18-24 February 1998, Manila: Installation visit, unusually I was requested by name to attend

Again very unusually, contrary to my 1997 job role changing from international service technician to a sticky tape salesman in Britain, I was requested at short notice and by name again to install a flexographic printing plate mounting machine in a customer’s factory in the Philippines. This link is to my customer data base entry for the Spicers International sales agency who was my host in Manila - I was never told the customers name. 

I do remember the customers factory and printing press were very dilapidated and it struck me as extremely odd they had purchased a $40,000 machine that could mount printing plates to one thousandsth of an inch accuracy when their printing press would be lucky to hold ten thousandsth of an inch accuracy. I did change hotels on the second day of my visit - I had been booked into a penthouse suite in a top hotel that felt so indulgent / excessive I moved to a far smaller hotel that I knew from my 1994 backpacking trip to the Philippines.

I have no suspisions about my hosts in manila - they were very hospitable and there was no conversation directed towards my previous visit to Yemen or my 9/11 warnings. The reasons I’m reporting it here are:

· It was very unusual that I was requested by name and sent to install this machine, especially because of the job role change mentioned above and because Asia was another technician’s area of responsibility

· The mismatch between the customer’s dilapidated printing press and our relatively expensive machine

· In 1988 (when I first met him as detailed here) Dave Dean told me that after being medically discharged from the army serving in Vietnam he had setup a go-go bar besides Clark air base in the Philippines (used by the US airforce, the CIA, by Air America, etc). Dean knew that I’d had some legal issues in Manila in 1994 and when I saw him again in April 1997 he said I should’ve let him know because he still had ‘good contacts’ in Manila who could’ve resolved my situation he said.

· Given my belief Dave Dean was behind my visit to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s front company in Yemen, and because of KSM’s and Abu Sayyaf’s activities in the Philippines (Abu Sayyaf are named after Abdul Rasul Sayyaf - KSM’s employer), and because of Dean’s ‘high level’ contacts in 1990s Manila police and judiciary - It is very hard to ignore these ‘connections’.


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© Anthony C Heaford - The Quiet Mancunian