Released in June 1985, the two-volume report into Nugan Hand by the Stewart Royal Commission was supposed to thoroughly track-down leads begun by the previous official investigations, starting with the State of New South Wales (NSW) Corporate Affairs Commission investigations and the work of the Sydney and Hong Kong liquidators, also a Joint Australian Government and NSW Task Force Inquiry’s findings about Nugan Hand’s connections with drug dealers and the CIA.
There is much material in the Stewart Report that a writer could turn to, should he/she want to present a case that Stewart bought into CIA-seeded disinformation in his report. “It was a deep disappointment and shed little new light,” Kwitny wrote.
He was indignant at the Stewart Commission’s dismissal of links between Nugan Hand and the CIA recommended in March 1983 for further investigation by an elite police unit - the Commonwealth of Australia and NSW Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking. ,” Kwitny wrote: “Almost incredibly, in reporting ‘allegations’ that ‘Nugan Hand executives’ were involved weapons shipments to American aided forces in Africa, the Stewart Commission listed the sources for these ‘allegations’ not as the Joint Task Force, but the Penthouse magazine, May 1984.” The author had lifted her information at times almost word-for-word. By-passing the Task Force’s formal finding in this way made it much easier to dismiss the allegations.
“One real disappointment in the Stewart Royal Commission report was its failure to deal substantially with the task force’s findings about arms deals,’ Kwitny wrote. “The commission apparently never questioned Hawes – for example, about Moore, Schlachter and Wilson.
“Outstanding among the unsettled issues were the significance of the Pentagon and CIA links, and the question of who should be given criminal responsibility for what everyone agreed had been vast crimes.”
Kwitny also complained about distracting disinformation seeded into the Stewart Royal Commission Report. That is, painstakingly presented findings into ‘red herring” issues already evident as insignificant compared to the real issues that previous investigations raised about Nugan Hand.
At least the Stewart Commission concurred with earlier officials’ evidence that the Nugan Hand Ltd was at all times insolvent… and flouted the provisions of the legislation as it then stood in that large volumes of currency were moved in and out of Australia. But Stewart held only the dead Frank Nugan accountable and the missing co-founder of the bank, Michael Hand, who had already fled Australia and gone underground with help from CIA operatives.
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