As it turned out, Michael O'Neill's career was not wrecked by the Arab boycott list
scandal; he did not go to prison; he did not lose his job. Mr. O'Neil's troubles with the law
ended through a deal with Sporkin and the SEC. O'Neil stayed on as General Tire's chief
executive, and he was not prosecuted. On October 26, 1977 General Tire announced that
O'Neil would pay the company $257,400 over three years as a partial reimbursement for
illegal corporate contributions made to US political campaigns between 1968 and 1972
through the secret political slush fund which O'Neil had maintained since 1965. [fn 3]
According to press accounts, Ms. Bowman met Senator Kennedy, his son Patrick, and his
nephew William Kennedy Smith at Au Bar, the most chic watering hole in the Palm
Beach area this season; she left with William Kennedy Smith during the early morning
hours of March 30. Accounts of the events of that evening are in conflict, but at some
point Ms. Bowman appears to have been joined by her friend Anne Mercer and Miss
Mercer's boyfriend, Chuck Desiderio. Chuck Desiderio was charged in 1979 with larceny
in a case involving the theft of auto parts. Anne Mercer's father, Leonard Mercer, served
9 months in jail during 1989 after being convicted of fraud and perjury in a case
involving the use of money from a Teamsters' union pension fund. Mr. Mercer used
funds to buy a bar and restaurant called Ta-Boo. Anne Mercer's sister, Susan Mercer, is
said to have a home just a few hundred feet away from the Kennedy compound in Palm
Beach.
All of these details provide a fascinating prologue for the William Kennedy Smith case,
and raise obvious questions about the relations of Mr. O'Neil and his family with such
figures as Sporkin, Casey, and Bush, to name just a few. Mr. O'Neil is a resident of the
Loxahatchee Club of Jupiter, described by The New York Times as an "exclusive walled
community built around a lush, palm-lined golf course and small lakes" where "a
uniformed guard at a gate-house screens all visitors." [fn 4] The Jupiter-Hobe Sound area,
as we have seen, is a residential and vacation area favored by executives of security-
minded defense corporations since the days when Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, and
Prescott Bush had homes there.
Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy might agree that presidential aspirants ought to stay out of
south Florida. Jimmy Carter might agree. On Monday, June 17, 1991 the former
president was doing charity work in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami. Carter
regularly works as a carpenter for Habitat for Humanity, one of his favorite charities,
which reconditions slum dwellings in order to provide low-cost housing for the
economically disadvantaged. Shortly after mid-day, several shots were fired from two
cars which drove through the street adjacent to the houses where Carter was working.
One of Carter's co-workers received a superficial head-wound. This incident came at a
time when Carter was reported to be marshalling his forces for a possible attempt at the
presidency, a personal vindication which Carter has never renounced.
Ther Bushmen had been alarmed by an interview Carter had just given to the Village
Voice of May 21 on the issue of the 1980 October surprise. Here Carter had speculated
about a mole in the White House who had leaked information about Carter's own
dealings with the Iranian regime, with the implication that this mole had helped to