Chapter 116

After the New Year’s parties and celebrations that I was requested to attend as a representative of the administration, life took a different turn.

The President was in the final year of his second term and was not able to run again. With former Vice President Mason out of the running because of his health, there was now a free for all in the candidates for President - and there were plenty of them.

I was being pressed to endorse one of the party candidates and campaign for them, but that was not going to happen. I agreed to do fundraisers for the party and not for individual candidates at both state and national level to satisfy Senators and attract a few more for votes needed to carry out the President’s agenda.

The first week of January I was in the air for official business. This time the trip took me to Australia, another long trip of four days; a day of flying, two days of meetings and negotiations and another official dinner and political affair.

We did talk aggressively about the international drug problem and the efforts of the Americas to fight it. I explained in detail the forensic testing facility that had just gone into service as part of JBG International efforts.

Then I broke more rules and asked if they would be interested in participating in the testing and sending certified samples to the forensic testing site. If they were interested I could see to it the sample kits would get sent to them.

The result was an agreement for Australia to join the fight in more ways than I expected. Their attorney general agreed to push for new laws allowing the country to share drug related arrest and conviction records with the international body.

The result would be an effort to stop drug traffickers from traveling country to country. It would be tightening the noose on the drug cartel, its kingpins and mules trying to transport drugs.

Once identified as having any prior connection to drug trafficking, a person would be flagged by facial recognition at airports, train, bus stops and port of call terminals worldwide if countries continued to join.

Two things happened while I was in Australia. One, Andy closed off the security zone as we had planned. It was a massive nightmare in the California section. Even though they had been warned for weeks, less than half had the documents to return to the states from Mexico.

The waits were 12 hours to get through if you had the papers. All the others were sent back to Mexico. The media was not friendly.

Mexico was not happy either but knew and understood that the startup would be problematic. They were happy with the cartel arrests and drug seizures.

The second was the work on the third pipeline was started and was moving at a much faster pace, fast enough that the cartel people were scattering. In less than two weeks the Air Tractors would be in range of the cartel drug manufacturing operation and two more of the cartel kingpins homes and center of operations.

Andy had taken custody of seventy eight cartel and cartel operatives trying to make the run into the US and other countries. Guatemala and Honduras both had signed on to the international drug offensive and were making arrests of cartel members trying to get a pathway into South America.

The media was screaming at me again, wanting statements and interviews. I was getting to be an easy target.

I had my office release a statement, ‘‘At taking the oath of the office of Vice President I was required to remove myself from all things JBG. This included all decision making for all divisions of JBG, including any control or influence over those divisions, also including the office that I held in the business. I was also required to place all stocks or ownership of any and all business entities in a trust that I have no control over.”

‘‘Any actions domestic or international by JBG are those of the new leadership of JBG. JBG does have a public relations department and spokesperson and all questions related to JBG should be directed to them,’’ the statement said.

The statement would not please any of them but was all I was going to say publicly. I was still in the loop and would always be.

On the return trip there was a stopover in Texas for the first fund raiser. There were plenty of VIPs to speak to while mingling with big money donors from the massive industrial complex in the state.