Canada’s Dirty Banks

by Dean Henderson
Left Hook
October 5, 2011

(Excerpted from Chapter 4: Nicaraguan Contraband: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

During the Nicaraguan contra war, the CIA 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 business man with mob connections started a shrimp business in Belize that was a carbon copy of the one John Hull cohort Paco Chanes had started in Costa Rica to move Columbian cocaine.

Mischer was a close friend of Vice-President George 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 Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion and later ran the CIA base in Laos from 1970-73 where North, Richard Secord, Quintero, Thomas Clines, Ted Shackley and John Singlaub all served.

Jenkins 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”. [1]  The tiny Caribbean nation, greatly influenced by the British Crown, is a major transshipment point for Columbian cocaine.

In 1962 OSS Detachment 202 veteran and Sea Supply proprietor Paul Helliwell returned to Miami from heroin-infested Kunming, China to found Castle Bank of the Bahamas.  The bank had only 300 depositors, but they included Richard Nixon, Chiang 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 Ted Shackley-directed operation aimed at Fidel Castro.

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