Paul Rigby

A Look Back … Robert Carey Broughton: From Walt Disney to War Movies https://www.cia.gov/...-broughton.html What do Walt Disney Studios and the Office of Strategic Services—the predecessor of today’s CIA—have in common? Accomplished camera effects artist Robert Carey Broughton created award-winning films for both organizations. From Math to Magic Broughton was born on September 17, 1917, in Berkeley, California. He spent most of his childhood in Glendale, California, where he attended Glendale High School and Glendale Junior College. Broughton also attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied chemistry, physics, math and optics. In 1937, Broughton got a job at Walt Disney Studios delivering mail. It wasn’t long before he was pulled to work in the camera department. He started out as an assistant in the test camera department, where he worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Broughton’s job was to shoot the test camera to check for continuous action of the animation before finalizing the film. Next, Broughton worked with the animation camera, which led to operating Disney’s famous multi-plane camera. It was used to create depth in animated featured films, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and many more. Broughton was very involved with the production of Fantasia. His work on this film and his eye for detail earned him a promotion to camera department supervisor. Filming the War With the start of World War II, Broughton answered the call to service by joining the U.S. Army. He was assigned to the Field Photographic Branch of the OSS. Film had not been used extensively during a war before, but with the beginning of World War II, it became apparent that it could serve a number of purposes: Boost propaganda and morale, Train the troops, Provide intelligence, and Record historical events. During his time with the OSS, Broughton worked with Hollywood director John Ford to create documentary films about the war. Together, the two men produced The Battle of Midway, which won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1942. Broughton photographed most of the footage and Ford directed the film. The OSS institutionalized using film in intelligence with the OSS Intelligence Photographic Documentation Project. Its purpose was to establish a worldwide photographic intelligence file of areas of strategic importance. Creating Magic After the War, Broughton returned to Disney as an assistant to legend Ub Iwerks—co-creator of Mickey Mouse. Under Iwerks, Broughton began to work on live-action motion pictures, such as Mary Poppins. He helped create the illusion that Dick Van Dyke was dancing with penguins by using Color Traveling Matte Composite Cinematography. This award-winning technology combined live action and animation on film. In 1982—with 45 years of work at Disney under his belt—Broughton retired. He was known for his passion. Even after retiring, his enthusiasm lived on in his coordination of the retiree club, The Golden Ears. Broughton was honored as a Disney Legend in 2001. This annual award honors an individual whose creativity and talent have contributed to producing magical films for children of all ages. Each Disney Legend receives an award cast in bronze and a plaque bearing their name, hand prints and signature at the Studios in California. Broughton passed away on Monday, January 19, 2009. He was 91. Broughton is survived by two sons, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

How the CIA Helped Disney Conquer Florida http://www.thedailyb...atsheet_morning Apr 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT With advice from former CIA operatives and lawyers, Disney bought up the land for Florida’s Disney World and orchestrated a unique legal situation—and set up an unconstitutional form of government. An excerpt from TD Allman’s Finding Florida. Finding Florida By TD Allman 528 pages. Atlantic Monthly Press. $27.50. Starting in the mid-1960s when Disney set out to establish the Disney World Theme Park, they were determined to get land at below market prices and Disney operatives engaged in a far-ranging conspiracy to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their Central Florida property. By resorting to such tactics Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for less than $200 an acre, but how to maintain control once Disney's empire had been acquired? The solution turned out to be cartoon-simple, thanks to the CIA. Disney's key contact was the consummate cloak-and-dagger operator, William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Sometimes called the "Father of the C.I.A," he was also the founding partner of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, a New York law firm whose attorneys included future C.I.A. director William Casey. Donovan’s attorneys provided fake identities for Disney agents; they also set up a secret communications center, and orchestrated a disinformation campaign. In order to maintain "control over the overall development," Disney and his advisers realized, “the company would have to find a way to limit the voting power of the private residents" even though, they acknowledged, their efforts "violated the Equal Protection Clause" of the U.S. Constitution. Here again the CIA was there to help. Disney's principal legal strategist for Florida was a senior clandestine operative named Paul Helliwell. Having helped launch the C.I.A. secret war in Indochina, Helliwell relocated to Miami in 1960 in order to coordinate dirty tricks against Castro. At a secret "seminar" Disney convened in May 1965 Helliwell came up with the approach that to this day allows the Disney organization to avoid taxation and environmental regulation as well as maintain immunity from the U.S. Constitution. It was the same strategy the C.I.A. pursued in the foreign countries. Set up a puppet government; then use that regime to do your bidding. Though no one lived there, Helliwell advised Disney to establish at least two phantom "cities,” then use these fake governments to control land use and make sure the public monies the theme park generated stayed in Disney's private hands. On paper Disney World's "cities" would be regular American home towns—except their only official residents would be the handful of hand-picked Disney loyalists who periodically "elected" the officials who, in turn, ceded complete control to Disney executives. In early 1967, the Florida legislature created Hallowell’s two "cities,” both named for the artificial reservoirs Disney engineers created by obstructing the area's natural water flow. When you visit Disney's Magic Kingdom, you are visiting the City of Bay Lake, Florida. The other was the City of Lake Buena Vista. In both “cities,” in violation of both the U.S. and Florida Constitutions the Disney-engineered legislation established a property qualification for holding elective office, requiring that each candidate for office there "must be the owner, either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated in the City" in order "to be eligible to hold the office of councilman." Though enacted by the legislature, this and other crucial pieces of Disney-enabling legislation, which would reshape central Florida and affect the lives of tens of millions of people, was written by teams of Disney lawyers working in New York at the Donovan firm, and in Miami at Helliwell's offices. Disney lawyers in California signed off on the text before it was flown to Tallahassee where, without changing a word, Florida’s compliant legislators enacted it into law. “No one thought of reading it,” one ex-lawmaker later remarked. Later, after the houses there were sold, compliant legislatures excluded all the residents of Celebration from Disney’s domain, to prevent them from voting. Those who were there never forgot the day Disney inaugurated what truly would be a magic kingdom in Florida – magically above the law. The Governor and his Cabinet came down from Tallahassee. TV crews were in attendance, along with Florida's most eminent civic leaders. Right on schedule, the curtains parted. On the screen, Walt Disney gave his much beloved, self-deprecating smile, then announced that in Florida he was going to create a new kind of America, not just a theme park. If Florida, among all the many melodramas of the last 500 years, could be said to have had only one defining moment, this was it because in this place, at this particular time, the distinction between reality and fantasy—nature and names—vanished entirely. Walt Disney was dead when he made this presentation. A chronic smoker, he had died of lung cancer seven weeks earlier. As the lips of the dead Disney moved, people in the audience murmured their agreement. As his hands gestured, they nodded their approval. The posthumous Walt Disney, like the mechanical Andrew Jackson in the Hall of the Presidents, had joined Mickey, Donald, and the Sorcerer's Apprentice in that special world where it doesn't matter whether you're real or not.

Talking With Chad Emerson: A ‘spy-like’ start for Disney By Jason Garcia, Orlando Sentinel March 14, 2010 http://articles.orla...ell-underground CFB: How did you get interested in Disney World? Well, I started researching for an academic article I was doing on improvement districts, and I stumbled across how the Reedy Creek Improvement District was pretty unique among all other improvement districts. So I started writing this academic article, and my wife and some other people were kind of reading it for me, and they started saying, ‘If you take out all this legal language and these footnotes, this would be a pretty interesting story in and of itself, about how Disney selected Central Florida and then purchased all of the land. … There are so many secretive and spy-like maneuvers that went on, all legal, but very interesting and intertwined. CFB: What surprised you the most during your research? The most interesting story I found involved Tufts College in Boston. One of the largest parcels that Disney was going to buy, they had secured a deal with the Demetree brothers to buy this land — a lot of which Epcot sits on these days. They bought the surface rights, but the Demetrees did not own the underground rights, because back then the underground rights were thought to be more valuable, with oil speculation. As it turned out, there wasn't any oil or phosphorous underground that was extremely valuable, but Tufts College wasn't sure, so they were very reticent to sell those underground rights. Disney's in-house attorney, Bob Foster, the Demetrees and their outside counsel, Paul Helliwell — a Miami attorney with literally a spy background in the predecessor to the CIA — they flew up to Boston, met in this conference room [with Tufts board members] to try to secure the underground rights. If they couldn't secure the underground rights, someone could have come in in the middle of the day and started drilling in the middle of Epcot for oil. So they went to the meeting, it went all day, and the Demetree brothers thought, ‘This is going to fall through.' And then Paul Helliwell pulled aside a couple of board members from Tufts, they went into another room, and they came out with a deal. Today, no one is really sure what exactly Mr. Helliwell said in that office to secure that deal. But without that deal, Disney World probably wouldn't exist in Central Florida. CFB: Did Disney cooperate with your writing this book? A lot of former Disney cast members and executives were obviously very helpful. Lee Cockerell wrote the foreward. And there were other folks: Joni Newkirk, Greg Emmer, Brad Rex. They [Disney] didn't officially provide any help. Now, I will say this: The Reedy Creek Improvement District, [District Administrator] Ray Maxwell and his team, were extremely helpful. CFB: There's been debate over the years about whether Disney should have its own government. How do you feel? I understand the concern people have about how this setup could be abused, because it really could. But when you thought about the industry that Disney's in, this customer-service industry where brand is so very important to them, they have such a strong incentive to govern well. If this would have been any industry or a plant of some type, they wouldn't want bad publicity but, really, who knows what would matter to them. But for Disney, they have to be so careful about the way the brand is. I think it just speaks for itself. There's been some times where there's been bond issues and things like that they've argued about, but, overall, I don't think many people in Orlando would say that having Disney there has been a bad thing. And without this improvement district, Disney was not coming. I'm convinced of that.

It's a tale of great mystery: How Disney came to Orlando By Joy Wallace Dickinson, Florida Flashback September 26, 2010 http://articles.orla...ell-underground 'All anyone in town was talking about' It's been 45 years since the Sentinel reported on its front page that a mystery buyer represented by Miami attorney Paul Helliwell had acquired about 9,700 acres from Bronson Inc. in Osceola County. All in all, the unknown land buyer had at that point acquired about 30,000 acres in Orange and Osceola counties, the article concluded. Who was buying the land? It "was all anyone in town was talking about" that summer of 1965, the late Sentinel columnist Charlie Wadsworth said in a 1988 interview. The Sentinel's Emily Bavar would break the story in October 1965, but Wadsworth and his "Hush Puppies" column had been on the track of the "mystery industry" for almost a year, he said. "It seems almost every day there was a new lead of some kind to follow . . . at cake sales, symphony openings, cocktail parties, everywhere," Wadsworth recalled. The speculation produced rampant rumors that the secret buyer would be revealed as Howard Hughes or Boeing aircraft or the Rockefeller family. Even the first legal secretary hired for the mystery company, Julia Switlick, didn't know who her employer was. "I was worried I might be working for the communists," Switlick said in a 1988 interview. "In those days, just saying someone was a communist was the worst thing you could do." Masters of secrecy Switlick need not have worried about communists, although the Disney team's covert maneuvers may have been even more secretive than those used by clandestine cells. Key players in the story had backgrounds in espionage. Disney adviser William Donovan, who has been called the father of U.S. intelligence, was head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, as Emerson writes in Project Future. (Rollins professor Rick Foglesong describes the Disney team's secrecy, too, in his book Married to the Mouse, published by Yale University Press in 2001.) One of the team's rules was that nobody at Disney could talk to anyone in Orlando, period. Emerson became absorbed in the story while he was researching an academic article and realized it had potential for readers outside legal journals. "There are so many secretive and spy-like maneuvers, all legal, but very interesting and intertwined," he told an interviewer earlier this year. One of the most interesting for Emerson involved a large parcel of land that's now the site of much of Epcot. Brothers Jack and Bill Demetree owned the surface rights to the land, but Tufts University in Boston retained the underground rights, in the hopes the land might contain oil or phosphorous. In the end, the negotiators for Disney secured a deal with Tufts, but without that deal, "Disney World probably wouldn't exist in Central Florida," Emerson says.

Newspaper Publisher's Big Story Would Wait For Good Of Community FLASHBACK - ORANGE COUNTY HISTORY By Mark Andrews of The Sentinel Staff November 17, 1996 http://articles.orla...-buyer-sentinel Martin Andersen was a transplanted resident of Orange County - as are many people here. But he quickly fell in love with the area and committed himself and his newspapers, the Orlando Morning Sentinel and Evening Star, to improving the community. Sometimes that meant writing editorials to support candidates for governor he didn't really like because he knew they would help get highways built in Central Florida. Other times it meant working behind the scenes with politicians and business leaders to bring industry - like the Martin missile plant - to town. Or calling in a favor from his old friend Lyndon Johnson to get a Navy base planted 50 miles from the ocean. But one time, doing what was best for his community meant sitting on one of the biggest stories of his career for more than a year. The year was 1964, and someone wanted to buy huge tracts of land on the Orange-Osceola County line. A Miami attorney representing the mystery buyer went to see bank president Billy Dial. The attorney, Paul Helliwell, told Dial there had been a leak in California about the project. If that information were publicized, it would ruin Orlando's chances of gaining a huge new employer, former Orlando Sentinel managing editor Ormund Powers writes in his new biography, Martin Andersen: Editor, Publisher, Galley Boy. ''Let's go see Martin Andersen,'' Dial replied. ''That's the last man we want to see,'' Helliwell said. ''That's the first man we want to see,'' Dial told him. After their visit with Andersen, the publisher called in his top staffers and told them, ''There is a big deal going on. And while we don't know what it is, we have assurances it will be good for the community, and we don't want a line printed in this paper about it,'' Powers writes. The buyer, of course, was Walt Disney. Disney's attorneys wanted to negotiate the purchase of huge tracts for Walt's theme park and hotels before enough people got wind of it to drive the price up. The secret was kept, and Disney was able to buy 27,400 acres at an average price of $182 per acre. Ironically, what lured Disney here was the junction of two highways - Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike. Andersen had influenced the routing of both through Orlando. Only after the first deed was recorded in May 1965 did Andersen's newspapers report long-running rumors that the land was to become an East Coast version of Disneyland. That was confirmed less than six months later when one of Andersen's reporters visited Disney's headquarters in California. Andersen insisted publicly that he never knew who the mystery buyer was until reporter Emily Bavar broke the story. But some Sentinel insiders told Powers they don't think as good a newsman as Andersen could have been unaware. ''If he got behind a project, he got behind it all the way,'' Dial once said. ''Martin would go along with anything that was for the good of the community.'' The growth of Orlando meant Andersen's newspapers needed to expand. Perhaps he was skittish about the debt that would require. Could be it was worry about getting unions in his plant. Or maybe the publisher who didn't like to delegate important tasks was just tired. In any case, he began casting around for someone to run his newspapers. He hired Charlie Brumback, an accountant from Toledo, Ohio, whose parents wintered here, to run the business side in 1957. A year later, he asked if the Tribune Co. of Chicago wanted to buy the two papers. (Brumback later became publisher of the Sentinel, then moved to Chicago and retired last year as chairman of the board of Tribune.) Andersen and Tribune - along with other potential suitors - danced around each other for several years. Andersen, Powers writes, ''was torn between feeling he would lose a part of himself if he sold, and the feeling that he had to sell because there was no one in his family to leave the properties to.'' The deal with Tribune finally was consummated in 1965. ''My greatest accomplishment was coming here a total stranger, dead broke, and being accepted by the leaders of a community,'' Andersen told the Sentinel Star after he retired. ''We'd go on those trips, fish and talk and work things out, go see people, get things done.''

Disney Pulled Strings So Mouse Moved In With Barely A Squeak FLASHBACK By Mark Andrews of The Sentinel Staff August 6, 2000 http://articles.orla...central-florida Critics of legendary newspaper publisher Martin Andersen fall into two camps when it comes to his role in helping to keep a lid on speculation about a mysterious gigantic land development project that would become Walt Disney World: Either he knew who was the buyer of all those thousands of acres straddling the Orange-Osceola county line in 1964-65 and helped deprive local people of a chance to cash in on the bonanza by sitting on the story, or he wasn't a good enough journalist to figure out the buyer's identity. Actually, almost no one believed he was a poor journalist. For his part, Andersen, who died in 1986, always insisted he did not know it was the Walt Disney Co. that was buying the land to build an East Coast version of its Disneyland theme park. And he said he did not let his newspaper staff go out of its way to try to identify the buyer because he did not want to compromise the success of a project that he hoped would be an economic windfall for the metro Orlando area. From 1931 to 1965, Andersen was the crusading publisher of Orlando's morning and evening newspapers, which later merged to become what is now The Orlando Sentinel. Andersen took a more out-front role as a community advocate than do most modern-day newspaper publishers -- lavishing praise on favored candidates for public office, while excoriating those he didn't like; working behind closed doors with politicians and bankers to lure new businesses to town; and arm-twisting legislators and governors to get highways built here. Concerning the Disney project, what did Andersen know, and when did he know it? In his 1996 biography of Andersen, former Sentinel editor Ormund Powers wrote that the strong-armed publisher may have known as early as 1958 that Disney was interested in Central Florida. Powers said a former secretary of Andersen's, Kay Unterfer, told him that Andersen met quietly with several Disney representatives, influential banker/lawyer Billy Dial and the mayors of Orlando and Winter Park that year. According to Unterfer's account, the Disney people wanted Andersen's promise of silence until they were ready to go public. Other accounts, though, say the company did not seriously begin scouting East Coast sites for a new park until 1960 or '61 and that Walt Disney himself settled on Central Florida as the site for his new park in 1964. What is clear is that the intersection of two new highways -- Florida's Turnpike and Interstate 4 -- was the determining factor that made Disney settle on the site. In a paper for the Florida Historical Society in 1991, Rollins College professor Richard Foglesong wrote that Disney and several of his top executives were flying in the corporate Gulfstream jet over Central Florida, scouting out potential park locations early in 1964. They had just eliminated Ocala from consideration because it lacked good highway links. Fifteen miles southwest of Orlando, Disney looked down and saw I-4, still under construction, crossing the turnpike. " `This is it!' the cartoonist-turned-showman exclaimed,'' Foglesong wrote. West of that junction lay a vast stretch of virgin land. The site for Walt Disney World had been discovered. Once the decision had been made, Miami attorney Paul Helliwell, who represented Disney, paid a visit to Dial, who was then president of First National Bank at Orlando, which later became SunBank and is now part of SunTrust Bank. Helliwell explained that he represented someone who planned to make a major investment in the area, which would result in thousands of new jobs. While keeping him in the dark, Helliwell wanted Dial to help deal with landowners. Dial recalled later that he asked to know more, but the lawyer explained that the success of the mission depended on keeping the buyer's identity and details of his plans a secret until all the land had been acquired. Disney's strategy was to take out options on the largest tracts, then later buy up the smaller parcels -- many of which were owned by people who lived out of state. Attorneys negotiated with various landowners for six months before closing on the first purchase. They knew that once the first deeds were recorded, people would begin asking lots of questions. Working under a strict cloak of secrecy, real estate agents who didn't know the identity of their client began making offers to landowners in southwest Orange and northwest Osceola counties in April 1964. Careful not to let property owners know the extent of their land-buying appetite, the agents quietly negotiated one deal after another -- lining up contracts to buy huge tracts for as little as $107 an acre. Helliwell had set up dummy corporations -- with such names as Latin American Development and Management Corp. and Reedy Creek Ranch Corp. -- to act as buyers of the land. The companies worked through a Miami real estate consultant named Roy Hawkins, who in turn used an Orlando real estate company, Florida Ranch Lands Inc., to make the purchases.

Disney Assembled Cast Of Buyers To Amass Land Stage For Kingdom FLASHBACK - ORANGE COUNTY HISTORY By Mark Andrews, of The Sentinel Staff May 30, 1993 Working under a strict cloak of secrecy, real estate agents who didn't know the identity of their client began making offers to landowners in southwest Orange and northwest Osceola counties in April 1964 - shortly after Walt Disney chose the site for his new theme park. Careful not to let property owners know the extent of their land-buying appetites, the agents quietly negotiated one deal after another - sometimes lining up contracts to buy huge tracts for little more than $100 an acre. Walt Disney Productions attorney Paul Helliwell had set up dummy corporations - with such names as Latin American Development and Management Corp. and Reedy Creek Ranch Corp. - in Miami to act as purchasers of the land. To make the deals, Helliwell worked through Roy Hawkins, a Miami real estate consultant. Hawkins contacted Nelson Boice, president of Florida Ranch Lands Inc., an Orlando realty firm, and ''expressed a casual interest in a 'super-sized' parcel of land,'' according to a November 1965 news account. Swearing their office staff to secrecy, the Realtors began assembling information from Orange and Osceola county tax rolls on the ownership of land in the area in which the ''mystery industry'' was interested. Next came the job of securing options to buy the property. The deal-makers made telephone calls to the owners - many of them out of state. Most were delighted to sell. Some, who had received their land through inheritances, had never even seen it. Because they knew that recording the first deeds would trigger an intense wave of public questioning about what was going on, Disney's representatives waited until they had a large number of parcels locked up through options before filing their paper work. Most of the land transactions were handled in cash to eliminate a paper trail. The first purchases, recorded on May 3, 1965, included one for 8,380 acres of swamp and brush from state Sen. Ira Bronson at a price of $107 an acre. The deal had been made seven months earlier. The first newspaper account of the large-scale interest in Orange and Osceola county property ran the next day. The May 4 Orlando Sentinel story said the transactions ''will undoubtedly increase rumors already afloat for the past year to the effect that a new and large industrial complex is about to locate in this area.'' Indeed it did. Because of the proximity to Cape Kennedy, much speculation centered on space or aircraft technology, Stephen M. Fjellman wrote in his 1992 book, Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America. Carmakers' names, especially Ford, also were mentioned. Former Orlando banker Billy Dial, who also was involved in the negotiations, said a Florida Power Corp. executive called him at about that time to ask what Ford would do with all that land. He wondered if the utility should plan to provide power. On May 20, an Orlando Sentinel article acknowledged the persistent rumor that ''the land is being purchased for a second East Coast Disneyland attraction.'' But the paper discounted the gossip because Walt Disney had specifically denied it during a recent visit to Cape Kennedy. Disney told the newspaper he was spending $50 million to expand Disneyland and was not interested in another such venture at that time. Within three weeks of recording the Bronson transaction, Florida Ranch Lands had wrapped up deals with 47 owners. Eventually, Boice and his associates negotiated agreements with 51 owners to buy some 27,400 acres for more than $5 million - an average price of $182 per acre. Disney intended to announce his ownership of the land and his plans for Walt Disney World on Nov. 15, 1965. But the secret wouldn't keep that long. In October 1965 Emily Bavar, editor of the Sentinel's Florida magazine, was in Anaheim with five other journalists to tour Disneyland as Disney's guests. During repeated interviews with Walt Disney, Bavar tried to pin the entertainment magnate down on whether his company was the buyer of all that Florida real estate. Disney would neither confirm nor deny the rumors. But Bavar learned enough in California to convince her. On Oct. 21, 1965, a story by Bavar predicted Disney would build a new theme park on the huge tract. After piecing together more information, the paper led its Sunday edition three days later with a story headlined, ''We Say: 'Mystery' Industry Is Disney.'' With the mouse out of the bag, Disney scrapped his plans for a formal announcement and allowed Gov. Haydon Burns to confirm the next day, Oct. 25, that he intended to build ''the greatest attraction in the history of Florida'' in Orange County.

How the CIA Helped Disney Conquer Florida http://www.thedailyb...atsheet_morning Apr 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT With advice from former CIA operatives and lawyers, Disney bought up the land for Florida’s Disney World and orchestrated a unique legal situation—and set up an unconstitutional form of government. An excerpt from TD Allman’s Finding Florida (528 pages. Atlantic Monthly Press. $27.50.) Starting in the mid-1960s when Disney set out to establish the Disney World Theme Park, they were determined to get land at below market prices and Disney operatives engaged in a far-ranging conspiracy to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their Central Florida property. By resorting to such tactics Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for less than $200 an acre, but how to maintain control once Disney's empire had been acquired? The solution turned out to be cartoon-simple, thanks to the CIA. Disney's key contact was the consummate cloak-and-dagger operator, William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Sometimes called the "Father of the C.I.A," he was also the founding partner of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, a New York law firm whose attorneys included future C.I.A. director William Casey. Donovan’s attorneys provided fake identities for Disney agents; they also set up a secret communications center, and orchestrated a disinformation campaign. In order to maintain "control over the overall development," Disney and his advisers realized, “the company would have to find a way to limit the voting power of the private residents" even though, they acknowledged, their efforts "violated the Equal Protection Clause" of the U.S. Constitution. Here again the CIA was there to help. Disney's principal legal strategist for Florida was a senior clandestine operative named Paul Helliwell. Having helped launch the C.I.A. secret war in Indochina, Helliwell relocated to Miami in 1960 in order to coordinate dirty tricks against Castro. At a secret "seminar" Disney convened in May 1965 Helliwell came up with the approach that to this day allows the Disney organization to avoid taxation and environmental regulation as well as maintain immunity from the U.S. Constitution. It was the same strategy the C.I.A. pursued in the foreign countries. Set up a puppet government; then use that regime to do your bidding. Though no one lived there, Helliwell advised Disney to establish at least two phantom "cities,” then use these fake governments to control land use and make sure the public monies the theme park generated stayed in Disney's private hands. On paper Disney World's "cities" would be regular American home towns—except their only official residents would be the handful of hand-picked Disney loyalists who periodically "elected" the officials who, in turn, ceded complete control to Disney executives. In early 1967, the Florida legislature created Hallowell’s two "cities,” both named for the artificial reservoirs Disney engineers created by obstructing the area's natural water flow. When you visit Disney's Magic Kingdom, you are visiting the City of Bay Lake, Florida. The other was the City of Lake Buena Vista. In both “cities,” in violation of both the U.S. and Florida Constitutions the Disney-engineered legislation established a property qualification for holding elective office, requiring that each candidate for office there "must be the owner, either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated in the City" in order "to be eligible to hold the office of councilman." Though enacted by the legislature, this and other crucial pieces of Disney-enabling legislation, which would reshape central Florida and affect the lives of tens of millions of people, was written by teams of Disney lawyers working in New York at the Donovan firm, and in Miami at Helliwell's offices. Disney lawyers in California signed off on the text before it was flown to Tallahassee where, without changing a word, Florida’s compliant legislators enacted it into law. “No one thought of reading it,” one ex-lawmaker later remarked. Later, after the houses there were sold, compliant legislatures excluded all the residents of Celebration from Disney’s domain, to prevent them from voting. Those who were there never forgot the day Disney inaugurated what truly would be a magic kingdom in Florida – magically above the law. The Governor and his Cabinet came down from Tallahassee. TV crews were in attendance, along with Florida's most eminent civic leaders. Right on schedule, the curtains parted. On the screen, Walt Disney gave his much beloved, self-deprecating smile, then announced that in Florida he was going to create a new kind of America, not just a theme park. If Florida, among all the many melodramas of the last 500 years, could be said to have had only one defining moment, this was it because in this place, at this particular time, the distinction between reality and fantasy—nature and names—vanished entirely. Walt Disney was dead when he made this presentation. A chronic smoker, he had died of lung cancer seven weeks earlier. As the lips of the dead Disney moved, people in the audience murmured their agreement. As his hands gestured, they nodded their approval. The posthumous Walt Disney, like the mechanical Andrew Jackson in the Hall of the Presidents, had joined Mickey, Donald, and the Sorcerer's Apprentice in that special world where it doesn't matter whether you're real or not.

A brilliantly plausible explanation for why Kennedy was nowhere near the center of Altgens #6, as readers can judge for themselves here: http://img26.imagesh...satevepost1.jpg ROFLMAO! The CENTER of the photo? ROFLMAO! Oh wait it is Paul Rigby. Photo analyst extraordinaire. [/sarcasm] Who just failed photo composition 101. Imagine that. http://photoinf.com/..._the_Don'ts.htm http://www.dpreview....-left-of-center And the list goes on and one and one. What a silly statement by Rigby, surprise surprise. I'm delighted to see that elementary comprehension remains your strong point. Or should that be your "101"?

A brilliantly plausible explanation for why Kennedy was nowhere near the center of Altgens #6, as readers can judge for themselves here: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/2439/satevepost1.jpg

Rare thing to see the truth about Kennedy's presidency on the Guardian's website. Take a bow, you patriot, you.

*http://www.amazon.co...rts and letters **http://www.amazon.co...n/dp/1620870568 ***http://www.amazon.co...tmm_hrd_title_0 Very good, indeed, Nate; and the element of DiEugenio's work for which I have the most respect. Let me for once reverse roles - why not sign on at the Grauniad and post (most of) the above? You'll find at least one supporter there, a mysterious character by the name of Anotherevertonian. A sound chap, it would appear, arguing along much the same lines.

Beyond military intervention: a 'wacko birds' manifesto for US foreign policy Never mind John McCain's jibe at those who challenge the consensus on American 'might is right', the US needs this debate Stephen Kinzer guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 March 2013 11.30 GMT The Guardian: the finest British liberal daily CIA could (and did) buy.

From the thread: Was Muchmore’s film shown on WNEW-TV, New York, on November 26, 1963? Post #115, 4 May 2008 http://educationforu...105#entry144363 The claim that Jackson was central to the process of suppressing the first version of the Z-fake looks to me, absent evidence to the contrary, a retrospective fiction promulgated to get the CIA off the hook. Plausibly, you understand.

As a wise American nearly remarked, a research community that is afraid to let its members judge truth and falsehood in an open market is not engaged in research and is most definitely not a community. It is, rather, an instrument of, and accessory to, the cover-up. Or as John F. Kennedy put it: “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

Hi Ralph, Yes, I'm happy to, but you'll have to give me time to pull all the diverse bits and pieces I collected - and which led me to the conclusions summarised above - into coherent form. I should be finished, "redecoration issues" with my teenage daughter permitting, within ten days or so. Paul PS Fascinating find with respect to the Benton Harbor News-Palladium's final edition of November 22, 1963: well done! http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/01/18/jfk-an-open-letter-to-robert-f-kennedy-jr/

Itches scratched simultaneously by the Bay of Pigs: Lanced boil of Guatemalan-style paramilitary counter-revolution Entrenched Fidel Castro in power Opened way to Red Army penetration of the island Discredited Kennedy (“soft” on Communism) Misdirected attention (real move against De Gaulle) Transformed the Dulles succession (Bissell’s chances of succeeding to Directorship of Central Intelligence ended) 5. The Dulles succession Richard Cumings. The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (NY: Grove Press, 1985), 159 Michael Holzman. James Jesus Angleton, The CIA, & the Craft of Counterintelligence (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 186-187 We know that Bissell met with Jacques Soustelle in Washington in December 1960. All together less well-known is the location of James Angleton in the summer of 1960. Confined to a sanitarium due to a “tubercular ailment,” the FBI reported: climbing mountains in the Languedoc region – in between excursions to Cathar ruins, it was claimed - of France, postcarded his wife, Cicely. As Holzman remarked, with quite admirable restraint, “It does seem remarkable he was able to go mountain climbing…so soon after leaving the hospital.”

I recently rediscovered the following piece. It's tongue-in-cheek, deadly serious, and thought-provoking - not a bad combo. Enjoy! Fidel Castro - Supermole by Servando González http://www.amigospai...rg/oagsg022.php A rare airing for the above: FIDEL CASTRO OF THE CIA http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/fidel-castro-of-cia.html "Castro's road to power was conveniently paved by the American government and media..."

Ken, What is your source for the above timing? And does the source give the precise times for the two Rather descriptions for which I have provided transcripts? If there were three, as you have stated, I take it there was no version offered at the time specified by Dunkel? Paul

Richard Trask. Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the assassination of President Kennedy (Danvers, Ma: Yeoman Press, 1994), pp.86-87. As US television coverage of President Kennedy’s funeral demonstrated beyond peradventure, few things are more injurious to rational enquiry than a scheme of state mourning (1). Or, for that matter, more tedious: By the conclusion of CBS’s live-feed from the country’s capitol, official mourning’s staples – in no particular order, sententiousness, pedantry, and lugubriousness, to name but three - had not merely triumphed, but taken human shape, by name George Herman, to whom fell the thankless task of commentating on the arrival of the country-delegations at the White House, via the North West Gate, there to pay respects to the widow within (2). Even the shadowy, fleeting shots of Pennsylvania Avenue traffic were more interesting. Like all bad things, mercifully, this coverage came to an end, and viewers were, in an instant of casual television magic, once more back in a New York studio and in the marginally less bromidic presence of Walter Cronkite. Here, things swiftly took an unexpected turn for the more interesting, as I recently discovered when viewing, not before time, some mislaid DVDs I bought a couple of years ago, each of them containing an extended segment of CBS television’s output on Monday, November 25, 1963. The DVD coverage extends to, rough guess (3), no later than about 1630hrs (EST), but it nevertheless proved sufficient to shed revealing light on the heroic labours of both Larry Dunkel (for the uninitiated, aka “Gary Mack,” the curator of Dallas’ Sixth Floor Museum), and Richard B. Trask, two stalwarts of the anti-alterationist camp. Dunkel, it will be recalled, had, in a late August 1980 edition of Penn Jones’ probing organ, The Continuing Inquiry, damned Dan Rather with a manuscript of the latter’s only television description of the Zapruder film, “aired at 6:30pm (EST)” in the course of “CBS Evening News,” on November 25. Dunkel knew it was the only such television description as a direct consequence, presumably, of his “studies,” about which he about he boasted in the paragraph preceding the transcript, and which were of such a comprehensive and vigilant nature as to compel a scathing denunciation of the CBS man’s efforts. “There are,” Dunkel boomed, “at least eight significant errors in Rather’s description” (4). So many, perish the heretical thought, that it was almost as if Rather had viewed a different, and earlier, version of the Zapruder film. One man similarly determined to banish all such non-conformist nonsense, albeit a quarter of a century later, was Richard B. Trask, whose National Nightmare on six feet of film: Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy (Danvers, Mass: Yeomen Press, 2005) sought not to belabour Rather but instead, somewhat ambitiously, to reintegrate Rather’s multiple faux-pas into a all-new meta-narrative of authenticity, in part by the addition of another Rather transcript, that of the reporter’s earlier radio description of the Zapruder film, as furnished to Hughes Rudd and Richard C. Hotelett (5). This transcript was sourced to the papers of another indefatigable upholder of the authenticity of assassination films and stills, Richard E. Sprague (6). There was, it should be noted, an interesting, if unacknowledged, shift in accounting from Dunkel to Trask. Where Dunkel insisted upon one Rather television description, but permitted the possibility of more than one radio version (7), Trask acknowledged he wasn’t sure how many descriptions had been offered – but then proceeded as if there was one and only one description on each medium (8). The truth proved more Trask, than Dunkel, but neither emerge with any credit, as will become clear. In fact, as I established from the vantage point of a desk several thousand miles away, unfettered by the meagre resources of the Sixth Floor Museum, Rather had not one, but two goes at summarizing the film within 25 minutes of the cessation of CBS’ funeral coverage, with less than 9 minutes separating the attempts. The effect of such rapid quasi-repetition was dizzying - and profoundly suspicious. Indeed, one man who appears to have found it both was Walter Cronkite: In apparent response to a piece of paper landing on his desk instructing him of the imminent return to Dallas for Rather’s second shy at the target, he became notably discombobulated as he read the news item immediately preceding the reprise. So to the text of Rather’s first televised description of the Zapruder film. It occurred sometime between 3:45pm and 4:15pm (EST), occupied just under 6 minutes of air-time, and comprised a tad over 700 words: Quite; and about to get a little more remarkable. So to Rather’s second take, offered, as noted above, a full less-than-nine-minutes later. This was a superficially pithier affair, markedly so in time (5 minutes 20 seconds, give or take), less so in word-count (688). The shift in emphasis is most obvious at the end. Repeat after me: the limousine never stopped... So what on earth was going on here? Why the manifestly hasty and crass second attempt? Well, one obvious potential explanation is that Rather’s director(s) felt it imperative to get the interpretative prism just right for viewers before the film itself was shown later that evening on CBS. Is there any evidence for such wild and irresponsible heresy? Not for the first time in this thread, it would appear so, at least, according to an intriguing passage from the Black Op Radio appearance of John Barbour, producer of the Garrison Tapes documentary (8), just over three years ago: If Barbour was - is - right, and Rather did appear on CBS Evening News on Monday, November 25, 1963, accompanied by some or all of the Zapruder film, the orthodox history of the film and its chain of possession is, irrespective of the version shown, a corpse, and its advocates discredited. But was it the same version? The enduring, systematic suppression of the full number and nature of Rather’s television appearances describing the Zapruder film on Monday, November 25, 1963, strongly suggests not. Endnotes: (1) For a British example of this universal truth, see the funeral of the assassinated Diana, Princess of Wales. (2) For an early description of Jacqueline Kennedy’s post-funeral meetings at the White House, see William Manchester. Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963 (London: Michael Joseph, 1967), 689-696. (3) In the absence of on-air time checks, or a detailed CBS log for the day, I rely based this guess on a combination of Manchester’s Death of President, NBC’s There was a President (New York: The Ridge Press, 1966), 152, in particular, and on the evidence contained within the DVD in question. (4) Gary Mack, ‘The $8,000,000 Man,’ Continuing Enquiry, Vol 5 No 1, (August 22, 1980), 3-4. http://digitalcollec...o-jones/id/1181 (5) Richard B. Trask. National Nightmare on six feet of film: Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy (Danvers, Mass: Yeoman Press, 2005), 138-142. (6) Ibid., 360, Endnote 73: “’CBS Radio Description of Zapruder Film by Dan Rather,’ from a transcript from the Richard Sprague Papers, Special Collections Division , Georgetown University Library, Washington D.C. , p.[1-3].” (7) Mack, ‘The $8,000,000 Man,’ 3: “He [Rather] apparently did one or two versions for the CBS Radio Network, and another for CBS television.” (8) Trask. National Nightmare on six feet of film, 137: “How many times Rather described the viewing of the Zapruder film on Monday is unclear.” (9) John Barbour (Dir.). The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes (1992) 96 min: http://www.johnbarbo...m/garrison.html (10) Black Op radio, show #435, August 6, 2009, 44:40 until 47:36. It used to be available, but is no longer, at this link: http://www.blackopra...chives2009.html The show in question is still obtainable, though on disc only, at the following: http://www.blackopra...m/products.html

All BBC employees had a personnel file which included their basic personal details and work record. But there was also a second file. This included ‘security information' collected by Special Branch and MI5, who have always kept political surveillance on ‘subversives in the media’. If a staff member was shortlisted for a job this second file was handed to the department head, who had to sign for it. The file was a buff folder with a round red sticker, stamped with the legend SECRET and a symbol which looked like a Christmas tree. On the basis of information in this file, the Personnel Office recommended whether the person in question should be given the job or not. A former senior BBC executive recalls seeing one journalist’s security file, stamped with a Christmas tree symbol: 'For about twelve years it had recorded notes such as "has subscription to Daily Worker” or “our friends say he associates with communists and CND activists." It is fair to say that there were contemporary memos from personnel officials adding they thought this was ridiculous. But it was still on file.‘ The names of outside job applicants were submitted directly to C Branch of M5. They were then passed on to the F Branch ‘domestic subversion', whose F7 section looks at political ‘extremists', MP’s, lawyers, teachers and journalists. After consulting the registry of files, the names were fed into MI5’s computer, which contains the identities of about a million ‘subversives'. Once MI5 had vetted an applicant their decision was given in writing to the BBC’s Personnel Office. MI5 never gave reasons for their recommendations. But, quite often, if they said a person was a ‘security risk', that was enough to blacklist him or her permanently. Members of board interviews were advised not to ask questions. And it was only when an executive or editor put pressure on the Personnel Department that MI5's decision was overruled. Extract from: Blacklist: The Inside Story of Political Vetting by Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor London: The Hogarth Press, 1988 ISBN 0 7012 0811 2

A row greeted with much cynicism at the time:

Outstanding, Robert, precisely the kind of material I’d long hoped to find, and despaired of ever doing. So now we know: JFK's first choice to supplant AWD was scuppered by a classic Angletonian sliming. I wonder (aloud) how the scupper-Hamilton-for-DCI operation ran? Was Ray Rocca hastily dispatched to unearth anything remotely useful in his voluminous Rote Kapelle notes? Were the Venona decrypts interrogated in search of a link, no matter how tenuous? The Amerasia archives thrown open in the desperate hunt for a usable morsel? Or was something simply invented & fed to Golitsyn, for conveyance to MI5’s Arthur Martin, who would in turn contact MI6’s Dick White with his non-discovery “discovery,” all amidst dark mutterings of a potential breakdown in the “special relationship”? And then, via the appalling White, to the FO, re-landing on US shores in the private bag of Ormsby-Gore? This is, after all, how the clique worked, not least in Dallas in late November 1963. Sincere thanks again - and keep it coming.

From the thread Arrogant CIA Disobeys Orders in South Vietnam: http://educationforu...=75#entry112048 Kennedy’s decision to back Lodge and recall Richardson was not the first time he had sided with an ambassador at war with his CIA station-chief, as Andreas Papandreou revealed in Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front (London: Andre Deutsch, 1971), p.80: It is a measure of the CIA’s contempt for Kennedy that Campbell was transferred to Paris (1), a capital in which conviction that the CIA had prompted the Challe putsch was matched only by the belief that Langley was now sponsoring OAS terrorism. Shades of Langley’s decision to send William Harvey to Rome at the height of the Kennedy-backed “opening to the left.” Writing of the same period in Greece, Peter Murtagh emphasises the clash between Ambassador Henry Labouisse, a Kennedy-appointee, and Agency man Campbell. Labouisse had attempted to preside over honest elections; and it was this unprecedented commitment to free and fair elections by a US Ambassador that permitted Papandreou’s Centre Union “to win not one but two elections” (2). Murtagh goes on to note: “Not long before the second general election, a number of Army generals approached the Ambassador. They asked him how the US would react to a coup to forestall a Papandreou victory. Labouisse said the US would be against such a move and cabled Washington with a copy of his answer. The State Department supported his position” (3). (1) August 1962 – see Peter Murtagh. The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p.71. (2) Ibid. (3) Ibid.

It's unquestionably one possible answer, Tom, but I have to observe, not the most likely or convincing. I wouldn't mind seeing one of your google harvests on Hamilton's background and social connections. I wonder who was his patron? Harriman? Friends of Dulles?