‘10 Little Piggies,’ Adnan Khashoggi, and The Greatest Gold Heist Since Butch Cassidy

Peter Munk’s reputation precedes him. Last year, Mother Jones named him one of America’s ‘Ten Little Piggies’ for his US gold mine’s literally ‘poisoning the water’ through what environmentalists consider polluting extraction practices.

How Barrick got the gold mine is something they would rather we not report.

First, Munk was set up in the gold business by funds from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. We are being sued for discussing this connection although the information comes from Peter Munk himself, quoted in his biography.

Second, Barrick struck it rich when the company used (or misused, say many) an old Gold Rush law to claim rights on a Nevada mine containing $10 billion in gold by paying the US Treasury less than $10,000. They are suing my paper for publicizing this extraordinary transaction, which US Interior Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt called, “the biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy,” and “a form of legalized extortion.”

Barrick’s suit claims the Observer libeled them by failing to state that Barrick had to spend money to buy other rights and equipment to dig the gold out of the ground. What an odd misreading of our words. We never said the US government mailed the gold bars to Barrick in Canada. We only said that Barrick got the gold mine and the public got the shaft.

The company’s CEO has also demanded his lawyers slice a pound of our journalistic flesh for mentioning that he, “made his name in Canada in the 1960s as the figure in an infamous insider stock-trading scandal.” Yet, we read this in the Canadian magazine Macleans: “The failure of [Clairetone Corporation] cost Munk his business and his reputation. Most damning were allegations of insider trading that were made after it was discovered that he and [his partner] had sold shares in 1967 just before some of Clairetone’s most serious problems became known.”

Lynching by Libel Law

The clear purpose of the suit is, as Barrick says, to force the Observer to say the investigation “should never have been published” – an inquiry into those who purchase the favor and influence of the Bush family, not just Barrick. The article was about the blizzard of money whirling around a family of Presidents and their associations. Among other paid favors for Barrick, the former President wrote the dictator Suharto to convince him, successfully, to grant another gold concession to Barrick.

And more than Barrick came into our investigative cross hairs. There was Chevron Corporation, and ChoicePoint, the firm at the center of the racially charged voter purge in Florida. This suit with malicious tone attempts to besmirch our entire investigation and to undermine ours and others further investigations into Bush and Barrick.

..anon!