Eminentoes/Mr. Occidental
Epstein, Edward Jay
EMINENTOES MR. OCCIDENTAL by Edward Jay Epstein Is there any limit to how much mon- ey an ingenious corporate chairman can divert from the corporate treasury for his personal glorification? Armand...
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...Afterwards, Lenin sent a secret message to Stalin, then general secretary of the Communist party, which included an intelligence report and a request that Stalin accord Hammer "particular support" (whatever "particular" meant...
...Armand Hammer, who died in December at 92, on the day he was scheduled to have his bar mitzvah, provides a clue...
...The millions of dollars a day from Libya gave Hammer great clout in Washington...
...He saw no point in paying the insurance, so he kept the real works of art, paid for by Occidental, in a bank vault...
...Lenin explained that Hammer was "a small path leading to the American 'business' world, and [that] this path should be made use of in every way...
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...Clever, calculating, and charming, he took great pride in deftly managing perceptions...
...Occidental financed an international trade center and a golf course in Moscow, bred Russian racehorses, minted Edward Jay Epstein's' most recent book is Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA (Simon and Schuster...
...embargo on Soviet trade), he met briefly with Lenin—a meeting he made a career on...
...Hammer channeled Occidental funds into his personal foundation, which then donated paintings to his private collection, as well as funds for the annual Armand Hammer Peace Conference in Poland...
...Some of the cash he provided was used in the Watergate coverup...
...Two months after his death, his successor, Ray Trani, wrote off a staggering $2.1 billion-60 percent of the company's market value—that had been on the company's books for years...
...As Occidental director Sir John Foster explained it to me, Hammer made it clear to any outsiders who might attempt, to take over the company that, through his Libyan and Soviet connections, he could destroy the Libyan concession—the chief source of Occidental's wealth...
...One close adviser told me that HamWriters, Researchers...
...Even museum directors are fooled by it...
...President Bush pardoned him in 1989...
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...CIA counterintelligence was intrigued by the apparent role of Soviet intelligence in Hammer's negotiations with both King Idris and Qaddafi...
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...He pleaded guilty to the violation but was not sentenced to prison, in consideration of a putative heart condition...
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...To help him open doors in Washington for his social blitz, he had Occidental pay six-figure retainers to a coterie of ex-White House officials...
...He added, "No one knows the difference, anyhow...
...His control of Occidental did not always require illusion...
...All because of paper clutter...
...When I trav- eled some 15,000 miles in Hammer's 727 to interview him for the New York Times Magazine in 1981, I found him a master illusionist...
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...Hammer's genius was that he managed to do all of this even though he owned less than one percent of Occidental Petroleum's stock...
...He cemented his relationship with President Nixon in 1973 by arranging for bundles of cash to be contributed under bogus names—which was against the law...
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...Mary's Court, Brookline, MA 02146 Telephone 617-277-9222 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 27 mer could also count on the votes of large blocks of Occidental stock that were in Arab hands...
...0 nee this "path" had expanded into a superhighway in the form of Occidental Petroleum, it meant billions of dollars' worth of capitalist aid...
...gold medals for the Olympics, built gas- and fertilizer-processing plants in the Ukraine, extended credits to deepen the Soviet port of Odessa for tankers (and submarines), and provided technology to the Soviet meat-packing industry...
...For transportation, he had Occidental provide him with a 727 jet and six pilots...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991...
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...His most powerful bargaining chip was a 500,000-barrel-a-day crude oil concession from Libya, which he received from King Idris but which expandeddramatically after Colonel Muammar Qaddafi took power in 1969...
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...Much of the loss stemmed from the pet projects that Hammer had undertaken in Communist countries, which the shareholders of Occidental never realized a penny on...
...In 1921, traveling to Russia on family business (i.e., getting goods through the U.S...
...In fact, it had been painted by his wife, Frances, as had the Renoirs, Utrillos, and others...
...He laughed...
...Hammer's Soviet connection goes back seven decades (longer, perhaps, since his father reportedly named him after the Communists' arm-anchhammer emblem...
...And for the non-corporate crime he pleaded guilty to—making illegal campaign contributions—he got Occidental to pay his legal bill...
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...Other Hammer legacies included a film company dedicated to making documentaries about Hammer's travels, and cartons of Hammer biographies bought by Occidental employees...
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...Hammer was chairman of Occidental Petroleum, the seventeenth-largest industrial company in America...
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...When he appointed directors, he had them fill out letters of resignation in advance, so he could peremptorily fire them in the event they dissented from his decisions...
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...When I met him at his Los Angeles home, he pointed to a painting over the staircase and asked, "What do you think of that Modigliani...
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Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
