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"jh" was Julian Hammer, as
he readily admitted after I brought the note-- and tapes--
to his home in Bel Air. He was Hammer's only son, born in
Moscow in 1929, but his relationship with his father had
not been an easy one.
His mother, Olga Vadina, was a gypsy
singer, who Hammer had married shortly before he was born.
Her pregnancy had been so unexpected that Hammer suspected
that he the biological father -- and he continued to harbor
these dark suspicions until 1988, when through having a
DNA sample secretly tested at UCA medica center he finally
determined Julian was indeed his progeny.
Almost immediately after the Hammer
family returned to New York in 1931, he began distancing
himself from Olga and Julian. Julian believed that his father
was embarrassed because they spoke Russian. When Julian
was six, his father told him that it was better if hey lived
apart. He sent him and his mother first to upstate New York
and then Los Angeles. In growing up, he saw little of his
father-- often not even on Christmas holidays. His father
did not even attend his wedding in 1954 or even send congratulations.
At this point, he had not seen his father in nearly three
years. On the night of his twenty sixth birthday, an event
happened that re-united them. He had invited a soldier over
to his apartment that night, and after they both drank heavily,
the soldier made advances towards his wife. They brawled
and Julian, getting his pistol from a drawer, shot the soldier
to death. After the police arrested Julian for the shooting,
the Los Angeles Times' headline, above he story about the
killing, reported "MILLIONAIRE'S SON KILLS GI."
Whether he liked it or not, Hammer was
again linked to his son. The publicity could not have come
at a worse time for Hammer. He had just divorced his second
wife, Angela, in a messy battle, and was also having financials
problems with his art business, the Hammer Galleries. He
now moved to avoid a trial that could further embarrass
him. He borrowed $50,000 in cash from Frances Barrett Tolman,
would become the third Mrs. Armand Hammer the following
year. He then had a women friend deliver the cash to a lawyer
in Los Angeles.
Julian was released from jail. The state's
attorney accepted his explanation that he had shot his guest
in self-defense and dismissed all charges against him. He
was free in the eyes of the law but not those of his father.
Hammer would not let him forget his $50,000 intervention.
He told him that payment to a party he never identified
had saved Julian from prison. He now wanted him to repay
his debt to him by disappearing from public sight so that
he caused him no further embarrassment. He would provide
him with a cash remittance each month. As Hammer began building
up his oil company in the early 1960s, he found an additional
way for Julian to pay his debt. He asked him to help him
with a task that he did not trusted his regular employees
to perform. He called it "James Bond stuff." and it also
required low visibility. Taking advantage of Julian's technical
skills with electronics-- skills he had developed initially
as a hobby-- Hammer had him install a sophisticated recording
system in his home and office. Then, he had him devise up
a micro cassette-recorder that he could conceal on his person.
Its miniature microphone was concealed in one of his gold
cufflink. On a number of occasions, he would have Julian
come to his private office and stand there shirtless while
Julian taped the recorder to his body and ran the wires
to the cufflink. As Julian rigged him up, he could also
sense the power his father derived from being able to secretly
tape the words of people close to him. He would watch him
put on his shirt, tie and jacket and, with the confidence
this concealed weapon gave him, he went to his appointed
meeting. He would then bring the cassette back to Julian,
who would then return to him a copy on a conventional cassette
and a transcript.
Although Julian did not always know
the identity of the voices on the tapes, he realized that
the conversations often concerned cash payments. He assumed
that this was his father's way of doing business: paying
individuals off the books and then secretly tape their acknowledgment
of the transactions. He also found that his father taped
on a number of occasions conversations with executives he
was about to fire. As the years went by, Hammer extended
the scope of his "James Bond" operations by having
Julian and others plant hidden surveillance devices in other
people's homes and offices. Julian knew much of what he
was doing for his father was probably illegal but he saw
he had little choice. It was the only service he could perform
to repay his debt.
Julian was able to tell me the circumstances
under some of the tapes were made. He also believed that
there were more tapes but he never found them. He died of
heart failure on April 3 1996.
Although many of these secret conversations
occurred decades ago, they still touch on issues that remain
sensitive today. Consider, for example, the 1971 tape in
which Hammer and Askew go over the list of pay-offs to ministers
in the Caldera government and officials of his Christian
Democrat Party. Caldera, the reformer whom Hammer so determinedly
wanted to reach then, is again President of Venezuela today.
After losing the presidency in 1973, he was re-elected in
1994.
In the intervening years, much happened
to Occidental in Venezuela. Carlos Andres Perez, who succeeded
Caldera as President, moved in 1974 to nationalize foreign
oil concession, which included the service contracts in
Maracaibo. At about the same time, John Ryan, who had been
fired from Occidental in Venezuela, alleged, although he
had no first hand knowledge, that Askew had paid bribes.
In the ensuing investigation, a mysterious check was traced
back to Askew, which was displayed by President Perez on
national television. Askew was then arrested, imprisoned
for six months and then released, since the authorities
developed no evidence that he had actually bribed a government
official.
But since both the Parliament and the
Judiciary continued their own investigation into the allegations,
the Venezuela government refused to pay compensation for
its nationalized contracts to Occidental-- although all
other foreign oil companies were paid. In the case of Occidental,
Perez took the position that if it turned out it had obtained
its service contracts through bribery, under Venezuala law,
it would not be entitled to any compensation.
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