DID THIS MAN CON THE CIA?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 30, 2011
• Sequence Number: 179
• Publication Date: August 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
V"V,E MUM
fO' PAGE
0
24 August 1986
DID THIS MAN CON THE CIA?_
By Stephen Magagnini
I n the early 1980s, life and the CIA
were good to Ronald Rewald. The
baker's son from Wisconsin set him-
self up in a million-dollar beach-front
spread on the outskirts of Honolulu. He
dined with Hawaii Gov. George Ariyoshi.
Jack Lord of TV's "Hawaii Five-0" called
him "a dear friend." He played polo -
badly - with Enrique Zobel and the sul-
tan of Brunei, two of the world's richest
men. He owned Rolls-Royces, Mercedes
and Cadillacs, a Jaguar and an Excalibur.
He drove Tom Selleck's red Ferrari.
As chairman of the board of Bishop,
Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham & Wong, a
multimillion-dollar international invest-
ment and consulting firm that provided
"light cover" for the Central Intelligence
Agency, Ronald Rewald oozed wealth and
power. His annual salary reached
$250,000. He bought a cabin cruiser and
named it Nancy after his wife. He spent
$70,000 a year on tutors for his five chil-
dren.
And when the soft-spoken, self-effacing
Rewald wasn't cultivating the aristocracy
in Hawaii, he was traveling first-class to
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Indone-
sia, Australia, London, Paris and Argenti-
na. Upon his return, he would file reports
with the CIA's field office in Honolulu. A
CIA agent called him a "genius."
It was a remarkable transformation for
the 43-year-old Rewald, a high school
graduate who came to Hawaii in 1977 with
a bankruptcy and a misdemeanor convic-
tion for theft under his belt, and within
five years found himself running a compa-
ny that had taken in $22 million from in-
vestors.
While Rewald was supposed to be man-
aging the finances of more than 400 inves-
tors in the lofty corporate offices of Bish-
op, Baldwin, he was trysting at a nearhv
apartment - he called it a "safe house" -
with a parade of women.
According to testimony from nearly two
dozen women at his trial, Rewald ro-
manced the young and the matronly, mod-
els and secretaries, an insurance agent
and a Playboy playmate - women who
shared a common interest in Rewald and
his money. About $287,000 of it, according
to the FBI. Rewald paid for their sports
cars and their apartments; he sent one
woman to college and another to Europe.
Eventually, many of them entrusted
their assets to Rewald. In the end they,
too, came up empty-handed, along with
the three-star generals, doctors, dentists,
morticians, attorneys and CIA agents who
invested in Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dil-
lingham & Wong and its promise of 26
percent annual return on investment,
guaranteed. After all, Bishop, Baldwin
and Dillingham are some of Hawaii's
most venerated names; as
one investor who lost
$42,500 from her late hus-
band's estate put it, "If they
go broke, all Hawaii goes
broke."
As news of the invest-
ment company's fabulous
success spread throughout
Hawaii, hundreds of inves-
tors approached Rewald
clamoring for a piece of the
action. The company's
standard line was that the
average investor had a port-
folio worth $4 million and
that the waiting list was
two years long. But the
kind-hearted Rewald al-
ways seemed ready to make
an exception.
Those who opened "in-
vestment savings accounts"
included businessmen from
Australia and Indonesia, a
deputy police chief, a blind
man, 18 people from North-
ern California, rich widows
and poor widows and a wid-
ow dying of cancer. Re-
wald's closest relatives and
in-laws, including his sister
and his father, now de-
ceased, invested nearly $1
million.
By 1983, Bishop, Bald-
win's technicolor prospectus
boasted assets of $1.5 billion
and branches in Sydney,
Singapore, Papeete, Hong
Kong, Paris, London and
Stockholm. Returns on in-
vestment ranged from 20 to
50 percent and Ronald Re-
wald, a self-described for-
mer halfback for the Cleve-
land Browns with a law
degree from Marquette Uni-
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
versity, was the toast of Honolulu. He was
appointed honorary sheriff. He made do-
nations to the Boy Scouts, the Salvation
Army and religious charities. He contrib-
uted money to the governor and lieutenant
governor and talked of running for the
U.S. Senate.
But in the summer of 1983, Bishop, Bal-
dwin, Rewald, Dillingham & Wong sud-
denly collapsed following a routine inves-
tigation by the Hawaii Department of
Consumer Affairs.
By the time the state regulators, the In-
ternal Revenue Service and a group of
nervous investors converged on the firm's
high-rise headquarters, the money was
gone. Rewald was found on the 16th floor
of a Waikiki hotel with his wrists slashed.
When Rewald was released from the
hospital a week later, the company had
been forced into involuntary bankruptcy.
Astonished investors learned that only
$630,000 of the $22 million they had
pumped into the Bishop, Baldwin compa-
ny had ever been invested in legitimate
projects. The rest had been used to pay an
earlier group of investors (with at least a
20 percent dividend) - or spent on cars,
polo ponies, ranches, boats and trips
abroad for Rewald and his colleagues at
Bishop, Baldwin.
Rewald was arrested and charged with
theft by deception. His bail was set origi-
nally at $10 million, the largest in Ha-
waii's history, and he was charged ulti-
mately with 98 counts of fraud, perjury
and tax evasion.
Following an 11-week trial last summer,
Rewald was convicted of 94 of those
counts and sentenced to 80 years with lit-
tle possibility of parole until 2014, when
he will be 72 years old.
After a team of four of the U.S. govern-
ment's finest attorneys got through with
some 125 prosecution witnesses, they
made Rewald, a churchgoing family man,
look like the smoothest, horniest, most un-
conscionable huckster in modern times.
The law degree from Marquette, the
Cleveland Browns football jersey, the
Price-Waterhouse insignia on the Bishop,
Baldwin prospectus, the $1.5 billion in as-
sets - everything was a fake.
The government attorneys claimed the
CIA, perhaps the world's most sophisti-
cated intelligence agency, had been duped
by a chump from the Midwest.
But wait, says Rewald. This is all a ter-
rible mistake. It was the CIA that
dreamed up the Bishop, Baldwin company
in the first place to provide cover for se-
cret agents working in the Far East. No-
body was supposed to lose money in Bish-
op, Baldwin. The CIA was supposed to
keep it afloat with infusions of cash and
the commissions on clandestine arms
deals, Rewald says. The 400 investors who
lost a combined $13 million, not counting
interest due, would have been reimbursed,
Rewald says, if he had been able to get his
hands on more than $10 million sitting in
a secret bank account in the Cayman Is-
lands. The money, Rewald says, was the
commission on the secret sale of M-60
tanks to Taiwan - a sale that was made
through the CIA because the Carter ad-
ministration had signed an official agree-
ment with mainland China promising to
end shipments of offensive weapons to its
capitalist adversary, Taiwan.
When the company had its cover blown
in July 1983, Rewald says, the CIA liqui-
dated the Cayman Island bank account,
erased all evidence of the account, and
tried to "cut and run," leaving Rewald to
take the fall.
Portraying himself as a patriot, if not a
hero, in the service of his country, Rewald
says he was only following the orders of
the CIA.
Rewald claims the company was used by
the agency to monitor wars and
revolutions, to orchestrate politi-
cally embarrassing arms sales to
Taiwan and India, to divert liter-
ally billions of dollars from Brit-
ish to U.S. banks, and to provide a
wide range of services for clients
ranging from Ferdinand Marcos
to Rajiv Gandhi. Rewald says it
was the CIA that supplied him
with the fake law degree from
Marquette, the CIA that wrote the
phony prospectus, the CIA that
directed him to take the cabbage
from kings (or at least retired
generals).
And, Rewald charges, it was the
CIA that hired a former member
of the Green Berets to assassinate
him while he was awaiting trial in
prison.
The ravings of a delusional
madman? The bilge of a desperate
bunko artist? Perhaps. The gov-
ernment attorneys were able to
minimize any evidence pointing to
the CIA's alleged involvement in
Rewald's phony company. They
managed to persuade a jury that
Rewald, a Gene Wilder look-alike,
had masterminded a fraudulent
pyramid scheme to underwrite his
hedonistic, jet-set lifestyle.
Bishop, Baldwin had indeed
been used by the CIA, the govern-
ment acknowledged, but as noth-
ing more than a maildrop and a
phone contact. Rewald, far from
the super-spy he held himself up
to be, was a bit player in the world
of espionage. The FBI, which in-
vestigated the Rewald case for the
U.S. government, said the compa-
ny's banking records showed no
evidence of any multimillion-dol-
lar weapons deals.
But when Rewald tried to intro-
duce a steamer trunk full of tapes
and documents he claimed would
expose the CIA's seminal role in
the creation of Bishop, Baldwin,
Wwi
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
federal Judge Harold Fong re-
viewed the material and decided
that nearly all of it was either ir-
relevant-- or inadmissible as evi-
dence in the interests of national
security. CIA Director William
Casey himself filed an affidavit
with the court saying that much
of Rewald's CIA-related evidence
is "classified" and should be
sealed.
Before the trial was over, the
government admitted that at least
half a dozen CIA agents used Re-
wald's company and its subsid-
iaries as "light cover," which in-
cluded business cards, telephone
numbers, addresses, a desk and a
telex machine. The government
admitted that at least nine pres-
ent or former CIA agents had
money invested in Bishop, Bal-
dwin. It admitted that the CIA
had signed Rewald to a secrecy
agreement in California five years
before the collapse of Bishop, Bal-
dwin - an agreement that was
approved despite background
checks that revealed Rewald had
been convicted of theft in
Wisconsin.
When the IRS came after Re-
wald for $1.8 million in unpaid
taxes, the CIA admitted it gave
Rewald three separate stories to
stall the IRS investigation while
several CIA agents pulled several
hundred thousand dollars out of
their investment accounts.
And, most intriguing, the CIA
admitted it had sent a cable in
May 1979 to the Hawaii field of-
fice that could be interpreted as a
blueprint for the creation of a
dummy company such as Bishop,
Baldwin.
The cable suggested that CIA
agent Charles Richardson, as a
cover story, describe himself "as
the principal in a major Hawaiian
and West Coast investment firm
which has major interests in Asia
as well as the U.S. That partners
in this firm are from some of the
oldest, wealthiest and most influ-
ential families in Hawaii."
The cable went on to say that
agent Richardson would tell "tar-
gets" he was "a special assistant"
to the head of such a company, a
person "with substantial political
stature." Richardson admitted he
later became the head of a compa-
ny originally founded by Rewald.
Rewald, in a recent interview
with The Bee, says the CIA cable
described "exactly what Bishop,
Baldwin was in 1982-83. That was
exactly what they wanted us to
develop - and we did." If the ca-
ble was indeed a blueprint for the
Bishop, Baldwin company, Rewald
carried out his instructions be-
the CIA's wildest hopes - or
yond
nightmares.
Ronald Rewald no longer
is wearing monogrammed
shirts, gold Rolex watches
and $500 Navy-blue wool suits
purchased from Andy Mohan, Ha-
waii's finest clothier. He dresses
in khakis and T-shirts and works
as a suicide prevention counselor
and librarian at Terminal Island,
an all-male medium-security pris-
on in Southern California. His
wife and children no longer live in
mansions but in what Rewald de-
scribes as "a rat-infested, two-
bedroom apartment in Los An-
geles."
But the Rewald case is far from
closed. Melvin Belli of San Fran-
cisco and Rodney Klein of Sacra-
mento, two hard-ball attorneys
who have made their millions and
their reputations by slaying gi-
ants, have filed separate civil suits
against the CIA on behalf of sev-
eral Bishop, Baldwin investors.
Rewald's appeal is beigg han-
dled by Brent Carruth, a tenacious
attorney from Van Nuys who re-
cently broke new ground when he
won the acquittal of former CIA
agent Richard Craig Smith on
charges of selling agent lists to
the KGB.
Carruth says a lot more is at
stake in Ronald Rewald's appeal
than the fortunes of Rewald him-
self. Carruth says the government
deprived Rewald of his right to a
fair trial by preventing him from
introducing the CIA-related evi-
dence that could have exonerated
him.
Carruth says the entire U.S.
system of justice will be called in-
to question if a man's right to a
fair trial is superseded by the om-
nipotence of a shadow agency that
has put itself beyond the law of
the land in the "interest of nation-
al security." Does the CIA's cover
story absolve it of all responsibili-
ty for the 400 people - greedy and
gullible, but victims nevertheless
- many of whom lost their life
savings in a cardboard company
that was being used, to whatever
extent, by the CIA?
What follows - based on thou-
sands of pages of court documents
and dozens of interviews - is the
story of how Ronald Ray Rewald,
a little guy with a major-league
imagination, lived out a fantasy
worthy of James Bond with the
help, if not the blessing, of the
CIA.
Rewald, descended from a long
line of German bakers, grew up in
Milwaukee. At 18, he married
Nancy Imp and enrolled at M.I.T.
- Milwaukee Institute of Tech-
nology, a two-year junior college.
There, Rewald says, he was re-
cruited by the dean of students for
a CIA project that may have been
a forerunner to "Operation CHA-
OS," an illegal CIA domestic spy-
ing operation involving radical
student groups.
Rewald claims he was given the
code name "Winterdog" and paid
$120 a week to grow his hair long
and spy on Students for a Demo-
cratic Society and the Black
Panthers, radical groups the CIA
believed were being financed or
infiltrated by foreign communists
- a claim the CIA denies.
After a marginal career as an
NFL running back, Rewald says
he went into the sporting goods
business with several professional
football players.
Patricia Ann Ebert, a neighbor
of Rewald's in Mequon, Wis.,
whose family lost $192,787 in
Bishop, Baldwin, testified, "He
was certainly the flashiest one in
the neighborhood. He drove a yel-
low Corvette. His children had the
latest in extravagant toys, gas-
powered motor cars, trampolines
and he put a swimming pool in."
Ebert said that even then, Rewald
claimed CIA ties and a law degree
from Marquette. Ebert admitted
she later had an affair with Re-
wald in Hawaii.
Despite Rewald's well-to-do fa-
cade, the sporting goods venture
went bankrupt in 1976 and Re-
wald pleaded guilty to misde-
meanor theft for collecting $2,000
for the sale of a defunct sporting
goods franchise.
Rewald, ever-resilient, activated
yet another company, Consolidat-
ed Mutual Investments Corp.,
with $25,000 belonging to a Mil-
waukee mortician, and registered
it with the U.S. Securities and Ex-
change Commission as an "invest-
ment adviser."
Rewald now had a wife and five
small children, a criminal record
and a record of failure as a busi-
nessman. He figured he could im-
prove his prospects by moving to
Hawaii.
b iml
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
So in 1977 the would-be spy
moved out to the beach. Rewald,
who prosecutors. say "didn't have
two nickels to rub together" when
he landed in Hawaii, began scout-
ing the country clubs of Oahu. On
a tennis court Rewald met Sunlin
(Sunny) Wong, an ambitious
young real estate salesman who
was licensed to sell securities.
Wong was to become the presi-
dent of Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald,
Dillingham & Wong.
Wong helped Rewald buy a sev-
en-bedroom home from former
Cambodian president Lon Nol.
Then Rewald moved into Wong's
offices on the 15th floor of the
Amfac Building in Honolulu and
opened a couple of sporting goods
stores, all of which lost money.
Then, in June 1978, Rewald tele-
phoned Eugene Welch, the CIA
station chief in Honolulu. Rewald
told Welch of his days as "Winter-
dog," added he had advanced de-
grees from Marquette and M.I.T.
and volunteered to file reports on
business trips to China and other
F?r Eastern locations. "My sport-
ing goods business was going
down the tubes and ... I really
had an interest in getting more in-
volved with the CIA," he says.
Welch testified that Rewald
came off as "a genius. He had a
great deal of charm. I couldn't
probe his intellect."
Welch, who was in charge of the
CIA's Domestic Collections Divi-
sion, which collects "foreign intel-
ligence from U.S. citizens who vol-
untarily offer it," filed the
following "DCD source/contact
sheet" on Rewald:
"Source was a walk-in who vol-
unteered his services, moved, he
said, to this action in sympathetic
reaction to the years of criticism
and slander leveled against the
U.S. intelligence community. He
claims a past association with the
agency during his student days ...
"He shows promise of develop-
ing into a productive source of FI
(foreign intelligence), once he has
been oriented properly as to the
agency's real needs and interests
... he would have to he cautioned
not to let his enthusiasm cloud his
judgment as to his real capabili-
ties."
According to court documents,
Welch said the CIA could use Re-
wald as a good source of informa-
tion on economic issues in the Far
East. Soon after Welch filed his
report, CIA headquarters in Lang-
ley, Va., issued Rewald a security
clearance good for the next five
years. He was made the head of
what was to be the first of five
CIA fronts, a dummy company by
the name of H & H Enterprises
that supposedly dealt in antiqui-
ties.
Before Welch retired in Septem-
ber 1978, he introduced Rewald to
his successor, Jack Kindschi, a ca-
reer CIA agent with a background
in clandestine activities in the So-
viet Union, Sweden and Greece.
Kindschi was equally impressed
with Rewald, an ingratiating St.
Bernard of a fellow.
Kindschi and Rewald became
extremely close. Both men were
from Wisconsin and had a similar
view of the world, Kindschi testi-
fied. It was Kindschi who in 1978
first recommended that Rewald
be used as "acting manager" of a
paper company, Canadian Far
East Trading Co., "to backstop
agency officers' aliases," accord-
ing to testimony. Rewald, wrote
Kindschi, "would appear to be a
natural for this task." The CIA
gave Rewald about $3,000 to pay
for telephone and telex bills run
up by agents using Canadian Far
,East Trading Co.
I
n late 1978, Rewald changed
the name of his company,
Consolidated Mutual Invest-
ments, to Bishop, Baldwin, Re-
wald, Dillingham & Wong because
the "kamaaina" (old Hawaiian)
names Bishop, Baldwin and Dil-
lingham are "synonymous with
Hawaii." CMI became a subsid-
iary of Bishop, Baldwin.
Rewald claims Bishop, Baldwin
was Eugene Welch's idea, and
that it was Welch who supplied
Rewald with fake degrees from
Marquette University - charges
Welch has denied in court.
However, a CIA cable that was
introduced at Rewald's trial out-
lined a " .. a major Hawaii and
West Coast investment firm
which has major interests in Asia
as well as the U.S. whose partners
... are from some of the oldest,
wealthiest and most influential
families in Hawaii." This firm,
which sounds suspiciously like
Bishop, Baldwin, was to be used as
a cover story for Charles Richard-
son, a CIA agent who was doing
undercover work in the Far East.
In 1979, when CIA headquarters
asked for a "personal assessment"
of Rewald, Kindschi described
him as "an eager beaver ... a win-
ner ... extremely dependable ...
In the short time he has lived in
Hawaii, he has managed to associ-
ate his company with three or
four of the oldest and most exclu-
sive families in Hawaii (Bishop,
Baldwin and Dillingham) ... we
have looked at the subject very
closely, especially in a social set-
ting, and we have found that ev-
erything that he has told us ap-
pears to be true, including
scrapbook documentation of his
athletic background and sports
business in the Midwest. We have
also verified his salient character
traits through mutual friends and
visitors... "
In June 1979 - Rewald says it
was 1978 - CIA agent John Ma-
son met with Rewald in a Los An-
geles hotel and signed him to a
CIA secrecy oath, despite a CIA
background check that turned up
Rewald's misdemeanor theft con-
viction in Wisconsin.
Kindschi, who brought Rewald
into the world of espionage, said
the affable Midwesterner never
requested payment or favors for
his CIA work and seemed moti-
vated by "that side of his person-
ality energized by risk-taking,
derring-do and achievement."
Perhaps the 58-year-old Kind-
schi's judgment was obscured by
his almost familial relationship
with Rewald's children - and
Kindschi's growing financial rela-
tionship with Rewald and his
companies.
Starting in 1979, Kindschi made
a series of investments in Interpa-
cific Sports, a Rewald company,
and Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dil-
lingham & Wong. When Bishop,
Baldwin went under, a tearful
Kindschi testified that he and his
wife lost $155,000 - and another
$104,000 Kindschi had invested for
his 86-year-old mother, a widow
who is legally blind and now living
on Social Security.
Of much greater significance
was Kindschi's role as an employ-
ee of Bishop, Baldwin. Kindschi
testified he started working for
the firm in 1979 (receiving $12,000
in Bishop, Baldwin checks that
year) and retired from the CIA in
1980 to become a consultant for
Bishop, Baldwin. Kindschi trav-
eled extensively and made up to
$7,000 a month. He earned 70 per-
cent interest on one of his "invest-
ments" with Rewald and was giv-
en a free car.
Kindschi admitted in federal
court that he was the author of
several Bishop, Baldwin quarterly
Wei
4
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
reports and the company's slick,
pricey (and phony) brochure. It
was this brochure - written to
Rewald's ' specifications - that
helped attract a legion of inves-
tors from throughout the United
States and the world.
Kindschi claims he didn't real-
ize he was writing phony reports
and brochures until Bishop, Bal-
dwin dissolved in August 1983.
Once Rewald had insinuated
himself on the CIA, he threw him-
self into the role he claims the
CIA assigned him - the free-
spending, high-living, influential
chairman of thy hoard of Bishop,
Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham &
Wong, "One of the oldest and larg-
est privately held international
investment and consulting firms
in Hawaii," serving satisfied cus-
tonmers " ... since territorial
days."
R ewald was moving up in
the world. Ile went from
the 15th floor of the Am-
fac Building to the 26th floor of
the Grosvenor Center, the most
expensive office building in down-
town Honolulu. He spent $8,000 to
install a rock and fiberglass re-
mote-control waterfall in his of-
fice, because - as he told one hap-
less investor - the bubbling
noises had a tranquilizing effect.
On his office wall he hung his
business and law degrees from
Marquette University, a plaque
listing his membership in the As-
sociation of Former Intelligence
Officers, and a photo of Richard
Nixon (who Rewald told investors
was a one-time client of his.)
"We then went out and hired a
handful of attorneys and financial
consultants to draw agreements
and do estate planning," Rewald
said. "We had to give the appear-
ance of being a legitimate busi-
ness."
Rewald says one of the CIA's
prime objectives was to use Bish-
op, Baldwin as a means of divert-
ing billions of dollars from banks
in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-
nesia to selected U.S. banks.
In 1980, Rewald and Wong went
to Hong Kong to research Bishop,
Baldwin's now infamous study,
"Capital Flight from Hong Kong
and How Hawaii Can Benefit."
Rewald said the study, published
in a 400-page, gold-colored vol-
ume, was nothing more than a
massive propaganda campaign
suggesting that mainland China
was planning to take control of
Hong Kong within two years, even
though the takeover isn't sched-
uled `until 1997. "Our real job was
to create unrest in the economy
and keep as much money flying
out of there (Hong Kong) as possi-
ble."
Once Bishop, Baldwin was oper-
ating (and beginning to take in in-
vestors' money), Rewald says the
CIA directed him to purchase the
run-down Hawaii Polo Club as a
means of getting close to interna-
tional money men like Enrique
Zobel of the Philippines and the
Sultan of Brunei, both billionaires
and polo enthusiasts.
Rewald - through Bishop, Bal-
dwin - spent $278,259 to buy and
refurbish the polo club, and an-
other $420,000 on a stable of 17 po-
lo ponies and polo lessons. Once he
had restored the club's luster, Re-
wald - who had been on a horse
twice in his life and was allergic to
the animals - used "the sport of
kings" to establish friendships
with a prince from the United Ar-
ab Emirates, British royalty, Zo-
bel and the Sultan of Brunei.
Rewald claims Zobel provided
him - and through him, the CIA
- with valuable intelligence on
the status of the Marcos regime in
the Philippines. According to doc-
uments obtained by The Bee, Re-
wald and Zobel formed a partner-
ship, Hawaii Ayala Corp., which
apparently never did any busi-
ness.
But Rewald says his biggest
prize was the Sultan of Brunei,
whose oil-rich nation on the island
of Borneo had recently gained its
independence from Great Britain.
Rewald says he sent his polo team
to Brunei, then invited the Sultan
to Honolulu: "We had dinner may-
be six, seven times in Honolulu
and I got very close to him." Re-
wald claims he ultimately induced
the sultan to transfer $4.6 billion
from British banking institutions
to two American banks, Morgan
Guarantee and Citicorp. There are
photos of the Sultan of Brunei and
Rewald together, but it is impossi-
ble to determine what role - if
any - Rewald played in the man-
agement of the sultan's billions.
Rewald also used the spruced-
up polo club as an entre to Hono-
lulu's inner circle. Through it he
met politicians, Air Force gener-
als, a Playboy Playmate and Ha-
waii's most famous personality,
actor Jack Lord, who starred as
Steve McGarrett on the TV series
"Hawaii Five-0."
According to testimony, Rewald
sent Lord five movie scripts
through a mutual friend who was
a polo player. Lord dismissed the
scripts as junk, but Rewald be-
friended him anyway. Lord and
his wife dined with the Rewalds
several times and the couples ex-
changed expensive gifts.
L osaid he thought Rewald
was a very dear guy, a
very dear friend." He never
invested in Bishop, Baldwin, but
he did sell Rewald a $45,000 cus-
tomized van from the set of "Ha-
waii Five-0."
Lord rejected numerous at-
tempts by Rewald to put him on
the payroll, but allowed Rewald to
pick him up and drop him off at
the airport in one of Rewald's
chauffeured limousines. He said
Rewald repeatedly invited him to
use the offices of Bishop, Baldwin,
but he refused.
But Rewald used his connection
with Jack Lord to good advantage.
Lord was listed on Bishop, Bal-
dwin's organizational chart as a
"special consultant," and Rewald
told people that the office next to
his was Jack Lord's office. Bishop,
Baldwin rented three parking
spaces in the basement of Grosve-
nor Center - one for Rewald, one
for his office manager and one
marked "reserved, Jack Lord."
Company president Sunny Wong
didn't even -rate his own parking
space.
A furious Lord testified that he
had no idea there was a parking
space or an office in his name: "It
would have been a damnable lie if
he (Rewald) had told anyone that
I occupied an office or a parking
space in that building ... I hate
being used ... and I would have
considered that being used."
Lord was only one of many Ha-
waiian personalities befriended by
Rewald. Lt. General Arnold Bra-
swell, commander in chief of the
Pacific Air Force from 1981 to
1983, said he was pleasantly sur-
prised when Rewald invited him
to invest in Bishop, Baldwin,
which Braswell thought "was out
of my league." Braswell said he in-
vested $143,000 in Bishop, Baldwin
(including $66,000 in borrowed
money) to take advantage of a
"special deal" that promised up to
100 percent interest.
In documents filed in federal
court, Rewald claims Braswell's
account was one of 19 Bishop, Bal-
dwin accounts used to channel
CIA money into secret agency
projects. But Braswell testified
that the more than $100,000 he
lost in Bishop, Baldwin was his
own.
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30 :
Braswell said he planned to go
to work for Bishop, Baldwin upon
his retirement from the Air Force.
He - like many of the investors
- is listed as a "consultant" in
company brochures.
Another person Rewald met
through the polo club was Playboy
centerfold Cindy Brooks, a tall,
green-eye blonde who was exercis-
ing the polo ponies.
Brooks, who said Rewald "had
the right answers for every ques-
tion," ended up losing $2,400 of
her own money in Bishop, Bal-
dwin.
Brooks was one of many women
whom Rewald courted at Ar-
thur's, a dimly lit restaurant with
red-cushioned booths in down-
town Honolulu. Through Brooks,
Rewald met Susan McGinnis, a
stunning model and actress.
McGinnis said Rewald showed her
a gold Rolex watch and told her he
paid $27,000 for it.
Rewald said he maintained a
"safe house" - a spy refuge that
couldn't be traced back to the CIA
- in room 907 of Harbor Tower
Apartments, above Bob's Big Boy
restaurant two blocks from Bish-
op, Baldwin's offices. The women
who testified they saw the inside
of Rewald's "safe house" included
a self-described artist and writer
of childrens' books by the name of
Shane Diamond Emerald who
said she was paid $500 for each
time she had sex with Rewald; a
former secretary who kept track
of her 29 sexual liaisons with Re-
wald by putting an asterisk in her
diary after each encounter (she
was paid $32,350); an insurance
agent who was paid $103,000 by
Rewald to serve as his mistress
and traveling companion for 21/2
years; a therapist who was paid
$12,000 and an 18-year-old legal
messenger who said she had sex
with Rewald in one of his Rolls-
Royces.
As the investors' money rolled
in, Rewald's fleet of automobiles
grew to include a Mercedes Benz
450 SL coupe, a 1957 Thunderbird,
a 1982 Corvette, a 1979 Continen-
tal, a 1969 Jaguar XKE roadster, a
Mercedes sedan, an Excalibur, a
red Ferrari used on Tom Selleck's
television show "Magnum P.I."
and four Cadillacs, including a
limousine that once belonged to
the governor. Before the charade
was over, Rewald used Bishop,
Baldwin to buy a 50 percent inter-
est in an exotic car dealership,
MotorCars Hawaii, and had use of
Maseratis and Lamborghinis.
R ewald moved into a mil-
lion-dollar mansion on a
lagoon in an exclusive sub-
urb of Honolulu. He decorated it
with original drawings by Goya
and Van Dyke, a Picasso print and
several statues of knights in ar-
mor. He bought himself an an-
tique gun collection that included
a three-barreled revolver and a
collection of rare knives, axes and
sabres. He ordered six Cleveland
Browns uniforms and had his
name put on them, perhaps as a
nostalgic reminder of his brief
gridiron glory days. Rewald
bought his five children $5,000
worth of scuba diving equipment
and told the store clerk that the
customary 10 percent discount on
such a large order "wouldn't be
necessary." He spent another
$5,000 for a nose job.
Meanwhile, happy
who were collecting interest rang-
ing from 20 to 100 percent begat
scores of other investors from all
walks of life, even though Rewald
told prospective clients that "90
percent" of all applicants were
turned down.
The investors included Chester
Owen, a blind California business-
man who said he was impressed
"by the sound of the waterfall" in
Rewald's office, who lost $240,000
- "every nickel he had"; Lani Sut-
ton, a widow dying of cancer who
lost $30,000 that was to pay her
medical bills; and widow Teressa
Black, who lost $81,000 in life in-
surance she collected after her
husband and two sons were killed
in an airplane crash in December
1981.
Rewald told clients he was in-
vesting their money in short-term
construction loans, tea planta-
tions in Indonesia, oil drilling
rights off the coast of Korea, land
deals on Maui and dozens of other
real and imagined projects. The
sad reality is that Bishop, Baldwin
earned a grand total of $9,000 in
interest on $22 million worth of
investments because nearly all the
money was kept in a checking ac-
count.
By mid-1982, Bishop, Baldwin's
seemingly phenomenal success
was the subject of laudatory
magazine and newspaper
accounts. The Honolulu
Chamber of Commerce and
Voice of Business endorsed
the fast-growing firm. But
with the flurry of favorable
press came questions. If
Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald,
Dillingham & Wong had
been enriching Hawaiian
investors "since territorial
days," as the brochures
claimed, why was there no
record of the firm before
1978? Why didn't the pro-
spectus explain the profits
and losses of Bishop, Bal-
dwin's far-reaching invest-
ments? And why hadn't
anybody met the three se-
nior partners, Bishop, Bal-
dwin and Dillingham?
"James T. Bishop, vice
president of U.S. Domestic
Operations," was one of the
aliases used by California-
based CIA agent Charles
Richardson, who also used
the name Richard Cavan-
naugh.
There was a Baldwin, but
he wasn't "Robert J. Bal-
dwin III, vice president of
European Operations." He
was David J. Baldwin, who
described himself as CIA -
"Catholic, Irish and Alco-
holic." Baldwin, who met
Rewald in 1977, ran a Mil-
waukee restaurant called
the "Safe House" with se-
cret passageways, code
words to gain entrance and
drinks with names like
"Double Agent." Baldwin
testified that Rewald signed
him to a secrecy agreement,
had him fill out a CIA job
application and sent him to
India to help with the pur-
ported sale of C-130 aircraft
to Rajiv Gandhi - another
deal secretly put through by
the CIA because of the offi-
cial U.S. relationship with
India's hostile neighbor, Pa-
kistan. ("We always support
both sides because you nev-
er know who's gonna come
out on top," explains Re-
wald.)
Baldwin realized a $14,000
profit on a $10,000 invest-
ment in the company bear-
ing his name.
Rewald could explain
away Bishop and Baldwin,
but when people started
asking about "Grant Ran-
dall Dillingham," he died
suddenly. On April 23, 1982
the company. issued a press
release announcing that
Dillingham had regrettably
died of a heart attack three
days earlier while visiting
relatives in Manila. The
touching press release ex-
tolled "Randy's ... wit, in-
sight into problem-solving
and unique ability to recog-
nize opportunities in ad-
vance of trends."
The press release went on
to say that "Randy" would
(0.
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
be buried near his Southern Cali-
fornia home in a private ceremo-
ny. Company president Sunny
Wong even flew to Los Angeles to
attend the phony funeral of the
non-existent Dillingham, whose
"ashes" were scattered at sea.
While Rewald and Wong were
able to deflect most of the ques-
tions thrown at them by investors,
a growing number of state and
federal agencies began to probe
inconsistencies and false repre-
sentations contained in company
literature.
The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC) wanted to
know why the firm claimed inves-
tors' accounts were insured up to
$150,000, when the federal govern-
ment, by law, only insures ac-
counts up to $100,000.
The Securities and Exchange
Commission wanted to know why
Bishop, Baldwin, advertised "tax-
deferred investment savings ac-
counts" when such accounts are il-
l why the company filed no
annual financial disclosure state-
ments and finally, why Rewald
had lied in his SEC application
about his criminal record and his
law degree from Marquette.
The Internal Revenue Service
had serious questions about Re-
wald's tax returns from 1979
through 1982. Joseph Camplone,
an IRS agent who happened to be
a neighbor of Rewald's, grew curi-
ous when he saw all the fancy cars
parked in Rewald's driveway and
received reports from his children
that Rewald's kids were dropped
off at school in chauffeur-driven
limousines.
Upon further investigation,
Camplone learned Rewald
- who told a life insur-
ance agent he was worth $6.5 mil-
lion - claimed a net loss of
$11,775 in 1979, received a refund
,of $1,917 on reported income of
$8,438 in 1980 and failed to file re-
turns in 1981 and 1982.
Jack Rardin, who took over as
CIA station chief in Honolulu
from Jack Kindschi in 1980 and
lost $2,800 in Bishop, Baldwin, ad-
mitted the CIA gave Rewald three
different "cover stories" for the
IRS, the kind of fiction "used to
protect an on-going operation
from penetration by the KGB."
Rewald told Rardin his compa-
ny had already been used by the
CIA "for passing funds to individ-
uals in the Middle East, Argenti-
na, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indone-
sia, California and Hawaii."
Rardin reported to CIA headquar-
ters that he had "no reason to
doubt subject's (Rewald's) veraci-
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
ty. Subject, who is a shared source
with the Foreign Resources Divi-
sion (of the CIA), is a conscien-
tious, patriotic individual who
tends to quickly follow CIA in-
structions to the letter."
The IRS investigation was tem-
porarily stalled for several weeks,
but the hounds were on the trail
even while Rewald was taking in
more than $12 million in new in-
vestment accounts in the final six
months.
In July 1983, a would-be client
of Bishop, Baldwin filed a com-
plaint against the company with
the Hawaii Department of Con-
sumer Affairs, which began an in-
quiry into Bishop, Baldwin. A Ho-
nolulu television reporter learned
of the inquiry and aired a July 29
report raising obvious questions
about the identities of Bishop,
Baldwin and Dillingham.
That afternoon Rewald, after
saying his prayers at Our Lady of
Peace Cathedral where he wor-
shipped thrice weekly, checked in-
to room 1632 of the Sheraton Wai-
kiki Hotel. He considered jumping
out the window, but said he didn't
want to hurt any innocent
passers-by. Instead, he swallowed
a bottle of codeine and Tylenol
pills to numb the pain, folded his
clothes neatly, and then slit his
wrists and forearms with a razor
blade.
Rewald left two suicide notes
for his wife Nancy apologizing for
"all the pain and suffering I must
be causing. I know how bad every-
thing must look to you and every-
one else. I want you to know I nev-
er did anything to hurt anyone ...
I started out working for our
country and was abandoned when
others feared for there (sic) jobs.
It never dawned on me that I
would be left alone and unprotect-
ed. Forgive me... "
But Rewald didn't die. While he
was recovering in Queens Hospi-
tal, Bishop, Baldwin was forced
into involuntary bankruptcy and
the CIA confiscated six envelopes
of key documents from the compa-
ny files. Immediately upon his re-
lease from the hospital, Rewald
was arrested on two charges of
fraud by deception - one of them
filed on behalf of his close friend,
former CIA agent Jack Kindschi.
Sunny Wong, president of Bish-
op, Baldwin, pleaded guilty to two
counts of fraud and agreed to tes-
tify against Rewald. He received
two years in a minimum security
federal prison and is now out. Re-
wald says CIA agent Charles
Richardson, who was never
charged, has either been reas-
signed to "deep cover" in Europe
or has been kicked out of the CIA
for his role in the Bishop, Baldwin
scandal.
Rewald recalled, "The agency
(CIA) originally thought they had
it under control and then lost it
and that's when they (Jack Kind-
schi and alleged CIA arms mer-
chant Ned Avary) came to me and
said, `You're gonna have to be
tough and you know what that
means, we're gonna have to put
some distance between us, don't
worry about Nancy and the kids
and the investors, they'll all be
taken care of.'"
Thomas Hayes, the bankruptcy
trustee, says Bishop, Baldwin
"never balanced their checking ac-
counts. There were no books, no
journals, no ledgers. There wasn't
a seasoned business person in the
group. It took me six months to
come up with a preliminary idea
of how much money was taken in
and how much was spent. It took
me an hour to see it was a ponzi
(pyramid investment) scheme."
Rewald's bail was set at $10 mil-
lion. There were Rewald songs
and Rewald T-shirts portraying
him as either a swindler or a
scapegoat for the CIA. He spent
six months in Oahu Community
Correctional Center waiting for
his bail to be reduced.
R ewald got out of jail in
January 1984 after his bail
was reduced to $140,000.
After getting a job as a night
watchman, he hooked up with a
California film producer and tried
to sell his life story to movie star
Bo Derek. Derek said Rewald
(who never told her he was facing
criminal charges) - claimed he
had 66 companies that the CIA
used to move and launder money
- money he could use to finance
Derek's films.
Rewald insists there are indeed,
numerous foreign bank accounts
set up by Bishop, Baldwin and the
CIA containing millions of dollars
in commissions from secret arms
sales to Taiwan, Syria and India.
He claims that for the first few
years, nearly all of Bishop, Bal-
dwin's investment accounts were
opened by CIA operatives as a
means of funneling money into a
variety of foreign operations, in-
cluding - but not limited to -
b6w
/.
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
monitoring West German elec-
tions, penetrating the Swedish
government, disinformation (pro-
paganda) campaigns in Hong
Kong, analyzing Argentina's abili-
ty to repay its loans to the U.S. af-
ter the Falklands crisis, a Chilean
bank deal with the leader of the
military junta, the debriefing of
an Afghani rebel and a CIA-fund-
ed project to find MIAs in South-
east Asia led by Bo Gritz, until the
agency pulled out.
In documents filed in federal
court, Rewald claims $4 million in
foreign funds were sheltered in 19
different Bishop, Baldwin ac-
counts allegedly used as conduits
for CIA funds. Those accounts
were held by Rewald, several em-
ployees, Kindschi, a number of re-
tired military men, and a couple
of Indonesian businessmen who
put $600,000 into Bishop, Baldwin
the week before the company
crumbled.
FBI special agent Glenn Martin,
one of 20 FBI agents who worked
full-time on the Rewald case, said
he examined 100 accounts in 15
different banks and said Rewald
had "signature control" over 81 of
those accounts. Martin said nine
present or former CIA agents
were among Bishop, Baldwin's in-
vestors. They lost more than half
a million dollars.
Martin said the bank accounts
he examined held no evidence of
any arms deals. But Martin ad-
mitted that he didn't try to track
down the arms deals. Despite the
exhaustive examination of Rewald
and Bishop, Baldwin, FBI investi-
gators apparently didn't probe the
company's dealings overseas.
At Rewald's trial last summer,
the jury heard excerpts from two
cables from Capt. Edwin (Ned)
Avary, the person who allegedly
handled the arms deals for Bish-
op, Baldwin.
The first cable read: "I hope, re-
peat, hope (to) finalize fantastic
military order with awesome yet
affable Lebanese gorilla (sic) this
weekend."
In the second cable, Avary said,
"awaiting urgent details as to
firmness of order from the big
man here," and made a reference
to "heavy equipment." Russel
Kim, another Bishop, Baldwin
employee who allegedly worked
with Avary on several arms trans-
actions, claims that Avary was
paid a $10 million commission on
the sale of tanks to Taiwan over a
period of several months in mid-
1983. Kim, who is reportedly in
Korea, owes Bishop, Baldwin
$250,000 in promissory notes.
Avary, a former Pan American
World Airways pilot, admitted he
had done "volunteer" work for the
CIA and had received a CIA clear-
ance as far back as March 1973.
But he denied the arms deal ever
went through.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John
Peyton, who led the prosecution
team, says Avary probably does
know arms dealers worldwide. But
Peyton says the arms deals "never
happened."
Only a fraction of Rewald's in-
formation on alleged arms deals
and other secret CIA operations
linked to Bishop, Baldwin was in-
troduced during his trial, which
lasted nearly three months and
cost the taxpayers between $5 and
$10 million. If the classified docu-
ments that Rewald says will exon-
erate him had been introduced as
evidence, "of course the result
would have been the same because
the documents are irrelevant,"
Peyton says. "They only served to
muddy the waters."
P eyton's co-counsel, prosecu-
tion attorney Theodore
Greenberg, declared in his
closing argument, "The CIA turn-
ed out to be the biggest patsy in
this case. If the CIA hadn't been
stupid enough, gullible enough to
let Rewald provide commercial
cover, what would the defense
have to talk about? Nothing."
Greenberg said that Rewald
"wrapped himself in the Ameri-
can flag and the CIA not out of
patriotic motives but of greed."
Defense attorney Brian Taman-
aha said documents linking Bish-
op, Baldwin and Rewald to "the
greatest intelligence agency in the
world" can't be written off to
"poor, bumbling, I'm-a-victim CIA
agents." Tamanaha found it in-
credible that Jack Kindschi, a CIA
lifer who worked as a spy in Mos-
cow and considers himself an ex-
pert on reading people, could be
"set up" by Rewald, whom Taman-
aha described as "an amateur."
But what probably killed Re-
wald's chances with the jury was
the testimony of nearly two dozen
women. His attorneys say Rewald
might well have been acquitted if
the government hadn't done such
a good job of making Rewald look,
like a churchgoing hypocrite with
a wife and five children.
Prosecutor Greenberg reminded
the 8-woman, 4-man jury that Re-
wald spent $287,000 on "secret,
clandestine meetings with women
... you can convict him ... just on
his spending the money on the
women. Did he tell the investors
he was taking their money and
supporting 15 different women?"
Rewald - whose wife Nancy, a
slender brunette, didn't sit
through the trial - bursts into
tears at the mention of his assig-
nations. "I don't want my family
to be hurt any more by this," he
says. "I lost the trial because of
the women. It was a dirty, dis-
gusting period of my life." It is the
only aspect of the case against
him he doesn't try to explain
away.
The jury, deciding that Re-
wald's investment scam hadn't
been set up by the CIA, found Re-
Wald guilty on 94 of 98 counts.
Judge Harold Fong fined Rewald
$352,000, ordered him to pay $13
million restitution, and sentenced
him to 80 years in federal prison.
It was the toughest sentence ever
given to a white-collar criminal.
Fong labeled Rewald's rip-off of
"the young, the old, the infirm and
even the blind ... the most repre-
hensible set of circumstances" he
had ever seen. The judge recom-
mended that Rewald serve at least
a third of his sentence before he is
eligible for parole. After Fong
handed down the sentence, a mag-
istrate commented, "Now you
know what `the book' looks like."
The recalcitrant Rewald main-
tains his innocence. He claims the
CIA promised to reimburse him
for "operational expenses," but
when Bishop, Baldwin was ex-
posed they left him out in the cold
along with hundreds of innocent
investors. "The investors are the
good guys in this," says Rewald,
and they too got jobbed by the
CIA. For a guy considered the big-
gest flimflam man in Hawaiian
history, Rewald has incurred sur-
prisingly little wrath and rancor;
many of the investors have turned
their legal guns on the CIA.
Rewald, who labels his trial "a
mockery of justice," says he didn't
testify in his own defense because
he wasn't allowed to talk about
clandestine CIA activities. But he
successfully passed a polygraph
examination administered by a
professional polygraph expert in
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
Los Angeles on his CIA story. He
claims that he never lied about
anything, except at the CIA's di-
rection, and that a fair trial with
all the CIA-related material in ev-
idence will exonerate him.
Federal Public Defender Mi-
chael Levine, who defended Re-
wald, said there is nothing incon-
sistent in Rewald's story - the
CIA either authorized Rewald to
do what he did, or condoned it. "If
the CIA didn't know about Re-
wald's criminal record they were
grossly incompetent. If they did
know they were criminal. The
same is true for the whole Bishop,
Baldwin episode," he said.
Prosecutor John Peyton, who
once worked for the CIA, said Re-
wald "is just an intelligence
groupie from day one. You won't
get anybody from the agency to
say they did things right - they
screwed up." Rewald used the CIA
to work his scam, but only to the
extent that the CIA story was a
good way to answer questions
from Bishop, Baldwin employees
about the company's strange fi-
nancial dealings and "orgy of
spending."
Peyton concedes that Rewald
"weaves a modicum of truth
through his entire tale - he's a
mastermind. You could see him
sitting up in that office beginning
to think it was all working ..
Ronald Rewald envisioned himself
as some kind of James Bond."
Maybe Rewald was able to take
in so many people because he is
the antithesis of James Bond. He
throws you that hang-dog look
with his crinkly, baby-blue eyes
that beg you to like him. He shuf-
fles his feet and looks sheepishly
at the ground. He walks with his
shoulders hunched over from a po-
lo injury. His rising, effeminate
voice is about as un-macho as you
can get, almost child-like. His
mannerisms are child-like and
even his handwriting is that of a
child's. How can such a schnook
be such a crook? He radiates vul-
nerability. Slick isn't his schtick.
"Everybody that ever met the
-guy said he is the most sincere,
humble, ingratiating person
they've ever met," Peyton said.
"Every single one of them." The
trustee was able to find out how
nearly every single cent of the
$22.7 million in investors' money
was spent, Peyton said. "The only
thing we never found out was
what acting school he went to. He
must have been an honors gradu-
ate." ^
Stephen Magagnini is a staff writ-
erfor the magazine.
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
 Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2
Taking the CIA to court
R onald Rewald says he ex-
pected the CIA to come to
his rescue when he was
charged with demise of Bishop,
Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham &
Wong, a CIA front in Honolulu.
So Rewald hired Melvin Belli
and sued the CIA for $671 million.
He hoped the CIA would settle
with him "as a nui ance thing and
say, 'Rewald's a crook and we
were never involved with him but
it isn't worth fighting. Here's $15
million. Go away.'" He
figured he'd be sen-
tenced to five years in
prison for theft, and
end up serving one.
Instead of getting 5
years, Rewald got 80.
While Rewald, a con-
victed swindler, may
not have much chance
of collecting from the
CIA, several investors
in Bishop, Baldwin have
filed multi-million dol-
lar civil suits against
the agency for "gross
negligence."
Sacramento attorney
Rodney Klein is suing
the CIA for $5 million
in San Francisco feder-
al district court on be-
half of Robert Jinks, an
attorney who persuaded
17 investors from Napa
to invest in Bishop, Bal-
dwin. Jinks and the oth-
er Napa investors lost
$600,000 between them.
Klein, who gained national at-
tention when he successfully sued
the A.H. Robins Co., maker of the
Dalkon Shield, an unsafe intra-
uterine device, on behalf of 150
women, is hoping to see the CIA in
court before year's end.
"If the CIA is fooled by a
'second-rate con,' that smacks to
me of civil fraud," says Klein. "If
the CIA selected the company
(Bishop, Baldwin) to provide cover
and didn't investigate it or Re-
wald more thoroughly - if they
truly were conned - they were
negligent. If the CIA helped set it
up, they defrauded the American
public."
John Hill, an associate of Mel-
vin Belli, has filed a similar civil
suit in Honolulu on behalf of in-
vestors Ted and Miriam Frigard
of Beverly Hills, who lost $257,000.
Hill said the government may
invoke the "State Secret" clause,
which would nullify any lawsuit
that might endanger national se-
curity. "I think the only issue is
the le\'el of CIA involvement,"
said Hill. "We're claiming that the
(AA was negligent at the very
least in not running its shop in a
better way, just like any enter-
prise that brings in investors. If
they're saying we can never see it
and find out about it (the extent of
the CIA's involvement with Bish-
op, Baldwin), then who's to know
except Big Brother?"
Roger D. Einerson, senior trial
attorney for the U.S. Department
of Justice, said the civil suits filed
against the CIA "are pretty much
on hold awaiting the appeal in the
Rewald criminal case."
Einerson acknowledges that the
civil actions against the CIA in
the Rewald case are unprecedent-
ed: "As far as I know, these are
the only cases where something
like this (pyramid scheme) has ev-
er been alleged against the CIA."
Rewald's own hopes rest on his
criminal appeal, which is being
prepared by A. Brent Carruth, an
attorney from Van Nuys who be-
lieves the government obstructed
justice by failing to disclose hun-
dreds of CIA documents relating
to Bishop, Baldwin. Carruth says
the appeal "is probably a year
away," but he has filed an applica-
tion for Rewald's release pending
the appeal, that could get Rewald
out of jail in 45 days.
Federal Public Defender Mi-
chael Levine, who defended Re-
wald in his criminal trial, says,
"The CIA is playing by a different
set of rules. I'm deeply troubled
that the full extent of the CIA in-
volvement with Bishop, Baldwin
was not allowed to come before
the jury. I do not think that na-
tional security would have been
jeopardized and I am a fierce pa-
triot.
fullmtruthrdid n tecoi a gouts that the
t in the
trial. I don't know the whole
truth. But if even the part of the
truth that I know were to come
out, Mr. Rewald would have a
damn good shot at acquittal."
What are the chances that Belli,
Klein, Hill or Carruth will win
their lawsuits against the CIA?
John Greaney, executive direc-
tor of the Association of Former
Intelligence Officers and former
associate general counsel for the
CIA, puts it this way: "There's an
old legal saying: 'You can sue the
bishop of Boston for bastardy, but
you can't win.' "p
- Stephen Magagnini
to
Approved For Release 2011/06/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605490179-2