The Crown’s Caribbean Silver Triangle
(Excerpted from Chapter 4: Nicaraguan Contraband: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
The CIA also ran a guns-for-drugs operation out of Belize. One note in Oliver North’s diaries read, “Proceed on White House project in Belize”. Another read, “wants to contact drug people in Belize camps”.
In 1984 Walter Mischer, a Houston businessman with mob connections started a shrimp business in Belize that was a carbon copy of the one Hull cohort Paco Chanes had started in Costa Rica to move Columbian cocaine. Mischer was a close friend of Vice-President Bush and Secretary of Treasury James Baker III. He bought 700,000 acres of land in Belize with help from investment partners Coca Cola and Paul Howell, an ex-director of the Houston Federal Reserve Bank.
Mischer’s land was utilized by CIA agent Carl Jenkins who began training contras there. Jenkins was Rafael Quinteros’ CIA case officer during the Bay of Pigs invasion and later ran the CIA base in Laos from 1970-73 where North, Secord, Quintero, Clines, Shackley and Singlaub all served. Jenkins now owned Helicopteros de Guatemala. During the 1970’s Alberto Sicilia Falcon, the Mexican drug kingpin with CIA connections, talked of taking Belize over for the “business”. [151] The tiny Caribbean nation is now a major transshipment point for Columbian cocaine.
In 1962 OSS Detachment 202 veteran and Sea Supply proprietor Paul Helliwell returned to Miami from Kunming, China to found Castle Bank of the Bahamas. The bank had only 300 depositors, but they included Richard Nixon, Chaing Kai-Shek’s daughter, Howard Hughes and Tony Curtis. The financial backbone of the bank was the Chicago Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain. Castle Bank served as a bridge between Santos Trafficante’s Florida mafia and KMT/Vietnamese Opium Monopoly heroin traffic. Helliwell was on CIA payroll and used Castle Bank as “paymaster” for the Shackley-directed shenanigans aimed at Castro.
Helliwell organized an entire Caribbean banking circuit and numerous Panamanian shell companies. He continued to operate Sea Supply and became Thai consul in Miami, operating out of the American Bankers Insurance (ABI) building. ABI board member James King sat on the board of Miami National Bank, which Meyer Lansky’s mob syndicate used to funnel millions of dollars in drug proceeds to the Swiss Exchange & Investment Bank. Helliwell served as legal counsel to Lansky protégé Santos Trafficante, Resorts International and Intercontinental Hotels. He later became an adviser to Lyndon Johnson. [152]
The Cayman Islands played a key role in Helliwell’s Caribbean offshore banking network after the IMF helped the islands gain offshore status. A nation of 13,500 residents and 14,000 telex numbers for banks, sometimes no more than tiny offices, the Caymans offer super-secretive bank accounts for the global elite. International intelligence agencies and drug traffickers find this secrecy quite convenient as well. Helliwell’s Castle Bank was joined in the Caymans by a branch of Nugan Hand Bank and the World Finance Corporation. All three dealt with both the CIA and Santos Trafficante.
Walter Mischer’s Belizean land deal was financed by the Bank of Nova Scotia, one of five huge Canadian banks and four large British banks that dominate the Caribbean Silver Triangle, a drug smugglers haven in which Belize and the Cayman Islands play key roles. The other Canadian banks are the Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto Dominion Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The British banks are National Westminster, Barclays, Lloyds and Midland Bank.
Midland was bought by HSBC and owns 20% of Standard Chartered Bank. These latter two banks print Hong Kong’s money. Midland’s board is loaded with ex-Pentagon officials who specialize in recycling petrodollars into CIA covert operations. [153]
The Bank of Nova Scotia is the leading gold dealer in the Caribbean and the leading handler of capital flight out of the Caribbean. It is the banker of Noranda, a huge Canadian mining company that is the second largest dealer of gold in the Caribbean. Gold is the preferred currency of drug traffickers and Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaican subsidiary Scotiabank plays a huge role in the Caribbean drug trade. [154] The 200 tons of gold recovered from vaults beneath the World Trade Center in the cleanup effort following the 911 terror attacks belonged to Bank of Nova Scotia.
Royal Bank of Canada has more off-shore subsidiaries than any other bank in the world. It bailed out the government of Guyana in 1976 after a CIA coup brought down the socialist government of Cheddi Jagan. Royal launched the business career of Venezuela’s most powerful Cisneros family, which overseas Rockefeller interests in that country. Royal has a joint venture in the Bahamas with National Westminster called RoyWest.
Both the Bank of Nova Scotia and Royal Bank of Canada are controlled by Canada’s most influential family – the Bronfmans. The Bronfmans control DuPont, which recently spun off Conoco, as well as Seagrams, Vivendi and Eagle Star Insurance.
Eagle Star is the Bronfman holding company and is a joint venture with British powerhouses Barclays, Lloyds, Hill Samuel and N. M. Rothschild & Sons. Eagle Star combined with Allianz Versicherung, a German company controlled by the von Thurn and Taxis and Wittelsbach families, to become a global titan in the area of finance.
The von Thurn and Taxis, Germany’s deposed royal family, funded Tradition, Family and Property, the fascist movement responsible for right-wing death squad genocide throughout South America.
Eagle Star is close to British intelligence. Two current directors, Sir Kenneth Strong and Sir Kenneth Keith were #1 and #2 at British Intelligence during WWII. Keith is a director at Bank of Nova Scotia and chairman of Hill Samuel, where HSBC’s Sir Philip de Zulueta joins Keith on the board. Keith is an influential member of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs (CIIA), the sister organization of London’s powerful Royal Institute of International Affairs and the US Council on Foreign Relations. [155] The official leader of Canada, by virtue of its Crown affiliation, is Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, whose mandates are carried out by a governor-general.
The Bank of Montreal has interlocking directorates with Seagrams and Hudson Bay Company. Hudson Bay is tight with Lord Inchcape’s Peninsular & Orient Navigation Company (PONC) and the Hong Kong Keswick family that controls Jardine Matheson. PONC’s Sir Eric Drake sits on the board at Hudson Bay. He and William Johnston Keswick also sit on the board of BP Amoco. Drake sits on the board of Kleinwort Benson, whose Sharps Pixley subsidiary runs 49% of the Hong Kong gold market. Keswick’s son Henry Neville Lindley Keswick is a director at HSBC, Jardine Matheson and the Canadian paper giant MacMillan Bloedel which merged with the largest US paper and timber company Weyerhaeuser in 1999.
MacMillan Bloedel took off when British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan married the daughter of Canada’s Governor General Victor C. W. Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire. Canadian Pacific owns a controlling interest in MacMillan Bloedel.
Vancouver is a favorite drop point for SE Asian heroin on the way to the US. In 1978 Canadian intelligence officials were forced to admit in a Vancouver courtroom that Canadian Pacific Air flies most of Vancouver’s heroin into the US. [156] Canadian Pacific Railways is also involved.
All of these Canadian Silver Triangle interests have members of Queen Elizabeth II’s secret modern-day roundtable, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, on their boards. At Canadian Pacific, board members J.C. Gilmar, J.P.W. Ostiguy, Charles Bronfman and W.E. McLaughlin are all Knights of St. John. McLaughlin also chairs Royal Bank of Canada.
Barclays has five Knights of St. John on its board, while Bank of Nova Scotia and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce have three Knights of Malta members each on their respective boards. Another Knight of Malta is Canadian Pacific board member M. G. Sandberg, who once chaired HSBC. Each of the big five Canadian banks have at least one Knight of Malta on their boards.
The CIIA is loaded with Knights of St. John as well. The CIIA’s Honorary Chairman for life is Walter Lockhardt Gordon, whose father founded Clarkson & Gordon, the accounting firm that audits Toronto Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. CIIA board member Henry R. Jackman is a board member of the Italian Knights of St. John and the Order of Lazarus. Roland Michener, a former Canadian Governor General who chairs the CIIA, is a Knight of Malta.
During the Crusades, the Knights of St. John, also known as the Hospitallers, escorted European pilgrims into Jerusalem where King Solomon had built his Temple on Mount Moriah. The site is said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant and other sacred objects and secret documents. What remains of Solomon’s Temple is housed today within the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Dome of the Rock, where the latest intifada began and always at the epicenter of Israeli/Palestinian tensions.
When the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 1947 at Qumran, one document etched in copper mentioned a huge treasure of gold buried beneath Solomon’s Temple. This booty may explain why the Knights of St. John’s brother organization, the Knights Templar, had turned over their pilgrim protection racket to the former group and focused their Crusade-era activity on excavating beneath the Temple. It would also explain how the Templars suddenly became the richest organization in the world.
Following their defeat by Muslim Saracens during the Crusades, the Knights of St. John fell back to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, but in 1522 the Turks invaded and the twice-defeated Knights relocated to Malta where the Roman Catholic faction became known as the Knights of Malta, today recognized as a sovereign nation by more than 40 countries. They are headquartered in Rome and answer to the Pope.
The protestant faction based in Britain is the Knights of St. John Jerusalem who answer to the Grand Prior of the Order, the Duke of Gloucester, cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. [157]
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