| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| Aristotle Onassis, the Palestinian Fatah, and Sirhan Sirhan (Part 6) |
| 2004-07-20 |
| This is Part 5 in a series of articles written by me, Mike Sylwester, based on a new book, Nemesis, written by Peter Evans.(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) On March 16, 1968, Robert Kennedy entered the presidential election. During late March Aristotle Onassis met repeatedly with Mahmoud Hamshari in Paris. By about March 26 Onassis informed David Karr that he and Jackie Kennedy had secretly decided to get married, and Karr passed that information personally to President Lyndon Johnson on April 2. At about that same time, Jackie informed Robert Kennedy, and he persuaded her to keep their wedding plans secret until after the election, in exchange for which he promised not to cause trouble for Onassis. When Jackie informed Onassis of her agreement about that issue, he feared that a newly elected President Robert Kennedy would ignore that promise and exploit his new power to cause maximum trouble for Onassis. In about early May 1968 Aristotle Onassis obtained from Olympic Airline chairman Yannis Georgakis the first installment payment of $200,000 of a planned total of $1.2 million to Mahmoud Hamshari. Onassis flew with the cash from Paris to New York, where his chauffeur Roosevelt Zanders delivered it in a shopping bag to an apartment at United Nations Plaza. That same evening, Onassis had dinner with Jackie Kennedy, her mother Janet Auschincloss and Robert and Ethel Kennedy at the home of Jackie's friend (and soon to be Onassis's lover) Joan Thring. Robert Kennedy's attitude toward Onassis at the dinner was frosty, since he could not conceal his disapproval for the marriage. Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 5. Aristotle and Jackie married on October 20. By this time the mass media had reported that the official investigators of the assassination had concluded that Sirhan was a lone nut, not involved in any conspiracy. On October 31, Onassis called Georgakis and told him he had decided to not pay the remaining million dollars to Hamshari. Onassis explained to Georgakis that he doubted that other airlines were paying so much money to the Palestinian terrorists to prevent hijackings and bombings. On the night of December 19, Georgakis was dining with Onassis when the latter accepted a phone call from his secretary in Paris. The secretary reported that a man had called on Onassis's private line and said that a bomb had already been placed on board an Olympic flight that was preparing to fly from New York to Athens — a flight carrying Jackie, her two children, and four friends. The flight was called back as it was taxiing to take off. The flight was delayed for four hours while every piece of luggage was searched, and no bomb was found. The following morning Georgakis received a phone call from Hamshari. Unless the remaining million dollars was deposited into a Swiss bank account by three o'clock that afternoon, Hamshari, warned, another Olympic flight would really be attacked. Georgakis reported the threat to Onassis, who agreed to the payment. A few days later, on December 26, 1968, two Palestinian terrorists instead hijacked an El Al Boeing 707 flight from Athens to New York. One person was killed and two were seriously injured in that attack. The two Palestinians were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment but were released from prison on July 27, 1970, at the demand of six other Palestinians who hijacked an Olympic airliner that was flying to Cairo. ============= In December 1971 Aristotle Onassis' ex-wife Tina met with their daughter Christina to ask her to stop badmouthing her current husband Stavros Niarchos. Christina was Niarchos's niece and step-daughter, since he had been married to Tina's sister Eugenie and was now married to Tina herself. Among the accusations that Christina kept repeating about Niarchos was that he had murdered Eugenie. In order to give Christina a broader perspective, Tina informed Christina that her father Aristotle had financed the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The next day Christina passed this information on to her brother Alexander Onassis, who subsequently placed some related papers into a safe-deposit box at the Plaza-Athenée Hotel in Paris. After that, Alexander told his lover Fiona Thyssen that these papers would prevent his father Aristotle from harming Fiona. Since Fiona was 16 years older than Alexander, Aristotle considered her to be a gold-digger and wanted her out of Alexander's life. Aristotle (and Tina) believed that Narchos was paying Thyssen big money to maintain the love affair with Alexander in order to spy on Alexander and, through him, on Aristotle Onassis. Nigel Neilson, a close friend of Onassis, told author Peter Evans that Onassis "wanted to have her [Thyssen's] legs broken, her looks ruined, her face pulped." Alexander later told Georgakis what he had learned from Christina. That information from Alexander enabled Georgakis to understand the significance of Onassis's payments to Harmshari. =============== In the autumn of 1972 Hamshari fell into disfavor within Fatah because of accusations that he had misappropriated large amounts of money he had received, including the money he had received from Onassis. The investigation was handled by Abu Iyad, Fatah's intelligence chief. On December 7, a team of Mossad agents secretly entered Hamshari's Paris apartment and placed a bomb under his desk. The next morning, when Hamshari answered a phone call, the bomb exploded and gravely injured him. While Hamshari lay in a Paris hospital, Fatah conducted a secret court martial of Hamshari in Beirut. Hamshari was found guilty of embezzling PLO funds, principally from Onassis, to his own accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg. On January 9, 1973, Hamshari developed a mysterious fever and died within 24 hours. A Mossad agent later informed Evans that Hamshari had been poisoned by Hamshari's own Palestinian colleagues. =================== On January 22, 1973, Alexander Onassis was flying a private airplane that crashed because the aileron cables had been mysteriously reversed. He died of his injuries on the next day. Aristotle Onassis died of various illnesses on March 15, 1975. In July of that year, Christina was planning to marry, and David Karr asked her what she wanted for a wedding gift. She answered that she wanted the contents of her dead brother Alexander's safe-deposit box at the Plaza-Athenée Hotel, where Karr served on the board of directors. Despite his position, Karr said he was not able to grant her request. In the early hours of August 18, however, two armed men entered the hotel. One man held the night staff at gunpoint while the other man broke open deposit boxes in the vault. The two men then disappeared. ==================== In January 1968 Aristotle Onassis commissioned Peter Evans to write his biography. Evans interviewed Onassis many times during that year, but then Onassis cancelled the deal shortly before me married Jackie Kennedy. Onassis resumed the collaboration with Evans in the spring of 1974 and the interviews continued until shortly before Onassis's death. Evans published the resulting biography, Ari: The Life and Times of Aristotle Socrates Onassis, in 1986. Georgakis read the book immediately and complemented Evans, but hinted that the biography had missed a very important part of Onassis's last year. Christina belatedly read the book in May 1988 and then met with Evans to suggest that he write another book, about how her father had financed the assassination of Robert Kennedy. She wanted him to slant the book, however, to show that her father's role had been inadvertant and unwitting. She promised to meet with Evans and Georgakis in December 1988 to begin collaborating on the book. She died, however, mysteriously in June. After her death, Georgakis decided to stop collaborating with Evans on the book. Later that year he died after a long illness. To be continued. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |