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  Sleuth's corner - Case 1 The Nugan Hand Bank
He also ran Australia's dirtiest and most crooked private bank, the Nugan Hand Bank, which he co-founded with Australian, Frank Nugan in 1973 - a bank that strong evidence suggests was used by the CIA to finance a covert war in Indochina, and that had associations with known drug traffickers. Many suspect they were knowingly washing the profits of drugs and arms sales as a sanitary front for CIA-sanctioned operations. One former Nugan Hand director has stated on oath that Hand warned Bank executives: "If we didn't do what we were told, and things weren't handled properly, our wives would be cut into pieces and put in boxes and sent back to us." Hand's also on the run from Australian investigators who still want to talk to him about fraud, drugs money and the CIA connections with his obscure Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank. We'd like to know where he is - Are you on the net Mike? We'd like an interview? Give us a call! According to top US journalist Jonathan Kwitny, whose book "The Crimes of Patriots" (Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-671-66637-1) is the definitive text on the subject, Michael Hand fled Australia under a false identity on June 14, 1980 on a flight to Fiji. He was helped to escape by an American code-named "Charlie" - a man subsequently revealed to be James Oswald Spencer, a former member of the US Special Forces and ex-CIA operative. In 1991, top Australian journalist Brian Toohey reported in his 'The Eye' magazine that Hand had a postal drop at Suite 327, 1075 Bellevue Way, NE Bellevue, Washington State. Michael Hand's wife Helen was apparently living with him in Washington State. Not surprisingly he's since moved on. Do you know where he is? In 1987, Jonathan Kwitny prepared a list of questions about the Nugan Hand affair for the US Senate Intelligence Committee when the Contra scandal was being investigated by both the Senate and the Congress. The questions formed the basis for closed door testimony the committee took from then CIA director William Casey. The answers have remained a secret. In the interest of truth, click here to read some of those questions all of us would like answered.
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He's a former Vietnam U.S Green Beret soldier. He won a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross - second only to the Congressional Medal of Honour as the U.S's highest military award. On June 9, 1965 he almost singlehandedly held off a 14-hour long Vietcong attack on the Special Forces compound at Dong Xaoi. He went on to become a contract agent for the CIA in Vietnam and Laos.
