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L,<Jj>anO<...J 0"'> '-o?rU1Ul:;......../ D/ rage --t Ul ~v based Galactic In 1984. The company was a legal shell when Friedland took it over In 1981 and began trading it on Vancouver's volatile and loosely regulated stock exchange. Many of the stocks then traded in Vancouver were for mining schemes, said Douglas Linkletter, a vice president with Bank of America's Canadian subsidiary, who followed the exchange. "It was fairly loose, and there were some shady characters in the market," Linkletter said in sworn testimony to state and federal attorneys in November. But Friedland was not considered shady, Linkletter said. He was viewed as a legitimate businessman with a dream of starting a global mining company. Friedland, who was then in his mid-30s, had come to the mining industry by an unusual route. A former liberal arts major, he had traveled to India during the 1970s, where he became a devotee of Eastern religions. He described himself on one legal document from the early 1980s as a "self-employed tree farmer." But others descnbe Friedland as a charming financial operator with a perpetual stream of mining plans. Risky deals "were Mr. Friedland's lifeblood," said Charles Russell, a Galactic executive. "He wanted to 90 in 5 million directions at once," said Gerald Wyman, also a Galactic executive. "Robert would get an idea that this is what we should do and want to 90 in that direction, and then the next day want to go in some other direction." But Linkletter recalls that Friedland put together a team of executives at Galactic who had mining and financial experience, and that the business community was impressed. "Mr. Friedland had a good reputation at that point in time of being able to raise the capital to get this thing done," Linkletter said. Friedland's goal in 1984 was to mine gold near the ghost town of Summitville, in south-central Colorado, two miles from the Continental Divide. He wanted Summitville to be the "flagship" of the budding Galactic empire. The Summitville area had been picked over by miners throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. But a new mining method called "heap leaching" was developed in the 1970s that offered the chance for Galactic to recover gold from ore that had been discarded as unprofitable. The method involves piling ore in a heap, then spraying it with a solution of cyanide and water. The gold bonds with the cyanide solution and is recovered through a dram at the bottom of the heap. The liquid then is chemically processed to separate out pure gold. The method produces only tiny amounts of gold - less than a half-ounce from a ton of rock, in some cases. But if a company moves enough rock - and if gold prices are high enough - the operation can be profitable. By the 1980s such mines had operated successfully in several states. hnp:/ /www.denver-rmn.comlnews/0507smmtlshtml 5/7/00