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In his store, he wanted to sell us diamonds, which were not set in rings
or jewelry. He went to his safe and brought out big diamonds, which he
then scattered across the glass counter as though he were strewing peb-
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him would appraise in the United States at double our purchase price.
He showed us his invoices from diamond cutters in Antwerp, Belgium.

While we were standing talking to him, I could hear a continu-
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my request, he took us upstairs to see what was going on up there. The
operation consisted of an old Indian who had a blowtorch and a metal
pot like plumbers use to melt lead which they pour in to seal sewer
joints. The old Indian would put gold bars into the pot. The gold melted
quickly. He would ladle a small amount of gold into a mold, which
was then dipped in a water bucket. The mold was then popped open.
What emerged was a gold sovereign. Some months before, Saudi Arabia
had introduced the gold sovereign which was, as I recall, equivalent to
100 Saudi Riyals. The jeweler told us that sovereigns were bagged and
smuggled into Saudi Arabia for sale there. The Kuwait-Saudi Arabian
border was very lightly controlled, so smuggling at night was easy. The
jeweler said that his gold sovereigns were even purer gold than those
produced by the Saudi government, so he felt no compunction whatso-
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Europe on a regular basis. After talking with him, I made a mental cal-
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While in Kuwait, we went to see Mr. Mac (J. McPherson), the
former Vice President of Aramco). Mr. Mac seemed pleased to see us.
He had leased an old Kuwaiti home and converted it to a combination
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American Independent Oil Company. Mr. Mac was the shrewdest of
opportunists. Rather than attempt to build housing and food service fa-
cilities, he had simply leased an old passenger ship and tied it up at a
pier. Communications between his crews and himself was done through
radio in his villa. The area that his company had to operate in was the
so-called Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Within a few

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