Alchemy, or Turning Swamps to Gold

Coral Gables Developer of the Early 1920's
Linked to Uranium Scam of the 1950's

Admiral Telfair Knight, a lawyer from Jacksonville, Florida, became an associate of a man previously researched here in connection with uranium stock scams of the 1950's in Canada to Robert Kennedy's nemesis Roy Cohn. This 1950's-era Canadian uranium stock broker Bryan W. Newkirk, appeared in a 1925 William Fishbaugh photograph, tagged 'portrait of real estate salesmen in Coral Gables, Florida.'

The QJ post from August 2011 contained a hodgepodge of information centered around Roy Cohn's indictment by Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department in October 1963, only a month before JFK's murder. Another QJ entry that same month delved more into the uranium stock scams being run out of Toronto, in which the following excerpt from a syndicated Red Smith sports column appeared six months prior to Kennedy's election as President:

APRIL 6, 1960 -DUCK KEY, Fla. — This is a sunny blob of coral and money 95 miles from Miami down the Overseas Highway toward Key West. The coral was here when Blackbeard sailed the Spanish Main; the money was trucked in by Bryan W. Newkirk, the wolf of Canada's penny stock market, who had a hand in developing Coral Gables, has one foot in Canadian gold mines and another in uranium. With his remaining hand he directs the Florida-Southern Land Corp., which has transformed this pelican roost into a flowering hideout for the over- privileged, complete with yacht harbor, fresh and salt water swimming pools, a nine-hole long-iron golf course, and a spang new hotel of simple elegance.

Shifting Gears

Following money trails mandates that a researcher have the ability to shift gears. When we first discovered Bryan Newkirk, the penny stock king of Toronto, involved in Roy Cohn's Florida empire at Duck Key, we were primarily concerned with figuring out how Florida land development fit into all the uranium hype in Texas the decade prior to the JFK assassination, if you recall, as we peered into the ins and outs of the Torbitt Document. At that time we researched David Copeland, alleged author of the document, pursuing what he knew and when he knew it about nuclear power in the Dallas and Fort Worth region and focused, in particular, on the Byrd Uranium Corporation, whose president, D. Harold Byrd, had sold stock in his corporations to Toronto scammers with whom Newkirk was somehow linked, before Newkirk returned to his established roots in southern Florida.

In the back of my mind, however, even before the curiosity about who killed JFK, there has always been the question of who engineered the savings and loan scandal in Texas in the late 1980's--the seminal series of events which led QJ's blogger into her initial conspiracy research. The two interests seemed inextricably intertwined; solving one would help to solve the other. It's the money behind the scene which lights up the trail. The conspirators are those who control the money, the knowledge about its illicit sources, and the plan for its ultimate use.

Click image to enlarge.

Since Bryan Winslow Newkirk II connects several sites of where such illicitly generated money emerged, it is helpful to track his entire life to see with whom he made contact. 

He had been born in 1888 in Wilmington, N.C., where he worked for awhile for the Atlantic Coast Railroad. He went to work in advertising for an Atlanta newspaper, married Lucile Rebecca King, a Georgia girl, in about 1913, and before long was handling financing for a car dealership in Atlanta (Newkirk-George Motor Co.), which sold Chalmers and Chandler cars--two up and coming models quickly submerged into the General Motors brand. 

 In today's digital economy, it's difficult for us to visualize the days when hardware was the king of modern technology. Car bodies, though designed by many different "brands," were almost all manufactured by the Fisher Body Corporation--60% of whose stock in 1919 was controlled by General Motors. William C. "Billy" Durant had advised GM to buy Fisher, just as John J. Raskob, who worked for E.I. Du Pont de Nemours, had advised his boss, Pierre S. du Pont, to purchase Durant's GM stock when the GM executive needed an infusion of capital just as World War I was ending.  The du Pont family was loaded with cash from selling munitions throughout the war years.

In 1923 Pierre du Pont, who then held the controlling share of GM, removed Durant as president of the company and replaced him with DuPont minion Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. It was during these transition years, we have been told, that Pierre's cousin Alfred was so incensed with his family's machinations that he moved all his many assets to Jacksonville, Florida.

Intriguingly, Bryan Newkirk left Atlanta for Jacksonville at about that same time. He switched from Chalmers-Chandler cars to Hupmobiles--acquiring  Black-Newkirk Motors (eventually called Thompson-Newkirk Motor Co.), located at 314 W. Monroe in downtown Jacksonville, facing the big federal Post Office Building across from the City of Jacksonville's office building, which bears the name of Alfred du Pont's brother-in-law, Edward Ball. (We found it by googling the address and looking at the street view, which makes one feel just like an NSA analyst sifting through its own software.)

Newkirk's interest in Hupmobiles apparently waned even before the Hupp Corporation, under its post-WWII chairman, William S. Knudsen (who had moved from Ford to General Motors in the early 1920s) diversified Hupp into electronics and kitchen appliances before its name faded away completely. 

Newkirk and Telfair Knight--
Land Sales in Florida

In the McLemore article inset above, Newkirk gave a brief biography of his life up to 1960, revealing that he was enticed into Coral Gables real estate sales by a man he met in Jacksonville--Telfair Knight--and says he went with Knight to work at George Merrick's Coral Gables development just outside Miami as early as 1921. But he apparently kept up his interest in his car dealership (see 1924 ad to the right) while he says he had 4,000 real estate salesmen working for him!

Coincidences like this make one wonder: Is there one overriding factor connecting Telfair Knight, George Merrick, Chalmers, Chandler, Hupmobile and Jacksonville, Florida? Of course. It's money, and Alfred I. duPont, who had more money than he could spend from munitions sales during WWI, suffered a brief dip in fortunes as a result of family disputes and business setbacks. Only five years after his third marriage, to Jessie Ball, he shifted from war to peacetime activities in Florida:

In 1926 Alfred and Jessie decided to move their principal residence from Nemours [in Delaware] to Epping Forest in Jacksonville, Florida. He opened offices in Jacksonville and founded Almours Securities, Inc. At this point his assets were reported to total over $34,000,000 and his business enterprises virtually dominated the economy of Florida [emphasis added].

Adm. Telfair Knight

Jacksonville attorney, Telfair Knight, to work for him. Merrick had become involved in land development after growing up on a citrus plantation and fruit packing plant, run by his father, which Merrick subdivided for residential development beginning in 1913, the same year Maude Fowler and her husband relocated from Oklahoma to Jacksonville, Florida. The Fowlers began selling real estate for Artesian Farms, a company linked to the Securities Underwriters corporation set up to finance the sale of swamp land in the Florida Everglades. 

There were several phases of development in Florida, and waves of investors from various locations who descended upon Florida with hopes of making many times their initial investment in marshy, virtually worthless lands. We have previously shown how Paul Helliwell's father had settled in Tampa, an area that grew before 1900 from the manufacture of cigars, to work as an inspector for U.S. Customs.

Flagler's Alchemy, a Model for
Turning Swampland into Gold
The land development model was set up in 1888 when Standard Oil magnate Henry M. Flagler completed Hotel Ponce de Leon in the northeast part of Florida. With the success of the hotel, he envisioned further travel along Florida's east coast by building a railroad down to West Palm Beach, across from the island of Palm Beach, where another hotel would be built--forming an American "Côte d'Azur," as it were. 

At the time the Royal Poinciana opened in 1894, soon supplemented by another hotel on the beach, called The Breakers, Flagler had become acquainted--possibly through Henry Walters, president of with the the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad--with the Kenan family from Wilmington, N.C., the city where the railroad was then headquartered. William Rand Kenan, Jr. was an 1894 graduate of the University of North Carolina and his sister, Mary Lily was 24 in 1891 when she and Flagler first met in Newport, R.I., while he was still married to his second wife. In 1901, two years prior to the death of her father, a Wilmington, N.C. broker, they were married.

Alchemists must have seen Florida as a way to turn, not lead, but swamp land into a gold mine. However, as Flagler quickly learned, the railroad was a necessary step before his hotels could be enjoyed by the wealthy vacationers in search of luxurious holidays without traveling abroad. After building the first two hotels Flagler moved into railroads as a means of bringing more travelers to them. One essayist in 1925 described the initial development in this way:

The unknown firm of Carrer and Hastings, New York, was awarded the job of building the Ponce de Leon and the spot Flagler picked for its location was typical of his developments along the East Coast. It was a swamp.
 
So his first hotel was rapidly built from below the ground up. Before it was completed in 1888 he had the Alcazar under course of construction. Two mammoth hotels, gorgeously appointed, were springing up in the marshes and no means by which the tourist might reach them except by river steamer, ocean voyage or over the ramshackle, narrow-gauge line running into St. Augustine from Jacksonville.

With $2,000,000 tied up in what he had announced would be the world’s finest hotel and another million being sunk in the Alcazar across the street, Flagler was precipitated by the course of events into railroad building. And it was in this field that he won fame as great as that of any captain of industry, not excepting James J. Hill, termed the empire builder of the West.

All negotiations with the owners of the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railway Company failed to convince these men that their road should be standardized and enlarged to meet anticipated traffic requirements. So Flagler bought the road outright, made it standard gauge, rebuilt the track system, added better equipment and made a railroad of what had been a streak of rust through the wilderness.

Flagler's residence in Palm Beach

Construction of the hotels helped make the lumbermen of the Jacksonville area--which included most of Telfair Knight's relatives--wealthy. In the late 1890's Flagler decided to keep going farther south to Miami. The mansion built for Mary Lily Kenan Flagler was completed in Palm Beach a year after their marriage.  By then Flagler envisioned more wealth through Cuba and Panama, former Spanish possessions acquired as a result of the Spanish American War which ended in 1898.

W. M. Walker wrote in The Greatest Men of Florida, the essay quoted above:

Miami then had no port, and that was what Flagler sought--an outlet to the sea and a line of communication with South America. He also anticipated the construction of the Panama Canal several years. Key West was the nearest deepwater port--a key to the National defense and a communication point within six hours of Havana... In May, 1886, he had bought his first railroad in Florida; in 1888, the St. Augustine and Palatka line, with a twelve mile branch leading to Tocoi. The same year he acquired the St. Johns and Halifax running from East Palatka to Daytona--a narrow-gauge road which he standardized in 1889. The same year he bridged the St. Johns river at Palatka and the following year he spanned the same stream at Jacksonville with a bridge which is now being rebuilt and double-tracked....On January 22, 1912, the Key West extension was opened to traffic-with Flagler’s special train running from Jacksonville to Key West where a gigantic celebration had been prepared for “The Chief’s” birthday, celebrated twenty days late.... In May, 1913, Mr. Flagler died....

All the money that built his dream had been created out of air, of course--in the form of paper sold to others in the form of stock or bonds. It is not unlike the theme of the Kevin Costner flick, "Field of Dreams," which imparts the ideal: "If you build it, they will come." And of course the implication is that, if they come, they will bring money to pay off what you spent to build it.

Flagler and wife

It should be remembered that Henry Flagler had no formal education, but he did have "educated" friends. When he died, he also had an extremely young wife, his third, Mary Lily Kenan, whom he met in Newport, R.I. in 1891 while still married to second wife, Alice Ida Shrouds, his children's nanny, whom he married when the first wife died. 

Mary Kenan's family lived in Wilmington, N.C., then headquarters of the Atlantic Coast Railroad, operated then by Henry Walters, and later by Lyman Delano, whom we will return to shortly.

Flagler's marriage to Mary occurred in 1901, and as his surviving widow, she and her siblings in Wilmington were the chief recipients of the Flagler estate (apart from $5 million) that went to Kentucky attorney, Robert Worth Bingham, whom she married in 1916. Author David Leon Chandler in a book delayed by a copyright dispute with Bingham's son:

The Binghams of Louisville: The Dark History Behind One of America's Great Fortunes, theorizes that family patriarch Robert Worth Bingham founded the family fortune in 1917 when he "murdered his second wife for money," according to a statement by Crown [the publisher].

A second book, written by William Ellis, "charges that he contributed to the death of his second wife, an heiress whose bequest of five million dollars helped purchase the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, followed him to the grave."

According to a blurb for the Ellis book:

In some accounts, Bingham drove his first wife to suicide and gave syphilis to the second before murdering her to gain control of her inheritance.

The things some people will do for money! But we digress. We'll attempt a new start in the next post.

Helliwell's First Employer in Tampa

We will recall from a prior post that CIA paymaster Paul Helliwell in his youth was listed as the manager of a liquor distribution company in 1934, the same year Prohibition ended. The treasurer of this enterprise was a Tampa attorney, Cody Fowler, who had arrived from Oklahoma some 12 years earlier.

Cuban Rum, Inc.'s Cody Fowler

Pettingill fired by Pres. T. Roosevelt

Employed by Cuban Rum, Inc. as Secretary and Manager, attorney Cody Fowler, whose mother was a real estate developer who came to Tampa from Jacksonville, was the treasurer for Cuban Rum, Inc. The address for the rum distributor was in the Citizens Bank Building, 706 Franklin in Tampa, coincidentally, where Fowler’s law office (MacFarlane, Pettingill, MacFarlane) was then housed in room 921. The building was torn down in 1978, the same year Cody Fowler died.

One of that firm's senior partners, Noah Brooks Kent Pettingill, came from a family which first moved to Tampa in 1884. He had been appointed Law Judge of the United States Provisional Court for the military district in Puerto Rico during the end of the Spanish-American War; following that, he became U.S. Attorney in Porto Rico, as it was then called.

He was, however, summarily fired by President Theodore Roosevelt in late 1906 after it was learned he had privately taken a case against other "colleagues" within the insular court system, whose names were not revealed. It is possible, however, that what led to his  dismissal was a scandal in 1903--a smuggling indictment involving naval officers in a court within Pettingill's jurisdiction--a scandal which saved the careers of the officers by throwing Pettingill under the tracks. We can only wonder what Pettingill learned from this experience.

Macfarlane family

Pettingill eventually retreated to western Florida to practice law in the firm joined by Cody Fowler in 1924. Pettingill's sister had married Scotsman, Hugh Campbell MacFarlane, who had helped organize the Tampa Board of Trade in 1885 to create a port at Tampa Bay and to lure cigar manufacturers to the area. He purchased 200 acres of marshy land on the west bank of the Hillsborough River, which he developed into West Tampa, a city independent of Tampa itself, which included at least 2,000 Cubans as early as 1895. Howard Street in West Tampa was named for Macfarlane's son, Howard Pettingill Macfarlane, a third partner in the law firm. It is, therefore, not surprising that Fowler, or possibly even his partners Macfarlane and Pettingill, through their investment company, would have been interested in setting up a business to import Cuban rum to take advantage of the end of Prohibition in December 1933. It is not known how long the relationship lasted between Paul Helliwell and the lawyers of the firm, or even whether they may have made use of the strategic position of Paul's father in the Customs house in Tampa, but the question is worth considering.

Nothing But Lies? 

Click to enlarge. Maude the only woman.

Cody Fowler’s mother, Maude Cody had been born in 1875 in Memphis, TN, the daughter of Joseph L. Cody (claimed in a DAR application to have been a relative of the famous scout and showman, “Buffalo Bill” Cody). While quite young, it has been alleged, she relocated to Kansas City where she became one of the most successful women of the business world in that city and, as Vice President of the Security Underwriters Corp. of Kansas City, she was one of few strong businesswomen of that day and also headed the the Kansas City Women’s Athletic Club." 

Oklahoma City addresses

None of these statements can be verified. The only Maude Fowler found in the Kansas City directory during those years was single and worked in a laundry. Who invented all the lies about Maude Cody Fowler's life before she came to Florida? Such as a D.A.R. application claiming a link to Buffalo Bill Cody? Her non-existent connection to the Kansas City Women’s Athletic Club? What were these people trying to hide? Perhaps additional research will answer those questions.

Mrs. Fowler was married to Orin Scott Fowler, proprietor of Fowler Auto Livery in Oklahoma City, after moving from place to place for many years. They were married in Tennessee, but moved to Missouri where their son, Orin Cody Fowler went to law school, but they also lived briefly in Texas and El Reno, Oklahoma.  O. Cody Fowler, as he was called, married Maude Stewart, whose father Thomas J. Stewart Sr. was a wealthy lumber man in Arkansas before locating to Oklahoma City, where his office was in the Insurance Building, 114 No. Broadway. This link contains an interactive map of the historic business district in Oklahoma during the time Stewart and Fowler were there. One interesting landmark stands out, which will be addressed in subsequent research, is the building closest to Hadden Hall at 801 N. Broadway--the Magnolia Petroleum Building--which was built in 1918 and located there until 1960.

Research reveals that Orin Scott Fowler and wife Maude C. Fowler lived, not in Kansas City but in Oklahoma City in 1918, managing the Hotel Lawrence, at 15 West Grand Avenue.  The 1917 directory listed the older Fowler couple as proprietors of the Martinique and Hadden Hall hotels in the city. 
 
Located at 112 N.W. 7th Avenue, the Martinique Hotel was less than two blocks east of the Murrah federal building, which was destroyed by whoever was directing the actions of Timothy McVeigh some years ago. It was at the hotel called Hadden Hall--215 N.W. 10th, three blocks north of the Murrah Building -- where all the Fowlers lived in 1917, just prior to their departure for Florida. In that day the hotel stood in the heart of the city across the street from the Santa Fe depot, often called the Frisco and Rock Island Railroads.

Before officially heading for Tampa, Florida, Cody Fowler, past department commander of the American Legion in Oklahoma, was honored by "several hundred Legionnaires from
all points in the state assembled at the home of the Oklahoma City post" on August 19, 1924. The item, which appeared in the Ardmore daily newspaper, stated 

"Fowler will leave Oklahoma soon for Tampa, Florida, where he will enter a prominent law firm of the Sunshine State." 

Even after moving to Florida, Fowler continued his involvement with the American Legion, then also became active in the chamber of commerce. By 1950 he was president of the American Bar Association. His father had long since died by then, but his mother was active for years after establishing herself in Tampa, by way of Jacksonville, Florida.

What Happened in Jacksonville?

Notwithstanding all comments to the contrary, we have discovered that Maude Fowler's name appeared in the 1913 city directory of Jacksonville, Florida. The listing for Orin S. and Maude C. Fowler gives their address as the Hotel Jackson, 206 Main, in 1913, and their occupation as manager of Artesian Farm Land Sales. This company was incorporated in 1910 by the son of former Florida governor, William Sherman Jennings, and the Bolles Trust Co. The governor was originally from Chicago, moving to Florida in 1885 and to Jackson after serving as governor of the state 1901-05. William Jennings Bryan, who built a home on Biscayne Bay in 1913, and was "very active locally, promoting the sale of real estate for George Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables," was his first cousin.

The Artesian Farm Land Co. was at that time housed in the Dyal-Upchurch Building, at 4 East Bay in room 310, next door to the Atlantic and East Coast Terminal company (see ad to left). It clearly was near the corner of Main and East Bay years before the Main Street bridge was constructed. 

Church near old Hadden Hall in 1917

Directories for 1917 and 1918 also show the O. Cody Fowler family living in Jacksonville at 721 West 15th Avenue, though simultaneously claiming to be a resident of Oklahoma City, at Hadden Hall, on West (now NW) 10th Street (between N. Robinson and N. Harvey avenues), only a half block from First Christian Church. The 1920 Census, however, showed the family living with his wife's parents in Oklahoma City.

http://www.ocgi.okstate.edu/shpo/nhrpdfs/79002006.pdf

At some point prior to 1920 the Fowlers bought a house in Jacksonville, as the U.S. Census for that year shows Orin S. and Maude C. Fowler living on Edgewood Avenue. Maude's younger sister Elsie Lee Cody, an unmarried school teacher, moved to Florida and later lived at 1860 Oak in Jacksonville. The Fowlers listed their occupations that year as druggist and truck garden farmer--far from being the eminent businesswoman from Kansas City touted in sales brochures!

Perhaps the lies had something to do with the massive fraudulent schemes which had already been occurring in Florida as early as 1912. One newspaper, the Miami Metropolis, had traced the fraud to Wall Street and to some land investors operating all over the country at the time, in particular the Security Underwriters Corp. of Kansas City mentioned above. 

Click image to enlarge.

 We'll examine these allegations in future posts.

An Off-the-Books Private War

An Off-the-Shelf Enterprise

Excerpt from:

The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave ©1988, Harper and Row, Inc

Reading between the lines of Lieutenant Colonel North's testimony, it is clear that CIA director William Casey was proud of having an "off the shelf" team of private operators funded by unofficial sources. This enabled Casey to avoid the kind of interference from Congress that had been blocking the Reagan administration's initiatives to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But Casey's gambit was not entirely new. The members of The Enterprise were all larger-than-life characters who had worked together for many years, a first generation of colorful old OSS hands, and a second generation of hard-nosed covert action types who cut their milk teeth at the Bay of Pigs. Some of their names have since become familiar:

• John Singlaub, 
• Richard Secord, 
• Ray Cline, 
• Theodore Shackley, 
• Thomas Clines, and others.

But no longer around is the man who, in a way, started it all going: the CIA's original overseas paymaster and Mister Black Bag. His name was Paul Helliwell.
 
Paul Helliwell, a lawyer, had been a colonel in the U.S. Army’s G-2 Intelligence unit in the Middle East, later transferring to O.S.S. as Chief of Intelligence in China, and he had a reputation for buying information with bars of opium. He reputedly met with Ho Chi Minh, leader of North Vietnam, three times in 1945 but was unable to reach an agreement for the U.S. to provide Ho with weapons to use against Japan because Ho would not swear not to use them against the French. When O.S.S. was disbanded, Helliwell stayed in intelligence in the War Department. 

He left the military around 1947, when the CIA was created, and joined a Miami law firm — Bouvier, Helliwell and Clark — but still found time to work for the CIA. [Alan A. Block, Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in The Bahamas (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991).]

Helliwell’s first major assignment after the war was to find a way for the CIA to subsidize the airline, Civil Air Transport, owned by Major General Claire L. Chennault, which had been used to furnish materiel to the anticommunist Chinese in Southeast Asia. In 1951 Helliwell set up Sea Supply as the CIA’s first proprietary company in order to transport weapons to the Nationalist Chinese troops in Burma and to Thailand police, whose Chief was involved in the opium trade. The planes were not returned empty after the guns were unloaded; they were filled with drugs destined for the United States — usually Florida. The money derived from the sale of the drugs had to be laundered for the CIA, and Helliwell figured out how to do it.

Tommy the Cork

His associates in Sea Supply, and later in the Caribbean area planning the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, were New York attorney ["Tommy the Cork"] Thomas G. Corcoran (one of FDR’s "Brain Trust") [the others being Felix Frankfurter, James M. Landis and Benjamin V. Cohen] and Frank Wisner. In 1961 Helliwell became "paymaster" for operatives working covert intelligence operations in the Bay of Pigs, although his methods are not clearly apparent. However, in late 1963 he was involved with a bank in the Bahamas called Bank of the Caribbean Limited, which was "picked up" in 1965 by one of his clients, a CIA-connected "insurance conglomerate."

In 1968 the bank’s name was changed to Underwriters Bank Limited, which had been registered by Inge Gordon Mosvold, a Norwegian shipbuilder who may have been a front for an even wealthier man named Daniel K. Ludwig, for whom Mosvold had chartered the Mercantile Bank and Trust in Freeport in January 1962. The corporate shareholders of the Mercantile Bank were Cayship Investment Company, Inc. (Panama); Security (Bahamas) Limited; and Cia. de Navegacion Mandinga S.A. (Panama); as well as two nominees. 

Mercantile Bank was parent company for the now-famous Castle Bank and Trust formed by Helliwell, alleged to be "one of the CIA’s finance channels for operations against Cuba," being managed from Andros Island in The Bahamas beginning in 1964. [Wall Street Journal, April 18, 1980.]

Thanks to the CIA's part in rescuing the regime of Generalissimo Chiang in 1949, Helliwell had access to its black resources. In 1949 Helliwell and a handful of other CIA agents salvaged Claire Chennault's Civil Air Transport (CAT) and other American and Chinese aircraft from the mainland, and transferred them by ship to Taiwan.

He spent the years immediately following Mao's victory reorganizing the U.S. line of defense around Red China. With war-surplus Victory ships and Liberty ships, and some of Chennault's planes, he set up Sea Supply Corporation and Air America, using the Philippines and Thailand as staging bases for secret operations throughout Southeast Asia. As a means of harassing Red China from the rear, and gathering intelligence, Sea Supply ferried materiel to Thailand to support the KMT opium armies in Burma and the rebellious Champa tribesmen in eastern Tibet. CAT and Air America flew these supplies from Thailand into the Golden Triangle poppy fields and across upper Burma to the Himalayas, and flew supplies from the Philippines for the beleaguered French at Dienbienphu.

It was an expensive business. The KMT and the CIA paid off General Phao, the commander of the Thai police, who obligingly transshipped heroin from the opium armies down to Bangkok for export. They also paid the KMT's General Li Mi what it took to keep his army of ten thousand going, which Li Mi was not about to do with his share of the opium proceeds. All this took a lot of gold bullion, but Helliwell rose to the occasion. He and other Agency financial experts in the field followed basic rules laid down by the original CIA director of covert operations, Frank Wisner. First get the rich people on your side, including the rich gangsters, then set up channels for black money so you can provide funds across borders to the people who need them to get the job done. Kim Philby said Wisner once told him, "It is essential to secure the overt cooperation of people with conspicuous access to wealth in their own right." The cooperation of rich people hid the transfer of black money.

Helliwell's Family and College Days

What Seagrave failed to reveal, however, are a few small details about Helliwell before he joined the Army. Could any of these facts have contributed to placing him where he ended up later--as the center man in the dirty money laundry for the CIA?

See map online

Paul Helliwell’s father, Lionel H. Helliwell, was an English cloth buyer from Yorkshire when he settled in New York, but by 1930 he had relocated to Seffner, Florida, a small town east of Tampa, Florida, where he secured a job with the United States Customs House, then located on the third floor of the building facing Florida Avenue, between Twiggs and Zack Streets (see inset map).

Paul lived at home until at least 1933, but a 1934 listing in the Tampa, Florida, City Directory, shows him living alone while working for Cuban Rum, Inc., the only company listed under liquor importers, only months following the repeal of Prohibition. Intriguingly, immigration records indicate that Helliwell made at least one trip to Cuba in 1934, the same year he began as a freshman at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he was soon in position to make even more powerful contacts.

Click image to enlarge.

Living in the Chi Phi House in Gainesville, Paul was one year behind future Florida governor, George Smathers, a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon House, where his roommate in 1933-34 was Philip Graham. Pulled out of college for a year because he had developed dissolute habits, according to Carol Felsenthal's biography of Graham's future wife, Phil was allowed to return in the fall of 1934, which placed him in the 1936 graduating class with George Smathers, who would continue law school in Gainesville until 1938. Helliwell completed his law studies there a year later. 

Phil Graham got into Harvard Law only after his father sought help from Claude Pepper, but the young genius had proved himself by the end of his second year when he was named head of the Harvard Law Review. Another Harvard Law scholar, Ed Prichard, Jr., soon introduced him to Felix Frankfurter, the Harvard professor whom FDR named in 1939 to the Supreme Court, and also key recruiter into FDR's brain trust. It was an auspicious year. Phil Graham and George Smathers both married in 1939, and Paul Helliwell graduated from law school and had married Majorie Mae Muller, whose father had moved the family to Florida  and sold insurance while her mother managed the Astoria Apartments at 1367 S.W. 5th Street (at 14th Avenue), where Marjorie grew up.

By 1945 Paul and Marjorie Helliwell were living in Miami, along with his parents. Paul had joined the military during the war and was already a Lieutenant Colonel. His father still worked as a Customs inspector. 

Peter Dale Scott sums up who was directing Helliwell in this one sentence:

In effect, Corcoran was running an off-the-books private war in which a private company, China Defense Supplies, was diverting some of the war materiel destined for China to a private army, the American Volunteer Group.

We'll pick up there later.

Who Was Jay Harrison?

The article below appeared on JFKCountercoup2, a blog written by Bill Kelly, JFK assassination researcher. It is not clear from the posting where or when the article appeared. What it fails to mention is who provided the information for the obituary, or even who wrote it for the newspaper. Very likely it was furnished by Walt Brown, the history teacher and COPA member trusted by Harrison at the time of his death to receive his files and papers. 

Jay's father's parents were John Calvery/Calverley Harrison (born in Lancashire, England, in 1868, died in Leominster, MA in 1921) and Eva Maude Proctor (1876 – 1950). Jay's mother was born in California to John Archibald Fraser, Jr. and Charlotte Theresa Mcclintock.

Obituary: HARRISON, JOHN FRASER [J and Jay]

Jay was born in Portland Maine on 8 Nov 1933. He was the only child of John Alexander and Leonore Mary (Fraser) Harrison. His father was then the Portland Branch Manager for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.

His paternal ancestry went back to 5 pilgrim passengers onboard the Mayflower that landed in Plymouth, MA on 16 December 1620. His maternal ancestry went back to the Fraser Clan in Kintail Parish of Ross and Cromarty County Scotland thence to Brockville Ontario, Canada, along with a direct linkage to Simon Fraser (his Great-Grand Uncle) of Canadian historical fame.

Jay used to joke that one day, when he was about 13 and living on the family farm back in Ogunquit Maine, he looked into a mirror and said "Where in the world did he come from?" and he searched for the answer to that question for the rest of his life. He was an active genealogist from that day forward.

Jay graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring MD and went on to the Industrial Engineering School at The University of Maryland. His college education was interrupted by the Korean Police Action in early 1953.

Jay was drafted into the US Army and was trained in communications and intelligence and among other assignments was assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Communication Center in The Pentagon. Following his "active" service he was assigned to a Reserve SIRA Team (Strategic Intelligence Research and Analysis) for 6 more years.

Jay held, during his military service, every Security Clearance ever issued and was sworn to secrecy on many subjects for the rest of his life. He abided by that commitment and refrained from addressing subjects that are today common topics on the internet.

Jay also attended George Washington University and the University of Maryland while he was stationed in Washington, DC, and then in later years Graduate School at the University of Texas in Austin.

As a veteran, and while attending UofM, Jay worked evenings repairing Multilith printing presses in Government agencies for Addressograph-Multigraph in Washington, DC. Jay then joined the sales component of A-M and became a Junior Salesman in Rochester, NY servicing Eastman Kodak Co. It was in Rochester that he met and married Marian Ernest, another A-M employee. Upon promotion to Senior Salesman Jay was transferred to the newly created branch office in Montgomery, Ala. Jay and Marian arrived in Montgomery in the first week of December in 1955 and that was the same week that Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person on the bus and the famous "bus boycott"  began.

Over the next few years Jay was promoted and reassigned by AM to Cleveland, OH, Erie, PA and eventually Dallas, TX in late 1959.

On 13 Jun 1961 he became a Reserve Officer on the Dallas Police Department. His military background and genealogical research experience was used by the DPD's Criminal Intelligence Section.

At the time of the Kennedy Assassination at 12:30PM on 22 Nov 1963 he was on assignment observing the Black Muslim Church, as intelligence information was that members of that church would be creating a scene somewhere along the motorcade route. When the shooting event happened, he went to the School Book Depository Building and arrived there 4 minutes following the shooting. Later that day he was on the guard team for Governor Connally at the ICU in Parkland Hospital.

He was the first Reserve Officer of the DPD to be awarded the The Meritorious Conduct Award, the highest award to an officer of the DPD. This award was made on May 14, 1965 for his research efforts  into the Kennedy Assassination and associated events before, during and after the action.

In 1964 he left A-M Corp and joined one of his clients (Texas Instruments) as its Corporate Printing Coordinator.

In July 1966 he was was hired by Frank McBee, the VP of a small but rapidly growing, electronics firm in Austin to be their Publications Manager. That company's name was TRACOR. Jay's first day there was  Monday, 1 Aug 1966, and he and a personnel officer ate an early lunch at the Night Hawk Restaurant at 19th and Guadalupe. They came outside about 12:05 and at that time Charles Whitman was shooting from the Tower.

In 1968 Jay became VP of Market Development of Norman Harwell & Associates (NHA, Inc) the 2nd largest technical publication firm in the world. In 1971, after the elimination of MIL-Spec requirements of the federal government, NHA went from over 1700 employees to less than 100. Unfortunately Jay was one of the ones that was looking for a new job.

In 1974 he returned to Austin and went to work for Nash Phillips-Copus Co (NP-C) as a salesman in their Multi-family Division. He was NP-C's Salesman of the Year in 1975 and 1976. He was awarded the Outstanding Salesman of the year award by the Austin Association of Sales Executives;  He was one of the top 10 Salesman in the nation in the years 1976, 77 and 78 by the National Association of Homebuilders. Jay was promoted to Sales Manager of NP-C in 1977. NP-C was the 2nd largest builder in Texas and 7th largest builder in the nation. CenTex Construction (a Clint Murchison, Sr Company) was the largest builder in both TX and the nation.

In 1979 Jay founded Texas Real Estate Marketing & Consulting Corp (TREMAC). It grew to be in the top 3 of Commercial real estate firms in the Austin Market. Its annual sales exceeded 35 million dollars. It went dormant in the real estate crash of 1988.

Jay has been a licensed real estate broker for over 25 years. He wanted to return to commercial real estate sales when the market recovered in 1998/99 but he has been recovering from major surgical and physical disabilities since 1998.

He has been Amateur Radio Licensed since 1952. His current call sign is N5BHU.  Jay received the original "Mayday" from the Medical college on Grenada Island and ALL the communications with that facility were through his home in Rollingwood for over a week in October 1983. The US Department of State and The Defense Department had open telephone lines to his residence for that whole week. His station was manned for 24 hours a day and he still has audio tapes of all the communications. (Ref: Dick Stanley AAS Staff).
  

Jay has done genealogical research for over 55 years and is a highly respected researcher of Colonial New England, The Republic of Texas, and early Texas History. He has been a contributing patron of the Texas State Library and through the years has donated many thousands of dollars in books, equipment and computer CD's to their genealogical collection. He was one of the original founders and authors of "Automated Archives" the ORIGINAL producer of genealogical CD ROMS in the early 1990's.

Jay is the Certified Genealogist for The Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. His current effort is doing hard genealogical research on all 150+ Justices of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas and the State of Texas.

Jay was a licensed pilot and in his spare time liked to cruse off into the wild blue yonder.

He can now do it permanently.

Daniel Hopsicker wants to know

Kris Millegan

Kris Millegan is a musician, who became fascinated with spies after his own father disclosed to him one day that he had been one. But that was not all Kris learned about his father, who had personally worked with a "quiet American" named Colonel Edward G. Lansdale. He learned that the Central Intelligence Agency was into pushing drugs on innocent, well-meaning peaceniks much like Kris himself. You see, that's where the market was. Even before Lansdale was a spy, he had been a marketer, like so many free-enterprise Americans who want enterprise to be not free, but lucrative. What they want to be free is the card they receive that gets them out of jail when they violate the law.

Daniel Hopsicker knows all about those "get out of jail free" cards. He's been writing about them for years since first joining Kris Millegan's research list known as CIA-Drugs.  In May 2000 Daniel was headed for Oregon to attend Millegan's first and only CIA-DRUGS SYMPOSIUM, to be held in Eugene. The event featured:

• Rodney Stich, author of Unfriendly Skies, Drugging America, and Defrauding America; 
• Peter Dale Scott, an authority on the drug trade, as well as on the deep political corruption behind the JFK assassination; 
• Catherine Austin Fitts, who at that time was just starting to discover who was behind the destruction of her own experience with free enterprise; 
• Cele Castillo, 12-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and 
• Michael C. Ruppert, former cop turned writer, who was intent on disclosing connection between "the C.I.A." and narcotics trafficking.
  

Kris Millegan would go on to author and edit a treatise called Fleshing out Skull and Bones, dealing with power, money, and the American way. The American way of corrupting the Constitution upon which the country was founded by the descendants of that same elite bunch who founded it, not least of which is Yale's Skull and Bones society itself.

 Daniel would go on to write Barry and 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History and to produce a video entitled "Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida." Daniel would also create a website called The Madcow Morning News, which, some might say, was obsessed with putting away a man called Rudi Dekkers. 

But Daniel had never heard of Rudi Dekkers in May 2000, when he arrived in Oregon for Kris' symposium. Back then his obsession was still about America's "secret history" and about Barry Seal, a "drug smuggler and aircraft pilot who flew covert flights for the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency and the Medellín Cartel." 

It was the last year that Bill Clinton was in office, and the "crimes of Mena, Arkansas" were soon to give way to conspiracy researchers delving into the real reasons behind the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center buildings in 2001. 

Some members of Kris' CIA-Drugs group were even researching whether former CIA agent Edwin Wilson was still in "the C.I.A." when he sold C-4 explosive in 1977 to Libya, as a consequence of Houston Judge Lynn N. Hughes' appointing a lawyer for the former agent  to consider new evidence in Wilson's case. Hughes' ruling, which took four years, eventually set Wilson free: “Because the government knowingly used false evidence against him and suppressed favorable evidence, his conviction will be vacated.” 

Between the time of the presentation of Wilson's motions and the ruling, Michael Ruppert had written in March 2000 in his emailed [since archived] newsletter, From the Wilderness:

...In the meantime Ed Wilson has just asked for contempt charges against 14 of

Ed Wilson

the biggest legal names in and out of government. And his attorney is moving for summary judgement because Judge Lynn Hughes, in Houston, is sitting on Wilson's explosive motion to dismiss the conviction and not rendering a decision. One Federal Judge, Stanley Sporkin, has already retired and two more, one on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, are on the verge of having their rights read to them and of being accused of perjury and of withholding exculpatory evidence. The CIA risks being exposed as having deliberately armed Moammar Qadaffy at the instigation of George Bush. Retired CIA Associate Deputy Director of Operations (ADDO) Ted Shackley stands on the verge of being exposed for perjury and worse. And the Department of Justice is close to being exposed, in open court, of having hidden crimes by high-ranking members for more than 17 years. Now that's the kind of  edifice-crumbling upheaval that may eventually lead to letting a lot of innocent people out of prison - not just one. But only If it is pursued and capitalized upon.

Edwin Wilson writes to me:

Dear Sir:
I have received your January 28 issue and thank you for a favorable article. My problem is this place [Federal Penitentiary, Allenwood, Pa.] makes it almost impossible to communicate. So I ask you to stay in touch with [Attorney David] Adler who has better, up to date, information than I. Also, I want to cooperate with you. By the way, the article you sent me is missing pages 6&7. Some machine also hates me!

                            Many thanks,
                            Ed Wilson
                            08237-054

The story had first hit the news in the fall of 1999:

Ex-CIA Officer Appeals Conviction

By C. BRYSON HULL

 The Associated Press

HOUSTON (AP) - Former CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson, jailed since 1983 for illegal arms smuggling to Libya, has filed an appeal accusing federal prosecutors of knowingly using a false affidavit to convict him.

Wilson's claims are accompanied by hundreds of secret government memos that his lawyers obtained.

Wilson's main job for the CIA before he retired in 1971 was setting up front companies abroad while posing as a rich American businessman. He lived his cover to the hilt and made himself a multimillionaire in the process. He was arrested in 1982 after being lured out of Libya by a government informant and was sentenced to 52 years in prison.

The appeal is of a 1983 conviction for shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives from Houston's Intercontinental Airport [now intriguingly named George Bush Intercontinental Airport] to Libya. Even if his appeal were successful, Wilson would still face prison time on two other convictions. But his defense attorney, David Adler, believes similar evidence exists that could throw out a Virginia conviction of Wilson for illegally exporting guns to Egypt.

Adler said the secret government memos detail lengthy efforts to hide the use of the false [Briggs] affidavit and prosecutors' failure to release information that would have aided Wilson's defense during his 1983 Houston trial on charges of selling tons of explosives to Libya.

Wilson claims that his dealings with Libya, for which he was convicted, were the result of a CIA request that he ingratiate himself with the Libyans after he officially retired from the agency.

The affidavit by then-CIA Executive Director Charles Briggs, the agency's No. 3 official, said the agency had not asked Wilson either directly or indirectly to provide any service to the agency after he retired.

A four-volume appeal filed Sept. 8 includes more than 800 pages of exhibits that allegedly show government lawyers knew the crucial affidavit was false the night before it was presented in court.

The documents show that Wilson in fact had some 80 contacts with the CIA from his retirement through 1978 and provided a variety of services, including arranging gun sales to a Saudi Arabian security agency and the shipment of two desalinization units to Egypt.

Documents also show prosecutors then spent nearly eight months discussing whether to disclose that fact to the court and Wilson's lawyers.

The evidence was enough to prompt an unusual courtroom admission earlier in March from Justice Department attorney Arlene Reidy.
 

"We have a lot of documents already that I think show that there was a clear problem with the affidavit's accuracy and that the individuals involved were well aware of that problem," Ms. Reidy told U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, according to a transcript.

The former CIA general counsel, Stanley Sporkin, now a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday there was no intention to cover up. Rather, he said, officials had a difference in philosophies about how to handle the information about Wilson's activities.

"It would be wrong to think this was in bad faith,'' Sporkin said.

The Justice Department has until mid-January to respond to the appeal. If Wilson's conviction was overturned, he could be retried.

The secret documents were obtained by Wilson's defense under the Freedom of Information Act and through court discovery. They were resealed by Hughes on Sept. 23, but The Associated Press had obtained copies before the order was signed.

Speaking from federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., Wilson said the alleged conspiracy against him was motivated by ambition.

"A few greedy people in the government saw an opportunity to make a name for themselves,'' Wilson said. "The longer I was in prison, the more they had to cover it up and it keeps going higher.''

Another intriguing coincidence? Sporkin would end up being appointed the judge in Catherine Austin Fitts' own civil trial against the man whom she sued for his role in bringing down her business. Business as usual.

It is now 2013, thirteen years later, and another defendant awaits trial in Judge Hughes' courtroom--none other than Daniel Hopsicker's current obsession, Rudi Dekkers. Can there possibly be a connection with that new evidence presented by Edwin Wilson in 1999 relating to his arrest in 1982. The evidence concerned the memorandum signed by Charles A. Briggs, who was then executive director of the C.I.A., as revealed in Hughes' opinion in the Wilson case:

To rebut Wilson’s evidence, on February 4, 1983, the government introduced an affidavit from Charles A. Briggs. Briggs served as the CIA’s inspector general until mid-1982 when he became its executive director—the third highest ranking official of the CIA. In the affidavit, he swore that—with one exception—the CIA did not ask Wilson to work for it after he officially stopped working there. Briggs declared:

“The search [of CIA records] revealed that Mr. Edwin P. Wilson terminated his employment with the CIA on 28 February 1971, and was not re-employed thereafter in any capacity.

According to Central Intelligence Agency Records, with one exception while he was employed by Naval Intelligence in 1972, Mr. Edwin P. Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any service, directly or indirectly, for [the] CIA.”

What will happen? Will Rudi make it to trial? Will he get out of jail free?

Is there somehow a link between George (Poppy) Bush's CIA, for which Edwin Wilson worked and the CIA of his son, Dubya Bush, which was lurking behind the scenes of 9/11?

Daniel Hopsicker wants to know:

CIA=Drugs

Rudi Dekkers is scheduled to go on trial in Houston next month for cocaine and heroin trafficking, unless, that is, something happens between now and then. Courthouse observers suggest the trial will never take place.  They note that Dekkers’ defense lawyers continue to attempt to hammer out a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office before he goes on trial.

Will Dekkers—facing as long as 20 years in Federal prison—get a sweetheart deal? And if he does, will it be in exchange for his testimony…or his silence?
Hanging in the balance is the answer to one of 9/11’s biggest mystery: Where did Rudi Dekkers get his "juice?"