Tale of two trips: mystery, history and intrigue - January 28, 2007
mevle...@yahoo.ca
appear to confirm two significant episodes in the life of intrigue and
mystery he recounts today.
His Gulfstream jet, furtively owned by Count Giuseppe "Gughi" Zanon
but registered in Heim's name to avoid Swiss and Italian taxes, sat on
the runway at Zurich, Switzerland, ready for takeoff on Dec. 22, 1979.
His principal passenger: Roberto Calvi, head of a large Italian
private bank, the Banco Ambrosiano. Their destination: Nassau in the
Bahamas.
"We put on board a large number of very heavy suitcases ... very
difficult to lift," Heim said. "I'm sure they contained gold bars. A
fleet of Mercedes-Benz limos met us when we arrived in Nassau. No one
was required to clear customs. It was all very strange to me because
normally, the Bahamian officials wouldn't give you the sweat off
their ..."
Slightly more than a year later, Calvi drew a four-year suspended
sentence and a $19.8 million fine for taking $27 million out of Italy
in violation of currency laws. When the full story emerged,
authorities found that Calvi had loaned several hundred million
dollars to dummy corporations he established in Panama and arranged
for the Vatican Bank to guarantee much of the amount.
Calvi fled Italy in June 1982, shortly after the Bank of Ambrosiano
collapsed following disclosure of the fraudulent loans. A week later,
a passer-by alerted London police to a body hanging from the
Blackfriars Bridge over the River Thames.
Roberto Calvi's death was initially ruled a suicide, even though his
pockets were stuffed with stones and several thousand dollars. Italian
prosecutors later reopened the case and charged four men and a woman
with murder. The motive: Mafia money had been lost in Calvi's illegal
dealings. The trial began in October 2005 and is expected to last well
into this year.
Meanwhile, the Vatican paid $224 million to creditors of the failed
Bank Ambrosiano. Investigators also linked Calvi's financial schemes
to a right-wing secret organization called P2 (Propaganda Due in
Italian) that Italian authorities said acted as a "shadow" government
and took part in numerous criminal activities including political
assassination.
Heim had scheduled a maintenance check in Florida for the Gulfstream
and didn't fly Calvi back to Europe. "He thanked me and the next time
I saw Roberto Calvi was a picture of him hanging from that bridge,"
Heim said.
>From hot money to hostages
Rest and relaxation in Florida ended with a message that the United
Nations had chartered Heim's Gulfstream from Paris to Iran where
revolutionaries held more than 50 American hostages in the U.S.
Embassy.
"My logs show a 5-hour, 7-minute flight aboard United Nations One from
Paris to Tehran on January 1, 1980." Heim said. "U.N. One means
Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was aboard just as Air Force One means
the President of the United States is in the air."
Several accounts of the 444-day hostage crisis document Waldheim's
January 1980 trip to Tehran. Heim said he piloted several more flights
to the Iranian capital, carrying Waldheim on two or three secret
missions and other times transporting "secondary" U.N. officials.
On one occasion, Heim said, he was instructed to meet Iranian Foreign
Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh in a hotel garage and bring him to
Waldheim's suite.
According to Heim, the two diplomats settled the details of a hostage
release plan and Waldheim asked Heim to arrange an additional Swissair
jet -- the only foreign airline servicing Tehran -- for a particular
Saturday.
"Because U.N. One could not use United States military facilities, my
communications went through a Drug Enforcement Agency station called
Atlas located at a secure site in the Rocky Mountains," Heim said.
"I asked for Mr. Smith at Sugar Cube -- code for the President at the
White House," Heim said, snapping his fingers. "Just like that,
President Carter got on the line and I relayed the information."
The President's response, according to Heim: "Very interesting and
we'll take care of it."
But the night before the scheduled release, Heim said he heard a Voice
of America broadcast detailing the plan to end the crisis. "Washington
couldn't keep its mouth shut," he said. "Washington never can." The
leak, Heim said, scuttled the hostage release.
During other trips to Tehran, Heim said he was free to wander around
the city with an Iranian escort and take seemingly innocent pictures
for U.S. intelligence. Some photos were released to media outlets, he
said, and appeared in Time magazine.
"The Iranians could tell when pictures had been taken from the
position of construction cranes, for example," Heim claimed. "They
didn't like seeing my pictures in Time so during my last three trips
they put me into a cell at the Foreign Ministry."
Heim wasn't abused or interrogated, but decided to "walk away from it
all. It's all game playing and all so pointless," he said. "If we
could just be honest with each other, we'd not have as much loss of
life and we'd save time, energy and money.
"I was a colonel by this time and was told I could retire from the Air
Force and be finished with what I'd been doing for them and the CIA. I
bought a house in Florida and took up gardening."
He eventually moved to Elmira Heights to be closer to his sister,
Martha Horton of Elmira. He and his beagle, Dudley, occupy an
apartment in Villa Serene. Social Security is his only source of
income.
"I drew government checks each month from the Air Force and the CIA,
but I'd turn them back in," Heim said. "I lived off my salary from
'Gughi' and figured my pension would come from directors' fees he
arranged with several companies. But that's no more."
Recalling his constant on-the-go life, Heim said he regretted not
having a family. "I'm sorry about that," he said, "but I was so busy I
never really had the chance. Oh, I proposed marriage once or
twice ..."
http://www.star-gazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070128/LIFE/701280303/1035