Eight weeks after Mexican soldiers at a rural airport in the Yucatan discovered 5.5 tons of cocaine onboard an American-registered DC9 painted to resemble aircraft from the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security, Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials seem no closer to publicly identifying either the owner of the plane, or the tons of cocaine.
Some suggest they may not be trying very hard. If true, this is yet another indication that suspicions of CIA involvement in the drug flight are on target. In fact, in the strange brew of companies through whose hands the twin DC9's have passed, we will soon see even more unmistakable signs of companies known to be CIA fronts and people considered to be Bush Family retainers.
Even so, our suggestion that CIA involvement in an imbroglio over 5.5 tons of cocaine led to Porter Goss’ surprise resignation as CIA Director just a few weeks later provoked someone to chastise us for not offering proof.
CIA involvement is the proof that Porter Goss, had been placed in an embarrassing and ultimately untenable position, and that he was sacked for committing what is regarded as the cardinal sin…
Goss, a spook extraordinaire since the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was (finally) caught holding.
"Starting at power forward for your American Drug Lords…"
Especially before the scandal potentially grows out of hand, this seems grounds for dismissal, even among the jaded keepers of well-tended Cayman Island accounts.
Losing 5.5 tons of cocaine on an airliner traceable to your Government Agency certainly does not appear to have been, for Mr. Goss, an especially good career move.
And there's potentially much worse to come… A probe into the tangled skein of companies and individuals in what has clearly been a continuing operation lasting at least a decade has revealed glimpses of what until now has been the most elusive species on Earth:
The American Drug Lords.
How is it possible that the owner of a DC9 airliner caught with 5 tons of cocaine can remain hidden for two months? The untimely bust came at a certain low ebb for the owner/operators of "Cocaine One." This favorable conjunction of the stars is about to allow a privileged glimpse into corruption so vast it can only be what Prof Peter Dale Scott called the "deep politics" of what sociologists refer to as "state-sponsored crime."
Pull up a chair.
Going way way wrong at the worst possible time
“The Feds have never wanted to clean up the sloppy way airplanes are registered,” one aircraft broker told us. “Registering a plane with the FAA is just a joke. They don’t even make you use a tax I.D. number or social security number to register a plane. You don’t even have to have your signature notarized."
"The result is that nobody can ever tell with any certainty what the hell is going on. Apparently that's the way they like it.”
Since April 11, the day things went way wrong in a small town in the Mexican state of Campeche, the mystery of the plane’s ownership has only deepened.
Recently the last registered American owner of the DC9, Frederic Geffon of Royal Sons Inc insisted he bore no responsibility at all for the plane’s recent misadventures.
In a May 5, 2006 interview with the Tampa Tribune following up a story they'd run the previous day, Geffon said he sold the plane 10 days before it was seized by Mexican authorities, to a man named Jorge Corrales, who he identified as a Simi Valley, Calif., aircraft broker.
But the MadCowMorningNews has learned that there is a problem with Geffon’s explanation: The California “aircraft broker” who Geffon says bought the aircraft(N900SA)—for resale to a client identified only as a “Venezuelan company”—does not appear to be in the business of buying and selling planes.
Tangled Web City, Next Exit
A LEXIS-NEXIS newspaper database search yielded no mention of Corrales and Associates. A Google search failed to find an aircraft broker named George or Jorge Corrales, or a Corrales and Associates.
A visit to the three major online venues used to sell airplanes confirmed the assertion… We could find no evidence indicating that Jorge “George” Corrales is an aircraft broker
A search for broker/dealers selling McDonnell Douglas DC9’s in California at The Controller, for example, reveals just three DC9’s for sale, from just two dealers.
An aircraft dealer at the Venice Airport told us, “There is a very small group of people involved in the market for jet airliners world-wide. If you had a party and invited every DC9 buyer in the world you could easily fit them all inside my hanger.”
OK Aviation is the listing broker for two of the three DC9’s currently for sale in California.
So we called OK Aviation's owner, Jack Kendall. He knew the other DC9 dealers in the state, he told us. No, he'd never heard of George Corrales or Corrales & Associates.
Maybe the paperwork is still in the mail
A search for aircraft brokers and dealers in California at Trade-A-Plane reveals no listing for Corrales & Associates. And it’s a free listing.
A check of ASO’s list of Southern California aircraft brokers and dealers turned up a Titan Aviation in San Diego, we were interested to learn, as well as an Air America Inc.
But no Corrales and Associates.
Frederic Geffon told the Tampa Tribune he sold “Cocaine One” to an aircraft brokerage which apparently doesn’t even exist.
The Tampa Tribune story quoted FAA spokesman Roland Herwig stating that the FAA received a copy of a letter from Royal Sons, dated April 7, asking that the plane be exported to Venezuela and that the FAA officially took Royal Sons' name off the books three days after the cocaine bust.
"We don't get involved with the sale of aircraft, only their registration or deregistration," Herwig told the Tribune.
Geffon himself, while insisting that the plane with 5.5 tons of coke wasn’t his, was otherwise suspiciously close-mouthed.
Who you gonna believe…Me? Or your lying eyes?
Apparently Geffon knows all the words to the hit song “It Wasn’t Me.”
But not much else… “Geffon provided the Tampa Tribune with a copy of what he says is a bill of sale he turned over to his title company,” the paper reported. “It had no information about the purchaser.”
Corrales "did not want me to know" who bought the aircraft "and I didn't care anyway," Geffon said.
Corrales contradicted this statement. He said that he did not know why Geffon claims not to know who purchased the DC-9. He said Geffon absolutely knew who had purchased the aircraft.
When people lie, its almost always for a reason…
“It was a Venezuelan company,” Corrales told the Tampa Tribune. “Royal Sons got a crew that flew the aircraft" to Venezuela, and obtained the permits needed to fly the plane out of the country.
Geffon denied it. He said he only "hired someone to find a flight crew to take it down there."
Frederic Geffon was having no trouble resisting the urge to fall all over himself clearing up any misunderstandings…
'Men in Europe' may be difficult to assemble all at once
"Geffon would not identify that individual, saying only that the man is in Europe and unavailable for comment,” the paper reported. “Corrales, who owns Corrales and Associates, disagrees.”
Although the paper didn’t say so, it was a classic Mexican stand-off.
And, as the Tampa Tribune’s Howard Altman noted wryly, the Federal Aviation Administration was not about to untangle the knot.
Still, compared with the little information which has managed to trickle out about the case, Altman's story contains a major scoop:
“A man in Europe unavailable for comment” has the answers to who owned the massive cocaine haul.
All we need do to find the owner of “Cocaine One” is take all the males on the European Continent, subtracting those who are available for comment, to give us the subset of "Men in Europe" in whose ranks today can almost certainly be found the man who knows who was using a DC9 tricked out to resemble a U.S. Government plane to smuggle tons of cocaine.
That was simple. All we need now is a stadium big enough to sort them all out.
I have no comment on my no comment
More bad news for the now rapidly-emerging official story: There is no Corrales & Associates in California.
The 'supposed' aircraft broker who bought the DC9 in the nick of time from people in St Petersburg FL has been “suspended” from operation for several years by the California Division of Corporations.
Thus, Corrales & Associates cannot legally do business in the state of California.
However, there is a Jorge Corrales, or rather a George Corrales, listed in the Simi Valley phone books. We phoned to ask if he had any proof that he buys and sells airplanes for a living.
“Mr. Corrales, we’ve been unable to find any evidence that you are in the business of buying and selling airplanes,” we began. “Can you point to anything to prove you are?”
“I have no comment at this time,” he told us tersely.
Why is that? Who did you sell the DC9 to in Venezuela?
“I can’t comment on that.”
“Aren’t you leaving yourself open to charges that you yourself may be involved in drug trafficking? If you get arrested for running 5 tons of cocaine…will you have a comment then?”
There was a loud click. The line went dead. We thought:
How very rude.
A murky mystery; A "great deal of concern"
Hovering at all times at the edge of the 5.5 ton cocaine scandal is the company responsible for painting twin DC9's in what clearly appears to have been a deliberate deception: SkyWay Aircraft.
Next we will learn about the founder of what became SkyWay Aircraft, Miami attorney Michael Farkas. But we can't resist teasing the story a little bit now.
Farkas, as you might well imagine, isn't just anyone... For example, he currently owns a North Miami company which wants
to market Israeli antimissile defense systems to U.S. aircraft manufacturers, after obtaining rights to a system developed by a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel's biggest defense contractor.
But before engaging in the popular sport of blaming the Jews it might be useful to recall that we've already seen Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi's involvement. Oddly enough, fifteen of SkyWay Aircraft's biggest investors are from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. One of them even appears to be the head of the Kuwaiti National Guard.
While presiding over SkyWay’s bankruptcy, Federal Judge Paul M. Glenn said, "I have a great deal of concern about this case. There is a great deal we don't know."
Two years ago, Judge Glenn called this case "murky.”
Since then, very little appears to have changed.
NEXT (FINALLY): An ultra-nationalist Israeli party & the head of the Kuwaiti National Guard
