Bernie Houghton

Bernie Houghton (Maurice Bernard Houghton, born July 25, 1920, in Dallas, Texas, died July 22, 2000, in Sydney) was an American businessman and bar owner in Sydney whom The Bulletin described in June 1984 as "the mystery man behind Nugan Hand's Saudi Arabian operations." The Task Force interviewed him in Acapulco, Mexico, in June 1981.¹²

Early life and Sydney

Houghton's account to Task Force investigators, as reproduced by The Bulletin, gives his background. He was born in Texas in 1920, lived in various cities in the south-western United States where his father worked as an oil driller, and attended Southern Methodist University when the United States entered the Second World War. He enlisted in the United States Air Force cadet training program and was discharged in 1946. He went into business in restaurants, clubs, surplus war material and miscellaneous ventures, went to Vietnam early in the 1960s, where he worked for a construction material expediter, and came to Sydney in January 1967. He worked for Parkes Development as a real estate salesman and opened the Bourbon and Beefsteak bar in Kings Cross in November 1967.¹

Houghton and Michael Hand, an American from New York, met socially in 1967 and lived near each other in Kings Cross. Houghton said he had heard of Hand's combat record in Vietnam as early as 1964, and that he had a "Sergeant York image" of Hand.¹ Jonathan Kwitny wrote that Houghton arrived in Australia eight months before Hand, that he was one of the first people Hand met there, and that he "may well have introduced Hand to Nugan."³

Nugan Hand operations

In October 1978 Hand asked Houghton to go to Germany to review an investment the bank had made there. Houghton said that he told Hand that he neither spoke German nor knew the banking business, and that Hand replied that Houghton's logic and judgment were what he wanted. Houghton then went to Hamburg for ten days with expenses paid by Hand.¹ On his return he stopped in the United States and visited Admiral Yates, who encouraged him to join the organisation. The Bulletin added that Yates, a retired Navy rear admiral, joined Nugan Hand International in 1977 and was the first president of the company.¹ Houghton told investigators that Hand was looking for senior executives to manage the various banks, and that Hand became aware that Yates was looking for a change of position and hired him after the two met. Houghton said Yates was "instrumental in the hiring of other senior retired military officers."¹ Kwitny wrote that by most accounts Houghton recruited Yates into the Nugan Hand job.³

Houghton said he went to Texas, learned of the potential for business in Saudi Arabia, discussed it with Hand in Singapore, and set up the Saudi operation after Hand assured him the company was financially strong. He said he agreed to a full-time appointment only after Hand agreed that he would not work for Frank Nugan, and that he worked for the Nugan Hand Bank of the Cayman Islands. Certificates of deposit issued in Saudi Arabia were pre-signed by Hand, George Shaw or Steve Hill, whom the Bulletin described as directors of the bank in Sydney, and copies were forwarded to the Singapore office. The Bulletin reported that Houghton described how $4 million or $5 million deposited in Saudi Arabia was converted into $1,000 traveller's cheques and taken to Singapore.¹ Houghton said that on about April 12, 1980 the bank's Jeddah office learned from a Saudi newspaper that the Hong Kong company had been put into receivership, that he was in Washington, D.C. when the Alkhobar manager telephoned him, and that the staff left the country.¹

Neil Evans, a former bank executive, told the Task Force that Houghton was the CIA's top man in Australia, that Hand had said Houghton was involved in distributing drugs through his retail outlets, and that an account at Irving Trust in New York was a link between the CIA and the bank. Houghton denied each allegation. He said he had never been an employee of the CIA, and that he had never heard or seen evidence that the Irving Trust account was used for any clandestine purpose.¹

Edwin Wilson and the Geneva office

The Nation reported in March 1984 that the Task Force's fourth volume described Edwin Wilson and "Maurice Houghton, an official of Nugan Hand," as having a series of meetings at the end of which Wilson placed Nugan Hand's order for 10 million rounds of ammunition and 3,000 weapons.⁴ Keith Schneider of the New York Times wrote in March 1987 that the report said that on the day Nugan's body was discovered Houghton arrived at Wilson's office in Geneva, and that according to an unidentified witness Houghton left a travel case at the office and departed. According to the report as Schneider described it, in April Tom Clines and Rafael Quintero arrived at the office, the bag was opened in the presence of all, they studied the documents inside and removed one, and during the search Richard Secord's name was mentioned and Clines said: "We've got to keep Dick's name out of this."⁵ Kwitny wrote that the circles Houghton moved in included Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Wilson and Clines.³

Nugan's death and the records

Kwitny wrote that after Nugan's death Hand returned to Sydney by way of the United States, was joined by Yates, and that Houghton met Hand and Yates at the airport and joined them, with Hill and Shaw, at the Nugan Hand offices.³ A Sydney butcher who worked on and off as manager of the Bourbon and Beefsteak told the Task Force that in late February 1980 he met Houghton and Shaw on the eighth floor of the bank's headquarters before moving records from an office in the AMP Centre, that on one occasion Houghton went to the flat where the records were stored and asked an employee to kick in the back door to gain access, and that Hand later told him it would be better to give the same evidence as Hand "rather than involve George Shaw, Bernie Houghton and Barry Target."¹

The Bulletin reported that Houghton left Australia in June 1980, two weeks after Hand's disappearance.¹

Task Force interview, 1981

Task Force investigators Kevin Woods and Bob Gray met Houghton and his San Francisco lawyer at Houghton's suite at the Princess Hotel in Acapulco on June 9, 1981, for a four-day interview.¹ Houghton said that he left Australia in June 1980 "to take care of commercial commitments," and that "I left the country legally and openly." He said Hand telephoned him in the United States in March 1981, and that Hand was "lonesome, full of guilt and asking for forgiveness for having embroiled me in his problems."¹ Houghton "absolutely denied" that the bank was operating on behalf of the CIA or as a drug-runner, according to the Bulletin's commentary on the interview.¹