Barbara Studley

Barbara F. Studley was a former conservative radio talk-show host in Miami who moved to Washington, D.C. and ran GeoMiliTech Consultants Corp., an arms-brokering company. The company handled a Soviet-bloc arms shipment to the Contras in 1985 that she arranged with John Singlaub, and it appears in the records of the Iran-Contra Affair.¹

Radio career in Miami and Washington

Daniel O. Graham, a retired Army lieutenant general and head of the High Frontier campaign, testified in a 1987 Senate deposition that he first met Studley around 1977, when she was a broadcaster in Miami and invited him to be a guest on her radio talk show. He said he appeared on her program two or three times to talk about military affairs, that he had never lived in Miami, and that she later came to Washington, where she hosted a short radio run and he appeared again on her show.² Committee counsel dated her move to Washington to about June 1984.²

Ken Silverstein and Daniel Burton-Rose describe Studley as a right-wing radio show host in Miami who forged close ties with conservative military and political figures and set up a Washington arms company.³ The Miami Herald reported in June 1987 that the company was run by a former Miami radio talk-show host, Studley, and United Press International carried the report.⁴ The United States Attorney's office in Miami described her in 1995 as an acquaintance of Louis Petrillo from her days as a conservative radio talk-show host in Miami in the 1970s.⁵ Christopher Byron wrote in New York Magazine in December 1991 that she was a onetime Florida beauty queen and radio talk-show hostess.⁶ The company's "board of advisers" in the mid-1980s, Byron wrote, included Singlaub and retired Lt. Gen. Dan Graham, whom he described as onetime deputy director of the CIA and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.⁶

Formation of GeoMiliTech

The Delaware Division of Corporations lists GeoMiliTech Consultants Corp. under file number 2015058, with a formation date of August 15, 1983, and a registered agent in Wilmington.⁷ Byron cites court records for a July 1983 incorporation.⁶ Mark Phythian gives August 15, 1983 as the date an ostensibly private company was formed in Delaware to sell or exchange weapons.⁸

The Hartford Courant reported in May 1992 that Studley created the company "to break into the arms business."¹ Graham was asked whether he had taken part in forming her firm and answered no. He said all he knew of it was that she ran it and that it was "an international trading firm in high-tech items," and that he had no function with the company.² The 1987 Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras chronology from the National Security Archive lists her as president of the company.⁹ A 1986 letter to William J. Casey on the company's letterhead gives its office as 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 300.¹⁰

Byron's advisers list places Graham on the company's board of advisers. Graham testified that he was never listed as an adviser or director of the company and had no function with it.²⁶ Byron names retired Lt. Gen. Robert Schweitzer as the executive vice president, and describes him as having served for a time as senior military official in the White House during the early Reagan years. Asked in her August 1991 deposition why she had hired Schweitzer, Studley answered that he seemed "literally to know everybody" in the military, in the Pentagon, in the White House, in the National Security Council and in the CIA, according to Byron.⁶ Byron also describes a consultant, John E. Carbaugh Jr., a member of the transition team after the 1980 election and a former staff aide to Jesse Helms, whom a company brochure described as having direct contact with the political and military structure of foreign governments.⁶

South Korea and the 1984 company documents

Byron reported a July 29, 1984 memorandum from Carbaugh to Studley about a cannon-shell export order from South Korea. In Byron's account, a South Korean official involved seemed to suspect the shipment was destined for Iran, and the memorandum suggested that the company's representative in Israel could approach the South Koreans directly, since they would be "more than willing to cooperate" if the client were not Iranian.⁶ Byron also cites a court-appointed investigator working on Durrani's case who had found what appeared to be internal 1984 company documents and telex traffic showing negotiations with South Korean military officials in July 1984 for 6,000 tons of explosives and 300,000 M107/155mm cannon shells and projectiles, and a further telex about F-4 Phantom jet parts, one of which, a QK410B oscillator assembly, the investigator said is a component of certain Raytheon-made Hawk surface-to-air missile systems. Durrani claimed that by the summer of 1984 the company was shipping large amounts of weapons to Iran and that the only Hawk systems then operating that used the part were those installed in Iran.⁶

The 1985 shipment and the Barcella opinion

In 1985 Studley and Singlaub arranged a private shipment of Soviet-bloc rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers to the contras, which the Courant put at $5 million and which ran from Poland to Honduras, with the money moved through Swiss banks, according to Singlaub's 1987 testimony.¹ Graham recommended the arms broker Werner Glatt, whom he described as a sheep farmer and arms trader with farms in Virginia and Scotland, to Studley as an honest broker. Counsel put the arms transaction in May 1985 with delivery in July, and Graham agreed it was early in 1985.²

The Courant reported that the legal opinion clearing the shipment was given by E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr., then an assistant United States attorney in Washington. Barcella said that "somebody in the government came to me," that he checked with the Office of Munitions Control at the State Department and the Justice Department's office of internal security, that he "orally passed that back to the person that had made the request of me," that he did not know Studley at the time, and that he did not remember signing anything. The United States attorney, Joseph diGenova, said he never authorized any such opinion.¹ In her 1991 deposition, as the Courant quotes it, Studley answered "Larry Barcella signed it" when asked who in the Justice Department approved the shipment.¹ She also said the shipment was "approved in writing by the justice department before we shipped it" and called it "Absolutely legitimate."¹ Her lawyer, Frank Koszorus Jr., said he was "not at all certain that she was ever issued a written opinion."¹ The Courant reported that Barcella left the United States attorney's office in June 1986 and went into private practice in Washington "initially at the same firm where Koszorus, Studley's lawyer, worked," and that he said he did not know Koszorus before joining it. The April 28, 1987 letter to the House committee on Studley's matter, on the letterhead of Finley, Kumble, closes with Koszorus's name above the enclosure notation.¹¹¹

On October 30, 1985, Studley sent a memorandum to Lt. Col. Oliver North reporting a telephone call from a source identified only as "W." The memorandum stated that a man named Mario Dellamico, described as working for an arms dealer named Ron Martin, had asked for the company's help in selling Martin's arms to the Contras and had been refused, since it would be against "their law." It closed with the sentence "General John K. Singlaub has been advised of this information."¹²

The conduit memorandum and the meeting with Casey

A memorandum from Studley found in North's safe proposed a "conduit" for "a continuous flow of Soviet weapons and technology" to support freedom fighters in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Ethiopia.¹ The congressional report calls the proposal the "Singlaub-Studley plan," records that the plan was not implemented, and states that in the fall of 1985 Singlaub arranged for North and Casey to meet with Studley to present another plan to aid the contras.¹³ Courant reports that Singlaub testified in 1987 that Studley had shown him the memorandum, that he thought it was for the most part a good plan, and that he set up a December 1985 meeting with Casey at which she presented it.¹

Graham gave a different account. He testified that after the ship arrived Studley told him that people not party to the deal had appeared, and that he told her to inform Casey and arranged a meeting at Langley toward the end of 1985 among himself, Studley and Casey, at which Studley left documents including the bill of lading. Committee counsel suggested December 20, 1985 as the date. Graham said he never introduced Glatt to Singlaub.²

The Miami bank transfers, 1986 and 1987

The Miami Herald reported in June 1987 that the president of Bayshore Bank of Florida, Petrillo, had resigned, that the bank was being sold, and that he had transferred a total of $2 million of bank funds on behalf of GeoMiliTech during 1986. The debts were unsecured, were supposed to be repaid within weeks, and remained outstanding, and the sum was nearly all of the bank's net worth that year. The newspaper reported that Petrillo left just as federal authorities, including Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, began investigating the transactions, and that the company acknowledged helping arrange arms supplies for the rebels. A bank director, Dr. Matthew Bradley, said the board was told of the questionable transfers about three weeks earlier. Studley told the Herald that the case involved private banking matters and refused to discuss the details. Petrillo said he had no knowledge of any arms deals, that he had left the bank solely because it was changing hands, and "There is no money missing."⁴

Bayshore Bank of Florida, with total assets of $40.4 million, was closed on August 7, 1987 by Florida State Comptroller Gerald Lewis, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was named receiver; the FDIC transferred its insured deposits to Eagle National Bank of Miami, which paid a $625,000 premium and bought $10.8 million of its assets.¹⁴ Petrillo pleaded guilty in September 1994 to misapplication of funds and bank fraud and was sentenced in March 1995 to one year in prison, five years' probation and $2 million in restitution. American Banker reported that he had issued letters of credit totaling more than $2 million in 1986 and 1987 to GeoMiliTech without his bank's knowledge, that he asserted in court that his actions were taken in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, and that the United States attorney's office in Miami said the claims were "discounted in court."⁵

Frank Bovenkerk and Michael Levi write that the $2 million covered two bad checks written by Studley, that Petrillo gave her a $1.5 million cashier's check from the bank, and that she tried but failed to sell about 20 percent of the company's stock to raise the $2 million.¹⁵ The Wall Street Journal Index for 1987 lists state regulators closing Bayshore Bank of Florida, with an overdue GeoMiliTech loan among the bank's problems.¹⁶ In December 1991 Byron wrote that, according to published reports, federal prosecutors in Miami had recently opened an investigation into Studley's involvement in the bank matter.⁶

The torpedo broker and Israeli-origin arms, 1985 to 1987

The congressional report states that during the summer of 1985 Singlaub worked without success through GeoMiliTech Consultants, "owned by Barbara Studley," on diverting part of a $75 million proposed sale of torpedoes to a buyer the report calls "Country 3," in connection with his early-1985 solicitation of that country's officials. The report's majority says the Singlaub-Studley plan was not implemented, and the minority views respond that the first diverted funds, from Israeli arms sales to Iran, arrived before the plan was tabled in December 1985.¹⁷¹⁸

Benjamin Weiser reported in the Washington Post in March 1987 that, of the two governments Singlaub approached in late 1984, he had a specific weapons deal in mind in the case of Taiwan: a Washington-based consulting company, for which Singlaub said he served as an unpaid adviser, was trying to broker the sale of 40 American-built MK 37 torpedoes from Israel to Taiwan, at a price Israel set at $72 million to $75 million. Weiser wrote that Singlaub envisioned Taiwan paying about $10 million above Israel's price, with the surplus going to the contras after the broker's commission, and that Singlaub said neither the Israeli government nor the broker was told of the diversion idea. Sources familiar with the deal told the Post that Israel had authorized the broker and had notified the United States government, and Israeli sources said the United States government would not allow the sale.¹⁹

The Post article does not name the consulting company. The torpedo sale in the report ($75 million, summer 1985, brokered through GeoMiliTech, with Singlaub working the diversion) and the sale in the Post (40 MK 37 torpedoes, $72 million to $75 million, a broker on which Singlaub served as unpaid adviser) concern the same subject and price range, and GeoMiliTech listed Singlaub as an adviser in 1987. The report does not name Taiwan as Country 3 and the Post does not name the company, so the two accounts are joined here only by that match.⁴¹⁷¹⁹

The Durrani depositions and later reporting

Arif Durrani, a Pakistani arms dealer convicted in 1987 of exporting Hawk missile parts to Iran without a license, petitioned the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut in 1990 to vacate his conviction and amended the petition in August 1991. He said he had acted for Manuel Pires, whom he said was working for North. In its September 9, 1991 objection to Durrani's requests for documents, the United States Attorney's Office in Bridgeport said defense counsel had taken the depositions of Studley and Singlaub in Washington in August 1991, and stated: "Neither witness had any knowledge of Arif Durrani or his claims; neither has any known involvement in or knowledge of the 'Iran' portion of the Iran-Contra affair." The filing adds that both had met Pires only within the last two years, and that defense counsel's proposed deposition of former CIA official George Cave offered, in the government's words, no greater prospect of usefulness than the Studley-Singlaub examinations.²⁰

Byron reported that Studley denied in the August 1991 deposition that she knew Durrani and denied that she had shipped weapons to Iran, and that she declined several requests for interviews for his article. Byron also reports that Holly B. Fitzsimmons, the assistant United States attorney in the Durrani case, said she herself had seen nothing to indicate Studley was not telling the truth.⁶ Koszorus denied that either Studley or the company had any involvement with Iran, and declined to identify the company's place of business, a spokesman, or the nature of its work.⁶ The Courant placed the deposition in the fall of 1991.¹ The filing's certification names the defense counsel as William B. Bloss of New Haven; the Courant names him as William M. Bloss.¹²⁰

In the Graham deposition, counsel asked whether Graham had met "her attorney, Mr. Perito," and Graham answered that the one he knew was Perito.² A letter of April 28, 1987, on the letterhead of Finley, Kumble in Washington, to the House committee's assistant counsel Kenneth Ballen, captioned "Re: Barbara F. Studley/GMT," refers to a telephone conference between Ballen and Paul L. Perito and encloses a memorandum from Studley's file regarding North.¹¹

Byron wrote in December 1991 that GeoMiliTech was still doing business but was not listed in the Washington, D.C. telephone directory.⁶ The Courant reported in May 1992 that Studley was not called to testify before Congress and that attempts to reach her through Koszorus had been unsuccessful.¹ American Banker's March 1995 account of the Petrillo sentencing describes her as the head of GeoMiliTech.⁵

The Ora Group account and Ben-Menashe

The former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe writes that a 1985 contra arms deal brokered through GeoMiliTech was itemized at $3,242,000 paid to the Ora Group, against $5 million that the company's own books showed received from the American side, a gap of about $1.76 million that Ben-Menashe says was never explained to him.²¹ Byron reported that a former top official of the company, whom he did not name, said that Studley and the company had tried to export arms to Iran and that the effort was aided by Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defense minister.⁶