World Commerce Corporation and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas

[Leslie Sharp]

@Ed Berger
I think this bears repeating:
 

According to Ralph Ganis, author of “The Skorzeny Papers: Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK,” Otto Skorzeny was aware of all operational aspects of [Johannes] Bernhardt’s SOFINDUS and its agent network. The seizure of Nazi assets in Spain by the Allies made public in news reports on September 25, 1945, included those held by Bernhardt’s SOFINDUS which Ganis says also provided cover for a vast Nazi network that extended into South America, and that the timing of the seizure of assets in Spain coincides with the foundation of the BACC soon to be named WCC which took advantage of Skorzeny’s particular skills. 

Before pursuing WCC in depth, in 1953, Bernhardt of SOFINDUS whose expertise included export-import of agricultural products and attendant commodities futures, established a major operation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, prompting our interest in what came to be called “the great salad oil swindle,” the financial scandal that had been brewing since 1962 but culminated the morning of November 22, 1963, just two hours and fifteen minutes before Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. The alleged swindle, reported in depth by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Norman C. Miller of The Wall Street Journal implicated the Buenos Aires-based agri-business conglomerate, Bunge Corporation, the largest customer of New Jersey based Allied Crude Vegetable Oil. Allied’s president Toni DeAngelis, guilty of a bizarre scheme to mislead inspectors responsible for measuring the amount of oil stored in massive tanks with American Express Field Warehousing Corp, claimed that Bunge had started short selling his stock around November 15. Bunge executives denied the claim. As reported in “Mind Control, Oswald & JFK: Were We Controlled” by Kenn Thomas and Lawrence Lincoln, the under analyzed financial crisis on the morning of November 22 that had been triggered by the salad oil scandal, and the assassination of Kennedy cannot be coincidental. Their research provides us a distinct thread to warrant reasonable suspicion that Skorzeny’s fellow Nazi and close business associate, Johannes Bernhardt was likely involved in the near collapse of the US commodity market as part of a greater agenda—an agenda summed up in a cautionary State Department memo of the period—to destroy or invalidate democratic capitalism and establish planned economy on a global scale through the agency of strong totalitarian governments.

. . . As evidenced in his private papers, by the early 1950s, Skorzeny was very much involved financially and operationally with WCC. Over the years the WCC had acquired the majority stock in worldwide trading group Biddle Sawyer Corp. headquartered in NYC which dealt in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, botanical drugs, waxes, gums, and essential oils. The transaction secured Anthony J. Drexel Biddle a membership on the board of WCC. In 1961, Biddle became US Ambassador to Spain, placing him in close proximity to Otto and Ilse Skorzeny, arms merchant Victor Oswald, and Johannes Bernhardt among various other “former” Nazis ensconced in Madrid. 

            Biddle returned to the US in April ’62, and World Commerce folded, allegedly for tax reasons, on August 31st of that year with reported gross income from trading—commodities included—to commissions and interest to just under $1 million with a total net income of $514,000, a far cry from its first year of operation, 1947 when it posted a $50,000 loss. This history of conglomerates tied directly to global commodities markets while at the same time serving as fronts for political and intelligence operations, contributes to the argument that the stock scandal with the valued food commodity vegetable oil—mostly soybean—at its center, brewing since 1962 and climaxing hours before the assassination deserves greater coverage whether tied directly to this investigation or not. 

Chapter Notes:

 

The Great Salad Oil Swindle, Norman Miller. Tino De Angelis, a New York-based commodities trader who bought and sold vegetable oil futures contracts around the world. In 1962, De Angelis started a huge scam, attempting to corner the market for soybean oil, used in salad dressing. In the aftermath of the salad oil scandal, investors in 51 banks learned that he had bilked them out of about $175 million in total ($1.2 billion in year 2000 dollars). Miller won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting on the De Angelis story. 

The World Commerce Corporation: Anthony Cave Brown, examining a letter written by WCC President Frank Ryan to General Lucius Clay*, contends that the primary function of WCC was to aid in building up the post-WW2 productive capacity of Germany as a bulwark against a potentially encroaching Soviet Union, and that may well be the case.

Prof. Peter Dale Scott who has studied the assassination of President Kennedy for decades, offers a potent hint of a deeper clandestine reality, which bespeaks important connections with the narrative of this book: “…George White’s closest CIA contact, James Angleton, was still working for the US Army at this time (1947), reporting to future Army G-2 and DIA chief William Quinn. And when White turned up in Italy to meet with his former OSS boss William Donovan, Donovan was not working for CIA, but for the elusive World Commerce Corporation, a private intelligence service representing wealthy Americans like Nelson Rockefeller…CIC (China), a subsidiary of Donovan’s World Commerce Corporation, was the firm that employed mob figure Sonny Fassoulis, at the urging of army colonel (and FBN agent) Garland Williams, to procure arms for Taiwan in the period of private procurement before the Korean War.” 

 *General Clay — who was replaced in Berlin by civilian high commissioner John Jay McCloy, the brother in law of Lewis Douglas (both of whom were related by marriage to Germany's first post-war chancellor Konrad Adenauer) — was on the board of American Express along with Lewis Douglas. AE was the parent company of the AE Warehouse division involved in the Bunge - de Angelis "Vegetable Oil Swindle."  Douglas was also on the board of Empire Trust as well as Phelps Dodge in Arizona which purchased majority shares of a small mining concern near Tucson founded by the family of Cicely d'Autremont who married James Jesus Angleton.  General Clay was also on a small company board which provided cover for the infamous John "Frenchy" Grombach (native of New Orleans where his father served as French consul), the founder of The Pond, an unconventional intelligence operation that attracted less than savory characters throughout Eastern Europe; The Pond — too long ignored in this investigation — vied for funding as the OSS transitioned to the CIA. For instance, one of Grombach's more credible agents was James MacCargar who years later was identified as having rescued former Hungarian PM Ferenc Nagy who would assume the face of Permanent Industrial Expositions (Permindex). 
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/MCCARGAR%2C JAMES_0158.pdf

Edited August 12, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Ed Berger]

22 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Tanganyika Concessions owns a 90 per cent interest in the Benguela Railroad, which serves the copper and uranium mines in the Belgian Congo. It also owns a 14 per cent interest in the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, the large Belgian mining company which owns and operates these mines.

@Ed Berger
' . . . It is first important to understand the stall in the Skorzenys’ purchase of property [in Ireland] between June 1957 and 1959. The delay is best explained by Stuart Smith who writes in the aforementioned biography of Skorzeny, “In fact, in 1958, the remaining war crimes charge hanging over Skorzeny—concerning atrocities in Czechoslovakia—had been rescinded by Austria. As a token of its good faith, his home country at last issued him a passport… That left the Irish government grappling with the nebulous rumors including Skorzeny’s alleged involvement in arms-trafficking with the National Liberation Front (FLN).” 

            Smith suggests there were rumors that had to be discarded, one linking Skorzeny to the flight of Adolf Eichmann to Egypt, but other rumors that Ireland’s intelligence service (Peter Berry included) missed. “One was a proposed 1958 mission to kill Fidel Castro on behalf of Fulgencio Batista… and the other was allegations that Skorzeny assisted in Moise Tshombe’s 1961 secession from the newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo* by training some thirty Katangan rebels in Spain.” This effort was endorsed by Americans, perhaps only nominally but in some instances, we have reason to believe they provided more than passive support. For instance, we know that Dallas oilman and executive for [Bronfman's] Empire Trust, John A. “Jack” Crichton who was Lafitte’s man on the ground in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was a signatory of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters. 

*keeping in mind the apparent friendship between Moishe Tshombe and Jaroslav Stetzko as evidenced in the latter's approach to his friend General Edwin Walker in 1964 to ask that he extend the Katangan leader-in-exile in Spain an invitation to the US. 

. . . 

Dulles continued to communicate regularly with close associate William A. M. Burden during 1962 and early 1963. Burden, the great-great grandson of the founder of the Vanderbilt wealth, railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, who maintained a business office at a New York City address (630 Fifth Avenue) in which Dulles was also ensconced, ran the gamut of US national policy and prime corporate positions. Burden served on the boards of the Hanover Bank, Lockheed Aircraft Co., and CBS during his lengthy career. He had been a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and founded a family investment firm that bears his name today. During the Second World War he had been a Special Assistant for Research and Development to the Secretary of the Army Air Force. 

            Following a heavy campaign contribution to the 1956 Presidential campaign of Dwight Eisenhower, Burden was granted an ambassadorship to Belgium, a position he held from 1959–1961, during the period of time that the former imperialist power was struggling to hold on to the remnants of past wealth and national glory. After the ascension to power in the Congo of charismatic leader Patrice Lumumba, Burden strongly felt the threat that Lumumba’s independence posed to Belgium’s long-time pre-eminence in the mineral-rich Congo, and was lobbying his long-time friend Dulles for action against Lumumba in 1959. 

            Dulles, Burden, and the State Department’s C. Douglas Dillon led the charge to persuade President Eisenhower to take serious action against Lumumba, culminating in an August 1960 “direct approval” by Eisenhower of Dulles’s backing of a plot to assassinate Lumumba. While the US-Belgian war to eliminate the Congolese leader moved forward in 1960–61, journalist James Phelan would report receiving a postcard from the Congo, mailed by his friend and clandestine source Pierre Lafitte, who was engaged in…something in that embattled country at the time. — Coup in Dallas

 

Associated in the purchase of the shares were the International Basic Economy Corporation, an international development corporation of the Rockefeller family, and David Rockefeller. It was asserted that none of the shares would be reoffered for public sale in this country. 

 At a meeting in London yesterday Harry B. Lake, a partner in Ladenburg, Thalmann, and Alexander L. Hood, formerly ith that concern, were elected directors of Tanganyika Concessions. George Murnane, a partner in Lazard Freres, also was named a director. 

. . . Historian Anthony Cave Brown writes: “The BACC officers contemplated at formation were Pepper (president), Ogilvy and Merten (vice-presidents), and Thomas William Hill (secretary). Hill gave his address Room 3606, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City—the same address as that of Intrepid’s British Security Coordination organization, although other reliable records indicate that while indeed located in Rockefeller Plaza, the BSC offices were at 600 Fifth Ave., the International Building (located in the complex with architectural twins La Maison Francaise and the British Empire Building) where Allen Dulles leased a private office when he was ousted from the CIA. 

            At first Donovan appears to have played no formal part in the establishment of either BACC or WCC, although his law firm, at that time known as Donovan Leisure Newton Lombard & Irvine acted as legal advisers.” (A few amateur historians have written that Allen Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, served as advisers to BACC and WCC, but we found no hard evidence of that. Additionally, it has been written that Dulles encouraged Donovan to participate in BACC and WCC, but again no hard evidence of that was found.) This leads us to speculate that Donovan may have initially been the “face” of WCC rather than the inspiration as those listed in early documents for WCC include Harry Beaston Lake and W. W. Cumberland, both investment bankers at the firm Ladenburg Thalmann, 25 Broad St. NYC. 

            In 1879, American banker Ernst Thalmann, teamed up with Adolph Ladenburg, the scion of a German banking family. As confirmed in “History of Ladenburg Thalmann,” by World War II the firm was providing banking services for British Security Coordination (BSC), including acquisition of foreign currency which was required in small denominations by a plethora of British covert wartime agencies as well as escape packs for Allied aircrew. The SOE turned to the BSC, and the close links between the BSC and Donovan's OSS meant that there was continual collaboration between all three entities in support of this task. Harry Lake and Bill Donovan shared an address at the exclusive One Sutton Place for a number of years. It should be noted that Lake was on the board of the American Moroccan Corporation, which will have greater relevance as we pursue the role of Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. in Chapter 5.  — Coup in Dallas

 

Leslie, this bit: 

Quote

“One was a proposed 1958 mission to kill Fidel Castro on behalf of Fulgencio Batista… and the other was allegations that Skorzeny assisted in Moise Tshombe’s 1961 secession from the newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo* by training some thirty Katangan rebels in Spain.” This effort was endorsed by Americans, perhaps only nominally but in some instances, we have reason to believe they provided more than passive support. For instance, we know that Dallas oilman and executive for [Bronfman's] Empire Trust, John A. “Jack” Crichton who was Lafitte’s man on the ground in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was a signatory of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters. 

seems so critically important here. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett seem to suggest, in their book Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, that the Rockefeller stake in the Congo-based monopoly was, among other things, a catalyzing factor in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in January 1961. After all, we have here the specter of American capital (Rockefeller interests) and a key nexus of Anglo-American economic and political power (Ladenburg, Thalmann) having become effectively the backers of Belgian neocolonialism in Africa. Imperial preservation, in so many words. Colby and Dennett point out that the Tanganyika Concessions were not the only Rockefeller holdings in the region: Laurance Rockefeller, for example, held a Congolese textile mill called Filatures et Tissage Africains. One of his fellow investors was none other than C. Douglas Dillon. 

There's another odd line that leads sideways from this towards Canadian intrigue, where familiar names begin to pop up with alarming regularity. The Belgian interests that held the sizable chunk of Union Miniere, Societe Generale, maintained a Canadian mining holding called Sogemines, Ltd. Sogemines, in turn, held Canadian Petrofina, the Canadian arm of the giant Belgian oil company. (Worth keeping in mind that American Petrofina had absorbed Panhandle Producing and Refining Company, which had been an affiliate of the Atlas Corporation. The head of Panhandle, Roger Gilbert, was a vice president of the Atlas Corporation and a director of the WWC). 

Two of the directors of Sogemines, J.R. Timmins and Jean Raymond, were directors of Noranda Mines, one of the mining interests owned and controlled by James Y. Murdoch—a president of the Bank of Nova Scotia and one of the Canadian board members of the WCC. 

This Jean Raymond held an additional directorship at Dosco, a steel-producing company owned by A.V. Roe, a company where Wood, Gundy exerted significant influence. Wood, Gundy, in turn, was one of the entities that helped organize the WCC. But there are additional connections: throughout 1957, A.V. Roe began to scoop up shares of Algoma Steel, a company held by the estate of James Dunn. The executor of Dunn's estate, and thus the person who managed this sale, was Canadian technocrat C.D. Howe, who during the war had served as head as the Minister of Munitions and Supply. Serving under him were E.P. Taylor and W.E. Phillips, both of the WCC and the organizers of the Argus Corporation (formed with Atlas Corporation capital). 

Howe also sold large Algoma shares to a curious German company, Mannesmann steel. Libbie and Frank Park (The Anatomy of Big Business) have the following to say about Mannesmann: 

The Mannesmann firm and the Dunn estate are now the largest shareholders in Algoma. Mannesmann is one of the major steel companies of the Ruhr, in existence since 1885. The association with Algoma had begun before the death of Sir James Dunn. In 1953 the Mannesmann Tube Co. (a subsidiary of Mannesmann Steel) had built a $20 million plant at Sault Ste. Marie, based on steel from Algoma.

W. Zangcn, chairman of Mannesmann since 1934, was a former member of the N-a-z-i party and of the SS; he was one of the group of big German industrialists who financed the Nazi rise to power and provided the armaments for the N-a-z-i war machine. In the days of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Mannesmann opened short-lived affiliates in Kiev and Dniepropetrovsk. The Mannesmann board includes figures from the Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank of West Germany. Zangen is a director of Algoma Steel.

[Leslie Sharp]

The following random notes for the softcover edition of Coup in Dallas — a work in progress as Albarelli and his coauthors wrapped up the first edition, published posthumously in November 2021. 

 

 

. . . Hank made the point that one can’t engineer Willoughby, Walker, [Algur H.] Meadows, [Robert G.] Storey, Crichton out of the equation — using only Crichton’s Military Intel role with the 488th as an excuse — when he had been employed as the face of Empire Trust's petroleum industry investments,  White Hall, Dorchester,  etc., since the war; after all, the original mandate of the 488th was to provide intel to the oil industry, and particularly Texas independent oil interests. This was a symbiosis of industry and intel/military (not vice versa) — coming together when necessary to remove democratically elected leaders who weren't going to fall in line — having nothing to do with advancement of global democracy.

 

Settling on the broad conclusion that THE C.I.A. and Army/Naval Intel were exclusively behind the assassination in Dallas does not accurately summarize Hank’s investigation nor does it fully reflect what Lafitte recorded.  

For example, how do Rosser Reeves and Charles Spofford fit neatly into THE CIA/Army/Navy Intel hypothesis?  

A page from the financial ledger maintained by Pierre Lafitte brings CIA agent Countess Aline {Griffith) Romanones' story full circle (seen above); PL records, Using old American Oil Mission cover with Harvey (JA), which is clear reference to Aline’s former American Oil Office in Madrid. This particular ledger sheet also includes the names of Willoughby — a primary suspect in this investigation — Conrad Hilton [Hilton Hotels and board member of General Dynamics behind the F-111 scandal which Bobby Baker was embroiled in during the autumn of ’63], ad man Rosser Reeves who was the brother-in-law of David Ogilvy —author of the mission statement for Dulles' and Donovan’s World Commerce Corporation, and Charles Spofford, Gen. Eisenhower’s trusted confidant who along with David Ogilvy ran Ike’s presidential campaign coining the tag, “I Like Ike.” The other name, “Rothermel,” can be safely assumed to refer to Paul Rothermel, chief security and confidant of Dallas oilman H. L. Hunt. Not only was Hunt a financial benefactor of Willoughby and General Edwin Walker - both staunch members of the John Birch Society, and both identified in the Lafitte datebook - he had aggressively promoted Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the ideal presidential candidate; MacArthur was a long-term resident of the Waldorf Astoria Towers, managed by Conrad's Hilton Hotels in NYC. Others referenced in this particular ledger including Wm King Harvey, are del Valle - clear reference to Gen. Pedro del Valle featured throughout Dr. Caulfield's expose on Gen. Walker and his role in the Dallas plot, and Frank "Brandy" Brandstetter - a vital cog in Crichton's 488th - and hotel manager of Conrad Hilton's property in Havana.

Aline’s service to Ryan, the president of WCC based in Madrid, and Lafitte's reference to her old cover, American Oil confirm the continuity of Cold War intelligence operations to the assassination in Dallas.

CiD excerpt:

At the end of the war, in April 1945, we now know that Frank Ryan helped his boss, William Donovan and William Stephenson (Intrepid), formerly of the SOE, form the BACC, the first incarnation of the World Commerce Corp.

Countess Aline’s recollections of the formation of BACC and WCC, written in 1991, are especially insightful and raise several intriguing issues:

In August 1945, a cable came in from Washington ordering the immediate return

of all OSS employees in Spain

and the termination of all networks that had been working for us. It was a hasty move and created much distress among our staff. The same week, I received a surprise. An OSS official from Washington visited and informed me that I was the only one of our SI group to be kept on for work in a super-secret organization inside Spain. I was told this would depend on my being able to get my visa extended to permit me to remain in the country. 
 

Said Aline shortly before she died on December 11, 2017:

It was [different] after eight or nine years. Otto [Skorzeny]

came in as leader and everything changed . . . everything went through him.

For me it was for the better.

With the [assassination] transfer to Otto

we were far more sophisticated. More weapons at our use . . . anything really . . . staff I didn’t know we had use of . . it became very sophisticated, more widespread. I was soon out of it. . . . I didn’t want to know half of what we were doing. 

Rosser Reeves and David Ogilgy:

Ogilvy’s first wife was the sister of Rosser Reeves’ wife. And it was not just David with whom Reeves shared a close relationship in the Ogilvy family, Reeves enjoyed a long and deep relationship with Francis Ogilvy, David’s older brother and member of the management team at Mather & Crowther, one of London’s top agencies. Their first exchange of letters located in the archives was in 1946 when Reeves was contemplating a trip to England. In fact, Reeves was proposing that Francis pay the expenses for Reeves and his wife to travel to England for a winter trip. In return for paying for the travel and lodging, Reeves would in turn provide instruction and advice to the teams at Francis’ agency (Reeves to F. Ogilvy 30 1946).

The letters between Reeves and Francis and Aileen Ogilvy are numerous and touching in tone, underscoring the deep friendship and affection the couples shared. Clearly, the families enjoyed a close and intimate friendship. Vacations were taken together. During business trips, Reeves and Francis Ogilvy attempted to get together for dinners. The letters and the relationship continued for decades

Of course, there was a business side to the relationship as Reeves had an international vision for his agency that would include offices in key countries around the globe. Clearly, his idea for England included a relationship with Mather & Crowther, of which Francis was the Managing Director (Reeves to Pinkham, 31 July 1962).

 

Ogilvy, founder of the advertising firm Ogilvy Mather, worked out of The Man Called Intrepid Wm Stephenson's New York City office as the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) liaison to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war. Ogilvy and Stephenson later established the British American Canadian Corp., out of which Permindex was spawned.

(a quick look at Ogilvy on wiki):

During World War II, Ogilvy worked for the British Intelligence Service at the British embassy in Washington, DC. There he analyzed and made recommendations on matters of diplomacy and security. According to a biography produced by Ogilvy & Mather, "he extrapolated his knowledge of human behaviour from consumerism to nationalism in a report which suggested 'applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence.'"[7] Eisenhower’s Psychological Warfare Board picked up the report and successfully put Ogilvy’s suggestions to work in Europe during the last year of the war.

Also during World War II David Ogilvy was a notable alumnus of the secret Camp X, located near the towns of Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. According to an article on the:[8] "It was there he mastered the power of propaganda before becoming king of Madison Avenue. Although Ogilvy was trained in sabotage and close combat, he was ultimately tasked with projects that included successfully ruining the reputation of businessmen who were supplying the Nazis with industrial materials."[9]

Most of the leading figures in the company were formerly in the British Security Coordination (BSC) and the Office of Strategic Service (OSS). The company used barter agreements and dollar guarantees to get around currency restrictions that slowed world trade. Tom Hill, who worked for the World Commerce Corporation later recalled: "The idea was to take advantage of the organization and international contacts that were set up during the war... The goal was to set up various companies, mostly in Central and South America."

Roald Dahl argues that the original idea came from David Ogilvy who argued that "we all needed jobs in civilian life." Dahl claims that Stephenson liked the idea and circulated copies of Ogilvy's paper to some of the wealthy people he worked with during the war and some of them put up capital. Other people involved in the organization included Lord Beaverbrook, Ian Fleming, Ivar Bryce, Henry Luce, Nelson Rockefeller, John McCloy, Edward Stettinius, Charles Hambro, Richard Mellon, Victor Sassoon, Roundell Palmer, Ralph Glyn, Frederick Leathers, William Rootes, Alexander Korda, Campbell Stewart (director of The Times) and Lester Armour. Another business associate during this period was William Formes-Sempill, who we now know was a Nazi spy during the Second World War. It has been suggested by Thomas F. Troy, a senior officer in the CIA, believed Stephenson continued to be involved in intelligence activities.

 

In addition to Rosser Reeves mentioned in the ledger sheet seen above, the name Reeves with a $ sign appears in Lafitte's 1963 datebook.  The entry is wedged within a series of entries noting activities of notoroious arms manufacturer/gun runner and purported CIA contractor Mich WerBell; based on the association some five years later reflected in the following, we conclude Reeves in the datebook is ad man Rosser Reeves' son Rosser Scott Reeves III:

Rosser Reeves III and Mitchell WerBell III:

The Quantum Corporation

In 1969, a group of investors from New York know as the Quantum Ordnance Bankers began investing in the Military Armament Corporation. On 11 June 1969, the Military Armament Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Quantum Ordnance Bankers, Inc. (who later changed their name to the less conspicuous Quantum Corporation) of New York. Quantum, headed by Rosser Scott Reeves III, was a holding company that was formed by a group of wealthy Wall Street financiers [including Oppenheimer & Co.] to pump millions of dollars into the fledgling Military Armament Corporation. The deal would eventually prove to be an unfortunate decision for both Mitch WerBell and Gordon Ingram.

https://smallarmsreview.com/sar-goes-back-to-mac/

 

Edited August 13, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Robert Montenegro]

deleted by author.

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by Robert Montenegro

[Robert Montenegro]

deleted by author

[Leslie Sharp]

@Ed Berger Did the Schley family surface in your Canadian research?

 

DEMISE OF THE HOWE SOUND COMPANY

141 In 1917 Grant B. Schley, the president of Britania’s parent Howe Sound Company, passed away in New York. Throughout his presidency, Schley had given steady support to the Britannia operation. He was succeeded as president by his son Evander B. Schley, who passed away in 1952. A third generation Schley, Reeve Schley, who had been vice president of Howe Sound for some years, succeeded Evander Schley. During the tenures of Grant Schley and Evander Schley, Howe Sound became a successful indirect owner of a number of mines, including the Holden copper mine in Washington (Chelan Copper Mining Co.), the Blackbird cobalt mine in Idaho (Calera Mining Co.) the Snow Lake gold mine in Manitoba (Howe Sound Exploration Co.) and mines in Mexico. In 1949, the operating revenues of Howe Sound were over 19 million US$ and the total income was almost 3 million US$. Britannia Mining and Smelting Company was its premier asset. However, in 1957 Howe Sound lost nearly 10 million US$ due to falling metal prices and was forced to restructure. In 1958, it merged with Haile Mines Inc., a producer of tungsten concentrates and metallurgical grade manganese from mines in Nevada and North Carolina. A new company was incorporated in Delaware with the old name of Howe Sound Company (Howmet Corporation 2010).

142 The president of the new Howe Sound Company was William M. Weaver, Jr., the former president of Haile Mines. Weaver’s strategy was to transform the new Howe Sound Company from a mining to a manufacturing company. He reportedly told a New York Times reporter that "manufacturing is not as risky as mining". The new Howe Sound Company liquidated the Britannia Mining and Smelting Company and assumed direct ownership of Britannia Mines. The Britannia operation was put up for sale, along with the other mining ventures, and by 1962 less than 5% of the new Howe Sound Company’s revenue was from mining.

143 After the legalities of liquidation had been completed, the Britannia Mining and Smelting Company was struck off the BC Registry of Companies in 1964. The new Howe Sound Company’s name was changed to Howmet Corporation in 1965, and in 1970 the company became a subsidiary of the French aluminum company Pechiney (Howmet Corporation 2010).

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/gc/article/view/18783/20600

 

 

[Leslie Sharp]

@Ed Berger @Robert Montenegro

 

At first Donovan appears to have played no formal part in the establishment of either BACC or WCC, although his law firm, at that time known as Donovan Leisure Newton Lombard & Irvine acted as legal advisers.” (A few amateur historians have written that Allen Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, served as advisers to BACC and WCC, but we found no hard evidence of that. Additionally, it has been written that Dulles encouraged Donovan to participate in BACC [British-American-Canadian Corporation] and WCC, but again no hard evidence of that was found.) This leads us to speculate that Donovan may have initially been the “face” of WCC rather than the inspiration as those listed in early documents for WCC include Harry Beaston Lake and W. W. Cumberland, both investment bankers at the firm Ladenburg Thalmann, 25 Broad St. NYC. 

            In 1879, American banker Ernst Thalmann, teamed up with Adolph Ladenburg, the scion of a German banking family. As confirmed in “History of Ladenburg Thalmann,” by World War II the firm was providing banking services for British Security Coordination (BSC), including acquisition of foreign currency which was required in small denominations by a plethora of British covert wartime agencies as well as escape packs for Allied aircrew. The SOE turned to the BSC, and the close links between the BSC and Donovan's OSS meant that there was continual collaboration between all three entities in support of this task. Harry Lake and Bill Donovan shared an address at the exclusive One Sutton Place for a number of years. It should be noted that Lake was on the board of the American Moroccan Corporation, which will have greater relevance as we pursue the role of Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. in Chapter 5. 

            In a convenient web of other addresses, Donovan’s law partner, George Stanley Leisure lived at 640-660 Park, sharing a prestigious address with J. Russell Forgan, another founding board member of World Commerce. Leisure was on the board of financial investment giant Empire Trust whose web extends over time to those active on the ground in Dallas that managed the immediate aftermath of the assassination. Forgan’s company, Glore Forgan was heavily invested in J. Peter Grace’s W. R. Grace & Co., a global maritime shipping concern. Grace, the first Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a.k.a. the Knights of Malta, in America, sat on Forgan’s board for decades. 

            Of note, at the height of the war, the man at the official helm of the SOE, Roundell Palmer, the 3^rd Earl of Selborne, was also in charge of economic warfare, placing him in close proximity to decisions involving the services Ladenburg Thalmann provided. Reporting directly to Lord Selborne was Viscount Frederick Leathers, a former Minister of Transport who was placed in charge of war support. For those more familiar with the esotericism that pre-occupied the shadows of power at the time, both in the US and Britain, both men were alleged members of the Prieuré de Sion, a neo-chivalric fraternal order with alleged roots in the Crusades, established legally in 1956 in France. In an instance of continuity, Viscount Leathers later appears in the roster of board members of the World Commerce Corporation. 

            Brown explains that among those legal advisers [Donovan and Leisure’s firm] was Lt. Col. Otto C. Doering, Donovan’s second in command at the OSS. Donovan only became an official director of WCC in October 1947. At the same time, Edward R. Stettinius, Secretary of State from November 1944 to July 1945, who had substantial holdings in WCC joined the board. According to Brown, in due course a number of other people prominent in intelligence and special operations joined the firm, as directors, officer, or shareholders. They included J. Russell Forgan of the Glore Forgan group of merchant bankers (and future career ambassador David Bruce’s successor as chief of OSS Europe; Lester Armour (former deputy chief mission to Moscow who would inherit the chairmanship of the Swift Armour packing company of Chicago); W.K. Eliscu (a member of Donovan’s OSS staff); Lieutenant Colonel Rex L. Benson (staff member of the British Secret Intelligence Service and chairman of merchant bankers Robert Benson and Company of London. Here it should be noted that Benson was the lead SOE interrogator of Otto Skorzeny after his surrender. Brown adds that the WCC board also included several persons who had been prominent in the Canadian intelligence services.

            In addition, Brown tells us that people with intelligence connections, but not formally members of any intelligence service, took an interest in the corporation. They included Nelson Rockefeller (son of John D., and former coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, an organization with intelligence responsibilities and associations in South America); John Jay McCloy (former undersecretary of the War Department and high commissioner in Germany) Richard Mellon (of Gulf Oil corporation); and Sir Victor Sassoon. The list of WCC board members and “interested parties'' reflects America and Britain’s future power brokers that would influence matters on a global scale as the Cold War escalated. 

            With so many powerful corporate titans interested in the WCC, in hindsight the holding company emerges as a quango, an acronym for ‘quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organization, a term coined in the 1970s inspired by remarks of the president of Carnegie Corporation in 1967 describing “a genus of organization which represents a noteworthy experiment in the art of government.” Were the founders of the WCC following European models established under fascist regimes for the control of and profit from global supply chains and markets, and did that agenda require the services of the sophisticated intelligence apparatus established by Donovan and Stephenson being shuttered by democratically elected government officials after the war? A former employee of WCC recounts, “The idea was to take advantage of the organization and international contacts that were set up during the war… The goal was to set up various companies, mostly in Central and South America.” And as British writer and wartime intelligence officer Roald Dahl argued in support of the creation of WCC, “we all needed jobs in civilian life.” 

            It is believed that BACC/WCC was initially funded in part with about $10 million that was in the accounts of the OSS London office at the time of Germany’s surrender. Eustice Mullins writes: “This money could not be ‘returned’ to the U.S. Government without stating where it had come from. As proceeds from dealings in gold and jewels, an inquiry could provoke a Congressional investigation.”

Follow the Money and the Arms . . .

. . . 

Skorzeny and Victor Oswald had known each other since at least 1951. This was the point during which Skorzeny was establishing an independent engineering office in Madrid. Introductions between the two appear to have come through Johannes Bernhardt, the former senior SS intelligence officer who headed SOFINDUS, the corporate network used by the Nazis in Spain. Readers may recall that SOFINDUS assets were acquired by the Allies after the war. Victor Oswald, as a lead British intelligence operative, in addition to his OSS duties, was involved in the post-war acquisition of SOFINDUS, placing him in close contact with Bernhardt. Bernhardt had contacted the Allies even before the war ended, attempting to transfer millions of dollars of SOFINDUS assets in return for favorable treatment. That offer was graciously accepted. In 1951, Victor Oswald and Johannes Bernhardt were joined by Otto Skorzeny, who had been transferred to Spain by US intelligence. This new business relationship with the revamped SOFINDUS was the intended cover for much of the intelligence and covert activity carried out by Skorzeny. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Leslie Sharp