Gary Best This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Sobaka :: God Save the Shah Part Two: American Guns, Spies and Oil in Azerbaijan

   www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003 - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/22/2003   Last Visited: 7/27/2005

   GARY BEST HAS made it his business not to be found. A self-described "electronics importer," he has left a long trail of anecdote and innuendo of past misdeeds but few testifying witnesses.
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   In 1985, Gary's business was headquartered in Marietta, Georgia. What exactly his company did, and how he spent his days, is a mystery.
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   But for his other activities in the late 1980s, Gary Best might be considered somewhat less credible than a run-of-the-mill crank babbling about weather control technology. Knowing people in his business in Southeast Asia (whatever it was), and with his connections to the not-yet-victorious Mujahedin in Afghanistan (however he got to know them), Best was in an advantageous position to capitalize on one of the great popular delusions of 1980s America: the search for missing American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
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   Gary Best was better placed than most to bring America and the USSR together over this issue, trading his contacts with the Mujahedin for his Soviet counterparts' connections in Vietnam. Should any Americans turn out alive, Best would be able to have them immediately transferred to a hospital in Thailand, where his associates would look after them as they began the long journey home.
   
   Best left few traces of his involvement in this caper, though associates would later give him credit for securing the release of several Russian POWs held in Afghanistan. He allegedly made several visits to the USSR as well as to Mujahedin headquarters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former associates say that Best bragged about his friendship with sometime-Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who, like many former Mujahedin, is now a sworn enemy of the United States. At the time of writing, Hekmatyar had just been placed on a terrorist list by the State Department, and a staffer contacted at his movement's headquarters in Pakistan was understandably reluctant to discuss too many things with outsiders that spoke English. A week later, the staffer, who claimed to be Hekmatyar's son-in-law, told us that no one in the organization had ever heard of Gary Best, and that they were unaware of any endeavors by Americans to assist in locating Soviet POWs, or securing their release.
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   Former associates say that Best used Aderholt's prestige to add credibility to his crusade. But Best's expensive trips around the world didn't pay for themselves. It wasn't long before Best approached Aderholt with a proposal which would give a shot in the arm and an infusion of cash into the search for American and Soviet POWs and, possibly, make both of them millionaires in the bargain.
   
   While traveling in the Soviet Union, Best had noticed the thousands of rusting cages over abandoned oil wells, concentrated heavily in Azerbaijan. He figured that capital costs to rehabilitate them wouldn't be prohibitively expensive provided just a fraction of the wells could be brought back into operation. Best boasted of his connections with the Azeri government - a collection of scarcely reformed apparatchiks wrestling with the popular revolts and waves of repression which marked the death spasms of the Soviet Union. Aderholt wouldn't have to do a thing except pitch the idea to investors: Best would take care of everything in Azerbaijan when, of course, he wasn't flying around the world, looking for skeletons long since turned to phosphor in the humidity of the Vietnamese jungle brush.
   
   Despite the unconventionality of the idea - forming a business to fund what most would consider humanitarian work, when they didn't consider it an outright swindle - Aderholt agreed. And that's when things really started getting weird.
   
   THE DREGS OF THE OIL RUSH
   
   GARY BEST WAS but one of a horde of con-men and ruthless operators who made the frightful voyage to Baku on Azerbaijan's state airline, which began the 1990s with quite possibly the oldest and most ill-equipped fleet of airplanes in the world.
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   "Gary is one of the most charismatic people I've ever known," he says. "Not physically. He just looks like he's always on the verge of doing something important and great. If you know him long enough, you stop and say, 'Well, have any of these plans ever worked out? No, so ta!' But to those who just meet him, Gary Best looks like a legitimate player."
   
   Andrew didn't know who Heinie Aderholt was, but "Gary rubbed shoulders with a lot of important people. You would never guess that every word out of his mouth was a crock of shit. The secret of Gary Best's success is that he disappears and reinvents himself all the time. He has to, because he's always running away from people who are really pissed off at him over one of his plans."
   
   According to Andrew, Best has a warrant out for his arrest in the United States and is probably traveling under a false passport (Best has had at least one default judgment against him in a lawsuit - he never showed up to contest the charges - but he is not the subject of any federal warrant we could identify.) Like many people who have dealt with Gary Best, Andrew is convinced that he's a CIA agent, or at least a former one who retained some contacts in the intelligence community. He doesn't think Best's work in Azerbaijan was part of an official operation, "but with the crowd he had around him, who knows?"
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   Whereas the partnership of Best and Aderholt could be written off as a curious pairing, the presence of Secord in Best's Azerbaijani oil venture ought to have raised blood red flags around the world.
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   Best, Aderholt and Secord, with their lack of background in public relations, might be forgiven for picking such an Orwellian name for their venture as "MEGA Oil."
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   Conducting a post-mortem on MEGA Oil - noting its birthdate and vital statistics - is almost as difficult as tracking down Gary Best.
   
   MEGA Oil's American partners wrote in press releases that the company was based in either Marietta or Atlanta, Georgia. A search of public records finds not one but two companies known as "MEGA Oil USA." One is called "MEGA Oil USA/Vista Joint Ventures," and was incorporated in 1985. "MEGA Oil USA" on the other hand wasn't incorporated until 1993. There is, moreover, a third MEGA Oil involved in the food processing business. None of these Georgia companies could be definitively traced to Best.
   
   To make up for MEGA Oil's lack of experience in the industry, Best contracted a company which specialized in rehabilitating and servicing existing oil wells.
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   Gary Best, insiders say, led Ponder to believe that his connections with the Azeri government would take care of any problems. As a result, Ponder agreed to fund and staff the oil wells in Azerbaijan by themselves, as well as providing unspecified "operating costs" to MEGA. All MEGA had to do was bring them the contract with SOCAR, the Azeri state oil company. Best promptly faxed it over. It was written in Russian, and no one in Ponder's office could read it. Incredibly, they took Best's word that the fax was exactly what he said it was: a joint venture agreement between MEGA Oil and SOCAR to service the abandoned oil wells.
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   Next: Gary Best and the Afghan Enterprise »