Paul Rigby
-
Posts
1,740 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Store
Posts posted by Paul Rigby
-
-
I, too, have been re-evaluating my attitudes, and have resolved to look at America afresh. For example, it is a little known fact, certainly in Europe, which really ought to know better, that Chechnya has a long and proud history of struggle to free itself from the iron grip of its sprawling neighbour, that infamous Stalinist redoubt otherwise known as…Slovakia. Some Americans, keen to bestow the blessings of their typically exceptional grasp of all things geographical, are determined to put that right:
http://www.independe...ya-8581341.html
http://www.rferl.org...s/24963035.html
I blame "Paulie Walnuts” for this splendid misapprehension, though interior decorators may feel less kindly disposed:
-
Boston Bombers: Role of CIA in Chechen Terror:
Islamic terror from Caucasus next phase of plan to undermine our liberty
By Kurt Nimmo, 22 April 2013
http://www.globalres...-terror/5332386
“The Chechen jihadi network is very extensive,” the neocon Walid Phares told Fox News. “They have a huge network inside Russia and Chechnya.”“They could well be supported by a significant international network,” warned Bush era neocon and former United Nations ambassador, John Bolton.
I find myself in the rare position of agreeing entirely with the ghastly Bolton: Chechen terrorism is unquestionably supported by “a significant international network,” comprising the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, and sundry US think-tanks, including…er, all the usual suspects
Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons
by Coleen Rowley, April 22, 2013
http://original.anti...nd-the-neocons/
Giuliani knows full well how the Chechen “terrorists” proved useful to the U.S. in keeping pressure on the Russians, much as the Afghan mujahedeen were used in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1980 to 1989. In fact, many neocons signed up as Chechnya’s “friends,” including former CIA Director James Woolsey.The Chechens' American friends:
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
By John Laughland, 8 September 2004
http://www.guardian....p/08/usa.russia
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?
The “Chechen Connection”, Al Qaeda, CIA and the Boston Marathon Bombings
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, The 4th Media News, Monday, 22 April 2013
http://www.4thmedia....athon-bombings/
Al Qaeda and the Chechnya Jihad
Chechnya is an autonomous region of the Russian Federation.
Among the recruits for specialized training in the early 1990s was the leader of the Chechnya rebellion Shamil Basayev who –in the immediate wake of the Cold War– led Chechnya’s first secessionist war against Russia.
During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander “Al Khattab” who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev’s return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab’s posting to Chechnya had been “arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [international] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya”.(BBC, 29 September 1999).
The evidence suggests that Shamil Basayev had links to US intelligence as of the late 1980s. He was involved in the 1991 coup d’Etat which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union. He was subsequently involved in Chechnya’s unilateral declaration of independence from the Russian Federation in November 1991. In 1992, he led an insurgency against Armenian fighters in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was also involved in Abkhazia, the largely Muslim breakaway region of Georgia.
The first Chechnya war (1994-1996) was waged in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was part of a US covert operation to destabilize the Russian Federation. The Second Chechnya war was waged in 1999-2000.
Broadly speaking the same guerrilla terrorist tactics applied in Afghanistan were implemented in Chechnya.
According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress’ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the insurgency in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. (Levon Sevunts, “Who’s Calling The Shots? Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999.)
It’s obvious that the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI in Chechnya “goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: The ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.”(Ibid)
The ISI is in permanent liaison with the CIA. What this statement signifies is that US intelligence using Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) as a go-between was calling the shots in the Chechnya war.
Russia’s main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington’s condemnation of “Islamic terrorism”, the beneficiaries of the wars in Chechnya were the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which were vying for complete control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.
The two main Chechen rebel armies (which at the time were led by the (late) Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab), estimated at 35,000 strong, were supported by CIA and its Pakistani counterpart the ISI, which played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:
“[in 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence [in liaison with the CIA] arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp,set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defence General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev.” (Ibid, emphasis added)
Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the KLA. (Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, “Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo”, Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000)
The Chechen insurgency modeled on the CIA sponsored jihad in Afghanistan has also served as a model for several US-NATO sponsored military interventions, including Bosnia (1992-1995), Kosovo (1999), Libya (2011), Syria (2011- ).
OIL AND THE BATTLE FOR CHECHNYA
A Caucasian Republic On An Oil Transit Corridor Between The Caspian And Black Seas
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/ukraine-caspian.htm
The EyeOpener- Sibel Edmonds on the Boston Bombing: The US Roots of “Chechen” Terrorism
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
http://www.boilingfr...chen-terrorism/
Show notes:
USA: The Creator & Sustainer of Chechen Terrorism
RT interviews Tsarnaev brothers’ mother
FBI Press Release: 2011 Request for Info on Tamerlan from “Foreign Government”
Terrorist incidents in Chechnya 1970 – present
Terrorist incidents in Dagestan 1970 – present
Barbarians at the Gate: Terrorism, the US, and the Subversion of Russia
By Eric Draitser, 20 August 2012
http://ericdraitser....sion-of-russia/
The complex network of terrorist organizations that operate under the banners of “separatism” and “independence” for the Caucasus region, has been at the center of the destabilization of Russia for the last two decades. Within hours of the deadly attacks, the Kavkaz Center – an organization known to be the propaganda mouthpiece of terrorist leader Doku Umarov – released an article characterizing the attacks as heroic acts and referring to the dead as “Russian puppets.” Though this would seem to be not in keeping with the Center’s stated mission “to provide reporting of events…and assistance of journalistic work in the Caucasus,” this is, in fact, very much par for the course for an organization that is funded by the US State Department and Finland’s Foreign Ministry.
Kavkaz Center has a long track record of supporting and legitimizing terrorist actions throughout the region, rationalizing atrocities committed in the name of “resistance.” In fact, Kavkaz engages in perpetual upside-down logic, referring to Russians as “terrorists” and terrorists as “heroes.” This type of Goebbles-esque propaganda is the hallmark of Western imperialist projects; most recently in the conflict in Syria, in which the Syrian National Council, Western corporate media and the like refer to terrorism and subversion as “rebellion and freedom-fighting”. Additionally, it is essential to note that Emarat Kavkaz (Umarov’s terrorist organization translated as “Caucasus Emirate”) has been listed by the United Nations as an organization associated with Al-Qaida. Kavkaz Center has been described by Umarov himself as “the official information organ of the Emarat Kavkaz.” This, of course, supports the claims made repeatedly by Moscow of the connection between Chechen and other extremists in the region and Al Qaida, a claim which, until recently, Kavkaz Center continued to deny.
Despite the fact that organs such as Kavkaz Center operate in the service of terrorists who advocate the destruction of Russia, their activity alone is not altogether significant if seen in a vacuum. Rather, it is the association of these types of individuals and organizations with the US State Department and US intelligence that makes them particularly insidious. One such entity that bears scrutiny is the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), previously known as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. As reported by Right Web at the Institute for Policy Studies, “The ACPC was founded in 1999 by Freedom House, a neoconservative organization that has worked closely with the U.S. government, receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. democratization initiatives.” This intimate relationship between the ACPC and the US State Department indicates not merely a confluence of interests, but rather a direct relationship wherein the former is an organ of the latter.
The paternalistic role of the US intelligence establishment in the ACPC is made all the more evident when one examines some of the more well known members of the ACPC including former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle and other top neocons such as William Kristol, Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, and Robert Kagan – the last two being closely associated with the inner circle of the Romney campaign. What becomes apparent in even a cursory analysis of these figures is that, despite the preponderance of neoconservatives, the top members of the ACPC are pulled from both the liberal and conservative establishments. Therefore, one can see how the ACPC represents a bipartisan consensus within the US imperialist ruling class – a consensus of aggression against Russia. What should be even more concerning to political observers is that, given the very real possibility of a Romney victory in November, Russia may see a surge in separatism and violence supported overtly or covertly by the ACPC and a future Romney administration.
The ACPC has taken the lead in championing the cause of separatism and terrorism directed toward Russia, both tacitly and overtly. After having championed the cause of former Chechen Foreign Minister Ilyas Akhmadov in his quest for asylum in the United States – subsequently granted along with a generous taxpayer-funded stipend – ACPC member Zbigniew Brzezinski went so far as to write the foreward to Akhmadov’s book The Chechen Struggle. The alliance between political figures such as Akhmadov and terrorist leaders in the region demonstrates conclusively the partnership between the various terror networks and the imperialist ruling class in the West. Moreover, it shows that, along with oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, the US and UK are still the favorite safe havens for criminals fleeing Russian justice.
The Political Context
Although the attacks of this week are tragic, their real significance is political in nature. There has been a sustained destabilization campaign waged by the West, particularly the United States, and aimed at President Putin going back to last December and the beginning of the so-called protest movement. The attempt by the Western imperialists has been to isolate Putin, demonize him, and erode his support within the country in hopes of toppling his government, thereby removing the biggest obstacle they face in implementing their hegemonic agenda. However, despite the financial backing, political demagoguery and media inundation, the attempts have entirely failed.
Once it became clear that Vladimir Putin would be reelected to a third term, the US State Department began its campaign against him. Organized and implemented by US Ambassador Michael McFaul in Moscow, the protest movement led by figures such as Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov as well as US-funded NGOs such as GOLOS and the Moscow Helsinki Group, the movement essentially sought to instigate a “color revolution” in Russia using the same tactics that had been successful in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere. However, it was soon quite obvious to political observers in Russia and around the world that this movement was nothing more than a superficial destabilization attempt that had no real traction among the Russian people.
Because of the failure of this manufactured protest movement, the tactics of subversion had to change. The imperialists had to incorporate new tactics that would either revive and grow the protest movement or inspire an international outcry. And so, we get the controversy surrounding the feminist punk band Pussy Riot. The Western media has attempted to hold up the band, which engaged in obscene and lewd acts inside a Russian church, as crusaders and martyrs for the cause of free speech. Naturally, this utterly transparent and vacuous attempt to whip up anti-Putin sentiment has, like the protest movement before it, sputtered and stalled. And so, as every covert attempt at subversion through the use of “soft power” has failed, the Western imperialists now activate their terror networks in the Caucasus to do by force what their intelligence networks failed to do by stealth: destabilize Russia.
The Geopolitical Calculus
The seemingly endless attempts to subvert the Putin government are cynically designed operations whose overarching goal is geopolitical in nature. To the US and its allies, partners, and clients, Putin represents a block that is difficult, if not impossible, to maneuver around. As demonstrated clearly in Syria, President Putin is able to successfully lead an opposition to the United States: an empire attempting to impose its hegemonic designs on the region. By using international law, the principle of national sovereignty, counter-propaganda, and countless other diplomatic weapons, Putin, along with his allies in China, has prevented the wider war that the US has tried to foment. Moreover, Putin has presented a major roadblock on the path to war with Iran, another mortal sin in the eyes of Western imperialist warmongers.
Putin’s “crimes” do not stop there. He has managed to successfully assert the right of national sovereignty over state resources, jailing or otherwise diminishing the power of the oligarchs who enriched themselves in the 1990s at the expense of the Russian people. He has successfully established the legitimacy of international institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS that exist outside the dominance of the United States and have begun to emerge as a counter-weight to NATO and other similar arms of US imperialism. Putin has also led the economic resurgence of Russia and maintained its dominance in the energy market with pipelines, exploration, and myriad deals with multinational corporations.
The common thread that unites the above mentioned achievements of President Putin is an unwillingness to be subservient to the United States. Putin has become, in the eyes of the Western imperialist ruling class, the unruly little brother who must be taught a lesson by force. And so, innocent Russians must pay with their lives for the hubris of these imperialists. As has been clearly demonstrated in Syria, Iran, Pakistan and countless other places around the world, terrorism remains the favorite weapon in the arsenal of the ruling class in the West. The attacks in Ingushetia and Dagestan are merely the latest example of this. Surely, they will not be the last.
Other links of interest
Elements of US intelligence have also backed the Chechen jihadis:
http://spitfirelist....efore-you-leap/
http://www.jihadwatc...nce-emerge.html
Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?
By Daniel Hopsicker, 22 April 2013
http://www.madcowpro...n-with-the-cia/
Boston's Jihadist Past
Long before the marathon bombing, Islamists in Massachusetts were helping militants in Chechnya.
BY J.M. Berger, 22 April 2013
http://www.foreignpo...s_jihadist_past
When Boston Marathon runners rounded the bend from Beacon Street last week, they were in the home stretch of the race. As they poured through the closed intersection, they ran past a nondescript address: 510 Commonwealth Avenue.
The location was once home to an international support network that raised funds and recruited fighters for a jihadist insurgency against Russian rule over Chechnya, a region and a conflict that few of the runners had likely ever given any serious thought.
Chechen Terrorist Networks Trace Back to the US State Department
By Brandon Turbeville
http://www.activistp...trace-back.html
The CIA and Muslim terror-gangs: roots
A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West
By Ian Johnson
http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/B006CDGPSA
Al-Qaeda: From Serving Hitler to Serving the CIA
By John Loftus, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, 7 January 2011
-
Once again, Paul, read this:
http://s3.documentcl...vs-dzhokhar.pdf
There's some of the evidence as it stands today.
Interesting that you took my passionate offering of evidence and took it personal with "incontinence," "artlessly," "you call yourself a student," and I've "learned precisely nothing." Says more about you than me.
Read the criminal complaint.
I have. It's a string of allegations knitted together by the presumption of guilt. Evidence is the stuff a prosecutor presents to a judge and jury.
Bet you we see some interesting modifications by the time - or rather, if - the young bloke is placed before a jury of his, er, FBI and CIA peers.
The latter's explanation of its funding and arming of Chechen terrorists promises to be a hoot.
-
By allegedly bombing the heavily-attended Boston Marathon with two bombs (ten seconds and 550 feet apart), allegedly killing a MIT security guard, allegedly robbing a guy after allegedly hijacking his car...
Point of order, your Honour, but is that last bit still part of the official narrative, or has it been expunged? I'm getting rather confused by all the shifts, you understand.
Point taken:
http://www.justice.g...t1304211847.pdf
Perhaps this will reduce your confusion.
Dear Mr. Rigby,
Please note the words "allegedly" added to my quoted my sentence fragment, above (and to my original post, as well, beforehand). Done so because my little 'ole pea-pickin' , bleeding (reactionary) heart just made me do it!
--Tommy
The feeblest attempt to row back from a rush to judgment I've seen in, oh, about ten minutes.
Respect.
-
No, the proper name for the sole-surviving youngster is the accused. Assuming he's permitted to survive to trial, that is.
Amazing how many extreme right-wingers float around JFK research sites these days.
Is THIS what it's come down to? The guy charged with this crime is a "sole survivng youngster" whose life is now in danger, and anyone who gets angry and points out the evidence is dismissed as an extreme right-winger? I SO much want to say something against the rules right now.
Your emotional incontinence is, to be candid, of no interest or relevance. It is also most definitely not a fit and proper substitute for the rule of law, as you have so artlessly demonstrated.
As for evidence, what evidence? A lot of law enforcement and spook briefings, many of them hopelessly contradictory, incomplete, censored, and self-serving, as relayed by the establishment transmission belt that is the mainstream US media?
And you call yourself a student of the Kennedy assassination?
You’ve learned precisely nothing.
-
[...]
So Boston was "terrorized" by these brothers?
[...]
Dear Mr. Jeffries,
Well, Don, that's what terrorists do, you know. They terrorize people. Preferably in large cities. Probably easier to spread that kind of fear in this age of instant digital communication and "social networking" than it was back in the day of, say, Ghengis Khan.
A damning indictment of the CIA's drone campaign, if ever I read one. And from such an unexpected source. Just goes to show.
By bombing the heavily-attended Boston Marathon with two bombs (ten seconds and 550 feet apart), killing a MIT security guard, robbing a guy after hijacking his car...Point of order, your Honour, but is that last bit still part of the official narrative, or has it been expunged? I'm getting rather confused by all the shifts, you understand.
Are you so absolutely convinced so soon after the ordeal that the two brothers must be innocent?So tell us, Tommy, which part of the defence have you heard so far? Or have you entirely abandoned trivial stuff like evidence, courts and that sort of flummery?
Should we start lionizing them? Calling them martyrs, perhaps?No, the proper name for the sole-surviving youngster is the accused. Assuming he's permitted to survive to trial, that is.
Amazing how many extreme right-wingers float around JFK research sites these days.
Isn't it, Tommy?
-
Angletasia
Is there any evidence, then, that Angleton ran, directly or indirectly, a prominent studio or director as a mouthpiece and celluloid front? There is, and it is compelling: His name was Alfred Hitchcock.
THE 50 GREATEST MATTE PAINTINGS OF ALL TIME
by Peter Cook
Sunday, 27 May 2012 12:35
35. Topaz (1969)
Many Hitchcock films are remembered for their more audacious special effects scenes, but Topaz stands out as a film seemingly devoid of matte-painted effects - yet a number of mattes were used to flesh out scenes without the audience being aware. As was the case with all of Hitch’s Universal pictures, Albert Whitlock was a key collaborator, and never more so than here. This view of the mansion in Havana, Cuba was a completely fabricated matte effect whereby the house, hill, town, sea and foreground are completely Whitlock’s oil paint, with just the tiny ‘slot’ of live action on a small length of the roadway to facilitate the approaching vehicle. Staggering work that, as with so much of Albert’s work, simply slips by the viewer unnoticed.
20. Saboteur (1942)
Definitely one of Hitch’s best films in my book – thrilling, cocky, fast paced and visually arresting. A sensational visual effects roller-coaster ride that’s packed with excellent matte-painted shots, miniatures and a terrifying death-by-conflagration which opens the story. John P. Fulton was Universal’s resident special effects genius, a not undeserving label for a man who had created some of the studio’s finest photographic effects over the past decade, from The Invisible Man onward. The resident studio matte artist was Russell Lawsen, though the sheer volume of mattes leads me to suspect that other artists may well have been brought in to help out. It’s difficult to choose my favourite among the dozens of mattes in Saboteur, though this shot is right up there. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
14. Vertigo (1958)
Probably one of the most iconic mattes from any of Hitchcock’s films, this Jan Domela-painted tower added to an existing Spanish Mission is one of around six key matte shots from various vantage points which form the cornerstone of this classic film, and were much imitated in later films. Special effects supervisor John P. Fulton was not the easiest man to work with by a long shot, with Domela and the other Paramount technicians constantly at odds with Fulton’s volatile personality. A shame really, as John was one of the industry’s most intuitive special effects designers, with many landmark trick shots under his belt. Terrific perspective here with invisible blending between the art and the location, courtesy of effects cameraman Irmin Roberts.
12. Torn Curtain (1966)
In putting together this list I simply couldn’t omit Torn Curtain. Part of the scenario involved a chase through an East German museum, a geographic impossibility to film due to the socio-political era in which the film was made. To solve his directorial dilemma, Hitch turned to his frequent collaborator, matte painter Albert Whitlock, with the resulting sequence presenting some of Whitlock’s best ever work in the form of some half-dozen mattes depicting the various galleries within the museum. The shot shown below is nothing short of phenomenal, with just the small staircase under actor Paul Newman being real, while the rest of the frame is a Whitlock painting. Even the tiny ‘masterpieces’ lining the walls are all a result of Albert’s skilled brushwork.
4. The Paradine Case (1948)
Hitchcock had always been a strong advocate of matte and special processes in his films with The Paradine Case displaying many amazing mattes where you’d least expect them. This shot is the highlight, one of several conceived in post-production to help strengthen the narrative. All of the shots of Gregory Peck’s tour through the mansion are painted mattes, with no physical sets at all. Under special effects chief Jack Cosgrove, matte painter Spencer Bagtotopoulis and cameraman Clarence Slifer achieved the impossible with Golden Era virtual set matte art – the sort of thing which today is widespread by way of digital imagery and a green screen – Slifer and Bagtotopoulis confidently created fabricated environments some 70 years earlier with just paintbrush, camera and an optical printer.
-
Angletasia
At the heart of the Dallas coup lay James Angleton’s Special Investigations Group: It was CI/SIG which selected and served up the patsy. This was done with complete success: Oswald was moved in and out of Russia, and, ultimately, to a post within the Texas School Book Depository at the appointed hour, with ruthless efficiency.
In stark contrast, the provision of an inanimate object, the alleged assassin’s alleged murder weapon, was characterised by an apparently ludicrous incompetence, from its inherent unsuitability to the fact of initial misidentification. How to account for the discrepancy in quality of work? Compartmentalization, and the inevitable division of labour among the coup’s directors? Perhaps, but was Angleton really content with controlling only one element of the plot, albeit a crucial one? His conduct throughout his career strongly suggests otherwise, whatever official hierarchies and policies decreed to the contrary. No, the answer would appear to lie elsewhere. In effect, that the incompetence was apiece with the efficiency – the deliberate work of a unifying intelligence. Two questions are begged: Did Angleton possess a philosophy of intelligence? And if so, what was it?
The shrewdest and most relevant explication of Angleton’s operational methodology was that produced by the Yale’s Robin Winks, English professor and some-time diplomat. If accurate, we find Angelton preferred complexity to simplicity, conceived concessions as indispensable lures and baits to deception, saw suspicion and conspiracism not as an enemy, but an indispensable weapon in his armoury:
What were the specific lessons of Ultra, Angleton wondered? If one is prepared to pay a price high enough price to deceive the enemy – if one will permit a city to be bombed, rather than warn its residents and thus reveal that one has broken the enemy’s codes (as one entirely false story concerning the alleged sacrifice of Coventry had it) one can make an unreal world real. Those with access to knowledge of one’s movements, and the enemy’s movements, must be protected at all cost: in the final analysis mercenaries, and even those simply without access, are expendable. Ultra made it clear that if a superior source is in place, agents could be sent into another system, an orchestration could be built up, to the point of layer upon layer of confirming information would also support the deception. In descending order of importance, therefore, those interested in penetration must control doubled agents, diplomatic channels (or “back channels”), cooperating agencies (such as the FBI), and the businessmen. Each level would reinforce the next. It followed, however, that if one’s own side could orchestrate an unreal world to deceive the enemy, the enemy would hope to do the same. Thus one must be suspicious of all sources and test all levels of information, examine all instructions, for any possible contribution to the unreal world that was pointed against one’s own interests. For the object, of course, was to live in a real world while thrusting the enemy into an unreal one.(1)Successful long-term deception, then, was predicated, in the compelling Winksian description of Angletonian methodology, upon:
1) Controlling the opposition through its leadership, either by turning existing established oppositionists or else creating false ones (“the superior source in place”);
2) Reinforcing the bona fides of these turned or manufactured oppositionists by multiple, incremental confirmations (“an orchestration could be built up, to the point of layer upon layer of confirming information would also support the deception”);
3) Deploying concessions, both real and pseudo, on the principle of giving some to get more (“If one is prepared to pay a price high enough price to deceive the enemy”);
4) Sacrificing, if required, expendable “own-team” assets (“in the final analysis mercenaries, and even those simply without access, are expendable”);
5) Creating, by careful coordination of 1) to 4), of a synthetic environment, populated by real people, into which the opposition would be shepherded and detained: “For the object, of course, was to live in a real world while thrusting the enemy into an unreal one.”
Was not Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman and quondam CIA asset, the classic superfluous man “without access” – to the core plot and plotters - sacrificed the better to re-launch the second version of the Zapruder fake? Wasn’t the emergence of hitherto unknown assassination scene films in late 1967, all reinforcing the reworked Z-fake, a perfect example of “multiple, incremental confirmations” at work? And what was the Z-film but an unreal world into which potential dissidents could be banished without fear or consequence, save for the transparently absurd official report he sought to crush the better to further the cover-up?
Is there any evidence, then, that Angleton ran, directly or indirectly, a prominent studio or director as a mouthpiece and celluloid front? There is, and it is compelling: His name was Alfred Hitchcock.
(1) Robin Winks. Cloak and Gown: Scholar’s in America’s Secret War (London: Collins Harvill, 1987), 342-343
-
The elite US interests arrayed against Kennedy: a snap-shot
An examination of top policy-makers’ social background helps explain their assumptions. Under Secretary Dillon was a life-long investment banker with worldwide interests. Dillon’s family firm had made a $15 million loan to the Congo in 1958 for investments in Katanga. Robert Murphy became, after his retirement, director of Morgan Guaranty Trust. Morgan was the American bank that showed the most interest in the Congo. In 1959 and 1960 Morgan was the syndicate manager and a participant in two $20 million loans to the Congo, guaranteed by Belgium. Morgan had a participation in the Banque du Congo, led by the Société Générale, the holding company that controlled the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. Further, Morgan was a principal banker for North-American mining companies with vast interests in Katanga. Thomas S. Gates, Jr., Secretary of Defense, was closely tied to Morgan interests through his family’s investment banking house, Drexel and Co. This firm has been in partnership with Morgan since 1850. Gates did not break his association with Drexel when he became Secretary of Defense.
The American ambassador to Brussels, William Burden, maintained during his ambassadorship, a directorship in American Metal Climax, whose Rhodesian copper interests were to make it the leading corporate defender of a conservative order, i.e. Tshombe, in Katanga. Therefore, one cannot exclude the possibility that the Eisenhower Administration’s perspectives on the Congo, particular its attachment to Katanga, may have been strengthened by tangible interests. Certainly, they have affected the assumptions of certain policy-makers.
Extract from: Why Did The US Want To Kill Prime Minister Lumumba of The Congo?, pp 10-11
LTC ROGER T. HOUSEN, ARMY
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE
-
Thanks for drawing attention to this piece - it's quite outstanding by any standards, and little short of remarkable for Counterpunch.
Eisenhower's reference to "recent statements and gestures of Soviet leaders" - who "give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment" - is in fact a cautious tribute to the extraordinary speed and range of reforms initiated upon Stalin's death by the briefly dominant figure of Lavrenty Beria, the former chief of secret police. These ranged from mass pardons for members of work camps, to the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe. Much of the agenda we associate with Gorbachev was drawn directly from this earlier reform programme.
The opposition to Beria's measures extended from the Soviet military to the American warfare state: we thus see the formation in this period of precisely the coalition of forces which killed Kennedy and deposed Khrushchev.
Thanks again,
Paul
-
The Birds Trailer
Ubbe Ert Iwerks (1901-1971) (pronounced "Aub", not "Oobe")
LOL I didn't see anything in the trailer that remotely resembled what was alleged with Z-film. I didn't even see birds and humans in the same frame.
Er, you weren't meant to.
The alteraationist not claim that the foreground was superimposed on a background but that movements of the people in the limo (i.e. foreground) were altered.And I seriously doubt the occupants of the limo were illuminated with sodium vapor lamps ROTF
I'm struggling with these sentences. Is this some kind of literary full Brazilian treatment? If it wasn't, it was a damn close shave.
-
The film, by the 25th, was no longer the original....
Was there an "original" in the sense you mean? Let us accept there was, if only for convenience's sake.
No, the film hadn't been altered by the time Rather saw it, not according to the contemporaneous evidence.
What you're assuming as definitive is, in essence, CIA limited hang-out, introduced to the HSCA in the mid-1970s, and elaborated upon by an elderly group of Agency loyalists before Doug Horne and the ARRB two decades after that.
The purpose of this limited hang-out was to portray the Agency as essentially passive-reactive. The real deceit, we are to believe, was being conducted elsewhere, at Kodak, by a person (or persons) unknown.
Rather could be saying anything he likes... and I have listened to his words a number of times now..."immensely detailed" ?? only in the fact that he repeats a number of times how the shots came from the TSBD 6th floor...Again, not so. When Rather began describing the film on November 25, it hadn't been sold: CBS could still have gained the film rights, and broadcast it. Are we to believe he was stupid enough to have taken the risk of repeatedly offering detailed descriptions - and for a short piece of film, they unquestionably are, from the limousine's left turn from Houston onto Elm, to Jackie's actions - only to be exposed, almost immediately, as a xxxx?
That dog doesn't hunt.
If you have links or access to these "print descriptions" I would love to see them...All I've ever seen are 2nd hand reports of what was said... not the actual statements themselves..Happy to oblige. I suspect you'll enjoy the "35 seconds" one:
Eleven early print descriptions of the Zapruder film
Seventeen early print descriptions of the Zapruder film and its contents
-
Thanks for your thoughts Paul...
The only "pre-planned" fake I can understand would be shot from the same pedastal to be used to mix in with the actual film...
These are big and interesting questions.
An obvious point arises: why would the plotters stop at preparing backing shots?
The plotters control the route, chose the assassination locus, and are faced with only a finite number of variables in the composition and order of the motorcade, all of which they have sufficient power to adjust (to) should the necessity arise.
Unless we are to believe the planning was kept entirely verbal, the basic outline of the plot must have taken the form of a narrative, storyboard or, more likely, both.
The plotters have access to the best photogrammetrists, special effects men, and camera technology then in existence.
They thus have the power to create, in advance, a synthetic environment which can be buttressed by censorship, editing, the use of planted or pseudo-witnesses, etc.
Why stop at backing shots?
Remembering the public only sees individual frames and hears the comments... all that was needed were a few people keeping their mouths shut about what they saw those first couple days.But that's precisely what they don't do: Rather's multiple descriptions on November 25 are immensely detailed. They are made before the film is allegedly sold to Time-Life later that day.
There are also print descriptions of the first version - albeit assiduously ignored by first generation critics.
But if the original was actually seen, and we cannot dismiss the slowing or stopped limo from it NOT being portrayed as such in the extant film... or the real bones and debris that DID leave JFK's right rear...or the subsequent reactions by the agents in the follow-up car, the comments of Chaney and Hargis... the quicker than normal head turns/physcial reactions in the Zfilm... the Nix/Muchmore films' treatment of Hill's movements,
the real impossibility of Hill catching a moving vehicle in two steps, etc... etc.... then the original was altered and a new original created using a single continuous roll that would now have the correct markings of an original...
I simply find it amazing that there has not been more done to more deeply question these first viewers of the film. And how easy some researchers accepted that Schwartz did not notice the limo stopping during his repetitive viewings...
Suggests to ME that like so much in this case, the testimony of those related to the film is simply not reliable or accurate... the FORWARD MOVEMENT was imo, added to the comments to add to the confusion.
Here we face what is likely an insurmountable obstacle for many in understanding the purposes of Z fake version 2: The counter-intelligence view of the utility of conspiracy for the purposes of long-range deception.
-
Disney World a new campus for CIA Caribbean operations? Based in Orlando, plausibly removed from the Cold War associations of the JM/Wave campus?
Worth remembering, David, that Disney’s original conception was very different & far grander than the present reality:
The Original EPCOT project: Walt Disney’s original vision for his Experimental Prototype Community of TomorrowIntroduction
Today Walt Disney World in Florida is the most popular vacation destination in the world. Walt Disney World includes more than 20 resort hotels, 2 water parks, 1 night-time entertainment district and of course 4 theme parks: Magic Kingdom, opened in 1971, Epcot, opened in 1982, Hollywood Studios, opened in 1989 and Animal Kingdom, opened in 1998.
Even if the original project of Walt Disney did include a Disneyland-like theme park (the Magic Kingdom as it was eventually called), the reason to build Walt Disney World was Epcot. But not Epcot as we know it today (a theme park), but Walt's Epcot, a one of kind project composed of several elements: a prototype community, an industrial park, an airport of the future and much much more...
All these elements were imagined by Walt Disney and his staff with new and advanced designs and technologies. This project was conceived between 1962 and 1966 (Walt Disney's death) and even if it did survived a couple of years it was stopped in the mid 70's and never developped. Some elements did survive in the Walt Disney World resort as we know it today but so much more was planned. Unfortunately, the project has lost its main energy: Walt.
In conception, then, what we have is something much more akin to an American version of Novosibirsk’s Akademgorodok, the Soviet center for scientific research built in 1957:
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Novosibirsk
It is – just – conceivable that it was for this that the Agency launched a sizable domestic covert op to secure the necessary Florida swamp for Disney’s (original) project.
If that's where the evidence leads, so be it.
-
My biggest question/concern at this point is why those that saw the film prior to it leaving Dallas both on Friday and Saturday talk about
1) violent FORWARD movement of JFK's head
2) YET... depris coming out the BACK RIGHT of his head... - no mention of debris falling forward onto the limo occupants OR the violent movment backward prior to this debris shooting our the back
No mention of being pushed backward - only debris... we know JFK was facing SW at the time... and his body was turned to the SW...
At the sound of the BANG! startled onlookers, unless directly to the side, would see him falling FORWARD, especially if the backward movement was actually much slower than we see and speeds up after removal of frames... "Pitching forward" "Head moved sharply forward", "move forward with considerable violence" (Rather) "head suddenly whips to the left" Schwartz
One of these witnesses, Schwartz, tells us that ne simply did not notice the limo stopping - even though he supposedly viewed the film over a dozen times ??!?
Rather, in his broadcast states "the car never stopped, it never paused"... yet this is on 11/25 and Trask states he sees the film THAT DAY...
Rather and DeLoach saw the FORWARD movement when they saw the film "shortly after the assassination"
DeLoach restates this after seeing the film the FOLLOWING weekend... (must be the altered film or a different aspect of the film being described)
Either they are lying to cover for a frontal shot... they are overstating the forward movement - or referring to a different point in the film... or they saw the altered film...
Where/when does Rather see the film on Friday?
DJ
No mystery, David, if you abandon both the traditional chrons and the nominally oppositional in favour of placing the contemporaneous evidence in chronological sequence. Stripping away the subsequent spins and fabrications give us a first version of the Z film which is both different to, and no more true than, the version with which we are familiar today.
In other words, there was an original, and likely pre-planned, fake that was hastily withdrawn and recast.
Two of Rather's televised descriptions of the Z fake (version 1) from November 25 can be viewed here: http://educationforu...240#entry262770 (#246)
-
The Birds Trailer
Ubbe Ert Iwerks (1901-1971) (pronounced "Aub", not "Oobe")
http://tvtropes.org/...p/Main/UbIwerks
http://en.wikipedia....m_vapor_process -
Review of Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
http://www.amazon.co...iews/0964060523
There is a connection between the CIA and WDW--see page 24: William Donovan (World War Two OSS chief--the forerunner of today's CIA) was a partner in the New York law firm used by Walt Disney for his Florida project. Tradecraft (as spy techniques are called) was used to hide Walt Disney Production's identity as the company acquired 44 square miles of swampland. One measure was co-opting the owner and publisher of the Orlando Sentinel, Martin Anderson. The history lesson is only part of Realityland--an enjoyable part. The role played by the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair and Walt's death and the `ghost town' opening day are all in here.
http://en.wikipedia....orrow_(concept)
http://sites.google....eoriginalepcot/
http://sites.google....at-roared-essay
On November 22,1963, Walt Disney and an entourage of his top executives flew from Tampa to Orlando searching for an East Coast Disneyland site. The night before they had checked into a Tampa hotel under assumed names to avoid tipping off the press and stirring up land speculation. Reports Walt had read on "Project Winter," as it was code-named, could take him only so far. Ever the artist, he needed to visualize the possibilities for himself.
Disney was close to selecting an expansion site after considering 13 locations in the eastern United States. An early favorite, Niagara Falls, was rejected because its winter cold would prevent the park's year-round operation. Walt wanted to avoid having a seasonal work force, fearing that carnival-type workers like those in existing amusement parks would corrupt the family atmosphere he sought to achieve. So the search turned to Florida with its natural advantages of sunshine and water.
As the plane circled south of Orlando, Walt looked down, saw the confluence of Interstate 4, then under construction, and Florida's Turnpike and exclaimed: "That's it!" What sold Disney were the roads crisscrossing beneath him which were needed to import tourists from afar to make their business plan work. Florida had fewer residents than the Los Angeles region surrounding Disneyland, yet Walt and his executives envisioned a giant pleasure palace ten times the size of Disneyland. It would not be a Florida theme park so much as an East Coast tourist spa, located in Florida.
From Orlando, the entourage flew west along the Gulf coast to New Orleans, where the members disembarked for the night. During the cab ride to their hotel they learned from the radio that President Kennedy had been shot. It was a fateful day for the nation and, for entirely different reasons, for central Florida. Walt's "that's it" reaction started a chain of events that would transform sleepy Orlando into the world's most popular tourist destination.
If Walt practiced gut decision- making, his brother Roy and others on the Project Winter team were more methodical. Returning from the fig Florida flyover, they commissioned a "Central Florida Study" to compare Orlando and Ocala as potential theme park sites, dispatching William Lund to Florida from Economic Research Associates, the Disney site consultant.
Wanting complete secrecy to avoid triggering a real estate price run-up, they contacted the company's New York counsel, William Donovan, of the firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton, and Irvine. He was the same "Wild Bill" Donovan who directed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, during World War II. Donovan procured a business card, letterhead stationery, and a phone number identifying Lund as a member of the Burke & Burke law firm, located one floor beneath Donovan and Leisure at One Wall Street in New York.
Arriving in Orlando, the 33-year- old Lund called on two banks and was steered to Florida Ranch Lands, Inc. (FRL), a real estate agency, where he met on December 9,1963, with salesman David Nusbickel. He introduced himself as William Lund from Burke & Burke in New York and told Nusbickel that he represented a major investment trust wanting information on large tracts of land near the crossing of 1-4 and the Turnpike.
The following day, Nusbickel took Lund to see three contiguous land parcels southwest of Orlando: the 12,440-acre Demetree tract, owned by Bill and Jack Demetree; the Bay Lake tract, owned by ten investors; and land east of the Demetree tract owned by Wilson and Carroll Hamrick. Lund spent a third day in Ocala before flying - through New York - back to California.
Thus, when Nusbickel called for Lund at Burke & Burke in New York on December 23, the message was forwarded to Lund in L.A. Similarly, Nusbickel wrote Lund at Burke & Burke on January 13,1964, and Lund wrote back a week later on Burke & Burke stationery, expressing continuing interest in the Demetree property. That was the last anyone at FRL heard from Lund. Meanwhile, Project Winter was moving forward, and a decisive meeting occurred at Disney's Burbank headquarters on January 16. Hanging on the walls were 30 x 40-inch visuals created from charts that Nusbickel had given to Lund. They showed the direction of future growth in Orlando, as well as drive times between major Florida cities and Orlando's many road linkages.
Supported by these materials, site consultant Lund made the case for Orlando. It had the state's best tourist by-pass traffic. It would have a good airport once McCoy Air Force Base was converted to full civilian use. It was larger and faster growing than Ocala with a stronger employment base. And it had several large proper ties available with interesting water features and convenient access. The only negative was Orlando's heavy summer rainfall. But the rain fell in short bursts, said Lund, and "did not disrupt business to any significant extent."
Accepting Lund's recommendation, Disney dispatched general counsel Robert Foster to assemble land for the project.
Secrecy now became imperative, so Foster returned to ex-spymaster Donovan, who directed him to Paul Helliwell, Miami lawyer, former OSS associate and money-launderer for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Helliwell in turn recruited the services of Roy Hawkins, a trusted veteran Miami real estate man who had developed much of Biscayne Boulevard for the Phipps family.
In short order. Project Winter operatives acquired an option on the Demetree property, bypassing FRL and using Hawkins as the broker. They also purchased an option on a 9,000-acre tract in Osceola owned by State Senator Irlo Bronson. They wanted land in both Orange and Osceola to preserve their future options, according to Foster, who was following Walt's dictum: "Whenever you deal with government, always deal with two."
The Demetree property posed a problem, because of its many "outs" - individually owned parcels within the larger tract. The land, much of it water-sogged, had been subdivided in 1912 and sold by catalogue to per sons across the country, complicating the task of land assembly. For help they turned once again to Florida Ranch Lands.
FRI's Nelson Boice remembers Roy Hawkins asking for assistance on getting the Demetree outs. Boice recalls that one thing struck him as strange: Hawkins arrived carrying FRL brochures, which had a distinctive yellow band at the bottom, under his arm. Looking back, the brochures should have tipped him off that FRL's sales work had led - through Lund – to the Demetree purchase. But he had no reason then to connect Hawkins with Lund.
The Project Winter team used dummy corporations with odd names like AyeFour Corporation to make the purchases, which led to media speculation though spring and summer of 1965 about the mystery land buyer's identity. McDonald Aircraft, Hercules Powder, Ford Motor, Hughes Tool, and even the Walt Disney Co. were among the rumored purchasers. To confound sleuths, Disney counsel Foster, who was overseeing the project, avoided flying directly between California and Florida. Since his name had appeared in a Disney annual report, he also adopted a pseudonym when he came to Florida, combining his first and middle names to become "Bob Price."
In mid-October 1965, the Orlando Sentinel identified Disney as the mystery land buyer. Improbably, the Project Winter team had maintained secrecy for eighteen months, while they assembled a 43-square mile parcel for which they paid less than $200 an acre. As for FRL, it had uncovered Disney's identity a year earlier when an FRL salesman recognized Adm. Joe Fowler, chief engineer for Walt Disney Productions, from a photo in National Geographic. Recalls Boice: "We knew, and they knew we knew, but we didn't talk about it." Still, FRL hadn't connected Disney with the mysterious William Lund, nor realized that the FRL sales work actually had led to the Demetree purchase. That connection would become clear through a series of coincidences.
After Disney announced it was coming to Orlando, a group of local officials flew Isto California at Walt's invitation to view Disneyland's impact on Anaheim. Accompanying them to California was Chuck Bosserman, an FRL salesman, who recognized the pilot of the plane, Sim Speer, an avid real estate investor. During the flight Speer gave the delegation a research report on Anaheim-area real estate. The report's author was William Lund, identified as vice president of Economic Research Associates in Los Angeles.
Curious, Bosserman arranged an appointment with the ERA vice president, discovering that he was the same William Lund who had visited FRL in Orlando. Lund told him he assumed they had figured out his connection with Disney. When Bosserman reported this to Boice, the Orlando executive realized that Disney had circumvented FRL on the Demetree property acquisition, approaching the seller through Hawkins. This bit of legerdemain by Disney resulted in a loss of an estimated $242,000 in commission to FRL and raised serious legal and ethical questions.
Boice called Hawkins and asked to meet with Helliwell and him in Miami. Taking his local attorney with him, the FRL president recalls: "We went in and everyone was smiles. We said good morning and what a lovely day it was, and then Paul (Helliwell) says 'Gentlemen, I have been directed not to talk with you," Says Boice: "It was just a complete stonewall."
Boice sued both Walt Disney Productions and Economic Research Associates, alleging that FRL was denied its 10 percent commission on the Demetree property and should have received a full 10 percent commission on the Bay Lake and Hamrick properties. On the day before the trial, the Disney Co. settled for what Boice termed a "significant amount." A stipulation prevents either side from revealing the exact figure.
Secrecy to facilitate a land deal was one thing, but Disney took advantage of the situation, in Boice's view. "They knew, no question about it, that they had an obligation to pay (gig a commission, but since there was all this secrecy, they just did not bother to come up and say 'hey fellows, we appreciate the work you did and here's your commission'."
-
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.
- Boost propaganda and morale,
-
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.
There would "be no landowners, and therefore no voter control," Disney responded, when asked how he planned to maintain control.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
Chad Emerson is the author of a new book, Project Future, that documents the origins of Walt Disney World and the lengths to which Walt Disney Co. went to keep its development plans and land purchases secret. Emerson, 37, spoke with Sentinel staff writer Jason Garcia.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
Intrigue. Master spies. Secret meetings. They seem like unlikely ingredients for the beginnings of "the happiest place on Earth," but the story of how Walt Disney World came to Florida has all of them.Author Chad Emerson will talk this week at the University of Central Florida about the saga that brought Disney World to Florida — including the amazing acquisition, piece by piece, of a 43-square-mile parcel twice the size of Manhattan.
Emerson is a law professor at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala., where his areas of expertise include law concerning land planning, intellectual property and amusement parks. He's also the author of Project Future: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Disney World, published this year.
'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.
The Boston Bombing and Dealey Plaza
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Eric Draitser on Boston false flag:
THE DAGESTAN CONNECTION
Salafism+CIA: The winning formula to destabilize Russia, the Middle East
by F. William Engdahl
13 SEPTEMBER 2012
Tamerlan Tsarnaev Attended CIA-sponsored Workshop
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
April 24, 2013
Boston Terror Updates & Developments
CIA MO Not the FBI, Contradictions from Dagestan, Recent Shooting Incident in Dagestan, Georgia-NATO-Russia & More
By Sibel Edmonds
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
America: The World’s Number One Sponsor Of Terrorism
By Garikai Chengu
April 23, 2013