ustxtxb_obs_1986_03_07_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

and quickly to avert world disaster,” he wrote. “That was the reason for the Marshall Plan,” Garwood explained emphatically. She read on: “In every country of the Eastern Hemisphere and most countries of the Western Hemisphere Russia is boring from within.” She looked up. “God, you can’t have anything clearer than that!” Garwood made national news last summer when she went public with her $65,000 donation for the reconditioning of a helicopter to be used for medical evacuations by the contra army in Honduras. The man who asked her to make the donation was General John K. Singlaub. Although it got less attention, Garwood also told a meeting of the World Anti-Communist League in Dallas last September that she had given $50,000 to Singlaub to buy boots for the contras. The WACL’s U.S. Council for World Freedom in Phoenix says she is their largest contributor. These days, Garwood worries that despite her efforts the U.S. State Department might be flubbing the fight against communism. One distressing event was the run-around she ended up getting with her helicopter, which had been named “the Lady Ellen.” It turned out that the helicopter technically could have been outfitted for combat and thus, under the arms control export act was held up for lack of an export license. “I guess the State Department heard some of this criticism, probably from the Nicaraguan Embassy . . . . And they’re so damned wishy-washy,” she said. She puts the blame on “Soviet appeasers among the Eastern elite businessmen” who have undue influence on the State Department. “They are the ones who are holding back my Lady Ellen helicopter,” she said. The question now is, will the State Department do its part to get the President’s military aid request through Congress? “I just can’t let myself imagine that it won’t go through,” she said. But if it were defeated, “I think there would be a tremendous effort among the people who are backing the freedom fighters everywhere to go up and absolutely almost mob Congress.” If it failed, there would simply have to be another vote, she said. Caves Road in Austin. A large man, Hurlbut is partial to elephant figurines his office contains a large wood carving of an elephant’s head on one wall, a stone sculptured elephant on an end table, a brass elephant’s head on his phone, elephants in parade on another table, a gold elephant in the waiting room. On another wall in his office is a nine-foot long blue sailfish that he says he caught. He often jokes with his friends “Dolph” and Mario Calero, two leading contra officials, that he is waiting for the time when he can fish again off the coast of Nicaragua and have his catch stuffed by a noncommunist taxidermist inside the country. Hurlbut’s political involvement has risen with the rise of the New Right in America where his views might have been on the fringe a decade ago, he’s now in good company. The photographs in his office tell part of the story: Bert with Bob Hope, Bert with Phil Crane \(the conservative Representative from with Jack Kemp, Bert with Ronald Reagan at the White House. “There’s Hurlbut has now been forced to put his small company, The First Texas Royalty and Exploration Company, registered with the Secretary of State’s office in 1982, on the back burner while he seeks to make money from other projects. He plans to sell some land soon and get into the convention business, by building a small convention center. Hurlbut declined to put a figure on his own financial contributions to the contras, but said, “I feel good about what I’ve been able to do.” His remarks about hard times in the oil business are not speculative. In January he was sued by the United Bank of Texas for failure to repay $21,593 in loans and interest as well as failure to cover overdrafts of $434.78 and $568.49. The bank noted in court documents that it holds a security interest in Hurlbut’s 1982 Willcraft 24foot outboard boat. Hurlbut said the debt resulted from an investment he made in a company that went bankrupt and is nothing more than an “interim non-payment of debt.” Big Wheels in Action “Soviet appeasers” in the State Department “are the ones who are holding back my Lady Ellen helicopter.” UNDOUBTEDLY THERE are other contra backers who are not having trouble covering their overdrafts. The wealth of the Hunt family in Dallas has been reduced somewhat by the celebrated silver speculation losses of 1980, but a Wall Street Journal article last August estimated the Hunts’ trusts are still worth at least $2 billion. Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert sat at a front table at WACL’s Freedom Fighters’ Banquet last fall. Bunker told the Observer at the time that he wasn’t “bankrolling” the contras, but that he put out $5,000 for tickets to that night’s banquet. Herbert Hunt said he has given money to the cause but would not say how much. Bert Hurlbut recently told the Observer that Bunker Hunt didn’t mind disclosures that he was a funder of the rebel groups. “It was like rolling over in bed to him,” Hurlbut said. Hunt played a key role in a more indirect manner five years ago when he and Fort Worth millionaire T. Cullen Davis organized the Council for National Policy, an elite group of big wheels on the New Right that meets in closed-door meetings four times a year to discuss current political events. It was in the summer of 1984, when CIA aid to the contras had run out and the rebels first began to turn to private funding sources, that the Council flew in Adolfo a picture of me and Savimbi,” he said with casual pride. Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader, was feted in Washington last month, but Hurlbut mentioned the time “when we brought him to Washington four years ago.” Hurlbut was part of the “God & Country” rally organized last April to counter Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s atheist convention, and he was a prominent figure at last fall’s World Anti-Communist League convention in Dallas. As a board member of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, he was one of the lead organizers of the “Freedom Fighters’ Banquet” held on the last night of the conference, which he says added 700 new contributors to the U.S. Council’s national list. But these days, Hurlbut said, fundraising has slowed down. “The people from Texas that normally support an issue like this are generally the oil people,” he said. Because of the slump in the oil industry, those people have less to give, he said. The Congressional approval of aid to the contras also caused private fundraising to subside, according to Hurlbut. Meet Me in Managua THE MAN who introduced Ellen Garwood to General John Singlaub a year ago is Bert Hurlbut, a second generation oilman who now works out of an office on Bee 8 MARCH 7, 1986