Letter to House Select Committee on Intelligence. Darryl Robert Schoon
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story to the Los Angeles Times but it didn’t. The purpose of Norman’s plan was not to enlighten the American public about the covert world of politics and money. Norman already had an intimate knowledge of the Machiavellian world of the American political process. For ten years he had worked for Howard Hughes, a man who believed that buying influence and politicians was the cheapest way of doing business.
The Marina Del Rey project in Los Angeles had been a Howard Hughes project that Thirion had financially managed. Thirion said that Hughes’ partner in the deal was a group led by Herb Kalmbach, the personal attorney of Richard Nixon. It was Thirion’s opinion that it was not for the financing clout or real estate expertise of Kalmbach that Hughes had included the Nixon crowd in the lucrative Marina Del Rey development. No, Norman already knew too much about the real political process and his plan didn’t include exposing it. The only purpose of Norman’s plan was to get Norman Thirion out of prison as soon as possible. And, being there myself, I couldn’t fault him a bit.
The prison experience dashes many hopes, and Norman’s was to be among them. His elation was short lived. Although his prospects for release were initially high, the calls to the lawyer and Laxalt’s and Hatch’s relatives were not to bring Thirion the news he hoped for. As the weeks turned into months, Thirion realized the efforts of the three men were not going to get him out of prison. Confirmation of his fears came when they told him they had informed Wilson of Thirion’s plan to tell what he knew unless he was released from prison. Wilson had replied, “Let him tell. No one will believe him.”
The arrogance of William Wilson’s answer was to be unfortunately justified; not because no one would believe it, but because no one wanted the story told, not even Norman Thirion. Finally released from prison, Thirion later wrote me and asked me to forget the story. It was understandable. Thirion had been an international banker and had moved easily and naturally in the corridors of power, corridors where scandal is avoided like the plague because there, as in society, virtue is measured not by fact, but by reputation. Thirion had a life to rebuild and the less anyone knew of his imprisonment the better.
I, however, had no reputation to lose. I was a convicted drug dealer, a group the media vilified with the same fervor it had previously reserved for child molesters and traitors and now blamed for most of society’s ills. I, however, cared little if people knew I had been in prison. Being a prisoner in a police state is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing.
At the time, the San Francisco Chronicle had been running a series of articles written by a federal inmate and I thought the Chronicle would be interested in Norman’s story. I was wrong. I sent a letter detailing what I had been told to the editors of the Chronicle but heard nothing in reply. I next thought of notifying the U.S. Department of Justice about what I knew. But the Department of Justice was securely in the control of the Republican Party and writing them would be akin to writing Goebbels in Nazi Germany, informing him that a nice Jewish family in the neighborhood had disappeared and I believed the police were responsible. No, I thought, Norman’s story would have to wait until I was released from prison.
In the summer of 1992, I was released, and although still on parole, I was now free to tell what I knew. I figured that the Democrats would be interested in my tale of Republican corruption, so I went to the offices of California’s Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. Because I had served on Diane Feinstein’s China Committee when she was the Mayor of San Francisco, I figured my chances were better with Diane. I was wrong again.
During Diane’s tenure as mayor, I had been asked to give a talk to the San Francisco Port Commission on behalf of my Republican landlord and prominent local society figure, Ed Osgood. At the time, I was importing Chinese hand-knotted carpets, the import duties were 45%, and Ed’s duty-free foreign trade zone was the most cost-effective place to store them until sold.
I gave the talk before the Port Commission and ended up photographed on the front page of the S.F. Chronicle business section extolling the virtues of San Francisco’s China trade and the value of Ed Osgood’s Foreign Trade Zone. For that, I was rewarded with a seat on Mayor Feinstein’s China Committee and later accompanied Diane on a trip to Shanghai to speak before various Shanghai import-export corporations.
My previous relationship with Diane notwithstanding, my story about the Republican skim was to fall on deaf ears. I spoke with one of her aides who listened carefully to what I had to say. But during the conversation, I could sense this was a story they didn’t want to know. Barbara Boxer’s office, too, was solicitous but in the end declined to take any action.
I was learning a cold hard lesson in modern American politics that I had not been taught when getting my degree in political science at UC Davis years earlier; to wit, when it comes to the powerful, no one wants to point fingers. I thought because the story included politically powerful figures such as President Ronald Reagan, retired Marine General and former CIA Deputy Director Robert E. Cushman, and Ambassador William Wilson, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and covert agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, there would be a great deal of interest in the story.
I was wrong. Just the opposite is true. In America, as elsewhere in the world, everyone is afraid to accuse the powerful of wrongdoing. If the culprit had been a poor black woman selling crack to fund a black women’s uprising, the outcry would have been deafening. As it was, I couldn’t get a response.
Whether it was my stubbornness or stupidity, I continued intermittently to attempt to tell the story fate had so ungraciously given me. The next attempt was inspired by the vitriolic Republican attacks on the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. Surely, they could use some ammunition to defend themselves against the relentless rage of the Republicans.
Again, I was to be wrong. In the fall of 1994, I contacted Webster Hubbell, Clinton’s beleaguered associate and offered to send him what I knew. Hubbell, at least initially, was both eager and grateful, thanking me for the information and promising it would get into the right hands. If the information did, I was never to know. Hubbell’s thank you was the last thing I was to hear from him.
My attempts to tell Thirion’s story of Republican malfeasance grew fewer as the combination of repeated rebuffs and passing years convinced me that no one wanted to know. Only three more times would a spark of unfounded optimism cause me to once again send Norman’s tale out in the vain hope that someone, somewhere out there would care enough to investigate.
Information was sent to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Bill Kurtis of A&E’s Investigative Reports, and to the investigative reporters at the Los Angeles Times. If they didn’t care enough to investigate, then no one would. No one did.
The burden of hearing a tale as extraordinary as Thirion’s and realizing that no one wants to hear it has not been an easy one to bear. Carrying this story around since 1987 has been a bitter task and the lack of feedback and support has only fueled my cynical view of America and American politics and the American media.
Alexis De Toqueville predicted in 1835 in his extraordinary book, Democracy In America, that (1) the United States and Russia would someday represent opposing views on the world stage, (2) the United States could become a police state where the people lost the political will to govern themselves, and (3) the rebirth of freedom in America would come through the arts. Only De Toqueville’s third prediction hasn’t come true, the rebirth of freedom in America has yet to occur.
In an ironic footnote to Norman’s story, in June 2001, I wondered what had happened to Norman Thirion. My curiosity caused me to enter his name, Norman Bernard Thirion, into Google, the internet search engine. Because I had been disappointed so often in the past, I didn’t expect anything different this time. But this time I was to be wrong. This time another piece in the story told by Norman Thirion was to fall unexpectedly into place.
There, on my computer screen, the words, Norman Bernard Thirion, had taken me to the site of Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library’s special collection of Ambassador William A. Wilson’s papers spanning the years 1980-1992.
There, in box 1, folder 54, was noted the following correspondence, “@ Roger W. Hunt, Hunt & Haugaard, attorneys at law, South Dakota.