Mr. De Mohrenschildt. It was—I think it was in 1959. I cannot swear you about the dates. But about 1959. Or early in 1960—one or the other. I went to Mexico on other jobs before, many times. But this particular job, since you are interested in the Mikoyan deal, which you call it, was this particular——
Mr. Jenner. Did I say deal or incident? I think I said incident.
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Incident. Anyway, one of our friends in Mexico is the pilot of the president—the personal pilot of the President Mateos of Mexico. He also took the Russian group, the Russian engineers, with Mikoyan, on the tour of Mexico, at the same time I was there.
By the way, our proposition of the Texas Eastern was to provide some financing for Pemex in exchange for this contract—which is the Mexican Oil Co. And the Russians were offering the same thing to the Mexicans.
Mr. Jenner. So you were then really competing with the Russians?
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Competing with the Russians. And through my contacts with this pilot, and with the Mexican officials, I knew exactly what the Russians were offering. We did not make any particularly big fight about it, but we knew what they were offering, and we knew what we could offer for our contract. It was one of the most interesting jobs I ever had.
And then one day, Mikoyan was with that group—the rest of them were technicians. One day Mikoyan was leaving. I remember we had dinner the night before with this pilot of the president. And he said, "George, why don't you come with me to meet Mikoyan tomorrow at the airport?"
I said, "By God, that sounds like an interesting idea. I would like to meet the character."
He had such a publicity of being an excellent businessman, I wanted to learn something from him.
So I said, "All right, I will go with you."