Edward Jay Epstein - Armand Hammer, The Darker Side: An EJE Single

ARMAND HAMMER: THE DARKER SIDE

By Edward Jay Epstein

An EJE Single

Also by Edward JayEpstein

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The Assassination Chronicles

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The Hollywood Economist

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Armand Hammer: The Darker Side

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The JFK Assassination Theories

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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 NewYorker

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 headquartersin Los Angeles. I had gone there to write a profile of Hammer forthe New York Times Magazine .

Hammer, who was just beginning his campaignfor the Nobel Peace Prize, assumed that I would present himfavorably, 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 Isaid I did not, he offered to take me to dinner with him (as heeventually did). He also told me that he assumed that the storywould be featured on the cover of the magazine, and he suggestedthat if I had "any problems" with my editor at the magazine, hewould "call Punch" in my behalf. He clearly liked to believe he wasin control-- and at the time, I did nothing to disillusion him.

On a personal level, I found Hammer to be amodest and affable man, who far more closely resembled a countrydoctor than a corporate magnate. He invited me to travel with himon his private jetliner, Oxy One on hisnon-stop business and political trips. The OxyOne had been specially designed for intercontinental flight.It had a 100-foot-long cabin configured as a personal salon, withtwin beds and a shower and an office. In the course of the next sixmonths, I traveled with Hammer to Paris, London, Ottawa, Chicago,Washington D.C. and New York, where he enjoyed prestigious hotels,in particular Claridges in London, the Plaza Athenee in Paris andthe Madison in Washington D.C., and seemed to relish it when he wasrecognized by the hotel employees. The only time I saw him lose histemper was when the cashier at the Plaza Athenee refused to accepthis assistants credit card and held up the delivery of baggage tohis waiting limousine. He also enjoyed going to the more celebratedrestaurants, such as the Tour dArgent in Paris and Wiltons inLondon, but once there he had little tolerance for gourmet food,often preferring to order a hamburger.

During these trips, I spent scores of hoursdiscussing his life, achievements and business strategies. It wasnot always easy. He was slightly hard of hearing, and he used thisinfirmity 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 notentirely correct his severe myopia and often, like the Mr. Magoocharacter in the cartoon series, he did not recognizeacquaintances. When he crossed time zone in OxyOne , he had little respect for other people's time. He hadno inhibitions about calling subordinates at home in the middle ofthe night. He kept his own schedule, napping or working, to suithis convenience. His third wife Francis almost always accompaniedhim on these trips and acted as his help mate. When the planelanded, he was usually met by personal assistants, public relationsmen, security men and his personal photographer, whom he instructedwhen to take pictures. This sizable entourage, which often hadstrain to keep up with him as he spryly went about his business,gave him more the appearance of a visiting head of state than amere corporate executive.

Throughout the winter and spring of 1981,Hammer invited me to a constant stream of events of which he wasthe center of attention. I went with him to diplomatic receptions,award-ceremonies, museum openings, private parties, pressconferences and charity events. He introduced me to suchacquaintances as Prince Charles, Nancy Reagan, Bob Hope, LouisNizer, Senator Charles Percy, Edgar Faure, Sir John Foster, PrinceBandour Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, David Murdock, and PierreTrudeau. His purpose was to provide me with colorful material for astory in which, as he conceived of it, he would be a central actorin a rarefied universe of money, altruism and power. When bysummer, I still had not completed the story, he grew somewhatimpatient and offered to help me write the story. I thanked him forhis interest but I did not tell him what was delaying thecompletion of my profile.

I was then in the midst of writing a bookabout Soviet intelligence (Deception: The Invisible War Between theKGB and CIA). One of my sources for this book was James JesusAngleton, the former CIA counterintelligence chief, who, when heheard I was writing a profile of Hammer, suggested to his crypticmanner that I might find "another side" of Hammer's activities byexamining Soviet trade mission documents seized by Britishintelligence agents in 1927. Through my very able Britishresearcher, Rebecca Fraser, I managed to obtain these documents.They, in turn, led to files in the National Archives concerninginvestigation of the Hammer family business in the 1920s which,though they contained more questions than answers, indicatedHammers past was more complex than he described. After Iconfronted him with some of the issues raised more than a halfcentury earlier by British and U.S. intelligence, he had his lawyerArthur Groman take action to expunge these files at the NationalArchives. I was blocked, since I did not have access to HammersFBI file. (The Freedom of Information law only allows access if thesubject is deceased). Nevertheless, I had become intrigued withHammers past and, as I tried to reconstruct it, the profile took adifferent direction than Hammer had anticipated.

It appeared in the New YorkTimes Magazine in November 1981 under the title "The Riddleof Armand Hammer" and posed the question: Does Hammer merely takeadvantage of his contacts with the Russians to advance his businessinterests or does Hammer take advantage of his business contacts toserve Moscow's interest? Hammer was infuriated by it and he wrote atwenty-five page letter to the editor of the Times describing himself in the way that he wanted tobe described in the article. He demanding the editors publish it infull, but instead they ran a one page excerpt in theletters-to-the-editor section. I choose not to respond.

I saw no point in writing further on thesubject since, without access to the Soviet intelligence archivesand the FBI files on Hammer, there seemed to be no way to resolvethe issue I had raised. Then, after Hammer died, the Soviet Unioncollapsed and documents began flowing out of its archives. Iretained East View Publications, a company in Minneapolis thatspecializes in obtaining Soviet archives, to acquire the files onHammer. Through it, I got more than 3000 pages of classified Sovietdocuments that described in considerable detail Hammer's relationswith the Soviet authorities. And since the privacy restrictions ofthe Freedom of Information Act did not apply to the files of adeceased person, I succeeded in obtaining most of thepreviously-classified FBI file on Hammer. This information provideda unique opportunity to write a biography from the vantage point oftwo opposing intelligence services. Hammer had for many years, likeRichard Nixon, secretly taped many of his own conversation,including those dealing with bribery and other murky activities,which I obtained from a family member. It helped me to fill in thejigsaw of his life.