons
of intelligence gathering around the world. And the founder of AIG, Cornelius
Starr, was an architect of its use in World War II. Consider these

quotes from a September 22, 2000 story by Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Fritz
entitled, "The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men."

"COLLEGE PARK, Md.ÑThey knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up,
which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for
roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration.

"They werenÕt just secret agents. They were secret insurance agents. These
undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global
industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf HitlerÕs
Third Reich.

"Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the
ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic
Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.

"Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the unit gathered
intelligence on the enemyÕs insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and
suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the
unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables
of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in
Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf. 'They used insurance information as a
weapon of war,' said Greg Bradsher, a historian and National Archives expert on
the declassified records. That insurance information was critical to Allied
strategists, who were seeking to cripple the enemyÕs industrial base and batter
morale by burning citiesÉ

"Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance industry before the war
began and managed to actually expand its business as it conquered continental
Europe. As wholesalers, or 'reinsurers,' these companies covered other insurers
against a catastrophic loss that could wipe out a single company. In the
process, the wholesaler learned everything about the lives and property they
were reinsuring [emphasis, mine]É

"The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William "Wild Bill" Donovan and
California-born insurance magnate Cornelius V. Starr. Starr had started out
selling insurance to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years,
would build what is now American International Group, one of the biggest
insurance companies in the world. He was forced to move his operation to New
York in 1939, when Japan invaded China. In the early years of the war, the
German insurance industry expanded its business as it conquered continental
Europe. Nazi insurance brokers who traveled with combat troops during invasions
also scoured local insurance files for strategic dataÉ"

On the special value of reinsurance as a vehicle for intelligence gathering
Fritz wrote:

"Such convoluted business dealings were traced largely through the work of
Ernest Stiefel, a member of the intelligence unit who diagrammed the way
insurance companies pooled their risks, invested in and insured each other and,
as a result, willfully or witlessly shared data about nations at war. 'Stiefel
mapped the entire system, said [Timothy] Naftali, a historian at the University
of VirginiaÕs Miller Center of Public Affairs. "Each time I take a piece of your
risk, youÕve got to give me information. I am not going to reinsure your company
unless you give me all the documents. ThatÕs great intelligence informationÉ"

Later in the story Fritz confirmed the value of reinsurance as a vehicle for
money laundering:

"With the Axis defeat imminent, U.S. intelligence officials focused greater
attention on ways the Nazis would try to use insurance to hide and launder their
assets so they could be used to rebuild the war machine..."

And how did Starr benefit from his service? Fritz writes:

"Starr sent insurance agents into Asia and Europe even before the bombs stopped
falling and built what eventually became AIG, which today has its world
headquarters in the same downtown New York building where the tiny OSS unit
toiled in the deepest secrecy.

Starr died in 1968, but his empire endures. AIG is the biggest foreign insurance
company in Japan. More than a third of its $40 billion in revenue last year came
from the Far East theater that Starr helped carpet bomb and liberate.

"In The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA (Basic Books, 1983)
author Bradley F. Smith shed more light on Cornelius Starr and the OSS.

"It [a secret intelligence operation in China] was formed in April 1942, when
[Bill] Donovan persuaded British insurance magnate C.V. Starr to let C.O.I.
(Covert Operations Intelligence) use his commercial and insurance connections in
occupied China and Formosa to create a deep cover intelligence network. Although
the State Department was nervous about the operation, Donovan went ahead and,
with the cooperation of the U.S. Army, bypassed the diplomats in operating the
communications system. Starr's people handled their own internal communication,
then turned over their intelligence findings to [General Richard] Stillwell's
headquarters for dispatch to the U.S. Starr, who was residing in the U.S. at the
time, provided these services to the Allied cause. Later Starr became disgusted
with what he considered Donovan's inefficiency and transferred his services to
the British S.I.S. But the Starr-Donovan connection worked in China at least
until the winter of 1943-44.

"The establishment of the Starr intelligence network, an operation so secret
that it even escaped the attention of Chiang's [Kai Shek] security police (and
of historians heretofore), was a major accomplishment for an intelligence
operation barely six months old" [p.133]

Drug Connections

The War Conspiracy (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972) by Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D. of UC
Berkeley is a book few Americans have seen. The compelling and meticulously
documented history of the creation of the Vietnam War was rushed from bookstores
and shelves almost as soon as it was published. Scott, author of Deep Politics
and the Assassination of JFK, The Iran-Contra Connection and Cocaine Politics is
an expert on the interface between covert operations and the international drug
trade. In Chapter Six of The War Conspiracy, entitled "Opium, the China Lobby,
and the CIA," Scott traces the connections between drug trafficking in Southeast
Asia and American intelligence operations. There are detailed references to C.V.
Starr and connections with some figures, like CIA veteran Paul Helliwell, who
have been irrevocably and blatantly tied to the drug trade. Those connections
also lead directly into the so-called "China Lobby" and firms identified as
either CIA proprietaries or "affiliates" such as Sea Supply, Inc. (run by
Helliwell), Civil Air Transport (CAT), a CIA proprietary, Civil Air Transport
Co., Ltd. (CATCL) -- a separate firm not owned by but affiliated with the CIA
through CAT-- and Air America, an evolution of Civil Air Transport. In 1957 the
Airdale Corporation which owned 100 per cent of Air America changed its name to
Pacific Corp. In 1976 CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston testified before the
Senate's Church Committee looking into intelligence abuses about CIA Air
operations. When asked what the one single holding company, above all others,
was at the top of CIA proprietary and contract air operations, he identified
Pacific Corporation. According to published reports, Houston also testified that
the CIA also had interests in investment and insurance companies.

Pacific Corp -- which one source has told me is currently insured by AIG -- and
the CIA have, in the 1990s, been connected with the "laundering" of some 28
C-130 military transport aircraft into the hands of private, forest fire, air
tanker contractors in the U.S. Subsequently, many of those C-130s turned up all
over the world. Some were directly involved in drug trafficking and one in
particular, operated by Aero-Postale de Mexico, was seized with a billion
dollars in cocaine aboard in Mexico City in 1996. [See FTW, Vol I, No 10 - Dec,
1998]

A key figure in the post-war operations was lawyer Tommy Corcoran, a legendary
"fixer" in the Roosevelt Administration, who went on to represent Nationalist
Chinese financial interests after the Communists took power in 1949. Corcoran
and Helliwell worked closely together in Asia. One of the critical and
well-documented U.S. responses to the Communist takeover was to fund remnants of
the Chinese Nationalist army -- who had fled into Burma, Thailand and Laos --
with opium. Much of that money, along with the drugs, found its way into the
U.S. As noted by writers like the late Jonathan Kwitny of The Wall Street
Journal in The Crimes of Patriots (Penguin, 1987) and by Professor Alfred McCoy
of the University of Wisconsin in The Politics of Heroin (1972, 1991, Lawrence
Hill Books), Helliwell paid the troops using five-pound "sticky" bars of heroin.
Helliwell later went on to head Castle Bank and Trust in Florida and the Bahamas
and then was heavily involved with The Nugan Hand Bank in Australia and the U.S.
Both banks have been heavily linked in official investigations to both drug
trafficking and money laundering while also moving money for the CIA.

In The War Conspiracy Scott writes:

"For it is a striking fact that the law firm of Tommy Corcoran, the Washington
lawyer for CATCL and [China Lobbyist] T.V. Soong, had its own links to the
interlocking worlds of the China Lobby and of organized crime. His partner W.S.
Youngman joined the board of U.S. Life and other insurance companies, controlled
by C.V. Starr (OSS China) with the help of Philippine and other Asian capital.
Youngman's fellow-directors of Starr's companies have included John S.
Woodbridge of Pan Am, Francis F. Randolph of J. and W. Seligman, W. Palmer Dixon
of Loeb Rhoades, Charles Edison of the postwar China Lobby, and Alfred B. Jones
of the Nationalist Chinese government's registered agency, the Universal Trading
Corporation. The [Senate] McClellan Committee heard that in 1950 U.S. Life
[later part of AIG] (with Edison as a director) and a much smaller company
(Union Casualty of New York) were allotted a major Teamsters insurance contract,
after a lower bid from a larger and safer company had been rejected, [Jimmy]
Hoffa was accused by a fellow trustee, testifying under oath before another
committee, of intervening on behalf of US Life and Union Casualty, whose agents
were Hoffa's close business associates Paul and Allen DorfmanÉ

"We find the same network linking CIA proprietaries, war lobbies, and organized
crime, when we turn our attention from CAT to the other identified supporter of
opium activities, Sea Supply, Inc. Sea Supply, Inc. was organized in Miami,
Florida, where its counsel, Paul E. Helliwell, doubled after 1951 as the counsel
for C.V. Starr insurance interests, and also as the Thai consul in Miami..."

The historical connections to CIA covert or proprietary air operations are
interesting in light of the fact that AIG proudly announces in its 2000 annual
report that with 494 full-sized jets -- 89 of which it manages itself -- it owns
"the world's most modern fleet of aircraft." AIG customers include major
airlines and a number of air transport companies. AIG also reported that in 2000
it leased additional aircraft "to a number of established customers" in South
America.

CIA proprietary ownership or interest in companies is very difficult to detect.
But, it has been proven by writers like Scott and many other researchers who
combed through the paperwork that surfaced during the Iran-Contra scandals of
the 1980s, where Air America assets were laundered into companies like Southern
Air Transport and Evergreen Air. The single largest stockholder in AIG, the
Starr International Company (SICO), holds 13.62% of AIG stock. Aside from
knowing that Maurice Greenberg owns 21.86% of SICO (source, SEC) we may never be
able to find out who, or what, owns the rest.

They Even Put It In Writing

In September 1997 a group of business and labor executives* reviewed and made
recommendations on the use of sanctions by the President of the United States to
influence world events. One of those executives was Oackley Johnson of AIG. The
group, called the Sanctions Working Group (SWG) of the Department of State's
Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, having completed its review
of the way the White House has imposed sanctions on foreign governments,
completed a detailed report which was sent to the State Department by the
Committee head, Michael Gadbaw of General Electric. The advisory panel called
for massive revisions in the way sanctions were selected and imposed in foreign
affairs to punish or induce foreign governments to behave the way the U.S.
wants.

Approval of the recommendations was unanimous from the business community and
opposition was unanimous and acerbic from organized labor representatives who
sent their dissent separately to the State Department. The report, they said,
cared about nothing but the financial interests of major U.S. Corporations.

As an Appendix to the report, which was found at
http://www.usaengage.org/studies.html, Footnote 4 following Tab 5 listed valid
U.S. foreign policy objectives. It states: This report addresses sanctions
undertaken pursuant to laws or regulations that authorize or mandate unilateral
economic sanctions in order to achieve a foreign policy objective.

"The foreign policy objectives may include the transition to democracy, opposing
terrorism or support of terrorist activities, sanctioning drug production and
transit or trafficking, supporting human and worker rights and religious
freedom, opposing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and protecting
the environment."

The language "support of terrorist activities" is ambiguous. It could mean that
the U.S. would punish those who support terrorist activities or that it might
support terrorist activities itself. The drug trafficking language also catches
the panel on the horns of a dilemma. As defined in the American Heritage
dictionary, to sanction something means to "grant authoritative permission or
approval." A secondary meaning means "to punish." In government documents and
reports, especially those laying out or recommending policy, every word is
reviewed dozens of times. Lawyers and decision makers sign off on every aspect.
Drafts usually circulate for weeks before final approval. This language may mean
exactly what it says. And if there is ambiguity then it must have been intended.

The whole purpose of From The Wilderness is to teach the world that it is a
specific intent of Wall Street and the U.S. government to give authoritative
permission and approval to the drug trade to ensure that drug profits -- the
money -- comes back under the control of the people who sanctioned the trade to
begin with. Is that what Coral Talavera is doing at AIG? I e-mailed Oackley
Johnson at AIG and asked him to comment on the report. At press time he has not
responded. I have also solicited (again) comment from AIG Corporate offices on
the content of this story. Also no response. But I hope to have something from
them for Part III in September.

AIG has also been connected, albeit indirectly, to a major money laundering
case. As the insurance carrier for the Bank of New York (BoNY) they are
defending BoNY in a suit filed this year by BoNY shareholders charging
mismanagement of the bank. That suit arose from revelations (See FTW Vol II,
No.7, 9/99) in the major media that BoNY had been involved in laundering between
$7 and $10 billion in criminal money out of Russia during the 1990s under its
Chairman, Thomas Renyi. A credible source has told me, but I have not been able
to confirm it, that AIG also insures the U.S. Department of Justice which was
charged with investigating BoNY and which decided not to file criminal charges
in 1999.

Perhaps no one knows more about your life, not even your immediate family, than
the various companies who insure you. Your health, finances, work history,
medical records, driving habits and almost every other aspect of your life is
recorded in insurance files and records. Is this necessarily something you want
available to the CIA or any part of the government? Remember that the CIA
doesn't operate under the law or respect privacy. What happens then when a giant
like AIG winds up insuring parts of the government or major businesses that
violate your rights or break the law?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Members of the Sanctions Working Group of the State Department's Advisory
Committee on International Economic Policy: -- Mark Anderson, AFL-CIO * Harvey
Bale, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assoc. * Steven Beckman, United Auto Workers
* Seddik Belyamani, Boeing * Fred Bergsten, Institute for International
Economics * Thomas Block, Chase Manhattan Bank * Carol Brookins, World
Perspectives * Anthony Corso, Mobil *Greg Farmer, Northern Telecom * Isaiah
Frank, Johns Hopkins (SAIS) * Don Fuqua, Aerospace Industries Association * R.
Michael Gadbaw, General Electric * R. Harkin, United Technologies * Robert
Hormats, Goldman, Sachs International * Nancie Johnson, DuPont * Oackley
Johnson, AIG * Robert Johnson, Phelps Dodge & Morenci * Dale Jones, Halliburton
* Robert Kapp, US-China Business Council * Frank Kittredge, National Foreign
Trade Council * Mary Lou Lackey, Motorola * T. Lee, AFL-CIO *Charles Levy -
Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering *Clement Malin, Texaco * Rebecca Mark, Enron
Development *Joel Messing, Cigna *Robert Niemeth, Pfizer * G. Staley, Toys R Us
* Roger Swanson, US-Japan Business Council * Sandra Taylor, Eastman Kodak *
Robert Vastine, Coalition of Service Industries * Alan Wolff, Dewey Ballantine *

AIG Highlights

a.. AIG has the largest market capitalization (total value of all shares) of
any insurance or financial services organization on the NYSE -- $198.4 billion
in 2000. It has operations in 130 countries.
b.. Ranked #7 on Forbes Super 100 list of companies. After GE, Citigroup,
BankAmerica, Exxon, IBM and Ford.

c.. The largest U.S. underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance.

d.. Operates AIG Financial Services Group, which sells investments,
international asset management and "advisory" services.

e.. The largest seller of retirement annuities in the U.S. through its
acquisitions of SunAmerica and American General in 1999 and 2001 respectively.

f.. AIG is licensed to operate banks in three countries, including the US
(1999) and also issues credit cards.

History

a.. Originally formed as the Asia Life/C. V. Starr Companies in the 1930s by
founder Cornelius Starr who served with the OSS during World War II. The Starr
corporation shared the same office building as OSS headquarters in New York, and
functioned as an intelligence conduit on shipping, manufacturing and industrial
bombing targets in Asia and Germany throughout WW II. [The Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 22, 2000]
b.. Early business centered primarily in China and Asia. Starr interests
centered in Asia and Panama.
c.. 1951 - Changed name to American Life Insurance Company (ALICO).
d.. Acquired major U.S. insurance companies in the 1950s and 60s.
e.. 1967 - Incorporated as American International Group (AIG).

f.. 1969 - First public offering.

g.. First western insurance company to create joint ventures with Hungary,
Poland and Romania in the 1960s.

h.. In 1980 established joint venture with the People's Insurance Company of
China.

i.. First insurance company licensed to do business on its own in Japan
(1952), Mainland China (1990), and Vietnam (2000).

j.. Member and staunch supporter of the World Trade Organization. During 1997
WTO negotiations, AIG collaborated directly with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
to negotiate Asian financial, investment and trade agreements covering 102
countries, which one report described as bullying and marked by "messages back
and forth from Geneva to Washington, andÉ reports, between the US Treasury and
American International Group." [Third World Economics, No. 175, 16-31, 12/97].

k.. During the 1990s involved with U.S. investment in Russia (overseen by
Goldman Sachs and The Harvard Endowment) through Brunswick Brokerage. Secured a
$300 million OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) guarantee for a
Russian investment fund. [Paul Likoudis, Editor, The Wanderer.]

l.. AIG has "joint venture" interests in Latin America through ZonaFinanciera
with Citibank which in May 2001 purchased Mexico's Banamex and will be placing
reported drug money launderer and trafficker Roberto Hernandez on its board of
directors.

m.. AIG insures more than half of the major US airports.

n.. The world's "market leader" in leasing and remarketing of advanced
technology commercial jet aircraft - "the most modern fleet of aircraft in the
world. " With 2000 revenues of $2.44 billion AIG owns a fleet of 494 jets, 89 of
which it "manages" itself. Clients include airlines in U.S., Canada, Europe,
Asia, the Middle East and South America where, in 2000, it leased, "additional
aircraft to a number of established customers."

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, 75 -- Chairman and CEO of American International Group
(AIG)

a.. WWII, Served with US Army Signal Corps and Army Rangers
b.. LL.B., New York Law School, 1950
c.. Korean War, Investigated reported massacres at POW camps run by UN/US
personnel
d.. Elected AIG President in 1962, CEO in 1967 and Chairman in 1989.
e.. Former Chairman and Director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
f.. Forbes 111th richest man in the world (More than $4 billion net worth)
g.. Vice Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations
h.. Vice Chairman, Center for Strategic and International Studies
i.. Member, Board of Directors, New York Stock Exchange
j.. Member, Trilateral Commission
k.. Member, The Bilderberger Group
l.. Chairman, The Nixon Center
m.. Chairman, U.S.-China Business Council
n.. Chairman, The Starr Foundation
o.. Accompanied President George Bush on his trade mission to China in 1992
p.. Major contributor to The Heritage Foundation
q.. Name floated by Senator Arlen Specter to become CIA director in 1995
(Reported in U.S. News and World Report - 2/20/95)
AIG Board's Board of Directors as Reported to the SEC

a.. M. BERNARD AIDINOFF -- SENIOR COUNSEL, SULLIVAN & CROMWELL (Attorneys).
Director since 1984 -- Age 72. [NOTE: Sullivan and Cromwell is the legal firm
that was home to Eisenhower Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his
brother Allen Dulles, who was a key OSS leader during WWII and who served as CIA
Director under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.]
b.. ELI BROAD -- CHAIRMAN, SUNAMERICA INC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of AIG).
Director since 1999 -- Age 67.
c.. PEI-YUAN CHIA -- RETIRED VICE CHAIRMAN, CITICORP AND CITIBANK, N.A.
Director since 1996 -- Age 62.
d.. MARSHALL A. COHEN -- COUNSEL, CASSELS BROCK & BLACKWELL (Barristers and
Solicitors); FORMER PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE MOLSON COMPANIES
LIMITED. Director since 1992 -- Age 66.
e.. BARBER B. CONABLE, JR. -- RETIRED; FORMER PRESIDENT, WORLD BANK, AND
FORMER MEMBER, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Director since 1991 --
Age 78.
f.. MARTIN S. FELDSTEIN -- PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY;
PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
(Nonprofit Economic Research Center), Director HCA and TRW. Director since
1987 -- Age 61.
g.. ELLEN V. FUTTER -- PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Director,
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Consolidated Edison, Inc. (also serves as Trustee
of Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Director since 1999 -- Age 51.
h.. MAURICE R. GREENBERG -- CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AIG,
Director, Transatlantic Holdings, Inc. ('Transatlantic'), which is owned 60.0
percent by AIG. Also serves as Chairman of Transatlantic, a director, President
and Chief Executive Officer of C.V. Starr & Co., Inc. ('Starr'), and a director
of Starr International Company, Inc. ('SICO') and International Lease Finance
Corporation ('ILFC'); Starr and SICO are private holding companies (see
'Ownership of Certain Securities'); ILFC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AIG.
Director since 1967 -- Age 75.
i.. CARLA A. HILLS -- CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HILLS & COMPANY;
FORMER UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE. (Hills & Company provides
international investment, trade and risk advisory services). Director, AOL Time
Warner Inc., Chevron Corporation, Lucent Technologies Inc. Director since
1993 -- Age 67.
j.. FRANK J. HOENEMEYER -- FINANCIAL CONSULTANT; RETIRED VICE CHAIRMAN,
PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA. Director, Carey Fiduciary Advisors,
Inc. Cincinnati, Inc. Director since 1985 -- Age 81.
k.. RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE -- FORMER UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED
NATIONS; FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN, CREDIT SUISSE, FIRST BOSTON. Elected February 7,
2001 -- Age 59.
a.. EDWARD E. MATTHEWS -- VICE CHAIRMAN -- INVESTMENTS AND FINANCIAL SERVICES,
AIG. Director, Transatlantic. Also serves as a director of Starr, SICO and
ILFC, -- Director since 1973 -- Age 69.
b.. HOWARD I. SMITH -- EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER,
AIG. Director, Transatlantic, 21st Century Insurance Group ('21st Century'),
which is owned 62.8 percent by AIG. Also serves as a director of Starr, SICO and
ILFC -- Director since 1997 -- Age 56.
c.. THOMAS R. TIZZIO -- SENIOR VICE CHAIRMAN -- GENERAL INSURANCE, AIG.
Director, Transatlantic. Also serves as a director of Starr and SICO. --
Director since 1986 -- Age 63.
d.. EDMUND S.W. TSE -- VICE CHAIRMAN -- LIFE INSURANCE, AIG. Also serves as a
director of Starr and SICO. -- Director since 1996 -- Age 63.
a.. JAY S. WINTROB -- PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SUNAMERICA.
Director, Anchor National Life Insurance Company and First SunAmerica Life
Insurance Company, wholly-owned subsidiaries of AIG. Also serves as a director
of Starr and SICO -- Director since 1999 -- Age 44.
b.. FRANK G. WISNER -- VICE CHAIRMAN -- EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, AIG. Director, EOG
Resources, Inc. -- Director since 1997 -- Age 62. [NOTE: Wisner is the son of
former CIA deputy Director, Frank Wisner, Sr. who was present at the creation of
the CIA. As head of the Office of Policy Coordination, the forerunner of the
CIA's Directorate of Operations. Wisner, Sr. once boasted, "I can play the media
like a mighty Wurlitzer." In a 35 year career with the State department, Wisner,
Jr. served as U.S. Ambassador to India, the Philippines, Egypt and Zambia.]
c.. FRANK G. ZARB -- CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECURITIES DEALERS,
INC. AND THE NASDAQ STOCK MARKET, INC. -- Elected February 7, 2001 -- Age 66
d.. AIG is a client of Henry Kissinger and Associates. Kissinger is the
Chairman of AIG's International Advisory Board.

[=> Vox Populi ©]

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in
order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada.
So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
~George W. Bush on how he dodged the
Vietnam draft---1994

[=> Vox Populi ©]

>> "I've been speculating for years that Lehder was free… Why

>> Carlos Lehder… I couldn't believe it! What was she doing

>> conversations I was excluded from… There's a lot of stuff
>> that went on that was questionable…I've been speculating

>> for years that Lehder was free but I figured he'd be in
>> Germany or some tax haven with his money, which he still

>> has… One of the major things that was a red flag in terms

>> of indicating that he made a deal was that Lehder wasn't

>> required to turn over his assets… There was essentially

>> CB: We’re living in both places now. We’re in Florida now.

>> We did have, we still have the house in Boca Chica. But

>> we’ve also got one in Coconut Grove.
>>
>> CC: Oh. Good.
>>
>> CB: So it works out really, really nicely. I’m here three
>> days a week.
>>
>> CC: Then you’re flying back.
>>
>> CB: …So it works out really, really nicely actually. I
>> thought it was going to be exhausting but it’s not. It’s
>> really kind of nice because when I’m here I really have

>> some time to myself, you know, running the business [AIG].

>> I shouldn’t say that, running the office.
>>
>> CC: Oops.
>>
>> CB: They’ll turn that [laughs]. That is a great one.

>>
>> CC: [Laughs] Ooh - running the business.
>>

>> CB: I’ve got to be very careful what I say, you know. Yeah,
>> but um, it’s really nice. If you ever get down there you’re

>> more than welcome to come and visit and stay. I love
>> Florida. It's really beautiful.
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>
>> CB: You know because I hear things, like there are going to
>> be hearings on this mess [The Gary Webb Dark Alliance

>> series]. Let me tell you something. I’ll tell you something
>> and I’ve heard it from people who have been informed by
>> very reliable people in the government. No there won’t. No
>> there won’t be any more hearings.
>>
>> CC: But even if there were any hearings…
>>
>> CB: It’s just going to be a joke.

>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>
>> CB: I've read such ugly articles lately. We attended some
>> benefit. And somebody wrote an article and they titled it

>> Beauty and the Beast. Is that…

>>
>> CC: God Damn...
>>
>> CB: Is that fucking cruel? I mean like he is like the
>> nicest man, the most generous man I have ever met. And to
>> call him a beast?
>>
>> CC: What newspaper was that?
>>
>> CB: Oh, who the hell knows. I don't even know. I get so

>> upset that people keep these things from me…. How about all

>> the money he gave me to start an orphanage in Mexico.
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>
>> CB: He was out of jail before I went to Gary.
>>
>> CC: Oh yeah, well I know that was in, we know, during the
>> Panama thing.
>>
>> CB: Well no. He was released in 95. In March of 95. I

>> didn’t go to Gary until June - or July - of 1996. [NOTE:

>> This date is disputed by both Webb and me. It would have
>> given him roughly six weeks to write the entire Dark
>> Alliance series.]
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>
>> CB: Do you know a DEA Agent named Rafael Salcedo or Armando
>> Medina.
>>
>> CC: Yeah, those names sound very familiar.
>>
>> CB: Those guys used to moonlight for the CIA all the time.
>>

>> CC: Yeah, there’s a lot of them. The last one I heard was
>> Juan Perez who was a Cuban…
>>
>> CB: I know who he is, of course…

>>
>> CB: We just saw Robert Vesco.
>>
>> CC: Who?
>>
>> CB: Vesco, Robert.
>>
>> CC: What about him?
>>
>> CB: We just went and saw him when we were in Cuba.
>>

>> CC: Is he under house arrest? Cause that’s what I heard.

>>
>> CB: What a great man. A Sweetheart.
>>

>> CC: [Laughing] How’s Fidel doing?…

>>
>> [CB: We had gone down once maybe a year or so ago and I met
>> him [Vesco] for the first time then. And then when we
>>

>> went back this time I met him again…I mean he’s old and he
>> walks with a cane. He’s just a sweetheart though.
>>
>> That’s what Fidel did for him. He took him in because the

>> United States was ready to just nab him. I mean you know
>> how the United States is. They kidnap people and they call
>> it extradition.
>>

>> CC: So, is Carlos still playing ball with…?

>>
>> CB: He has nothing to do with the business.
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>

>> CB: In fact we’re having a birthday party this weekend.
>> What are you doing this weekend? I’m 29 - again. [Laughs] A

>> little party. Just a hundred of our closest friends. It's
>> going
>>
>> to be really, really fun. I think Julio Iglesias. He's
>> going to sing. He's like my all time favorite. He's in
>> Florida anyway.
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>> --
>>
>> [Baca enters into a lengthy discussion regarding a suspect
>> who had allegedly burglarized her e-mail accounts. Because
>> these are criminal allegations and I have been unable to
>> ascertain the validity of the charges I have omitted
>> references to the named suspect.]
>>
>> CB: Because of Carlos' situation the State Department

>> called in the FBI to find out who was doing this… And then

>> he got into my e-mail account, my Coral Lehder e-mail
>> account, and they were e-mailing Carlos from my e-mail

>> account…

>>
>> CB: He got into our e-mail account and was reading all of
>> my correspondence with, back and forth between Carlos and
>> me.
>>
>> CC: How did he do that?
>>

>> CB: Well it’s not too hard if you’re close to somebody.
>> It’s not too hard if you know what words are important …
>>
>> CC: Oh my God. So, what did the FBI… Are they going to
>> bring any charges?
>>
>> CB: See, there’s another point of contention. My other half
>> is very pissed off and me, no, I’m not going to do that. He
>> has to live with the fact that what he did [was] wrong…
>>
>> CC: So the FBI came and they…

>>
>> CB: The State Department, once I found out that my e-mail
>> was being broken into, I told Carlos. And Carlos said,
>>
>> "You know what, it makes sense "Because I knew that some of

>> my e-mails just weren’t right." He’s like, "I knew somebody

>> had looked at them." So he called in I guess, whoever he

>> has to report to, it’s a matter of his national security

>> status, that his security might have been jeopardized. And
>> the Feds got involved, you know, because they called in the
>> Feds. - It was an ugly ordeal. Do you know that we had to

>> go to a safe house, because they didn’t know who it was? …

>> put on a resumÈ. It has drawn attention to Lehder rather

>> than steer it away. What does she gain by that? I know that
>> some people insist he's still in jail but why won't the
>> government just say so? Instead you have this big mystery
>> that only deepens the legend. Who benefits from that? Who
>> profits from the confusion? And the government would have
>> found out about it. That's why I think the government went
>> to Carlos and said to put a leash on her."
>>
>> A Paper Trail
>>
>> Far from being silent about Talavera's relationship with
>> Lehder I had written about it in January of 1999. I had
>> been puzzled as to why no one in "the anti-CIA drugs
>> movement" seemed to think it noteworthy. It was known to at
>> least a dozen people that I was aware of. It was "sticky"
>> to me, oozing with a kind of dysfunctionality found in
>> families that conceal child abuse.
>>
>> Information developing around the then pending Clinton
>> impeachment had led me to suspect an alliance between the
>> Medellin Cartel's genius of transportation and Arkansas'
>> genius of money and political power, Bill Clinton. [See
>> Parts II and III of this series.] My writing on this
>> subject (available at www.copvcia.com) had drawn an angry
>> January 7, 1999 letter from Talavera's attorney. I made a
>> correction stating that at the time of the Dark Alliance
>> stories Talavera was probably not married to Lehder when

>> she went to Webb but that she was indeed his fiancÈe. What

>> report is. I can't figure it out. Things don't match… It

>> beauty like that loving a wretch like me…," The quid pro

>> pleasure. I got a good chuckle out of it… hope you both do

>> not to discuss her personal affairs in a company situation…

>> "COLLEGE PARK, Md.—They knew which factories to burn, which

>> bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good
>> conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for
>> invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for
>> incineration.
>>

>> "They weren’t just secret agents. They were secret

>> insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave their
>> World War II spymasters access to a global industry that
>> both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf

>> Hitler’s Third Reich.

>>
>> "Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the
>> remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence
>> Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a
>> forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence
>> branch X-2.
>>
>> "Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the

>> unit gathered intelligence on the enemy’s insurance

>> industry, Nazi insurance titans and suspected collaborators
>> in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the
>> unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of
>> bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of
>> other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a
>> candy company in Bergedorf. 'They used insurance
>> information as a weapon of war,' said Greg Bradsher, a
>> historian and National Archives expert on the declassified
>> records. That insurance information was critical to Allied

>> strategists, who were seeking to cripple the enemy’s
>> industrial base and batter morale by burning cities…

>>
>> "Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance
>> industry before the war began and managed to actually
>> expand its business as it conquered continental Europe. As
>> wholesalers, or 'reinsurers,' these companies covered other
>> insurers against a catastrophic loss that could wipe out a
>> single company. In the process, the wholesaler learned
>> everything about the lives and property they were

>> reinsuring [emphasis, mine]…

>>
>> "The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William
>> "Wild Bill" Donovan and California-born insurance magnate
>> Cornelius V. Starr. Starr had started out selling insurance
>> to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years,
>> would build what is now American International Group, one
>> of the biggest insurance companies in the world. He was
>> forced to move his operation to New York in 1939, when
>> Japan invaded China. In the early years of the war, the
>> German insurance industry expanded its business as it
>> conquered continental Europe. Nazi insurance brokers who
>> traveled with combat troops during invasions also scoured

>> local insurance files for strategic data…"

>>
>> On the special value of reinsurance as a vehicle for
>> intelligence gathering Fritz wrote:
>>
>> "Such convoluted business dealings were traced largely
>> through the work of Ernest Stiefel, a member of the
>> intelligence unit who diagrammed the way insurance
>> companies pooled their risks, invested in and insured each
>> other and, as a result, willfully or witlessly shared data
>> about nations at war. 'Stiefel mapped the entire system,
>> said [Timothy] Naftali, a historian at the University of

>> Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. "Each time I
>> take a piece of your risk, you’ve got to give me

>> information. I am not going to reinsure your company unless

>> you give me all the documents. That’s great intelligence
>> information…"

>> business associates Paul and Allen Dorfman…

>> forth from Geneva to Washington, and… reports, between the

[=> Vox Populi ©]

>>> --------- - --

>>>
>>> CB: You know because I hear things, like there are going to
>>> be hearings on this mess [The Gary Webb Dark Alliance
>>> series]. Let me tell you something. I’ll tell you something
>>> and I’ve heard it from people who have been informed by
>>> very reliable people in the government. No there won’t. No
>>> there won’t be any more hearings.
>>>
>>> CC: But even if there were any hearings…
>>>
>>> CB: It’s just going to be a joke.
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------

>>> --------- - --

>>>
>>> CB: I've read such ugly articles lately. We attended some
>>> benefit. And somebody wrote an article and they titled it
>>> Beauty and the Beast. Is that…
>>>
>>> CC: God Damn...
>>>
>>> CB: Is that fucking cruel? I mean like he is like the
>>> nicest man, the most generous man I have ever met. And to
>>> call him a beast?
>>>
>>> CC: What newspaper was that?
>>>
>>> CB: Oh, who the hell knows. I don't even know. I get so
>>> upset that people keep these things from me…. How about all
>>> the money he gave me to start an orphanage in Mexico.
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------

>>> --------- - --

>>>
>>> CB: He was out of jail before I went to Gary.
>>>
>>> CC: Oh yeah, well I know that was in, we know, during the
>>> Panama thing.
>>>
>>> CB: Well no. He was released in 95. In March of 95. I
>>> didn’t go to Gary until June - or July - of 1996. [NOTE:
>>> This date is disputed by both Webb and me. It would have
>>> given him roughly six weeks to write the entire Dark
>>> Alliance series.]
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------

>>> --------- - --

>>> --------- - --

>>>
>>> CB: In fact we’re having a birthday party this weekend.
>>> What are you doing this weekend? I’m 29 - again. [Laughs] A
>>> little party. Just a hundred of our closest friends. It's
>>> going
>>>
>>> to be really, really fun. I think Julio Iglesias. He's
>>> going to sing. He's like my all time favorite. He's in
>>> Florida anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------

>>> --------- - --

>>> --------- -

--
"We are going to fight them and impose our will
on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill
them until we have imposed law and order upon
this country,"
-- US Viceroy Paul Bremer,
how U$A is going to win 'hearts and minds'
of the subjugated people of Iraq