ARMAND HAMMER: THE DARKER SIDE
By Edward Jay Epstein
An EJE Single
Also by Edward Jay Epstein
Inquest
Legend
News From Nowhere
Cartel
The Rise and Fall of Diamonds
Agency of Fear
Between Fact and Fiction
The Assassination Chronicles
Dossier
The Big Picture
The Hollywood Economist
Myths of the Media
EJE Singles
Armand Hammer: The Darker Side
The Rockefellers
The JFK Assassination Theories
Garrison’s Game
The Zia Crash
Who Killed God’s Banker
Killing Castro
Tabloid America: Crimes of the Press
The Crude cartel
Published at Smashwords
Copyright © by EJE Publication 2011
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-1-61704-074-0
Part of this book was excerpted in The New Yorker
Cover design by J Elissa Marshall
Jimmy Goldsmith
Contents
Preface Meeting Dr. Hammer
PART ONE The Magic Mistress
PART TWO The Art of Bribery
Preface Meeting Dr. Hammer
I first met Armand Hammer on February 21, 1981 at his office on the top floor of the Occidental headquarters in Los Angeles. I had gone there to write a profile of Hammer for the New York Times Magazine.
Hammer, who was just beginning his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, assumed that I would present him favorably, since he was on friendly terms with Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, the chairman and publisher of the Times. He immediately asked if I knew Punch and when I said I did not, he offered to take me to dinner with him (as he eventually did). He also told me that he assumed that the story would be featured on the cover of the magazine, and he suggested that if I had "any problems" with my editor at the magazine, he would "call Punch" in my behalf. He clearly liked to believe he was in control-- and at the time, I did nothing to disillusion him.
On a personal level, I found Hammer to be a modest and affable man, who far more closely resembled a country doctor than a corporate magnate. He invited me to travel with him on his private jetliner, Oxy One on his non-stop business and political trips. The Oxy One had been specially designed for intercontinental flight. It had a 100-foot-long cabin configured as a personal salon, with twin beds and a shower and an office. In the course of the next six months, I traveled with Hammer to Paris, London, Ottawa, Chicago, Washington D.C. and New York, where he enjoyed prestigious hotels, in particular Claridge’s in London, the Plaza Athenee in Paris and the Madison in Washington D.C., and seemed to relish it when he was recognized by the hotel employees. The only time I saw him lose his temper was when the cashier at the Plaza Athenee refused to accept his assistant’s credit card— and held up the delivery of baggage to his waiting limousine. He also enjoyed going to the more celebrated restaurants, such as the Tour d’Argent in Paris and Wilton’s in London, but once there he had little tolerance for gourmet food, often preferring to order a hamburger.
During these trips, I spent scores of hours discussing his life, achievements and business strategies. It was not always easy. He was slightly hard of hearing, and he used this infirmity to great effect when he did not want to discuss an issue. When I asked Hammer questions he did not expect or want to answer, he simply ignored them. He also wore thick glasses that did not entirely correct his severe myopia and often, like the Mr. Magoo character in the cartoon series, he did not recognize acquaintances. When he crossed time zone in Oxy One, he had little respect for other people's time. He had no inhibitions about calling subordinates at home in the middle of the night. He kept his own schedule, napping or working, to suit his convenience. His third wife Francis almost always accompanied him on these trips and acted as his help mate. When the plane landed, he was usually met by personal assistants, public relations men, security men and his personal photographer, whom he instructed when to take pictures. This sizable entourage, which often had strain to keep up with him as he spryly went about his business, gave him more the appearance of a visiting head of state than a mere corporate executive.
Throughout the winter and spring of 1981, Hammer invited me to a constant stream of events of which he was the center of attention. I went with him to diplomatic receptions, award-ceremonies, museum openings, private parties, press conferences and charity events. He introduced me to such acquaintances as Prince Charles, Nancy Reagan, Bob Hope, Louis Nizer, Senator Charles Percy, Edgar Faure, Sir John Foster, Prince Bandour Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, David Murdock, and Pierre Trudeau. His purpose was to provide me with colorful material for a story in which, as he conceived of it, he would be a central actor in a rarefied universe of money, altruism and power. When by summer, I still had not completed the story, he grew somewhat impatient and offered to help me write the story. I thanked him for his interest but I did not tell him what was delaying the completion of my profile.
I was then in the midst of writing a book about Soviet intelligence (Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and CIA). One of my sources for this book was James Jesus Angleton, the former CIA counterintelligence chief, who, when he heard I was writing a profile of Hammer, suggested to his cryptic manner that I might find "another side" of Hammer's activities by examining Soviet trade mission documents seized by British intelligence agents in 1927. Through my very able British researcher, Rebecca Fraser, I managed to obtain these documents. They, in turn, led to files in the National Archives concerning investigation of the Hammer family business in the 1920s which, though they contained more questions than answers, indicated Hammer’s past was more complex than he described. After I confronted him with some of the issues raised more than a half century earlier by British and U.S. intelligence, he had his lawyer Arthur Groman take action to expunge these files at the National Archives. I was blocked, since I did not have access to Hammer’s FBI file. (The Freedom of Information law only allows access if the subject is deceased). Nevertheless, I had become intrigued with Hammer’s past and, as I tried to reconstruct it, the profile took a different direction than Hammer had anticipated.
It appeared in the New York Times Magazine in November 1981 under the title "The Riddle of Armand Hammer" and posed the question: Does Hammer merely take advantage of his contacts with the Russians to advance his business interests or does Hammer take advantage of his business contacts to serve Moscow's interest? Hammer was infuriated by it and he wrote a twenty-five page letter to the editor of the Times describing himself in the way that he wanted to be described in the article. He demanding the editors publish it in full, but instead they ran a one page excerpt in the letters-to-the-editor section. I choose not to respond.