AUSTRALIA: THE NUGAN HAND INVESTIGATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200820008-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 3, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: March 3, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/03: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200820008-1 STAT
ARTICLE APPEARED THE NATION
ON PAGE =2.4" 3 March 1984
DISPATCHES.
^ AUSTRALIA: The Nugan Hand Investigation Hand is still sought by the Australians on criminal
Nugan Hand, an American-owned merchant bank based charges in connection with the bank's financial dealings.
in Sydney that collapsed four years ago, has the Central In. Soon after the collapse, he left Australia using a false
telligence Agency worried. In 1982 The Wall Street Journal passport provided by a mysterious friend named "Charlie."
published a series of articles linking the bank to multi - The Australians have identified "Charlie" as James Oswald
million-dollar swindles, drug trafficking and arms smu - Spencer, a former member of the U.S. Special Forces who
gling. Worse, it discovered that a number of former U.S. in- was "loaned" to the C.I.A. during the Vietnam War.
telligence and military officers-were employed at Nugan about his dealings t W Michathe F.B.I.,
el Hand, but refused to talk
Hand when it went under. Last Year. an article in Fn?s:e~
Policy provided evidence that Nugan - Hand was the "b
ur-
sae" for C.I.A. operations aimed at Australian political 0 LEBANON: The Army Game
parties and labor unions. The C.I.A., which rarely com- When Shiite Moslem fighters moved to retake West
ments on such allegations, flatly denied any connection Beirut last month, many of their coreligionists in the
with Nugan Hand but refused to cooperate in Australia's Lebanese Army preferred to switch rather than fight. Their
investigation of the bank, behavior must have disappointed Fadi Afram, the military
Recently, the Australians released "Volwne 4 Nugan'{. commander of the Phalangist militia. Last November,
Hand (Part II)," a report by the Commonwealth-New:; Afram spoke frankly to the Kuwaiti publication A1-Siyasah
South Wales Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking. It is a about the political role he expected the army to play:
shocker. Among dozens of remarkable vignettes on the in- Lebanon ... is not an Arab country.... No state or
telligence community is one describing. how former C.I.A. military power is ready to die in the place of the Lebanese.
agent Edwin Wilson, who was convicted last year of nu_iu' n Therefore, -the Lebanese Army must undertake this task.
guns to Libya, performed a similar service for Nugan Hand. Thin' occur only after the army has obtained sufficient
According to the report, Wilson was hired in 1973 by the;;, support. It cannot be done in a month or two but will take
U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence "to expand the operations---I two ym If the army can again liberate the mountain [the
of Task Force 157" Shur region, home of the Druse] then the military balance'
com by establishing a numbei,uf proprietarwill change-decisively. Then the political negotiations will
be
panes to be used as fronts for intelligence work. One of turned about in Lebanon's favor.
the companies Wilson founded was World Marine,_ which
had offices at 1425 K Street, in W Thus all along Afram and the Phalangists have viewed the
g ashington Incidentallyr - Lebanese Army as merely an instrumentto promote Phalan-
althou h the C.I.A. claims Wilson severed all. ties with it in April 1976, the report points out that he. worked out of gist interests. That has always been the problem in Lebanon.
World Marine offices until late 1979. It goes on to say: 1969, the commander of the army, Gen. Jaim Nujams_
paid a visit to Egypt's Gamal Abdul `Nasser. According to
Accordin
to "J"
f
g
(a
ormer employee of Wilson's], in. either
1975 or early 1976 two C.I.A. operatives, James Hawes and
Robert Moore, who were then working out of, Indonesia
,
called at World Marine in Washington D.C. Hawes told Wil-
son that there would be some Australians visiting Washing-
ton
to discuss an African - arms deal "that hid. to be put
together." There was also some discussion about Agency.
ti
opera
ons in Indonesia and the name Nugan Hand was men-
Nasser's intelligence chief, Amin Houeidi, Nasser told the
Lebanese general,.
. You know, Jaim, my opinion about the Lebanese. They
boast of their democracy and they have no democracy. They
speak of their great economy and they produce nothing.
Their state is a piece of paper. But still, you have in your
hands the solution to all these problems. Lebanon needs a
national army, not an army of the Maronites.
Shortly after Hawes 'S visit, Wilson and 'Mau rice1"- ..Houeidi told "Dispatches" that when his Lebanese friend
Houghton
two had been classmates in a
an official of N
ilita
t
i
i
a
a
,
m
ry
ra
n
ugan -H
d a series of ''. - -
ng program
nd, h
meetings, at the end, of which Wilson placed Nugan Hand's 8t Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) returned to Beirut, he tried to
order for 10 million... rounds of ammunition and 3,000 opea:the officer corps to non-Mes_ "But a few months
weapons, including machine guns, MIs and carbines. World aff his talk .with Nasser," Houeidi said,. "Nujam died
-a plane crash. I -don't know if ,it-was . by design or
Marine shipped the weapons from Boston ostensibly to a
in -
buyer in. Portugal. En route, however, the shipment was '> accident.'*'" '
diverted to South Africa.. The report concludes that the
weapons were received by Michael Hand, one of the
founders of Nugan Hand, and shipped to C.I.A.-supported
guerrillas in Angola.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/03: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200820008-1