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On March 6, 1979, Billy voluntarily entered an alcoholic rehabilitation center in Long Beach, Calif., emerging seven weeks later as an avowed teetotaler. (Asked last week if he had merely undergone treatment to avoid the investigation, Billy firmly denied it, adding with a smile: "Baby, I was about as big a drunk as you want to find.")
Sober now, he set out to seek some income on April 26, 1979, by looking up an old Marine buddy, Jack McGregor, who was then executive vice president of Carey Energy Corp. Billy told McGregor that he could help Carey Energy secure Libyan oil. McGregor explained that his company was being purchased by a conglomerate named the Charter Co. and suggested that Carter make his pitch to the new owners.
On Aug. 17, 1979, Lewis Nasife, president of Charter Crude Oil, responded to Billy's invitation and visited Carter's Buena Vista home. They talked oil—and big bucks. Charter at the time was getting about 125,000 bbl. of crude a day from Libya. Billy said he thought he could get the company up to an additional 100,000 bbl. If he did so, Carter wondered, what kind of broker's commission would Charter pay? The two men worked out a verbal agreement that was later confirmed in a short "Dear Billy" letter by Nasife. If Billy succeeded in providing 100,000 bbl. per day in the tight oilmarket, Carter would be paid 55¢ per bbl.—$20 million a year. If oil became more plentiful, Billy still would get 5¢ per bbl.—$1.8 million a year.
All Billy had to do was to persuade his Libyan friends to make the oil available. "Wishing you much success on your trip to Libya," was the way Nasife pointedly concluded the letter of agreement. Billy flew to Tripoli again at the end of August for a visit that coincided with the tenth anniversary of Libya's revolution. He returned without any commitment from Libya to make more oil available to Charter. Instead, Libya was cutting back its oil production and later reduced Charter's allotment to 60,000 bbl. per day.
That sequence raises some intriguing questions for Senate investigators to probe: Was it possible that the Libyans tried to trap Billy in a Machiavellian scheme based on his potential commissions? The Libyans at some point promised to loan Billy $500,000, and the only way he could pay back that kind of money would be through his oil-sale commissions. But the Libyans controlled the sale of oil to Charter; by turning off the flow, they could also put the squeeze on Billy—and perhaps drive him to work harder in their behalf.
There is, however, the other school of thought: that Billy, whose home-town friends insist is "not as dumb as he appears," conned the Libyans into giving him—or loaning him—the money although he knew he had no influence over U.S. foreign policy at all.
While Billy was in Tripoli, the Justice Department was investigating a vague plot by Libya to get its eight impounded C-130s released by bribing U.S. officials with up to $1 million per plane. One source the department regarded as unreliable said Billy was involved in the scheme. Fugitive Financier Robert Vesco