THE MONEY CHANGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000300450015-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 25, 2004
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: April 10, 1976
• Content Type: NSPR

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Approved For Releal? j1 klc 6CIA-RDP88-01315R0 30OP-Q4-~7T
Curious Customers of Leak & Co.
he Money Changer
by Tad Sztdc
\, .lost of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation's secret
payments to agents in Japan and to Japanese govern-
ment figures between 1969 and 1975 were.transmitted
by Deak & Co., a New York-based firm of international
currency dealers that has for many years also served as
a covert channel for worldwide financial operations of
the Central Intelligence Agency.
That Deak was used by Lockheed in its Japanese:
dealings is shown in documents in the hands of the
Senate subcommittee on multinational corporations
and the Securities Exchange Commission. Deak's '
involvement with the CIA is a matter of guarded
knowledge in Washington's intelligence community.
Therefore it is more than likely that the CIA was aware:
all along of Lockheed's secret activities in Japan,
including the payments of millions of dollars in "fees"
and "marketing commissions" to the leader of an
extreme right-wing Japanese political faction and still
unidentified senior Japanese government officials.
According to well placed American sources familiar
with the ongoing investigations of these links, the CIA
may have even orchestrated much of Lockheed's
financial operations in Japan pursuant to covert US
foreign policy objectives. This, then, may be what
investigators have called the "missing link"in the wider
mystery of secret overseas payments by US cor-
porations. Secret foreign payments by American CIA funds through its Hong Kong of fice for conversion
corporations abroad and their political implications are into piastres in Saigon on the unofficial market. Beak
to be investigated by a special cabinet task force headed officials in Hong Kong and h4acao helped the CIA
by Commerce Secretary Elliot L. Richardson. How tivill investigate Far East gold smuggling in the mid-1950s. It
the investigation proceed if evidence develops of CIA has also been suggested that Deak & Co.'s Hong Kong
involvement? office may have "laundered," with the CIA's
Between June 1969, and January 1975, Lockheed knowledge, illegal contributions to the Nixon reelec-
used Deak & Co. to transfer at least $8,279,894 in 27 tion campaign in 1972 although it is unknowvnwhether
separate transactions to Lockheed representatives in. Deak & Co. was aware of the precise nature of that
Tokyo for the secret payments. Of this amount close to operation. As in all secret CIA dealings no documenta-
seven million dollars went to Yoshio Kodama, the most tion is available to prove the reported links between
powerful Japanese rightist leader, eminence grise and Deak and the agency.
maker and breaker of a succession of prime ministers. Lockheed spokesmen refused to discuss. with me the
company's connections with Deal: 4r Co. They would
Lockheed payoffs in Japan relating to sales of not say, for instance, whether using Deak had been
commercial and military aircraft added up to $12.6 suggested to Lockheed by anyone in the US govern-
million, but some payments-about $4.3 million-went ment. Lockheed's international payments are currently ? through other, non-Deak channels. Deak & Co. became under investigation by the Securities and Exchange
Lockheed's hidden transfer agent in June 1969, six Commission; this is one reason, according; to the
months after the aircraft company signed its initial company, that Lockheed refuses to comment on the
contract with Yoshio Kodama to be its Tokyo "consul- Deak connection:Nicholas Deak himself refuses to say
tant." Deak's first transfer coincided with the signin of t about his cam zany or his own bacl:g;round
an expanded contract b 4~ugQs517erformed for
And intelligence sources say that Kodama had a Lockheed. A CIA spokesman refused comments,
working relationship with the CIA from the time he ?d,?*4
was released from a Japa
serving a three-year term .
Deak & Co., which occa
funds through its offices in
through Hong Kong-and
shortly after World War II b
Deak, a wartime employee
Services (OSS) in the Far
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have joined the CIA after vow
according to intelligence sources, he has continued to
have close personal ties with senior agency personnel.
Having built his company into one of the leading United
States foreign-currency dealer firms, Deak is said to
have performed various covert services for the CIA in
the last 25 years. With headquarters in New York City
(Deak's own home is in Scarsdale), the company
operates through some 20 offices in the US and abroad.
These include Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, London, Tokyo,
Hong Kong, Macao, Honolulu, Guam, San' Juan,
Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami,
Vancouver and Toronto. It thus offers an ideal network
for what is known in the trade as "discreet" transac-
tions, and, according to reliable sources, the CIA had
repeatedly availed itself of beak's help.
Deak is said, for example, to have handled CIA funds
in 1953 when the agency overthrew Iran's Premier
. Mohammed Mossadeq and restored the Shah to the
throne. In that instance, the money went through
Zurich and a Deak correspondent office in Beirut.
During the Vietnam war, Deak & Co. allegedly moved