Dirty Money, Dirty Politics and Bishop Estate

Stealing the Legacy of a Hawaiian Princess

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PART I - The Stealing Begins....

PRINCESS BERNICE PAUAHI was born on December 19, 1831, the last in the royal lineage of Kamehameha the Great, conqueror and first king of the Hawaiian Islands.

As was the custom for Hawaiian royalty, it had been planned from childhood that Pauahi would marry her hanai brother, Lot Kamehameha. She doted upon her brother but declined to take him as a husband. Instead, the attractive young Pauahi met and fell in love with a commoner, a foreigner from Sandy Hill, New York -- Charles Reed Bishop.

The love between Princess Pauahi and the foreigner faced great opposition from her family, other ali'i and members of the community. But the young princess was intelligent and independent, and in June 1850, at age 18, she married the young "haole" businessman.

The Princess and her husband eventually won over many of their critics and their relationship came to be admired by Hawaiians and westerners alike, and she eventually reconciled with her family and the other ali'i.

Pauahi grew and developed as a young matron and counselor to her people. At the age of 25, she inherited over 16,000 acres of land from her parents. Other inheritances followed as other members of the royal family passed away. The greatest of the inheritances came from Princess Ruth, her first cousin. Ruth had declared Pauahi sole heir to her entire estate. The amount of land was mind-boggling: about 353,000 acres.

Ruth's gift to Pauahi made her the largest landowner and the richest woman in the Kingdom. At the same time, she presented Pauahi with the greatest challenge and responsibility of her life. Pauahi now owned a giant estate, and she would have to decide how it would be used.

The Bishops had a multitude of blessings, except one. They never had children of their own. Possibly from this came Pauahi's inspiration to use her legacy to establish the Kamehameha Schools for all the children of Hawaii.

On Thursday, October 16, 1884, the princess passed away. Charles was by her side.

The newspapers reported that a heavy downpour of rains reached a crescendo just about the time Pauahi died. In ancient days, the Hawaiians said when rain fell at a the time of a person's death or funeral, "Kulu ka waimaka, uwe `opua." (The tears fall; the clouds weep.), for the gods mingle their tears of affection with those who weep in sympathy and aloha.

Of all the eulogies that were held upon her death, perhaps that of Reverend J.A. Cruzan was the most moving and prophetic:

"The great loss which Hawaii sustained last Thursday was not that the last of this great line of High Chiefs died, nor that the possessor of great wealth died, but that a true woman died...True in all times and among all races...

That Bernice Pauahi Bishop was such a true woman her life bears witness....Refusing a crown, she so lived that she was crowned. Refusing to rule her people, she did what was better, she served them, and in no way so grandly as by her example....

'The world can do without its masters better than it can without its servants.'...For fifty-three years her royal life here has borne unswerving witness in favor of virtue and purity...

She hated that which was impure with an intense hatred. She had only loathing and contempt for that which was coarse and low. Place, power, wealth, nor influence could win her favor or regard if it was joined with degraded character. And her womanly example was all the more potent for good because it was so quiet...

The things that are most noisy are not the most powerful. Nay, things that make no noise, and make no pretension, may be really the most powerful. This quiet, modest, true womanly life has been for years, and still is, and will be for years to come, a mighty power for good here in Hawaii.

Only the God who loveth purity and righteousness can measure this one true woman's influence for good upon her people..."

- Source: PAUAHI: THE KAMEHAMEHA LEGACY,
by George Hu`eu Sanford Kanahele

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It was from Pauahi's legacy that vast amounts of wealth eventually flowed, until the Bishop Estate became the wealthiest charitable organization in the United States. It is her estate that has been systematically looted over the last decades by persons "with degraded character" that the princess undoubtably would have viewed with only "loathing and contempt."

In 1997, responding to a surging tsunami of criticism from the faculty, students and alumni of the Kamehameha Schools, and from concerned citizens of all ethnic backgrounds in Hawaii, Governor Ben Cayetano took an unprecedented action and directed the state's attorney general, Margery Bronster, to investigate the practices of the Estate's five highly paid trustees.

But the attorney general was not the only one investigating the estate. The IRS had already been auditing the records of the estate for several months -- empowered by the "interim sanctions" regulations which had been passed by Congress in early 1996. At the same time, the court-appointed "master" who is charged by the probate court with oversight of the operations of the estate, was digging deeper into the activities of the trustees than a long line of previous masters.

Suddenly the trustee's were, for the first time in the schools' 115-year history, under siege from all sides.

The full and sordid story of the looting of the estate is too long to relate here. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the financial losses, however, the Master's Report on the 109^th Annual Account of the Trustees revealed that the Estate's investment portfolio suffered substantial losses in 1994, the year under review. The records relating to the various investments showed that combined losses and loss reserves of $264,090,257 were recognized in fiscal year 1994 alone.

The short story is that, after long and hard-fought court battles, the five former trustees were forced to resign, and five interim trustees were selected to take their places until a new trustee selection process was created and implemented. The removal of the five former trustees was one of the non-negotiable conditions of the IRS to prevent the loss of the estate's tax-exempt status.

The long story can be found herein and in the volumes of news articles and court proceedings in the on-line archives of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The removal of the incumbent trustees was good news, hailed by many as the beginning of the healing process....

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March 12, 2000

Bishop Estate’s first trustees played
key role in overthrow

By Bob Dye, Honolulu Advertiser

They were American annexationists, these first five trustees of the estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

Within three years of their appointment, they helped strip King Kalakaua of his power. When, upon his death in 1891, Pauahi’s hanai sister Lili‘uokalani succeeded to the throne, they joined with others to depose her, establish a provisional government and a so-called republic.

The annexationists realized their ultimate political goal four years later when the Hawaiian Islands became a U.S. territory. Their political agenda had a profound effect on Bishop Estate and the Kamehameha Schools.

Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the last of the Kamehameha dynastic line. Upon Pauahi’s death, in the 11th year of Kalakaua’s reign, the royal lands of the Kamehamehas — one-ninth of all land in Hawaii — passed to the control of five esteemed haoles — the trustees.

None had a drop of Hawaiian blood.

Those lands became a base of wealth for two great estates — those of Bishop and Damon.

The trustees were:

Charles Reed Bishop, president, founder of Bishop Bank (now First Hawaiian) and Pauahi’s husband. Born in Glenn Falls, N.Y., in 1822, he came to Hawaii in 1846 and accepted a clerkship in the U.S. Consulate. He became the Collector General of Customs in 1849, and a year later, he married the princess. She was 16 and he was 26. Her missionary teachers at the Royal School — Amos Starr and Juliette Montague Cooke — encouraged the courtship.

“I’m decidedly in favor of annexation, not only because I’m an American, proud of the ‘stars and stripes’ and expect to gain something by such a move, but because I’m an Hawaiian too, and believe that while such a change might bring its evils, it would be the best thing for the great majority of the population both native and foreign,” he wrote in 1853.

In 1873, as Lunalilo’s minister of foreign affairs, he urged the cession of Pearl Harbor to the United States for a naval base. In addition to being a trustee of the Punahou School, he headed the public board of education. He served as president of the Legislative Assembly, and was a member of the House of Nobles.

The Rev. Charles McEwen Hyde, vice-president. Hyde was born in New York City on June 8, 1832. His father, an attorney, was treasurer and general agent of the American Bible Society, and his uncle William was a board member of American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions.

A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and the holder of a doctor of divinity degree from Williams College, Hyde came to Hawaii in 1877 to be secretary of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association. He reorganized a Honolulu theological school as the North Pacific Missionary Institute, and served as principal. He was named a trustee of Punahou School in 1877.

Supporters called Hyde a “typical American, combining all the energy and persistency of the New Englander with the refinement and culture of the Christian Gentleman.”

Charles Montague Cooke, secretary. A son of missionary parents and teachers of Princess Pauahi, Amos Starr and Juliette Montague Cooke, he was born in Honolulu on May 16,1849.

He began his business career with Castle & Cooke, a firm founded by his father.

At the time of his appointment, he was a partner in Lewers & Cooke. He married missionary daughter Anna Charlotte Rice in 1874. They had six children. He became a trustee of Punahou School in 1880. He was a charter member of the Hawaii Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

Samuel Mills Damon, treasurer of the board. A son of missionary parents, the Rev. Samuel Chenery Damon and Julia Mills Damon, he was born in Honolulu on March 3, 1845. A partner of Charles Reed Bishop in the Bishop Bank after Sept. 1, 1881, he inherited from Bernice Pauahi Bishop the ahupua‘a of Moanalua. That bequest contained about 7,000 acres, and stretched from the Koolau Range to Keehi Lagoon. He coordinated her funeral.

Earlier he had coordinated the funeral of Princess Ruth. He married missionary daughter Harriet Melinda Baldwin. Her brother, Henry P. Baldwin, was a founder of Alexander & Baldwin. At the time of appointment Damon was a member of Kalakaua’s privy council. With Charles R. Bishop, he was an executor of Princess Pauahi’s will.

William Owen Smith, trustee. A son of missionary parents, Dr. James William and Melicent Knapp Smith, he was born at Koloa, Kauai, in 1848. He became the sheriff of Kauai in 1870, and of Maui in 1872. In 1875, he was admitted to the practice of law. The following year he married Irish-born Abbey Hobron, the daughter of Capt. T.H. Hobron, founder of the 3,000 acre Grove Ranch on Maui. They had five children. He was named a trustee of Punahou School and an editor of Planters’ Monthly in 1882.

When appointed to the Bishop Estate board, he was a trustee of Lunalilo Estate. A member of the Hawaiian legislature, he was politically allied with Sanford Ballard Dole, a childhood friend. Smith, who had extensive trust experience, resigned as trustee on Oct. 20, 1886, and was replaced a day later by Joseph Oliver Carter, another trust expert.

Schooling Hawaiians

The trustees met at least once a month in the board room of Bishop & Co., but usually more often than that. Hyde’s biographer reported that trustee commissions “hovered”‘ about $1,000 a year during the first years.

But apparently individual commissions varied. Cooke returned every penny he received from his trusteeship in the first five years — a total of $989.79 — and pledged all future commissions to establish a library at the school.

The Rev. Hyde recommended a site for the Boys’ School, and enunciated “the objective, aims, method, time, and extent of the school.” Called The Prospectus of the Kamehameha Schools, the report was unanimously adopted. After Princess Pauahi’s will called for the establishment of a school to educate Hawaiian children, the document became the principal guideline for the development and management of the schools.

Hyde became the “lead trustee” for the schools and advocated appointing the Rev. William Brewster Oleson as principal. Oleson began his duties on July 1, 1886, and soon traveled to the United States to visit similar schools and recruit faculty.

Planning an overthrow

Calling King Kalakaua “a bully and a coward,” Hyde advocated his overthrow.

He wrote to the Rev. Judson Smith, head of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, on Nov. 20, 1886: “I have learned facts about the King’s measures and objects, which convince me that with the cunning of the savage and the tirelessness of revengeful animosity, he is seeking the overthrow of Christian institutions and the utter demoralization of society. His aim is to restore heathenism with its absolute power of the chief and licentious orgies of wasteful indulgence ... we should have a revolution.”

A Jan. 13, 1887, correspondence from Hyde to Smith states: “By the Constitution, he is not responsible to anybody for anything he chooses to do. He can steal, murder, defraud. He cannot be called to account. But if twelve of the leading men of this community should agree upon a line of policy that they believe the King ought to pursue, and publicly demands, he would have to succumb. That is my idea in reply to your question what means there are of checking this irresistible rush to disgrace and ruin.

“But there are no such twelve men to be found in this community … But if circumstances should put me in a position in which I should have to defend the interests of Christ’s Kingdom, as against the King, I should have neither fear nor hesitancy in doing so.”

Months earlier, the king had confided to an aide that he feared he might be overthrown. Members of his staff spent the night guarding him for several weeks after as he slept in the palace.

It was confirmed later that a secret organization, called the Hawaiian League, had been formed about the first of the year, consisting of some of the most powerful businessmen and their pastors. All were white, male and mostly Protestant.

Hyde refused to join the Hawaiian League, “objecting to the secret, underhand plottings involved in such a style of procedure.” But his co-trustee Cooke was among the first to sign up. Kamehameha School principal Oleson was on its executive committee and vice principal Henry S. Townsend, was a member.

Members pledged to keep the League secret and to “protect the white community” of the kingdom “against any arbitrary or oppressive action of the government.”

The League held its first meeting at the home of Sanford B. Dole. By June 30, 1887, it had 405 members. Meetings usually took place in the evening, and in different parts of the city, to frustrate police efforts to gather information on them.

Seizing control

The revolution was bloodless.

Kalakaua was stripped of power and the government fell into the hands of the Hawaiian League. On July 5, 1887, the Honolulu Rifles were ordered out in full uniform. Their cartridge belts were full. Charles Bishop’s nephew, Eben Faxon Bishop, was one of the officers as a first lieutenant of Company B. In addition, League members armed themselves.

At the palace a New York Herald correspondent asked King Kalakaua:

“What means have you of self-defense?”

“I have my bodyguard of sixty men, who are passably well armed and drilled,” he replied, “an Austrian battery of six field pieces, two brass cannon with sweeping fire, good bolts to outside doors and good hearts within. Then, too, there are two companies of native volunteers called the Queen’s and King’s Own, composed mainly of old retainers.”

“But outside, as I understand it, there are three hundred men, over a thousand rifles and ammunition enough for a siege.”

“Yes,” replied the king, nervously wetting his lips, “but they have not got in yet.”

Hyde told a different story. He wrote that Kalakaua had “ordered his military to assemble at the palace Friday night, but only 20 assembled out of 200. When he asked them how many would fight for him, only 2 said they would.”

Hyde also wrote: “The backbone of the whole movement is the money furnished by some of our capitalists, while the brains came largely from the ‘missionary ring’ and the muscle from the sturdy mechanics, carpenters, and masons and machinists who have no great regard for royalty but do believe in right and justice.”

A man credited with financing the revolution was Trustee Damon, the banker. In July 1889, the “reform” cabinet named him minister of finance. Kalakaua died in 1893 and was succeeded by Queen Lili‘uokalani.

-Bob Dye is a Kailua historian and writer.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2000/Mar/12/opinion6.html

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The Catbird Chronicles: Bishop Estate

1986 - Bishop Estate joins golf course designer Robert Trent Jones and North Carolina developer Clay Hamner in the purchase of 1,100 acres at Lake Manassas, Virginia.

1989 - Bishop Estate trustees approve the McKenzie Methane acquisition, with trustees, principle executives, managers, family members, business cohorts and other insiders co-investing millions of their personal money. Among the investors are the estate's tax-adviser, Mark McConaghy of Price Waterhouse.

1989 - HFH, a holding company originally comprised of four major investors, William E. Simon, Sr., Gerald L. Parsky, Larry B. Thrall, and Roy Doumani, to purchase HonFed Savings & Loan Association, sells approximately 23 percent of its ownership stake in the thrift.

1991 - Bishop Estate and partners set up RTJ Acquisition LP to develop the Lake Manassas property, which is to become the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club -- the object of controversy and a lawsuit in which the later owners of the club claimed fraud was involved in the sale. The purchasers allege Bishop Estate was both the buyer and the seller (BE trustee Henry Peters also served on the golf club's board of trustees), and also had failed to inform them of a $33 million development debt they would have to pay off -- to Bishop Estate.

1992 - Bishop Estate trustees invest $250 million of the trust's money in Goldman Sachs.

1992 - Bishop Estate invests $31 million in Mid Ocean Reinsurance Co. with partners J.P. Morgan & Co, Marsh & McLennan Co. and Texas deal-maker Richard Rainwater. While a director of Mid Ocean, estate trustee Henry Peters received substantial director's fees and received options to acquire 6,000 shares of Mid Ocean Stock.

1993 - Bishop Estate, The MacArthur Foundation, and Duke University Endowment Fund back the formation of a Boston merchant bank called Orion Capital Partners LP.

1993 - Robert Rubin, worth an estimated $100 million at the time, resigns Goldman Sachs to join the Clinton administration. Rubin makes a phone call to Bishop Estate and the estate "insures" Rubin's stake in Goldman Sachs for $100,000 a year -- a real "sweetheart deal" for poor Rubin?

1994 - Bishop Estate invests another $250 million in Goldman Sachs.

1994 - The records relating to the various investments held by the Trust Estate and its Pauahi Holdings, Inc. subsidiary, showed that combined losses and loss reserves of $264 million were recognized in fiscal year 1994.

1995 - The Wall Street Journal exposes the estate nationally with their in-depth, front-page article, Bishop's Gambit - Hawaiians Who Own Goldman Sachs Stake Play Clever Tax Game.

1995 - According to The Cheating of America: “Tax attorneys for Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand– the Washington, D.C.-based law and lobbying powerhouse whose members include the likes of Bob Dole and former treasury secretary Lloyd Bentsen – prepared a thirty-page confidential report for a client (Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate) in search of a new home. The attorneys surveyed the tax and legal consequences of relocating in 49 states (only Hawaii was excluded), then recommended a single location to their client: the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.”

1996 - Bishop Estate lends $1 million to Charles M. Harmon, Jr., an investment banker and former general partner at Goldman Sachs, and together with Larry L. Landry, chief investment officer of the MacArthur Foundation; and Brad Heppner, a consultant at Bain & Co. and former director of private investments at the MacArthur Foundation, they form Crossroads Group to purchase Bigler Investment Management, a Conn. firm that manages fund-of-fund accounts. Bigler's clients include: Connecticut State Treasury; Massachusetts' Pension Reserves Investment Management Board; Rhode Island Employees' Retirement System; City & Co. of San Francisco Retirement System; and pension funds of E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co.

1996 - The estate spends more than $330,000 on federal lobbying - most of it going to three firms to fight, unsuccessfully, the "interim sanctions" law that created penalties for employees or officers of charitable institutions who gain undue "excess benefits" from their positions. The three lobbying firms were Verner, Liipfert, Bernard, McPherson & Hand, a prominent Washington, D.C. firm that employs former Hawaii governor (and friend of Bill Clinton), John Waihee; Hecht Spencer & Associates; and Price Waterhouse. Other Verner firm members enlisted in the effort included former Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and former Texas Governor Ann Richards. Also, enlisted to fight the "interim sanctions" regulations was the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

1996 - In October, Bobby Harmon, the estate's Risk Manager and president of P&C Insurance, reports suspected fraud and collusion between Trustee Henry Peters; Nathan Aipa, the estate's general counsel, and Marsh & McLennan, Inc. to the organizations' auditors, Coopers & Lybrand. In November, Harmon is terminated from both positions.

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The Chronicles Continue in Part II.

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IF YOU WANT TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT SOME OF THE CAREFULLY HIDDEN NESTS INHABITED BY THESE BIRDS OF A FEATHER, JUST TRAIN YOUR FIELD GLASSES BELOW!

Bedford Property Investors, Inc. - From a Bedford Properties press release: Bedford Property Investors, Inc. announced the appointment of Scott R. Whitney as Sr. V.P. and CFO. Whitney, 45, has been serving as Sr. VP/CFO of WCI Communities (a Bishop Estate investment) of Naples, Florida since 1995.

Before joining WCI Communities, Whitney was with Equity Group Investments, Inc. Prior to joining Equity Group Investments, Whitney worked with Balcor/American Express, Inc. as V.P. Banking and Sr. Controller.

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From Midweek, 3/7/01, by Robert M. Rees: Years of pursuing the Bishop Estate trustees revealed more than the self-seeking greed and hubris of its five now-deposed incumbents....

Bina Chun, widely referred to as “the queen of the school,” (and wife of Kamehameha Schools’ president, Michael Chun) had her own rewards. In 1992, for example, Bedford Properties paid her a cool million just for negotiating the purchase price of the Kalele Kai condo project with the trustees....

For more, GO TO > > > Paradise Paved; The Grand (and dirty) Ko `Olina

Benson Forests - Kamehameha Schools’ 390,000-acre timberland investment in Michigan.

For more, GO TO > > > Part II

Blackstone Group - A New York-based private investment bank.

From The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider, by Al Martin:

GOVERNMENT FRAUD, CORPORATE FRAUD,
AND MORE FRAUD

People in the media often ask me to give them examples of frauds that began in Iran-Contra and continue to this day, albeit under different names.

It’s essentially the same fraud and the same cast of characters.

The examples I always give (about which I have substantive information, since I was involved in all three of the original frauds and also involved in marketing some of the partnerships for the secondary fraud) are the Ocean Reef Development Group, Ltd., the Omni Development Group, Ltd., and the Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd.

Who are the common players who are links between all three deals during Iran-Contra ?

They are Frank Carlucci and Richard Armitage.

When Frank Carlucci and Richard Armitage left government service immediately after Iran-Contra (they literally had to leave in order to avoid being subpoenaed as part of the overall coverup), they became principals with Pete Peterson, the infamous Republican player and GOPAC money launderer, in the Blackstone Investment Group, which is a big organization.

Then they simply continued the same real estate development frauds which were begun under Iran-Contra.

This time all the original deals went bankrupt. A certain set of banks got burned. The property reverted to them, and then they refinanced the property again through Blackstone.

Subsequently they entered into an arrangement with another similar sounding company (there’s always been some confusion) the Capstone Development Group, which was also a post-Iran-Contra creature.

They are two separate organizations.

Some people will try to claim that Capstone was simply a subsidiary of Blackstone.

It is not. It is a separate company. Look at the directors. They are none other than Larry Eagleburger and Bernie Aronson, former co-workers of Frank Carlucci and Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.

However, the real estate frauds continued essentially until the early 1990s. It’s interesting to note how former government officials who were in the Reagan-Bush Administration during Iran-Contra profit by subsequent frauds – post-Iran-Contra frauds, if you will.

For instance, in 1994-95, there was the great Mexican Diversion Fraud, when Blackstone immediately opened an office in Mexico City to take advantage of American taxpayers’ money being lent to Mexico vis-a-vis the OCED and OPEC and other United States lending and/or guaranteeing agencies.

The opportunity to commit fraud against the United States Treasury during that Mexican bailout was just like a walk in the park.

You buy a busted out Mexican company for pennies on the dollar, pump it up, make it look nice, make sure you’ve got your hands out for a twenty or thirty million dollar loan from somebody else, like the IMF, or a direct United States lending agency, and you would be given Brady Bonds which could then be rehypothecated.

And it was such a scam.

Dinnerstein alone documented $130 million of fraud committed by former officials of the Reagan-Bush Administration during the “Great Mexican Turkey Shoot” as it became known.

And then what happened?

The Russian bailout.

Blackstone suddenly opened an office in Moscow and promptly proceeded to do the same thing again. This time they were raping and pillaging the American taxpayer with the same corporate schemes to get money out of U.S. agencies and/or collateral guaranty or fidelity instruments that could be rehypothecated.

It’s exactly the same scheme.

It was another $38 million of fraud according to our estimates at the time.

To follow fraud from the Iran-Contra period and to continue to do it to this day – just look at where the Blackstone Investment Group is opening up offices in the world. . . .

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For more, GO TO > > > Birds that Drink from Cesspools; The Blackstone Group; Predators in Paradise

Bruce Nakaoka - Former investment manager at Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate.

Ex-estate workers to talk to Bronster

They were granted immunity from suits that could come up

By Honolulu Star-Bulletin Staff

Two former investment managers at Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate have agreed to comply with subpoenas issued by Attorney General Margery Bronster in the state's investigation of the $10 billion charitable trust.

Bruce Nakaoka and Eric Martinson agreed to meet with the attorney general before Nov. 26, after they were granted immunity from civil suits that may arise from their cooperation, said Deputy Attorney General Hugh Jones.

The agreement was approved today by Circuit Court Judge Kevin Chang.

In another Bishop Estate investigation, retired Circuit Judge Patrick K.S. Yim today said he met with the five estate trustees Monday to update them on the progress of his fact-finding report into management of the schools.

Yim did not disclose the nature of the discussion. He is required by court order to complete his report on or by Dec. 5.

None of the trustees commented on the meeting.

Critics of the trustees' management said Yim was wrong to privately meet with the group before he releases his report....