Dixie Cup Assassin
by
Jerry Bohnen
Smashwords Edition
Dixie Cup Assassin
Presented by Publishing by Rebecca J. Vickery
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4659-0491-1
Copyright © 2011 Jerry Bohnen
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art Copyright © 2011 Laura Shinn
Produced by Rebecca J. Vickery
Design Consultation by Laura Shinn
Smashwords Licensing Notes
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Dixie Cup Assassin is an exposé – the true story of a contract 'hit man' as shared with Jerry Bohnen and reported to the best of his abilities and knowledge. Facts, names, addresses, and dates included within are based on statements from an informant and/or informants and have been verified where and whenever possible. Due to changes over time, the diverse interpretation which can be placed on any facts, and human failings, we will not be responsible for any inconsistencies, if such should exist.
Dedication
"For Mary and our Children, and
All the 'Black Dogs' that Walk Backwards"
What action does the government take when there are 'dirty' jobs to do? After September 11, 2001, those rules changed. Men were contracted to take care of these jobs – covertly, quickly, and for big bucks.
Dixie Cup Assassin relates the experiences of one such man. Why did he become involved? To stay out of prison... For the money... Because he enjoyed the rush... Or underlying it all, was he a patriot who wanted payback for 9/11 and to ensure his country's freedom?
And what will happen to this man when the government no longer needs him? Will he be tossed aside like a used Dixie Cup?
This is the exposé of a man, who hired out to government agencies to rid a country of subversive enemies, as shared with investigative reporter Jerry Bohnen over almost two decades.
Due to language and subject matter this book is for adults only.
Chapter One: After the Killings Started…
The clipped-spitting sound echoed repeatedly and was joined by the tinkling of brass cartridges raining to the tile floor in the square cinder-block box called a home in the western reaches of Nogales, Mexico. Three men, armed with silencer-equipped machine pistols stood over the bloody bodies of three suspected terrorists who had been asleep on the couches and chairs in the main room of the rented home. The terrorists were left in twisted and bleeding heaps; the gunmen said nothing. Their black automatic weapons did the talking that early morning of August 6, 2005.
The people who hired the three assassins had provided a front-door key that enabled the gunmen to sneak quietly into the home and kill the terrorists. One of the gunmen, a bald-headed man known as M.H., started for a bedroom door next to the living room. A screaming man burst through the doorway and with all his force kicked M.H. in the balls. Actually, ball—the only one remaining after hernia surgery nearly a year earlier when doctors removed his right testicle because it was strangulated. M.H. sagged in pain and the screaming man struggled with him. Then M.H.'s machine pistol spewed six slugs into the terrorist's chest, putting an abrupt end to his screams as he crumpled to the floor. The fight lasted only a few seconds. M.H. panted to catch his breath. He stood over the dead terrorist, leaned forward, pressed the gun barrel to the dead man's head and fired one more round. "You won't kick no more, you son of a bitch!"
While the injured M.H. fought waves of nausea, the other two hired gunmen raced through the home. They grabbed two laptop computers, then fled into the night, believing they had thwarted the plans of four more would-be terrorists who intended to attack the United States.
M.H. wanted to be known as M.H.—nothing else. No name known to others who killed with him. He was the government-informant-contractor I met eighteen years earlier. He was a man who confessed his incredible secrets to me as I filled notebooks, files, and boxes with documents, pictures, postcards, and whatever else I could get to prove his wild claims.
His two partners were a German named Hantz and a hardened man in his fifties who went by the nickname of 'Yippie'. He was known as Yippie because he once kicked in the front door of a terrorist hideout in Joplin, Missouri, and shouted, "Yippie Yi Yay, Mother Fucker!" as he cut loose with a blast from the machine gun that he carried. Yippie often let a small smile sneak across his face after the gunfire of each mission ended when silence and the smell of blood enveloped a room. "Mission accomplished," he would utter.
Afterward, M.H. telephoned me from a Marriot hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he nursed himself with a large bag of ice between his legs. A glance at the caller ID on my home phone showed it was the same phone number that M.H. used a few weeks earlier, when he and a few dozen other 'contractors' had reportedly napalmed a terrorist training camp deep in the jungles of Guatemala, later landing by helicopter and promptly shooting dead the few moaning and badly-burned survivors.
Their return flight took them to Albuquerque to spend what was left of the night, before they were flown back to Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, Texas. Hantz and Yippie laughed at M.H. and joked about his 'big balls'.
"Ball," I corrected M.H., as he painfully told me how the party went down. It was funny, but it wasn't funny. He knew it and I knew it. I heard the pain in his voice.
"I tapped him about six times," he said, recalling how he was attacked and had narrowly survived the party. "I started when he put his foot between my legs! I was so goddamned mad, I stood up and I put one through the middle of his forehead! He'll kick no more." He groaned, cursing first the dead terrorist, then Hantz and Yippie for taunting him. Our phone conversation was interrupted. "Hang on a minute, Jerry!" A glance at my watch showed it was 10:25 p.m., the night of August 7th, a Sunday. He returned to the phone and declared, "Just got a call from Dallas. Gotta Go!" Dallas meant his CIA controller was on the line.
It wasn't the first party carried out by the three gunmen and it would not be the last. They had all been handpicked by the U.S. government to secretly carry out the war on terror. Each had a preferred, deadly skill that the Central Intelligence Agency, so claimed M.H., liked in them. They could kill and did so without hesitation. They were hired killers. Assassins. M.H. preferred 'patriot' and 'soldier'. It was a secret I had been let in on slightly less than a year after the 9/11 attacks, when M.H. became involved in the parties, as they liked to call them—killings and kidnappings of terrorists in Mexico, Canada, France, Haiti, the Philippines, and the U.S. Actually, M.H. began sharing secrets with me thirteen years earlier when he revealed that he was a paid informant for the federal government. For nearly eighteen years, I listened intently, took thousands of pages of notes, researched and documented what I could of his claims, and did my best to confirm the fantastic stories he told me.
Chapter Two: Before The Killings…
Before the secret killings started in the government's war on terror I knew M.H. as a self-described patriot, a lover of women—lots of them—a Korean war veteran, a former businessman, a man who did time in prison, and a man who received money from the federal government in exchange for the information he provided and the undercover work he did for the different agencies. His signature appearance was his shaved head. It glistened when you met him in person. M.H. shaved his head long before it became a popular fashion statement. His piercing blue eyes and mischievous smile greeted you, and sometimes the eyes seemed to laugh, hiding what really lay behind them. He gave the appearance of being warm and caring and shook hands with a firm grip. It was a deceptive and deadly appearance.
This man was called M.H. because he didn't want others in the KTOK radio newsroom where I worked, to know his name. So over the years, those who came and went from the news department knew him only as M.H. "M.H. is on the phone for you!" they would shout across the newsroom. They knew him only as "one of Bohnen's sources." Had they met him, they would have seen he was a confident-looking man. He dressed casually, often wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt displaying a tee shirt underneath. The dress shirt served as a light jacket for him. It flowed at his sides as he made energetic strides in the black or brown cowboy boots that he usually wore. He never wore shoes—except when he was in prison. That's another story.
We first met in 1987, after I gained some national attention, along with journalist friend Tony Kimery, following stories we did regarding a conflict-of-interest of retired federal judge Lawrence Walsh, the Oklahoma City attorney named to investigate the Iran-Contra Affair. The Oklahoma City law firm where Walsh was 'of counsel' handled the aircraft records for the C-123 shot down over Nicaragua while carrying supplies to the Contras. Kimery and I felt, at least, that it was a 'perception of conflict-of-interest', enough to get Walsh disqualified. Despite the flurry of national stories, it wasn't deemed enough of a 'conflict-of-interest' for the judge to be replaced, and after our fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol fame, the Iran-Contra probe moved forward.
So it was that M.H. knew of my investigative reputation. After I had aired a series of stories about POW-MIAs in Vietnam, he sent a note thanking me for my interest in the missing soldiers of war. He followed it up with a phone call and suggested we meet for a cup of coffee. It was at a Grandy's restaurant on Lincoln Boulevard north of the Oklahoma State Capitol when M.H. first told me his unbelievable story of doing 'contract' work for different government agencies. When I first asked him about his background and what he did for a living, he gave me the stock answer that he gave to others, "Oh, a little of this and a little of that." But over coffee and sitting in a booth on the 36th Street side of the restaurant, he finally made his confession. I admit I thought he was crazy and laughed at the very idea that I was talking with someone who was doing the 'dirty' work of different government agencies.
"What kind of a goofball am I dealing with?" I asked myself. Something drove me to keep meeting and talking with the man who told unbelievable stories. But I think it was the slow and small confirmations I made of his claims that prompted me to continue this search for the truth. Plus, he was intriguing!
It took years of meetings, countless cups of coffee in some good and bad restaurants, and God knows how many telephone conversations, for him to unravel his wild claims. Whether it was spying on Chinese college students who wanted AWACS information from Tinker Air Force Base, searching for hidden Nazi gold in Europe, hunting down sellers of stolen Soviet nuclear weapons in Europe, stinging purveyors of financial schemes to avoid IRS taxes, bringing home a missing WWII vet after sixty years of absence, escorting old Nazis, or most incredible: assassinating suspected terrorists in President Bush's war on terror—M.H. claimed he was involved. It was clear that M.H. had a questionable background.
A check of his criminal file revealed lapses of honesty starting in the 1960s and continuing through 2006. Bad checks were written from Pennsylvania to Tennessee to Kansas and Oklahoma. He did federal time in the early '60s for not paying for the car that he took off a showroom floor from a California car dealer. In prison in El Paso, Texas, M.H. met Chicago mobster Angelo Inciso, a man who had 6,000 pages on file at the FBI and a reputation as a killer and enforcer for the mob and the labor unions. Inciso was one of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy's first targets in the early 1960s. Inciso was also M.H.'s cellmate and, naturally, the two shared secrets and deadly adventures.
In the '70s, it was embezzlement that landed M.H. in trouble with the U.S. Justice Department, and it came at a time when M.H. was the largest manager of apartments and property in the state of Oklahoma. That's when he started working for the FBI and the IRS. They 'flipped' him and turned him into a tool to be used against others like him.
M.H. did the kind of work federal agents wouldn't normally do. Sometimes they couldn't do them. M.H. did undercover operations against all kinds of crooks and suspected crooks—dope dealers, gun runners, smugglers of illegal aliens from Mexico and financial schemers. He was good at it because he was like them and if any of them had suspicions about M.H., all they had to do was check the court records to learn that he had his own history of criminal problems. We often talked about it. The FBI and criminal investigative divisions of other federal agencies were good at investigations and some undercover operations. But many of them were 'boy scouts'. They didn't have the means to travel the crooked paths often traveled by M.H. He had a background already made.
His targets knew what he wanted—money. They could run a court check and see his legal problems and come to the conclusion—he was up to his old ways. He would do anything for a buck. A 'boy scout' FBI agent would have to create a phony file. That's not to say FBI agents never do undercover work. But why do it when a ready-made operative was handy? Some of the stories and claims told by M.H. were provable. He testified in federal trials of gun dealers who broke the law by attempting to sell weapons to certain foreign countries who were on a list of 'no sells'. One woman sued him over his testimony that landed her in legal trouble. Retired IRS agent James Climer of Oklahoma City had coffee with M.H. and me on one occasion at a restaurant where M.H. and I often met. The agent laughed heartily as he recalled the operations they carried out in Las Vegas years earlier—the women, the whiskey, steaks—courtesy of the mob—and their chance meeting with actor Telly Savalas.
From the '70's to the present, M.H. was a paid informant and undercover operative—a freelancer, if you will. He was a contractor for any government Agency that wanted to pay him; and with most government agencies that hire people such as M.H.—it was always cash. They wanted no paper trail and there was none, except for the rare instance when a clerk gave him an invoice detailing what the expense was for; then quickly paged him to return with the paper. By then, it was too late. M.H. had photocopied the document, knowing that it was one more piece of evidence and proof for me. If there was one thing M.H. learned in the reporter-source relationship we had over the years, it was 'documentation'—proof. My files were filled with airline ticket stubs, copied documents, cassette tape recordings, postcards from afar, foreign newspapers and trinkets purchased in foreign countries—all a product of this journalist-source relationship. The list included a piece of concrete from a German cave where he had been sent to search for Nazi loot from WWII; two teeth from two men shot dead as they tried to steal Nazi gold while M.H. and others dug for it in Austria; the skull that I held in my hands one October morning following M.H.'s European hunt for Nazi gold; and the bloody wristwatch cut from the arm of a terrorist shot dead at a CIA party near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Of course, there were pictures—lots of them. Some were of the people he targeted—terrorists who wanted to sell nuclear devices in Europe. Some of the pictures were snapshots as he posed with the women who thought he was the victim of their con. Instead, the pictures ended up in the hands of government agents and, of course, in my files. M.H. was always good about some of the documents and proof. He would show them to me, then tell me he also had copies for the FBI and had to deliver them. We chuckled numerous times over how he first showed things to me, then gave them to the FBI. As M.H. went on more and more operations for the CIA, they involved airplanes.
I taught him the value of the aircraft registration number—the tail number that identified the plane. It showed who owned the aircraft and who didn't. He realized an aircraft registration might erase any doubts that I had about his meetings with his 'people down south,' the CIA. They were the ones running what he called parties, another name for assassinations, whacks, hits, killings, or whatever you wanted to call them. In some cases, the tail numbers raised more doubt about his stories of meeting CIA-types who flew into a local airport to either pay him cash, talk about another upcoming party, or discuss how the Agency was going to keep him out of serving a six month prison sentence. Regardless, when M.H. had one of those meetings at an airport, or when he was flown by the Agency to a meeting in Washington or elsewhere, one of the first things he did was to get the tail number of the aircraft.
Ours was a relationship built on constant note-taking on my part, skepticism, fact-checking, and the slow and tedious construction of a foundation of belief. Notebooks accumulated over the years; crammed with the dates, times, locations of meetings and conversations and, of course, the stories—who was killed, how they died, who was spied upon and what the government wanted him to do next. M.H. called me his 'father confessor', explaining that he never had anyone else with whom to share his secrets. He didn't share them with his wives or with his girlfriends because sometimes they were the very people he was paid to target. And M.H. always said his family didn't believe him. For M.H., it was a way of life. He made a living off of the information he obtained for the law agencies for which he worked undercover. And he always had this nonchalant attitude about the veracity of his stories. "I only know what I saw," he would say. Or "I only know what I was told." And it became the same for me, despite my constant efforts to prove his claims. I only knew what he told me.
Chapter Three: Let the Parties Begin...
The killings started—in the fall of 2002—thirteen months after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington D.C.—more than a year after President Bush spoke to Congress and the nation and said:
"Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success."
M.H. was a part of the retaliation—the assassination of a Russian officer who spied for the Iraqis at the UN mission in New York City. As the President promised—it was secret and it was successful. It was the week of October 9, 2002, a Wednesday, when M.H. and his German friend Hantz flew to New York City to carry out the 'hit'. I received some details the following Sunday night, October 13th when M.H. phoned my home at 7:10 from Washington D.C. and left me wondering about the story.
I remained eager to hear the details. M.H. sounded emotionally down. I could hear it in his voice. Still, he wanted to talk and unload his burden. I had become, as he said more than once, his father confessor— the one who heard some of his most intimate secrets or perhaps his shadowy secrets. He had a tail number of the CIA plane that carried him to New York City—N500EX. It was a corporate-style jet. "Twin engine," he added. "They called it a Falcon. But the only falcon I know is a bird. It has a real long range. Can fly to London and back without refueling." I didn't press him for details of the hit because I knew he couldn't, or wouldn't, give me details over the phone. Even as M.H. said he didn't want to offer much information about the hit over the phone, he revealed the Agency had another 'fast trip' planned for him—the assassination of a female spy in Turkey. It was the same woman the CIA wanted him to hit last year and he declined the offer. He had been on his way to Turkey twenty-four hours earlier to carry out the job. "I said I'd do it," he said, while I scribbled notes and rested my voice. He and another Agency person were waiting at the Dulles Airport terminal to board a Turkish airliner, when the traveling companion received a phone call. The trip and the hit were cancelled.
"The individual wasn't there," explained M.H.
"The lady?"
"Yeah, the lady friend," he answered. She was a travel agent who, according to the CIA, had ties to terrorists in the Middle East and the Agency wanted her eliminated. A year earlier, M.H. wondered at the time how he would ever make it alive out of Turkey if he killed the woman, but he finally rejected the mission. This time, the Agency apparently assured him of a safe exit from the country. M.H. waited for a CIA plane to fly him back to Oklahoma City the following day. He wrestled with what took place in New York City. "I know a whole lot but I don't wanta go into it right now."
"How do you feel?" I pushed. I knew that in one way it was a stupid question to ask, something like one of those questions asked by a TV reporter who just stuck a microphone in front of a woman whose child was swept away by roaring floodwaters. In my newsroom, it was a constant joke, as well as a warning to my reporters, that they should never ask such a question. Still, I wanted to hear him tell me how he felt about killing the man—and he told me.
"I don't know. Not bad. Not excited. But I don't really know," he answered. "In the final analysis, I done a good deed for motherhood and apple pie. But how do you go to confession and tell a priest you did what you did?"
Good question, I thought, but it was one I couldn't answer. Only he could.
M.H. struggled emotionally with it, knowing some called it patriotism while others called it something else—murder.
"I do know I didn't feel so bad I wouldn't go to Turkey. Hey, it'd build up my retirement fund. We'd write a book and make a million," he quipped, but without the usual humor in his voice.
M.H. phoned a second time not quite an hour later. He remained curious about the aircraft registration numbers on the jet that had flown him into New York City. I researched the tail number and learned that N500EX was not on any aircraft—legally that is. The Federal Aviation Administration files showed the number was reserved to a man in Columbus, Indiana. For the first time that night, M.H. laughed lightly. He knew the number was on a plane used by the CIA. I checked another number that he provided—N724DW. While M.H. waited for a flight, an Agency operative traveling with him talked with someone who had exited a similar corporate jet bearing the number. There was nothing in the FAA files on N724DW. We weren't surprised.
* * * * *
The next day, M.H. phoned the KTOK newsroom. "Don't pay the ransom. I've escaped," chuckled M.H. when I grabbed the phone in my office at the end of the newsroom. "Just got here." He arrived home from New York City and promised to call later in the evening. "And I also have another number for you." That meant another aircraft registration number.
A few minutes before 8:00 p.m., he phoned my home and I was ready with pen and paper in hand to listen and take notes.
"As you can see on the caller ID, I have a new home phone number," he started.
"Sorry, I didn't see it," I responded, as I noted the time and date in a notebook.
"It's 366-6892. The guys south wanted me to change it," M.H. continued. "Say, here's another number of a plane—N793AA."
I ran an FAA check on my computer and found N793AA was registered to Airline Transport Professionals Corporation of USA, Wilmington, Delaware. It was a Cessna Citation 501—a fixed wing, multi-engine turbojet.
"Hey, the one I flew on was a twin engine. Maybe we got lucky. All right!" he exclaimed. "Well, I got a couple of things for you, Jerry. One's an ID card, and a hat."
"A hat?"
"A Russian Army officer's hat."
"And where did you get it?"
"A head," he laughed," you know whose head."
I knew. Or at least I suspected where he got the hat. M.H. wasn't sure about the rank of the individual who once wore the hat. I had perused the wire services and New York City newspapers, but saw nothing about a Russian military officer killed at a hotel. M.H. had seen nothing either.
"I don't know. I haven't looked. Maybe they'll pack him up and take him home," suggested M.H. I wasn't sure about the hat and told him so. "Hey! It has grease stains and apparently was worn a long time," he laughed. We ended the call after M.H. said he would stop by my 50 Penn Place offices the next day.
It was early afternoon when he did. I stood outside the office tower and watched as M.H.'s little car entered the south parking lot. I walked the short distance to where he parked. By the time I arrived, M.H., dressed in a white sweater and blue slacks was out of the car and retrieving something from the car trunk. He carried a plastic sack and pulled out a Russian officer's military hat. I suggested we sit in his car.
"Hantz went with me," started M.H. "He actually did the dirty work. I have to tell you, this Hantz could play Clint Eastwood."
I didn't care about Hantz's acting ability. But I didn't say so to M.H. I just wanted details of the killing of the Russian and M.H. provided them.
"His name is George. Got his home address and ID, but had to give it to the feds. His last name is Korvinski—K-O-R-V-I-N-S-K-I," he said, spelling it carefully as I wrote down the name in my notebook. "But it had the J's in it like they spell in Russia," he added.
Korvinski was in his military uniform when M.H. and Hantz shot him dead at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, where the Russian lived while working at the United Nations.
M.H. wanted me to phone the hotel to see if Korvinski was still on the register. He grabbed his own cell phone and called information for the hotel number—212-872-4534. I wrote down the number as M.H. repeated the digits when the operator gave it to him. He called the hotel and handed me the phone so I could ask the hotel operator if George Korvinski was still registered. The clerk who checked said Korvinski wasn't a registered guest.
"He was staying there and called it home whenever he visited to do stuff at the UN," continued M.H. as he unraveled his story. "He apparently was KGB, and involved in doing favors for Iraq."
"How'd Hantz get involved in this?" I pressed forward.
"I didn't know until I got into D.C. He didn't know until he got there either."
While in D.C., he and Hantz filled their rental car with gasoline at a service station at Four Corners. An hour later, a sniper opened fire and killed a man. "Scary back there, Jerry," M.H. said, prompting me to return the conversation to the shooting and how it went down. "We knocked on the door. Hantz said something in Russian. The guy let us in. We walked in and Hantz immediately plugged him."
"With what?"
"With his pistol—a .38-caliber revolver. Silencer. He used hollow points. Shot him at the base of the neck and it came out the top here," said M.H. pointing at his forehead. "One shot. I picked up the hat. We went through his pockets and we left. Left the TV on. Didn't touch a thing." I wanted to know the room number. M.H. said it was room 1824 of the Waldorf-Astoria. Time ran out for M.H. to tell me more because he had to meet his FBI agents for lunch just up Northwest Expressway from my offices, at a place called the Macaroni Grill. The agents wanted more information about the Russian.
* * * * *
It was early afternoon, October 25th, when M.H. phoned to tell me he was only a few minutes away and wanted to meet me in the south parking lot of the office building. I left the noisy newsroom and as I did, grabbed my leather jacket because it was cloudy and chilly outdoors. Eleven floors down, I exited the building and saw M.H. and his wife sitting in their car toward the east end of the parking lot. He immediately got out of the vehicle, smiled and shook hands and handed me copies of the identification of the supposed Russian military officer. A Russian alphabet accompanied the ID card and it showed that the man worked at the UN, but the picture was gone.
"I had to give it back to the guys south. They wanted it," explained M.H.
I wondered about the body. Since I never found any news stories in the papers about the death, was it removed? Did M.H. ever ask about it?
"Yeah, I have, and they wouldn't comment." We stood in the chill as M.H. explained a Swiss bank account was being set up for him by the Agency.
I wanted greater details of the hit; I wanted proof, and I had questions about the bullet wound.
"Bigger coming out than going in," he answered. "A big hole in the forehead."
As soon as the man dropped to the floor, M.H. and Hantz made sure no one else was in the room. Then Hantz got on the phone while M.H. went through the dead man's pockets. They needed some proof for the Agency that the man was dead and the proof was the identity badge. M.H. also found two-hundred dollars cash in the man's wallet and split it with Hantz.
M.H. wasn't quite ready to say how much he was paid for the job, but believed that since Hantz was the shooter, he received more than M.H. Finally, the chill got the best of us. M.H. returned to his warm car, and I walked back into the office building and took the elevator to the newsroom.
Whatever M.H. got paid, he needed it for his legal problems. He was hit with a bad check charge in Oklahoma County District Court, and in early November, learned his court hearing was delayed until January 13, 2003. At the same time, someone wanted him to do another job—eliminate two people who were considered terrorists. M.H. provided their names to me in a Saturday noontime phone call to my house, on November 9, 2002. He had recently received a check for $1,237,441.45 in the mail from the Board of Enquiry in the United Kingdom. Someone named William W. Moore had signed check number 38. While I suspected it was one of those phony check operations where the operators ask you to pay $5,000 up front to cover their legal expenses, M.H. wasn't sure. The Agency knew nothing of it and his local bank suggested that it appeared to be perfectly legal. Turned out the check reportedly came from some Israelis who wanted M.H. to assassinate two men in the States.
The first was a man named Tannaz T. who lived in Marina del Rey, California. The second target was Fariborz M. who resided in Herndon, Virginia.
"So tell me, if you can, anything about them." I asked.
"I can't on the phone. But at least you got the names."
"Are they notables of some sort?"
"Not to us." But M.H. made it clear he would not take part in the killings. "I'm not doing it. I'm dumb, but not stupid." As it turned out, Hantz took care of the two men.
* * * * *
M.H. received another assassination offer from the CIA by December 1st. The Agency wanted him to whack a student at Oklahoma City University. He was N. A., who had student ID number 999-90-****. His brother was N. K., who was born May 14, 1974, with passport number N533-***. "These people are from Nairobi," M.H. told me in a 5:40 p.m. phone call to my home that Sunday night, December 1st.
"K." has tried to get to the U.S. to visit his brother. And I've been asked to take care of the situation—like the guy in New York." Hantz would join him for the hit, just as he did in New York City. M.H. had been on the phone with his CIA controller in Dallas just an hour earlier. He was told that A. and K. had connections that put them at risk. "They have links to some bad people."
I had taken careful note of the names and information and wanted to know, "So are you taking the job? Are you going to do it?"
"We'll see. I'll let you know," answered M.H.
"How much for this job?"
"Half a million," he replied.
Half a million? Damn. Not bad pay—if the story's true.
Even as M.H. validated and documented some of the things that he said he did, I found others incredibly difficult to believe. The Soviet military officer's hat for instance, had a thirty-five dollar price tag stuck onto it. M.H. said that's how he and Hantz were able to carry it around because it appeared to be a collector's item and wouldn't raise suspicion. I had my doubts. Who wouldn't? The thought of eliminating someone in Oklahoma City bothered M.H. Or so he said. He talked of the dangers of doing such jobs, even if it was for the CIA and for the sake of ridding the country of anyone with links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
"You walk, you don't run," advised M.H., as he discussed how to avoid attention. The Agency had faxed him information about the target, and M.H. said he would get a copy to me soon.
Two days later, I had it. December 3, 2002. Rain fell as I drove onto I-44 adjacent to the 50 Penn Place office tower. Snow and sleet were in the forecast and a winter storm warning had most motorists' attention. A half-inch of ice was in the forecast for the next morning's rush hour. It promised to be typical Oklahoma City wintry weather—very little snow—lots of damned ice.
As I negotiated through traffic, I phoned M.H. at his home and he picked up on the second ring. He had phoned the newsroom earlier in the day, but I had been busy recording newscasts and running the shop. My drive home finally offered an opportunity to talk to him. He explained that he had faxed some information to my home and it would be waiting on me when I arrived there. It was a "to Whom It May Concern" letter, dated September 24, 2002, from Dawn Day, the Assistant to Director of International Relations at Oklahoma City University, and pertained to a student named N. A. (Student ID #999-90-****) who was described as 'a full-time student in good standing at Oklahoma City University'. The letter indicated that N. had been enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication program since the fall of 1998 semester and 'will be graduating in December, 2002'.
"Mr. N.A. would like to invite his family members to come visit at Oklahoma City University." She identified his brother as N.K., DOB 05/14/19**, Passport# N533-***, and offered her fax phone number if there were any questions. Her signature was bold and long in stroke and consisted of what appeared to be two D's. M.H. said N.A. was from Kenya, the same country where al-Qaeda terrorists struck twice in the past week.
At 8:00 p.m., M.H. and I finally were able to discuss the letter. It had been sent by Oklahoma City University to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Somebody intercepted that thing, the FBI or the CIA or the INS turned it over to them. Or maybe they had no way of verifying and turned it over to the FBI," he explained. Whatever the case, it was in the hands of M.H., who seriously considered the job to eliminate Mr. N.A. for the sum of $500,000. He was disturbed that the school encouraged the INS to grant the visas, and finally said the letter was from the "guys down south."
I wasn't surprised. I knew he didn't get it from the University. The FBI was aware that he had the letter. Whether the FBI knew why M.H. had a copy of the letter was quite another issue.
"I don't know, but I suspect they do," he replied.
It raised a fascinating scenario that I laid out to M.H. If the FBI knew that the CIA had sanctioned a hit on someone in Oklahoma City, how would it possibly handle an investigation into such a killing? M.H. had an answer. "The FBI would be called in and they'd whitewash it, Jerry. They'd say everything's cool. And you'd say 'in a pig's eye, I know better!'" He chuckled at the thought.
But I would know better—if it happened.
At that point in the conversation, M.H. made one of the most intriguing revelations to me about his secret life. He didn't do so with great dramatic flair—he just said it. "Jerry, I don't know when I can do it, but I wanta get with you. I finally got permission to show you something which goes back to the Angelo days." They were the days of being imprisoned with convicted mobster and killer Angelo Inciso, one of the first organized labor targets convicted by former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. I wondered what he was getting at. Had he really been a government plant during his prison time?
"No way," M.H. denied. He was adamant about it. "I was there cuz I shoulda been. No way!"
But he had a document he wanted me to see. He described it as a document with his picture on it and the picture was of him with hair. M.H. hinted he and Angelo were freed temporarily from prison to do special work for the government. He definitely had my attention and at the same time aroused a great deal of skepticism. It had all the makings of another fascinating and outlandish story from his secret life that I could not prove.
"The neighbors south are giving permission for me to go public. It goes back to my cousin, the one who died." M.H. meant Eugene Trone, the former State Department officer. I pushed him for more information but tried not to be too direct about it. "We'll hook up," he promised. "Jerry, the government don't care if somebody's done something bad—if they need you."
"Was it something like what you did in New York?"
"The same thing. And I did it well, Jerry, many times in another country. Vietnam. It was all done there. I got my ID card and letters to back it up."
He went on to explain that the ID and letters indicated if he were found dead or were arrested, they would ensure he was not to be touched. "I could walk into any place I wanted and flash my ID and they'd give me what I wanted."
I eventually got my hands on the ID and other documents. The ID showed a picture of M.H. with thick horn-rimmed glasses. It stated at the top and above his picture, "Military Assistance Command-Vietnam" followed by "Studies and Observation Group." Under his name, he was listed as an E-7, blood type O, and his service number of RA 1632*****. The card was numbered 41*** and on the same front with his picture was the warning, "This card is registered to the bearer. It must be surrendered prior to any departure from MAC-V operational areas or the Republic of Vietnam."
The flip side repeated that it was Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, APO San Francisco. It stated that it was a "special identification and pass." The card added, "The bearer of this document is acting under the direct orders of the President of the United States." It further said the bearer was "authorized to wear civilian clothing, carry unusual personal weapons, transport and possess prohibited items including US currency, pass into restricted areas and requisition equipment of all types, including weapons and vehicles." The last bold declaration at the bottom of the card stated: IF HE IS KILLED OR INJURED, DO NOT REMOVE THIS DOCUMENT. ALERT YOUR COMMANDING OFFICER IMMEDIATELY! The operation lasted about a year before M.H. and Angelo returned to El Paso, Texas, and a brief life behind bars.
"Oh yeah, but I didn't stay for more than a few days," added M.H.
He definitely had my interest; even if it sounded like a far-fetched tale drawn up for a Chuck Norris-type movie in Hollywood. A meeting the next day would be out of the question because I knew that severe weather might interfere. And he had plans to go to Dallas, Texas.
* * * * *
December 4, 2002: M.H. was on his drive back from Dallas when he phoned me in the newsroom. I probed him about the Vietnam mystery he teased me with the previous night—how he and Angelo Inciso were freed from prison and became part of the government's secret assassination teams. "We went over there and were put in a group of misfits. You know, like The Dirty Dozen. We were just misfits," he answered. They were often flown by helicopter to remote parts of South Vietnam and even North Vietnam. Their targets were political leaders. "We'd often hike six miles or more, kidnap them, and return to a site in the jungle. We'd proceed to torture the hell out of them, then whack the S.O.B.'s. Pure and simple." M.H. said about a dozen men were picked to be on the team. "Hey, Angelo was so good. My cousin felt sorry for me. He knew I had been in Korea and offered me a way out. So I told him about Angelo."
Killing was easy for Angelo. After all, he had done it so much in his mob life. After about a year in Vietnam, the two returned home and to the La Tuna federal prison in Texas. M.H. said he spent one day there processing out of the place. Angelo did the same.
Later that day, M.H. phoned me at my home and said he would not take the local hit. He would leave it to someone else.
"So will Hantz do the job instead of you?"
"Don't know. He could do it by himself. He's got it down to a routine."
That same day, M.H. watched a news story on TV about the CIA approving hits on terrorists around the world. "They mean business, don't they? But as for me, I'm gonna be judged one day. Hope I'm righteous. I mean, what if you make a mistake? I used to not care about anything." He paused in obvious thought. "I guess you take from the devil and give to God. But I don't know if I'm taking from God. Guess I'd rather go gold digging. It's more interesting and there's not as much tension and stress. Course, you don't make as much either."
He left me with those thoughts as he said good night.
* * * * *
December 8, 2002: I learned the hits in Oklahoma City had been cancelled. I returned from a weekend trip to Kansas and listened to two messages left on my voice mail from M.H. I phoned him and he answered immediately, and explained his Agency controllers had flown into the Norman airport. "They came on up and I got another tail number for you. N29J. It was sorta like a small business jet." He said Hantz and 'our buddy George Wilson' were on the plane.
A later search on FAA records showed that N29J was not listed on any kind of a small business jet. Once again, the Agency used trickery on the aircraft registration number of the plane flown into Oklahoma.
For some unknown reason, the Agency according to M.H., decided against the hit on the student at Oklahoma City University. Lucky for him. Was it ever a real situation explored by the CIA? I would never know. One thing was for certain—the letter from the OCU official and the data provided in it were real enough. Most people could not have gotten such a letter.
Nearly a week later, on December 16, 2002, M.H. suggested he was about to do more of the 'dirty work' for the Agency—joining Hantz for more of the assassinations. By now, he told me he had been paid $150,000 to do the job on the Russian military officer in New York City. The pay for upcoming work would be far less. He would be the driver in the newest job—wherever that would be.
Even after many years of meeting and talking on a nearly daily basis with the man, M.H. remained an enigma and it was demonstrated as he said he had gone to confession to a priest at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in south Oklahoma City. There, he had confessed to the murder of the Russian military officer and found the reaction of the priest to be 'weird'. The priest didn't believe him and peppered him with questions, until M.H. said he finally told him that he could answer no more questions.
I tried to make light of it by suggesting to M.H. that he should have propped a chair against the priest's confessional door so the priest couldn't open it to see who had just confessed. M.H. said he might remember the idea in the future if he ever went to confession again.
Two days later, December 18, 2002, came confirmation of more of M.H.'s secret life. It concerned Angelo Inciso, the man he claimed was his cellmate in the federal prison near El Paso, Texas. I had made a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI about Inciso, and a representative named Julia Eichhorst called me with good news. She had 6,000 pages at the FBI on M.H.'s old cellmate. I was stunned at the enormous volume of files on the man. Eichhorst explained that Inciso's rap sheet started in the 1930s. In the 1950s, he came under FBI investigation for organized labor problems. Even after being freed from prison in the '60s, he was convicted in the 1970s of kidnapping and extortion. "A real slimy character," she said as she listed some of his crimes.
I couldn't afford 6,000 pages so I asked for the rap sheet. It turned out to be three pages in length. At least I had confirmation of a character in M.H.'s secret life. Eichhorst telephoned me the next day with more information about Inciso. She explained Inciso did time at the Federal prison in Texas for 'misapplication of funds' stemming from his organized labor days. In December of 1961, Inciso first went to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. Some time later, Nebraska deputies transferred him to Sandstone, Minnesota. In June of 1963, Inciso was moved to La Tuna, Texas. Eichhorst said that in 1966, Inciso was moved to a federal prison camp at Stafford, Arizona. There was nothing about him being released secretly by the government to become a paid assassin for the CIA in Vietnam. Not that I really expected to find such an admission in the documents.
The files also reflected that Inciso was convicted in October of 1974 of kidnapping and extortion in California. A 15-year-old boy was the victim and Inciso got life. The remains of the boy were discovered in 1977 and prosecutors considered putting Inciso on trial for murder, but didn't follow through with the idea. The FBI files did not reflect when and where Inciso died. Eichhorst said the FBI responded simply because I provided his social security number obtained from an Internet website. No matter what Inciso might have done for the government in Vietnam, there was one thing about him, he fit Eichhorst's description—'a real slimy character'.
Even as Eichhorst and I discussed Inciso's colorful past, the CIA prepped M.H. to carry out another violent mission. For some, it was to be their last Christmas alive on this earth. And the targets were terror suspects out of country. It was about to be time for them. M.H. had indicated there would be a party in Haiti, and he was to be a participant. Someone was going to be whacked, but he didn't have many details—only that it was a New Year's Eve party.
Chapter Four: Port-au-Prince Party
By New Year's Eve of 2003, M.H. became the Dixie Cup. The CIA had hooked him and put him to work doing its dirtiest work in the war on terror. He killed once in New York City and now in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he killed again for the Agency. It was clear he was going to be used as a secret weapon against the terrorists.
It was 7:30 p.m., New Year's Day 2003, when my home phone rang. "Everything went well," he declared. But the count was six, not four as the Agency thought there would be. Two more were found asleep in the house, and according to M.H., they were disposed of in the same way as the other four. He and Hantz were flown to Haiti and a driver took them to the targeted house where they carried out their work. The two gunmen used silencers on their guns. While M.H. wasn't in an especially light mood, he still joked that he had a souvenir for me—Haitian money that he took from one of the victims. Just what I needed. First, M.H. said, he needed sleep because he had returned home only 90 minutes earlier.
Slowly over the next few days during telephone conversations, I learned more about the killings. M.H. and Hantz used Uzi machine guns or machine pistols. The guns were already on the plane when M.H. boarded it in Norman. "Each carried a clip of about 60 rounds." They entered and caught the six asleep, or passed out, and totally unaware. No one had time to offer any resistance. M.H. said he took care of three of the men and fired dozens of rounds into their sleeping bodies. "Hantz emptied his. Far as I know, there are six bodies rotting in the place. Oh yeah, you'll be getting a FedEx in the morning with some Haitian money and the names," he promised.
How many others around the globe were being targeted by the spy network? "Jerry—there's a whole piss-pot full of 'em out there." Even if they were terrorists, the act of killing three sleeping men bothered M.H. But he didn't dwell long on the subject, and explained his pay didn't match the $150,000 he got for the hit in New York. "Half that amount this time," he said, complaining he would lose half of it to taxes.
* * * * *
The next day, President Bush delivered a speech about the war on terror and proclaimed, "We do not yet have all the terrorists, but they're all on the run." He was at Ft. Hood, Texas.
"And if they listen carefully—they will hear behind them the mighty footsteps of the United States of America. And we're not quitting. We'll fight this war on many fronts with many tools. Our intelligence operations are tracking the terrorists."
It was a poignant speech by the President in relationship to the story that M.H. unraveled. If M.H.'s story were true, the President's remarks were more than timely.
"Our coalition is strong and we're keeping it strong. And we're on the hunt. We're chasing them down one by one."
Maybe they truly were chasing them down one by one, just as M.H. claimed. The same day of the President's Ft. Hood speech, I received the FedEx package from M.H. It contained a sealed envelope. On the outside, he had written: "Coin from pocket. Stamp from Ltr." Then he wrote: #1 Ahnha Ayesha, #2 Zaitshik L.A., #3 Askari Zajist, #4 Ukn, #5 Ukn, #6 Ukn." Inside the envelope, I retrieved a postage stamp 'Posta Romana' and part of it bore the cancellation print. There was also a shiny gold Haitian coin.
Two days later on January 5th, Sunday, M.H. telephoned my home to explain he met his CIA controller earlier in the day at the Norman airport, as well as the previous day in Denton, Texas. It was a corporate jet that landed at the Max Westheimer Airport and it was registered as N-CJ1, numbers that reflected a foreign registration. There was no way I could trace it. But he also gave me a tail number of N750RL from a plane that had been used by the Agency a few weeks earlier.
The next day after our Sunday phone conversation, M.H. learned of plans for another party—a big one. He phoned the newsroom at 1:30 in the afternoon and I took the call, immediately making my usual notes about our conversation. He had met with the CIA again. "They came through town this morning," he explained as he provided the tail number, N752CX. "They were on their way back up to D.C. Maybe they will have another job for Hantz and me and another guy." The job involved a large number of suspected terrorists. "Two in one place, eight in one place, and four in another. Makes 14." Eight of them would be taken down out of country while the others would take place somewhere in the U.S.
M.H. phoned my home the night of January 7th, a Tuesday. "You wanta go along with me to Tijuana? I'll be leaving next week. Probably Wednesday, and be done by Friday or Saturday."
While he laughed, I declined his offer.
"Hey, maybe you could drive for us," he teased. "You know, it's a darned shame I don't have a cell phone small enough for you to hear as we do it."
Was there really a way for him to record one of these parties just to prove that they really took place? Realizing that M.H. used to carry a tape recorder in his cowboy boots as he went on some of his IRS and FBI operations, I raised the suggestion to him.
He liked the idea. "Yeah, I might." Earlier in the day, he had another phone call with his Agency controllers. "This afternoon. Spoke on the phone with 'em. I might run down to Dallas tomorrow afternoon—time's running short."
On Wednesday, the 8th of January, he telephoned the newsroom to break the luncheon appointment we had scheduled. "Jerry, getting ready to leave for Dallas. Gotta go. I just have to," he explained with urgency in his voice. Despite the noise level in our newsroom, I could hear it plainly, and I also understood he couldn't speak openly because his wife was with him.
"She's there so you can't talk, right?"
"Yup, but I'll call you tonight.
"Where are you meeting?"
"Going all the way there."
"To their offices?"
"That's right. But don't worry, I'll take a picture for you," he said with a chuckle.
"You give any more thought to using the tape recorder in your boot?"
"No, not really but I think it might work." He had to go.
The next day, January 9th, a Thursday, M.H. gave me details of his meeting in Dallas and of the targets for the approaching party. The meeting was designed to brief him on the suspected terrorists trying to sneak across the border from Tijuana, Mexico. I could hear the fatigue as he spoke.
"Didn't get home until two this morning," he said after calling the newsroom. "But I did have a special viewing of special people last night. It was in the Penthouse of the Key Club." He had no clue where it was located in the city. "Shit, I don't know where it was. Didn't get down there until 5:30 and I arrived at the very worst time of the day." The meeting was held to discuss the targets and to introduce M.H. to a new man for the party.
"What an asshole. Some loose cannon fodder. Looks like he's left over from hell." M.H. said the man looked like he lived on the street and his appearance didn't impress him. His description raised my curiosity.
"Is he a government worker? Someone who works for your people?"
"Yeah, a full time government worker. I'm telling you Jerry, he looks like a street person. Gawd, what mother threw him out with the bath water? They should throw the key away with this guy!"
The night of January 9th, a Thursday, M.H. phoned my home at 7:03 p.m. He had the address of the targets in Mexico—Manuel M. Ponee #43, Mod 3 OTAY, Tijuana, Mexico 22500. "This is where the party will be."
"Yeah, but eight still seems a lot."
"Seems to me it's gonna be a household. I know, Jerry... Why don't you call there next week? Say you've heard the people who used to be there are deceased or suffered an accident?" he laughed.
"Gonna be quite a cleanup job."