The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/George K. Pender.md

category	tags	aliases	summary	updated	relations
Business & Finance	Person Engineer Executive FIDCO Lebanon Octopus PROMIS Inslaw	George K. Pender George Pender George Keyburn Pender	Engineer who founded First Intercontinental Development Corporation in 1970, according to his 1999 obituary, and signed the 1983 FIDCO letters on the reconstruction of Lebanon that Cheri Seymour published.	2026-10-09	type with start fn founded First Intercontinental Development Corporation 1970 1 type with role fn head_of First Intercontinental Development Corporation president and chief executive officer 1 type with role start fn director_of First Intercontinental Development Corporation director 1983 4 type with role fn employed_by Burns & Roe, Inc. sales representative; established West Coast division 1 type with role start fn employed_by Aerojet set up architectural engineering division of General Aerojet Corporation 1957 1 type with role end fn employed_by General Electric apprentice course; jet propulsion division, Lockland plant 1957 1 type with reverse role start end fn investigated Federal Bureau of Investigation true Los Angeles field office name check and file review, Major Case 90 (Front Door); closed without interview 1990 1990 3

George K. Pender (George Keyburn Pender, died January 6, 1999, at age 86) was an engineer who founded First Intercontinental Development Corporation in 1970 and served as its president and chief executive officer, according to his obituary in the College of the Holy Cross.¹ Cheri Seymour wrote that he was a Director of FIDCO, a former Director of the Pacific Ocean area for Burns & Roe, Inc., an international engineering and construction corporation, and a Senior Engineer Consultant to that firm.² The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles office described him in 1990 as the chairman of FIDCO and a self-employed consulting engineer.³

Engineering career

The obituary states that he worked for his family's clothing store in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, at the start of his career. After completing the apprentice course at General Electric he worked in Schenectady, New York, New York. In 1947 he was transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio, Ohio, where he was part of a group that established the jet propulsion division at the Lockland, Ohio plant. In 1957 he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he set up the architectural engineering division of Aerojet. He then joined Burns & Roe, Inc. in Oradell, New Jersey, New Jersey, as a sales representative, and was responsible for establishing a West Coast division for the firm.¹ The obituary names a design engineering project in Cairo, Egypt, as his most recent work, and records his death in Pittsfield. It appears in the magazine's list of deaths among the class of 1934.¹

Seymour listed the Burns & Roe positions as "former Director of Pacific Ocean area of Burns & Roe, Inc., an international engineering & construction corporation with active projects on all seven continents of the world" and "Senior engineer consultant to Burns & Roe, Inc."; the same list gave Kenneth A. Roe as chairman and president of the firm.²

First Intercontinental Development Corporation

The obituary describes FIDCO as "a consulting and engineering firm he founded in 1970."¹ A 2016 FOIA request filed by Emma Best with the FBI describes the company as "founded by George K. Pender in 1970" and lists its board of directors as of January 11, 1983 as including Robert Maheu, Michael A. McManus, Robert Booth Nichols, George K. Pender, Kenneth A. Roe, Frances T. Fox, Clint W. Murchison, Jr., William M. Pender and Glen R. Shockley.⁴ Seymour lists the same nine as the board, from FIDCO corporate documents she obtained through a contact of Michael Riconosciuto, together with a letter dated January 11, 1983, on FIDCO letterhead from Santa Monica, California, to Nichols in Marina del Rey, signed by Pender, referring to a resolution of the board.² William M. Pender is listed as Director and Senior Vice President and as a licensed contractor in California; records found do not state whether he is related to George K. Pender.²

The FBI reported no responsive documents on the 2016 request for FIDCO records (FBI number 1344462-000), and on appeal the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy recorded the final disposition on June 21, 2016, as affirmed on appeal with no records.⁴ A California stock corporation named First Intercontinental Development Corporation, company number 0871867, is recorded in the OpenCorporates registry.⁵

FBI Los Angeles file, 1990

An FBI airtel from the Special Agent in Charge, Los Angeles, to the Director, dated December 3, 1990, captioned "Front Door; Major Case 90," resubmitted findings on leads set out in a Bureau teletype of August 13, 1990, after a file review found the earlier findings missing from the file. Item 3 of the findings is headed "George K. Pender, Chairman of First Intercontinental Development Cooperation." It states that confidential indices were searched on August 16, 1990, and Elsur indices on August 17, 1990, with negative results, and that a search of the general indices and FOIMS on August 15, 1990, "revealed three references." The review of those files uncovered information identifiable with a George Keyburn Pender. The airtel gives a Santa Monica residence and a business address in Santa Monica and states that investigation "revealed PENDER to be a self-employed consulting engineer," that "No derogatory information was developed, nor was there any indication that he was a security risk," and that "The case was closed without any interview of PENDER." The remaining paragraphs of the page are redacted under exemptions b6 and b7C.³

The FBI released these two pages on June 24, 2019, in response to a request Emma Best filed on January 30, 2016, for records on Pender (FBI numbers 1344385-000 and 1344385-002). The FBI's release letter, dated June 20, 2019, states that four pages were reviewed and two released and that the enclosures are the final release. An appeal of the fee category assigned to the request (DOJ-AP-2018-008427) had been decided on October 18, 2018, as "Completely Reversed/Remanded."⁶

Lebanon, 1983

Seymour published three letters from the summer and autumn of 1983. The first, on White House letterhead and dated June 29, 1983, was from McManus, Assistant to the President (Ronald Reagan), to Pender in Santa Monica: "I appreciate the update you and your associates gave me concerning the status of your efforts in the rebuilding of Lebanon," and "Without question FIDCO seems to have a considerable role to offer particularly in the massive financial participation being made available to the government of Lebanon."²

The second, on FIDCO letterhead and dated July 12, 1983, was from Pender, signing as President of FIDCO, to Amin Gamayel, president of Lebanon. Pender wrote that he had visited Beirut in February and May 1983 to discuss FIDCO participation in the redevelopment of Lebanon, in meetings with the Chamouns, Maurice Ghanem and Mourad Baroudy; that FIDCO offered to arrange financing for projects in the government sector; that he had expressed specific interest in the rebuilding of Damour and Alkhyam; and that FIDCO had presented these projects to "an international Trust with whom we have a close relationship." He asked to meet Gamayel in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 1983, and wrote "As per copy of attached letter, the White House is actively interested in our efforts." The letter states that Pender was "a good friend of Bechir" (Bashir Gemayel), was with him in Beirut in 1976 when the Syrian Army came in, and went with his wife to Framingham, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, to meet him during a speaking tour of the United States. It gives the telex number "652483 RBN [Robert Booth Nichols] ASSOCS LSA" for replies.²

The third, on Arab Bank Limited letterhead and dated November 23, 1983, was from Abdul Majeed Shoman, chairman and general manager of the bank in Jordan, to Pender in Santa Monica. Shoman wrote that "Mr. Ahmad has talked to me about the fund to reconstruct Lebanon and we the Arab Bank together with a group of other banks will be glad to cooperate with you," and that "You have mentioned in your letter to Mr. Ahmad on September 27th that this fund amounts to US$ three billion or more. There is no problem to take care of this by the Arab Bank and the other group of banks," subject to conditions in Lebanon and "the approval and counter guarantees of the Lebanese Authority." Seymour wrote that it was unlikely any reconstruction funded by FIDCO took place in Lebanon, and that only a congressional investigation could determine what the three billion dollars was used for.²

Seymour wrote that Nichols and Pender, when not in Lebanon, operated a National Security Council listening post from a condominium at Marina del Rey, which she described as allegedly the American end of the operation in Nicosia, Cyprus.²

Reports of CIA and intelligence ties

Seymour wrote that Riconosciuto often stated that Pender and Glen Shockley were Central Intelligence Agency officials, which she later corroborated through Peter Zokosky, a partner of Nichols. In a February 14, 2001, interview with Seymour and Kelly O'Meara, Zokosky said FIDCO was a National Security Agency front corporation used in Lebanon, that all its corporate directors were intelligence people, and that the $3 billion mentioned in the "White House" documents bearing the names of McManus, Pender and Nichols was used to pay the president of Lebanon for the release of an American prisoner.⁷

The cast of characters for Danny Casolaro's "Octopus" manuscript, faxed in July 1991, lists "George Pender - former CIA agent."⁸

An INSLAW memorandum to the record dated July 18, 1990, summarizing statements by Riconosciuto, reported that for a 1980 mission to Iran Earl Brian "liaised with George Pender, whom we have later discovered was Chairman of the First Intercontinental Development Corporation (FIDCO)." It reported Riconosciuto's statement that FIDCO had Saudi Arabia Royal Family money for rebuilding Beirut and that Mr. and Mrs. Reagan owned shares in FIDCO through proxies held by Pender, his daughter or McManus. Citing a former colleague of Riconosciuto who served on the FIDCO board, the memorandum stated that Pender was then in his seventies, lived in Southern California and "may" well have known William J. Casey, Brian and Reagan, that FIDCO was engaged in part in covert intelligence-related operations such as building an electronic listening post in Nigeria under the guise of building a steel mill, and that the memorandum's authors inferred that Pender served as Casey's project manager for the 1980 mission to Iran.⁹

Riconosciuto's account

Michael Riconosciuto told Seymour in telephone calls that he worked directly under Maurice Ghanem and Pender in Lebanon, that Ghanem was CIA "in country," and that "George Pender and Bob Clark were the high level contacts on all of this," later "George Pender and McFarland and Michael McManus." He said the CEO of FIDCO was Pender and that "FIDCO was an NSC [National Security Council] corporate cutout," created to secure financing for the reconstruction of Beirut and Damour and working out of an office in Nicosia. He said FIDCO had a companion company, Euramae Trading Company, which operated throughout the Middle East and was involved in the drug trade, and that he was in a warehouse near Larnaca where Michael T. Hurley, Pender and a third man told him that upwards of twenty-two tons of heroin was stored. He said he handled communications protocol and financial transactions for the operation. Riconosciuto also said that in 1983 Pender, Ted Gunderson, Nichols, Zokosky and others were together at a country club in Indio, California, where Nichols spoke of Shockley and Jose Londono having 3,500 "soldiers," and he listed Pender among the people for whom he handled gold transfers and money laundering before his arrest.¹⁰

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Footnotes

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1. College of the Holy Cross, Holy Cross Magazine, "In Memoriam," Summer 1999, entry for George K. Pender (died Jan. 6, 1999). Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20040812105331/http://www.holycross.edu/departments/publicaffairs/hcm/summer99/in_memoriam/1927.html ↩︎

2. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010, chapter 7 (FIDCO board list; letters of June 29, July 12 and November 23, 1983; Marina del Rey listening post; Riconosciuto and Zokosky on Pender and Shockley). ↩︎

3. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, airtel to the Director, "Front Door; Major Case 90," December 3, 1990, page 2, item 3, "George K. Pender, Chairman of First Intercontinental Development Cooperation," released June 2019 in FBI file 1344385-002 (pages 6 and 7 of the release PDF cited in note 4). ↩︎

4. Best, Emma. FOIA request "FIDCO," submitted February 9, 2016, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation through MuckRock (FBI number 1344462-000; appeal DOJ-AP-2016-002797, final disposition June 21, 2016). The founding date and board list are as stated in the request text. https://web.archive.org/web/20191224043712/https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fidco-23873/ ↩︎

5. OpenCorporates, First Intercontinental Development Corporation, California company number 0871867. https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/0871867 ↩︎

6. Best, Emma. FOIA request "Freedom of Information Request: George K. Pender," submitted January 30, 2016, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation through MuckRock (request 23694; FBI numbers 1344385-000 and 1344385-002; appeal DOJ-AP-2018-008427, final disposition October 18, 2018; FBI release letter of June 20, 2019, posted June 24, 2019). The request text quotes the 1999 obituary. https://web.archive.org/web/20230530151228/https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/george-k-pender-23694/ ; release: https://cdn.muckrock.com/foia_files/2019/07/01/6-24-19_MR23694.pdf ↩︎

7. Seymour, The Last Circle, chapter 22, "The Octopus Exposed" (interview of Peter Zokosky, February 14, 2001). ↩︎

8. Casolaro, Danny, "The Octopus," cast of characters (fax dated July 22, 1991), in John C. Dwyer Miscellaneous Inslaw Papers, NW 15457, DocID 70098640, pages 72 and 82. https://archive.org/details/JohnC.DwyerMiscellaneousInslawPapers ↩︎

9. INSLAW, Inc., Memorandum to the Record, July 18, 1990, in "Inslaw - Press Releases," Internet Archive item InslawPressReleases. https://archive.org/details/InslawPressReleases ↩︎

10. Seymour, The Last Circle, chapter 6 (telephone calls with Michael Riconosciuto). ↩︎