An aviation outfit on Imperial Highway in El Segundo that called itself Air America Holdings, Inc. agreed to transport the goods on an executive Boeing 707. Sholtz negotiated with the firm’s president, who claimed to have been a veteran CIA pilot for the agency’s Air America charter airline, which gained notoriety as an American paramilitary asset during the Vietnam War. The airline later disbanded.
This pilot, in a missive on a conspiracy-focused website, said that after Vietnam ended the CIA formed a new, covert airline under his last name. With the agency’s assistance, he flew missions from 1974 to 1988, delivering arms to Asia, the Middle East, even the Soviet Union. By the late-1980s, he said he shut the charter down because he believed CIA operations were harming U.S. interests. Two years later, he asserted the Justice Department charged him with wire fraud to “silence and discredit” him. The book, Drugging America: A Trojan Horse, also captured his story. The pilot, whose name and others the Weekly is withholding because none of them were charged for their participation in Eagle, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
EAGLE LANDS (SORTA)
Sholtz said this pilot not only told her he was still associated with the CIA; he instructed her on what to write in operational documents. Whether you believe her insistence she was merely the front, and not a ringleader, this was no standard mission. Members of her Eagle team declared holding “diplomatic immunity” and other high-level governmental protections freeing the 707 from customs, immigration, and security scrutiny, Gold Ray letters signed by Sholtz stressed repeatedly.
The team itself was no less formidable. A retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with fourteen years in U.S. Special Forces and a Philippine colonel were two of the point men. Another, the overseas lawyer representing the Philippine company maintaining the booty, was once connected to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’ administration, several knowledgeable sources said. Sholtz recalled meeting this lawyer to discuss Eagle in Sri Lanka, where she said he told her the loot was given to Marcos’ people by U.S. authorities who supported them. Marcos was deposed in 1986. Emails and calls to the Philippines embassy about the colonel and to the Philippine Bar Association about the lawyer went unreturned.
Sholtz and Air America Holdings settled on a $200,000 fee for the chartered 707 to make the three-leg trip that would take it from Los Angeles International Airport to the Philippines and finally to Las Vegas, invoices show. On June 26th, 1998, the pilot warranted in a short memo to Sholtz that their aircraft would not face the usual restrictions and protocols landing in Las Vegas, implying Nevada airport personnel were in on the caper and that they had lined up a protected spot to unload the plane’s cargo. “This is to certify that entry into and departure from the drop off point of the merchandise has been cleared and traditional formalities for the personnel and merchandise will not be observed,” the pilot wrote. No government body, in other words, was going to be hassling them about the contents of the 707’s belly.
But three weeks later, Eagle had yet to lift off. The jet they intended to use had experienced “severe mechanical malfunctions,” the pilot wrote in a “sincere” apology to Sholtz. “Obtaining an alternate aircraft is not as simple as telephoning a [typical] charter service,” he said in a July 13th letter. “The only aircraft we can utilize must meet rather narrow parameters of ownership, nationality, crew requirements and most importantly range.” As an alternative, the pilot suggested switching to an older, slower, propeller-driven DC-6 or another Boeing 707 standing by in London. Sholtz would only have to pay $25,000 more for the round trips. “Air America also owns a C-130 but this aircraft is considered too high profile for this mission, and is too expensive to operate,” the pilot wrote. “We therefore have discontinued its use.”
Despite the hiccups and apparent pressure that Sholtz felt to hasten the mission, her plan still retained its VIP access in and out of international airports. The retired lieutenant colonel working with the ex-CIA pilot, she wrote July 17th, had “full diplomatic papers” that conferred on him “full diplomatic immunity,” a flag, “which may have been code for something else” and an inspections clearance-pass alternatively called the “raincoat” or “rain repellent.” All she needed from her Manila contacts was confirmation, preferably in writing, that everything was synced in the Philippines, she said in a July 22nd memo. “We prefer the [plane’s] tail number not be recorded, but we have been able to alter this as a strict requirement, and we can allow it be recorded… The most important verification is that the diplomatic flight will be able to skip customs and proceed strictly to the hangar” to load the merchandise and related equipment. Air America Holdings, she added, was ready to take off within seventy-two hours of payment.
Asked why she believed Washington would condone such furtive actions when the Air Force could simply dispatch its own C-130 to collect the pallets, Sholtz responded: “I wasn’t looking at the mechanics. We were meeting real people who were supposedly working with the U.S. Government. We needed to help our country. I was starry-eyed, thinking this is going to be fantastic! You don’t think something this big could not be true.” Guy Bailey, a Miami attorney who represented Sholtz on Eagle before a falling out, remembered her recounting the same story as the documents paint. “She said she was in some sort of contractual arrangement with the CIA and the Treasury Department to go retrieve currency, gold, or something from the Philippines,” Bailey told the Weekly. Bailey said that as far as he knew, the 707 arrived in the Philippines, waited a week there to collect the goods and left with an empty cargo hold for unexplained reasons.
Sholtz said she has heard that version and another one where the booty was returned to the U.S., and everybody profited but her because she had been swindled. By mid-summer 1998, Sholtz said Eagle team members would not answer her questions, then her phone calls. It was as if they had vanished. “I don’t know what happened. Sometimes it depends on the day,” she said. “I thought they’d chosen us to do this great work, and it was so flattering and if you have any narcissism, it’s ‘Oh boy.’ Nobody said it was illegal. Now I’m thinking there has to be a conspiracy.”
NO PRESSURE
While it seems likely Eagle was little more than a Nigerian-type scam on Sholtz, the fact that RECLAIM money was alleged to have helped finance it infuses it with relevance in understanding how well authorities have policed cap-and-trades heretofore. There is also the issue of Washington’s awareness of former—or phony—spies and soldiers portraying themselves as agents on government-sanctioned missions. If something like Eagle would deliver gold bars into a U.S. airport un-checked, what else could be brought into the country?
For its part, the CIA denied involvement with Eagle and its participants. “These individuals, to my knowledge, neither have, nor have had any affiliation with the agency,” said Agency Spokesman Paul Gimigliano. “We’re not part of this tale.” State Department Spokeswoman Laura Tischler said diplomatic officials knew nothing about Eagle, either. She did note it is illegal to claim diplomatic immunity if it is not officially conferred. The Treasury Department never answered the Weekly’s inquiries. In New York, the UN Office of Legal Affairs found no evidence after searching its records that the organization was affiliated with Sholtz or Gold Ray. A UN Official said the organization does not typically approve private charities, and says it is illegal to misuse the UN’s name.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the silence over Eagle today is crushing. All three companies allegedly fleeced of their RECLAIM credits to help finance the scheme—Chevron, Mobil, and Aera—
refused comment or never returned calls. Edison Spokesman Steve Conroy would only say the utility was reviewing the matter after the Weekly’s inquiries.
In spite of ample documentation and a four year investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office never charged Sholtz, Keller or their associates with a potential array of felonies stemming from alleged misuse of smog credit money or the extraction scheme. One natural question that arises is whether the U.S. Intelligence Community or other federal officials pressed
