Codename Iago: the Story of John Friedrich by John Friedrich with Richard Flanagan
Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1991 ISBN 0855614528
Some time ago, I read and reviewed Richard Flanagan's book First Person, a fictionalized account of his experience ghost writing the memoirs of John Friedrich, the man who defrauded Australian banks of well over one hundred million dollars to fund the NSCA, and who ended up taking his own life before the authorities could get to the bottom of why he did it.
So, when I saw the actual book that is the basis of Flanagan's novel for sale at my local second-hand bookshop for the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee, I naturally picked it up, and it has turned out to be just as fascinating and frustrating as Flanagan's novel.
This book was published not long after Friedrich's suicide (in fact Flanagan met Friedrich for the final time two days before he shot himself), and so was quite newsworthy at the time. People bought the book no doubt hoping to find out not only how Friedrich committed his fraud, but also why he did it.
In essence, the fraud was simple. Friedrich borrowed money by putting up fake assets as collateral. It worked because the 1980s was a time of financial excess, and lenders were desperate to lend. For many years banks and auditors believed that the assets Friedrich claimed to have were real. The scam came undone purely because the NSCA's auditors became more suspicious over time about the existence of these assets, which Friedrich had to keep inflating to meet the payments on the fraudulent loans that he had already taken out. Friedrich explains this simply and clearly in this book.
What is almost impossible to garner from reading these pages is why he did it. Unlike a lot of fraudsters, it seems it was not for personal gain - there is little evidence he skimmed any money off the top for himself. Of course he did have a good job with good pay and perks (cars, trips etc.), but it seems he didn't enrich himself. He doesn't explicitly say so, but certainly the idea of being a man running a big operation was appealing to him, and running an operation that was quasi-military added to that appeal.
What is almost certainly false is what he actually claims in the book - that he worked for the CIA, and that the NSCA was a front organization that did work for government that the government didn't want to do. The second allegation is patently false - while the NSCA did engage in safety training for some defence force personnel, it certainly did not engage in any undercover or surreptitious activities. The first is just as absurd. Friedrich circles around his early life and alleges that he spent time in South-East Asia and Vietnam. Of course he claims that he can't talk about it, but the things he does "reveal" are so vague and unclear that I could have written them (and I certainly have never done anything he claims to have done...). His very vague statements about his time in Vietnam also sit oddly with the almost encyclopaedic recollection he has of his past activities when they show him in a good light. There is no doubt that Friedrich was a brilliant con-man, and one can see how he managed it if you read the personality that comes through this book, rather than the story he is trying to tell.
We still haven't got to the why - and to be honest I'm not sure if Friedrich even knew. In an afterword from his lawyer, it is revealed that even while awaiting trial he defrauded his friends and family once more, with a fake "contract" with the Queensland government to map Cape York. It seems that it was his compulsion to aggrandize himself that was his continuing downfall. His claims of CIA involvement helped in the sense that he could explain away why he had to hold his cards close to his chest.
In many ways this is a boring book - Friedrich spends much time explaining the history and activities of the NSCA, and a few cryptic chapters where he tries to insinuate that he was working for the CIA and doing things to help them, as well as ASIO and ASIS. As I explained above, once the reader gets some way into this book they realise that when detail is scant, so is truth.
I wrote of First Person that Flanagan wrote about identity, truth and evil. Certainly Friedrich's story is about identity and truth. I'm not sure that the real Friedrich was evil, but he certainly was a manipulator of other people, and an accomplished liar. One can feel, while reading Codename Iago, that Friedrich is trying to drag you into his world, dropping hints here, questions there, that make you wonder if after all he was part of a big "system" that used him and the NSCA to do things that needed to be done. Of course the real world doesn't work that way, and Friedrich uses this book to try and present himself as something other than he was.
Ultimately the story of Friedrich is of someone who was a victim of his time, a victim of his own personality, and who preyed on others who were too gullible, or too lazy to question the convincing story he sold them.
If you are a Richard Flanagan fan, this book might be worth hunting out. Otherwise, probably not worth the time and effort to read. It is a most unreliable memoir....
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