Michael Hand

Michael Hand was a highly decorated Special Forces Green Beret soldier in Vietnam. He later co-founded Nugan Hand Bank in Australia with Frank Nugan and officials of the CIA-owned Air America. Hand had special knowledge of intelligence operations in the Golden Triangle.¹

After his first tour in Vietnam, Hand moved to the clandestine CIA war in Laos, according to Ted Shackley, a former station chief in Indo-China.¹

Nugan Hand Bank, a primary CIA operation in the Pacific area, reportedly laundered profits from drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle. These laundered profits, in turn, financed subversive paramilitary activities in Southeast Asia. The bank collapsed in 1980, $5 billion in debt, and Michael Hand disappeared.¹

According to the book The Crimes of Patriots by Jonathan Kwitny, Michael Hand reportedly fled Australia under a false identity on June 14, 1980, on a flight to Fiji. He was allegedly helped to escape by an American code-named "Charlie," identified by Kwitny as a former member of the U.S. Special Forces and ex-CIA operative.¹

In 1991, Australian journalist Brian Toohey reported in his The Eye magazine that Michael Hand had a postal drop at a suite in NE Bellevue, Washington State, and his wife was reportedly living with him there. Michael Riconosciuto, who was living near Tacoma, Washington State, when he was arrested in 1991, claimed to have been in direct communication with Michael Hand before and after Hand's disappearance, and that he had handled money transfers for Hand when he fled Australia.¹