FUGITIVES' TRACER VANISHES HIMSELF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303150010-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: February 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303150010-0
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PACE / .7 -11
FUGITIVES' TRACER
VANISHES HIMSELF
Man Who Sought to Capture 1
Vesco Fails to Appear for
Meeting in Fraud Case
By JEFF GERTH
special to no Nw Yet 11m.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 - Ernest R.
Keiser, a man the Federal Government
has relied on to bring back some of Its
most notorious fugitives, is now a fugi-
tive himself. His disappearance has
left behind a series of puzzling ques-
tions about his secretive life and his
relationship with the Government.
It was Mr. Keiser, now 64 years old,
who in 1982 lured back to the United
States the former intelligence agent
Edwin P. Wilson, then a fugitive in
Libya, to which he had illegally sup.
piled arms. Subsequently, according to
Mr. Keiser, his attorney and Federal
officials, he got involved in assisting
the Justice Department in attempting
to trap the financier Robert L. Veseo
and other prominent fugitives.
On Thursday, Mr. Keiser's attorney,
William Amnwaid, told Federal prose.
cutors in Tampa, Fla., that Mr. Keiser
had disappeared. Mr. Keiser, Mr.
Aronwald said, had not shown up at a
scheduled meeting in New York with
probation officials in connection with
his conviction last month in White
Plains, N.Y., for larceny. A Justice De-
partment spokesman, John Russell,
said subsequently that the department
would have no comment on Mr. Keiser
or his case.
Warrants for Keiser and Wife
Mr. Keiser was scheduled to go on
trial next week in Tampa on Federal
charges of fraud. Judy Hoyer, an
Assistant United States Attorney in
Tampa, said arrest warrants were
issued Thursday for Mr. Keiser and his
wife, Bahira. Mrs. Keiser was sched-
uled to go on trial next weds in Tampa
on separate charges that she lied about
the Keiser finances in connection with
a hail hearing for Mr. Keiser.
The questions about Mr. Keiser touch
on his relationships with various Gov-
ernment agencies and secret Govern-
ment missions, his involvement in
criminal activity, his true identity and
even on place of birth.
NEW YORK TIMES
3 February 1985
In an interview last year, and in a
partial biography he gave to associ-
ates, Mr. Keiser portrays himself as a
secret Government "operative," in-
volved in snaring Nazis hiding out in
South America, illegally entering Com-
ma nist countries to free dissidents, In.
-kkrating high-level drug rings in the
Middle East and South America and
aseisti;ig the Central Intelligence
Agency in the 1950's by secretly supply.
ing guns in the Algerian war of inde-
pendence.
yeses Reported in Csia
In the interview, Mr. Keiser de-
scribed in detail his efforts, through a
h1exican associate, to trap Mr. Vesoo,
who, according to Federal law. enforce
ment officials, is living in Cuba and is'
trying there to help the country obtain
American technology. Mr. Vesco is
wanted in connection with a $224 mil-
lion fraud case.
But court records, law-enforcement
documents and Justice Department at.
ficials say the C.I.A. is prepared to tes-
ti fy that Mr. Keiser never had any rela-
tionship with the agency, that some of
the exploits in the biography never oc-
t, ink has because he was in jail,
and that frequently been in..
volved ud nd t in illegal activities. But they ac-
knowledge that he had been involved in
some way in attempting to apprehend
Mr. Vesco.
A key issue in the Tampa case, where
Mr. Keiser is charged with
an indicted banker of $00,000 prom-
ising to help fix his case, is Mr. Kais-
er's role in seeking to apprehend Mr.
Vesco. An affadavit by an agent of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation says
Mr. Keiser told the banker he could
take care of his case.
Mr. Keiser's file in the Florida State
Attorney's office for Broward County
calls him an "internationally known
swindler, who possibly may be living
under an assumed name, and a false
passport." In 1973, Mr. Keiser pleaded
no contest to state larceny charges in
Broward County. The files of Interpol,
the Vienna-based wold clearinghouse
for police information, say Mr. Keiser
has been arrested numerous times in!
several countries and served time in an
Austrian prison after World War II.
Problem With Flsigsrprhr4s
Law-enforcement officials have
often questioned Mr. Kaisers true
identity, according to the Broward
C amty filed, the Interpol files and testi-
mony in Federal District Cam in
Tramps. Mr. Keiser has said be was
born in New York in 1918, in a hospital
that lost its birth reobtds. Tracing Mr.
Keiser's past is complicated by the fact
that his bcannot be
ccoro-
riled ing to Florida recotds and Justice
partment officials.
Last year Chris Hoyer, then a Fed-
eral prosecutor, told a Federal magic.
trite in Tampa that Mr. Keiser had
"lied to you, to us - not just about his
arrests, about where be was bornowbo
he is, what he does, where's he tradt.'?
Mr. Hoyer went on: "From the bat
we can determine, he was born in Ger-
many. In a sense, he's not a person...
Justice Department officials said the
hospital where Mr. Keiser said he had
been born had not lost Its records and
had no record of his birth. The officials
also said the State Department, acting
on behalf of the Immigration and Natu-
ralization Service, had traced Mr.
Kaiser's birth to Germany. Mr. Keiser
denies he was born there.
But E. Lawrence Barc eila Jr., an
Assistant United States Attorney in
Washington, who had worked with Mr.
Kaiser in apprehending Mr. Wilson,
told the Tampa magistrate he had
checked out Mr. Kaiser's background,
found him to be reliable, and was sure
Mr. Keiser would appear to face the '
fraud charges in Tampa.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303150010-0