Letters
THIRION’S TALE - PART I
Some stories are only told under certain circumstances; when certain events lead to the telling. Otherwise those stories would never be told and would, of course, then never be heard. This is one of those stories.
My ten year prison sentence began in the fall of 1986 at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp in Lompoc, California. New surroundings always lead to new acquaintances. As true for prison as it is for other locales, only the types you meet there are different.
Dr. Norman Bernard Thirion and I would never have met on the outside. Thirion had served as international banker to Howard Hughes and had been the financial director and project planner for Archisystems, Hughes’s personal holding company. Later, he was to work with Adnan Kashoggi, the flamboyant Saudi oil wheeler-dealer through whom he was to develop close ties with the Saudi royal family. My life instead had included countless phone booths from which calls could not be easily traced and to me words like acid and coke had completely different meanings from those like Thirion thought them to have.
What we did share was an interest in business and money, and countless walks on the prison grounds were spent in discussing projects Thirion intended to pursue once he was released. Unlike myself, Thirion believed himself innocent and thought when his appeal was heard he would be freed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to happen. But because it didn’t, Thirion was to tell me a story I am sure he never intended to tell anyone.
It was March 1987 when Thirion learned his appeal had been denied. That evening he took me to his room where he showed me various documents and told me of events he believed were the reason he had been sent to prison. He then asked if I would write down his story and keep copies of certain documents for safekeeping. Thirion had a plan and said he needed the story in the hands of a third party to ensure his safety.
The first document Thirion showed me was a letter of introduction from a New York movie production company, Transglobal Productions Ltd. The letter, written in 1983, was from Transglobal vice-president, Perry Morgan to Lord Cranbourne, a British Viscount.
The letter to Lord Cranbourne introduced Thirion as former international banker to Howard Hughes and stated Thirion was representing Transglobal Productions in securing financing. The letter was copied to two persons, Dr. [Norman] Bernard Thirion and General Robert E. Cushman Jr. Thirion informed me General Cushman was not only Transglobal’s Chairman of the Board, but was also retired Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corp and past Deputy Director of the CIA.
What was a former Deputy Director of the CIA doing as chairman of a movie production company? The answer was not to produce movies. Transglobal Productions never made a movie during its short existence. It did, however, successfully solicit hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudi royal family for an Afghan government-in-exile that never received the money.
Thirion said in 1982 he had been approached by Transglobal’s two vice presidents, Perry Morgan and Dr. Jon Speller. Morgan and Speller knew of Thirion’s close ties to the Saudis and wanted his help in soliciting the royal family to support the Afghan resistance against Soviet invaders. They also said some of the money was to produce a movie Morgan had written.
Thirion said he was dubious about such an odd proposition, but, as a banker, he had heard many unlikely proposals. He told them he would approach the Saudi royal family for a fee of 2% of the moneys raised. Speller and Morgan agreed and, soon thereafter, Thirion said, events began to move forward quickly.
He was soon introduced to Dr. Nake Kamrany, a professor at the University of Southern California. Dr. Kamrany, a supporter of the Afghan cause, believed a government-in-exile should be created prior to asking the Saudis for money. He also believed former King Zahir Shah could provide the rallying point for the new government. To this end, Dr. Miskanyar, a former Afghan ambassador, flew to Italy to ask Zahir Shah if he would head the new organization. There, he reported the king agreed to do so provided it received official U.S. recognition.
To Thirion, this presented a problem, how was this newly proposed organization to get official U.S. recognition? Transglobal vice-president Perry Morgan told him not to worry, stating “General Cushman was directly wired into the National Security Council, the guys at the NSC work for Cushman.”
The National Security Council is the forum where the highest national security concerns are discussed for the benefit of the President of the United States. Thirion was about to discover just how close Transglobal Productions was to the Presidency itself.
In
