Erle Cocke, Jr.

WWII veteran. Brigadier General in Georgia National Guard. Possible CIA. Notable for the Cocke deposition describing Project Hammer.

Project Hammer

On April 13, 2000, retired Earl Cocke, Jr. gave a deposition describing a money laundering scheme known as Project Hammer. Cocke described Project Hammer as a money laundering plan to "bring monies back to the United States from all types of activities, both legitimately and illegitimately", mostly from arms traffickers who did business in the 1940s and 1950s. As the opportunity to launder money became widely known, "everybody got into the act that could."

Money was exchanged through "collateral trading programs" in which each trade involves "a very large amount of banking transactions with a certain face value that are discounted and then resold." Transactions were recorded in off-ledger accounts.

One of the accounts in Project Hammer had a balance of $223,104,000,008.03 ($223 billion).

Project Hammer funds were used to pay for military operations in Sudan and the Sahara.

Persons involved in Project Hammer included:

• Shelly Smith Rhoades - The name Cocke provided when asked for "the dominant person involved in running this project"
• John Reed - Citibank's lead on the project
• Roelof van Rooyen - "had so many names that the only one that identifies him completely, he does not walk away from, is Roelof." Roelof claimed to work for South African police, military, or intelligence. The attorney questioning Cocke suggested that Roelof may have been involved with the Pan-Islamic American Bank and Srur, and that Roelof and Stander "were acting as agents of U.S. arms dealers who were shipping arms to Angola and Mozambique."
• Barrie Wamboldt - A Canadian Citibank employee who drew a schematic of Project Hammer accounts.
• Paul Green - A real estate lawyer in New York with "50 years practice" who was involved "from an early stage" in attempts by Project Hammer investors to get access to money owed them by Citibank
• Paul Gray - a computer hacker retained by Project Hammer investors to break into Citibank's computers

Cocke's deposition was provided in the case of Steven A. Curtis, David Lee Maudlin, and David Wayne Oster v. Adriaan Barend Stander, Roelf Ignatius Johannes van Rooyen, Intercol Ltd., and Oceantec Group/Syndicate. The deposition was recorded by Thomas Melo.

Nugan Hand Bank

Jonathan Kwitny's The Crimes of Patriots associates Cocke with the Nugan Hand Bank scandal.

Herman was surprised to find that Nugan Hand's Washington phone number led to the public relations firm of Cocke & Phillips International. One partner in the firm, Eugene Phillips, assured reporter Herman that he and his partner, Erle Cocke, Jr., had nothing to do with Nugan Hand, and merely allowed Admiral Yates to use their firm as his office. Though Herman had no choice but to accept the statement at the time, the evidence suggests it simply wasn't true-as was largely acknowledged, in interviews, by the firm's leading partner, Brigadier General Erle Cocke, Jr.

CIA disassociation

The CIA claims to have no record of Earl Cocke.

See also

• http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/projecthammer/contents.htm - Mirror of David Guyatt's Deep Black Lies website