Work on the Bicentennial.Posted on 06/13/2005 11:00:45 PM PDT by doug from upland
Edited on 06/14/2005 3:35:08 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
11- $2,000 Returned, We Keep the 2 Mil, Meet Bill on AF One with More
12 – Hillary’s Laundromat at 88 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
13 - How Is David Rosen Like Sally Field?
14 - Lying Chart of Sandler Was Like Unwelcome Visiting Relative
15 – If Rosen Didn’t Do It, Who Did It?
No. 16 – The Civil Trial Is Coming (in song)
NOTE: This is the 17th episode in a series of stories regarding the events surrounding Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Hollywood fundraiser, and the business relationship of entrepreneur Peter Paul, the impeached William Jefferson Clinton, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, perpetrator of the largest campaign finance fraud in the history of Western civilization.
*** A TIME MAGAZINE article about this story will appear in its entirety below and after this episode. ***
As many of you have read from the usual suspects in the mainstream media since 2001, you don’t see Peter Paul's name without the word "felon" or "convicted felon" preceeding it. I actually prefer something more accurate. Whistleblower.
So how bad a guy is Peter Paul anyway? Fidel Castro thinks he’s bad enough to try to assassinate. Those who know how dangerous he is to Hillary want to make him look as bad as they can—but not so bad that she shouldn’t have taken $2 million from him. Let's go back in time and get a little taste of the story of this bad guy Peter Paul.
It's 1978. The economy of Fidel Castro's communist island paradise is being propped up by the Soviet Union, which is overpaying for the price of Cuban coffee. It was, of course, in the Soviet interest to see that Castro's communist experiment in the Western Hemisphere didn’t collapse.
Peter was a rather famous international lawyer at the time in Miami. Even before the age of thirty, he was doing some amazing things. But we'll try to stick to the coffee caper in this episode.
It seems that Castro was scamming his Soviet benefactors by secretly buying black market coffee and adding it to his shipments of subsidized Cuban coffee. Because Peter was an avowed anti-communist and one very opposed to Castro, he was ripe for certain intelligence agents to recruit him for an economic sting that would expose Castro’s fraud on his Russian sponsors, creating a schism between them.
At the time, Peter was a major player with the leaders of more than five South American and Caribbean governments. Someday soon, the story will be told in book form of his anti-communist exploits.
For the Coffee Caper, Peter organized, supervised, and got the project funded. It began with the purchase of a cargo ship for $800,000.
One of the most intriguing parts of the story is that Peter pulled it off while he was on bail. An operative in the coffee string tried to sabotage the deal and planted cocaine in his garage. A half hour later, a SWAT team was there to make an arrest. Even though the Justice Department knew of every detail of the intended international incident, because of the pressure by certain factions in the government, it was allowed to proceed while Paul was out on bail for the cocaine charge.
The story that appeared in TIME MAGAZINE is below. Although the details were accurate as far as the story went, it was part of a disinformation campaign Peter conducted to divert attention from the government’s role in catalyzing and then facilitating its success. The upshot is that Peter pulled off a scam against Castro in which Fidel lost 8.7 million bucks. What was aboard the cargo ship that was supposed to have the coffee? Only the crew. Peter bit the bullet and did time without blowing the whistle on others who were conducting ongoing anti-Castro operations. Sometimes you have to do that or it can be very dangerous for you. As it was, Castro detailed two Cuban agents in Miami to assassinate Peter a few weeks after Castro discovered he was had. An unsuccessful attempt on Peter’s life occurred one night in a restaurant parking lot next to Miami Airport in November of 1978.
The scam gets even sweeter. A few million dollars from the caper managed to find its way to South America to help fight communist insurgents. That WAS a very good thing.
The Carter Administration allowed Castro (Banco Nacional de Cuba) to sue Peter in federal court in Miami. Peter laughed when he first told me a little about this story, noting that the judgment Castro has against him is probably over $20 million now with accrued interest.
When he was released from prison and while on parole, Peter participated in another government operation. A government operative for various agencies set him up at the Canadian border, where he was using the operative’s brother’s I.D. to cover his meeting with Contra representatives in Canada. That was the origin of Peter’s third guilty plea—making a false statement not under oath to a border agent about his name.
In a previous episode, you read the story of how Hillary made sure everyone knew, through the WASHINGTON POST, that she would not take money from this "convicted felon" Peter Paul. She gave back the only donation she ever reported from Paul, a $2,000 check for another fundraiser. Did Hillary ever report the in-kind contribution for putting on that fundraiser? Who are you kidding?
As we also chronicled earlier in this series, the refund of the $2,000 was followed eight days later with a fax request from David Rosen on Hillary official stationery for another $100,000, payable in stock. Of course, she has neither reported nor refunded Peter’s $1.9 million cash in-kind contribution. Hillary made that illegal by hiding it from the FEC and the voters. She will have to answer for that in a Los Angeles courtroom when Peter’s civil fraud case against both Clintons is finally heard. Discovery in that case may not be far away.
Is Peter Paul a bad guy? You decide. What if he had defrauded Hitler during World War II rather than defrauding the current communist murdering thug in Cuba during the Cold War? Remember that Castro’s Cuba was the only enemy of the United States at the time under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Had Peter pulled off the coffee caper since the creation of FreeRepublic, I would have proudly promoted him for FReeper of the Year. It was one helluva FReep.
Work on the Bicentennial.
Peter's friend Frank Sturgis is an American hero. Not only did he try to have Castro whacked about 10 times, he discovered a plot in Angola about six Libyans coming to the U.S. to assassinate President Reagan. He alerted the Justice Department and may well have saved the Gipper's life.
Peter with his friend, Lech Walesa
(Nation section of TIME MAGAZINE, 2-12-79)
THE CUBAN COFFEE CAPER
How Castro paid $8.7 million and got not a single cupful
As Cuba’s ruler for the past 20 years, Fidel Castro obviously wasn’t born yesterday. He has triumphed over attempted invasions, coups and assassinations. He has felt confident enough to send troops to Africa to stir up trouble. Yet he has now been taken, in a huge swindle brought off by a group of men accused of selling Cuba a cargo of nonexistent coffee. The ruse, involving transactions from Canada to the Caribbean, ultimately collapsed, but not before Cuba was relieved of about $8.7 million—perhaps the worst sting the Cuban dictator has ever suffered.
The Cuban government, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI, and the U.S. Justice Department’s Strike Force are all involved in the attempt to untangle the swindle. Authorities have arrested one man, a West German commodities broker named Karl Fessler, charged three more, and are seeking others.
In an attempt to support Castro’s faltering economy, the Soviet Union has been buying much of the coffee Cuba grows at a price higher than on the world market. In fact, Cuba has even been accused in some anti-Castro quarters of mixing imported coffee with home-grown and then selling the spurious blend to the Russians. Be that as it may, Cuba does import cheaper coffee for domestic consumption.
Knowing the Cubans’ need for coffee, Karl Fessler, a jet-hoping high roller, is said to have made them an attractive offer in late 1977. According to the Cuban government, Fessler told its trade representatives that he would sell them 3,000 metric tons of “Barahona,” a choice Arabic blend grown in the Dominican Republic, at a bargain price. Reportedly, Fessler and some cohorts produced all the documents attesting to the availability of the coffee, and the deal was clinched last October on the Caribbean island of St. Martin. The Cubans agreed to a price of $1.39 a lb. vs. $1.54 on the world market. In a later meeting, the Cubans asked if they could inspect the coffee. No need for that. Fessler assured them. Everything was fine.
Except that not a single coffee bean existed. Companies were set up in the Caribbean and an aging freighter of Panamanian registry was bought for $700,000. The culprits proceeded to payoff anybody who might hinder the swindle. The Justice Department estimates that hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid out.
The ship with the coffee was launched near Santo Domingo last November. The plan was to sink it en route to Havana. The gang expected to collect twice: once from the duped Cubans, a second time from the company that insured the ship. When the freighter was at sea, Fessler and a confederate are said to have marched into the Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto. All sorts of papers were shown verifying that the coffee was on its way: a telex from the ship’s captain, complete invoices, bills of lading, inspection receipts. Following the instructions of Cuba’s brokers, the bank promptly disbursed the $8l7 million as Fessler directed.
Then came a hitch. Someone had apparently neglected to bribe a port official in Santo Domingo: he retaliated by refusing to let the crew that had been hired to scuttle the ship to board the vessel. So the freighter had put out to sea with its original crew, who were unaware of the plot. En route, they evidently realized that something was wrong. They sailed into Puerto Limon, Coast Rica, and left the ship. At first, when the coffee failed to arrive on time, Cuba’s representatives were not alarmed. They received a telex explaining that the freighter had been delayed at sea because of mechanical problems. Finally, the brokers involved in the deal decided to check. They flew to Costa Rica and found the freighter empty.
By then the swindlers were long gone. Fessler showed up in Miami, where he went on a spending spree. He bought a $17,000 Cadillac and $70,000 in jewelry, made a down payment on a Key Largo condominium, invested $850,000 n securities, and moved into a Coral Gables hotel suite. Fessler lived so openly, it seems, because he though he had not committed a crime liable to prosecution in the U.S. He also did not figure that Canadians would press so vigorously for his extradition. FBI agents, who had been tipped off by the outraged Cuban brokers, arrested Fessler in December. On him they found $40,000 in cash, travelers checks and around-the-world air tickets. Fessler is the only one of the gang who has been arrested. He was charged with fraud. The others remain at large. So does most of the money. Last week FBI agents and Canadian Mounties island-hopped around the Caribbean looking for the funds, which were laundered in a series of bank-account transfers. “They did everything to make it vanish,” says Martin Raskin, an attorney for the Justice Department Strike Force.
Even if the money is found, Castro may not get it. In an extraordinary action, Cuba’s Banco Nacional filed a suit in Dade County Circuit Court against Fessler for the return of the money. But by doing so Cuba has made itself vulnerable to lawsuits from property owners whose assets were seized when Castro took power. In addition, the U.S. Treasury has tied up the roughly $1 million recovered on the grounds that the Americans involved in the scheme violated the Trading with the Enemy Act.
If the Cubans do not get their money, they are determined to get Fessler. Currently jailed in Dade County without bail, he intends to fight extradition to Canada. His attorney, Samuel Bare, who calls his client “strictly a broker, a dupe in the whole thing,” fears that if Fessler is extradited to Canada, he might somehow wind up in Cuba. In that case, says Bare, “he would be looking at a firing squad.” Even so, the Justice Department dropped the fraud charges against Fessler in January, to clear the way for extradition hearings this month. Meanwhile, Castro’s agents, who have no great respect for due process, are said to be on the prowl for him and the others. Says a source close to the investigation in Miami: “Everyone in this thing is in jeopardy of his life.” That is a high price to pay, even for coffee.
Ping
The dude has 'nads the size of beach balls....
bttt
That's b/c Fidel went to Star"bucks."
My coffee tastes sweeter and better after reading this.
Fidel got taken to the cleaners.
Thanks for the ping!
Want a nice hot capitalist warm-up for your coffee, A-G?
It was poured over Castro Nostra's head...publicly.
Are Peter Paul and Fessler the same guy?
Interesting read, as always. DougfromUpland, will you autograph to me a copy of your upcoming book when it comes out?
Actually, a need another cup of coffee myself ... LOL!
I don't know about a book yet, but I'll sign your copy of the DVD. We are working on it.
They are not.
You forget I bid to play Hillary in the movie, but I've decided against it. I'm better looking, my legs are great looking, and the mere thought of playing Hillary makes me sick to my stomach.
Thanks for the Hildabeaste ping.
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