Bedford Wynne's Connections to Dallas Lawyers and Military Intelligence

Bedford Wynne's In-Laws

In 1944 Bedford Shelmire Wynne married Juanita Jean Love, the daughter of T. Stafford Love, a medical doctor. Her grandfather (Thomas Bell Love) had been an attorney, insurance executive and a Democratic politician and bureaucrat in Dallas until his death in 1948, with an office (in the 1940s) at 1922 Republic Bank Building while residing in the Argyle Apartments at 3212 Oak Lawn. Dr. Love's office was in the Medical Arts Building and at 4239 Prescott Ave., while living at the south side of Cochran Chapel Road at Midway, a short distance east of Dallas' Love Field. The marriage between Bedford and Nita lasted until 1971, when they divorced. She was a member of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas when she died in 2006.

Paternal Grandfather of Juanita Jean Love (Mrs. Bedford S. Wynne, 1943)

Thomas Bell Love (1870-1948), lawyer and Democratic politician, the son of Thomas Calvin and Sarah Jane (Rodgers) Love, was born in Webster County, Missouri, on June 23, 1870. He graduated with a B.S. degree from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, in 1891. He was married to Mattie Roberta Goode on June 11, 1892, and they had three children. Before moving to Dallas in 1899, he was city attorney of Springfield, Missouri (1892-94), a member of the board of managers of Missouri State Hospital, and secretary of the Democratic State Central Committee of Missouri (1896-98).

Love was a prominent figure in Texas political life for the first three decades of the twentieth century. He was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from Dallas County in 1902, 1904, and 1906; the last term he served as speaker of the House of Representatives. He was an expert on taxes, insurance, and banking and had an important role in the passage of the reform legislation of 1905 and 1907 related to these issues. At the conclusion of the 1907 legislative session, Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell appointed him commissioner of the newly formed Department of Insurance and Banking. Love resigned from the office in 1910 to resume law practice in Dallas and to become associated with Southwestern Life Insurance Company and Western Indemnity Company.

He did not retire from politics, however, for he was a leading spokesman for the prohibition forces in the 1911 submission campaign, and he was an early supporter of Woodrow Wilson for the Democratic nomination in 1912. In 1917 President Wilson appointed him assistant secretary of the Treasury Department and placed him in charge of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Returning to Texas in 1919, Love was elected national Democratic committeeman from Texas in 1920, and he served in that capacity until 1924. He was a leader of the anti-Ferguson forces in the gubernatorial campaign of that year. In 1928 he opposed the nomination of Alfred E. Smith and bolted the party during the election to help organize the Hoover-Democrat clubs that went into the Republican column that year. The last elected office he held was that of state senator (1927-31). Love died in Dallas on September 17, 1948.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Norman D. Brown, Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics, 1921-1928 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1984). Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1992).

As we reported in a previous blog post, Bedford had attended in 1938 a very small private school in Dallas, the Texas Country Day School, which had been founded with only 10 students in 1934. One of the best recruiting devices for the school was the hiring as its football coach then-famous Heisman-Trophy winner and All-America football star from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Davey O'Brien, who had graduated from Dallas' Woodrow Wilson High School in 1932. As Barr McClellan mentions in his book, Blood, Money & Power, among Davey's fellow students during the 1930s were Congressman Jim Collins and Malcolm (Mac) Wallace.

Davey grew up with his divorced mother, Ella May O'Brien in the home of her parents Robert P. Keith and his wife Ola Poole Keith from Tennessee. Ella was born in Cleburne, Texas in 1890, where the family lived until they moved to Dallas after 1900, and Robert changed from selling insurance in Cleburne to working as a salesman for a wholesale produce company. By 1920 the entire family was still living together--Ella's brother, Boyd M. Keith, bringing his wife to live with the family for a decade before buying a house next door. Ella herself had married and divorced while Davey was still a young toddler; Davey had an older brother named Boyd O'Brien. Ella May taught at a private school by then, and her brother had a florist shop. Their closest neighbors on Tokalon Drive were the family of Robert G. Storey, a lawyer, who had two sons a few years younger than Davey.

Lt. Col. Robert G. Storey

Robert Gerald Storey (1893-1981) was a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force during World War II and was Executive Trial Counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg Trial of major Axis War Criminals. He personally interrogated Rudoph Hess, Hitler's Deputy and Nazi Party Leader. In 1947, Mr Storey founded the Southwestern Legal Foundation, serving as President (without compensation) from 1947 to 1972. He served as Dean of SMU School of Law from 1947 to 1959, President of the American Bar Association 1952-1953, President of the Inter-American Bar Association 1954-1956, Member of the Commission to Reorganize Executive Branch of U.S. Government (Hoover Commission) 1953-1955, Member and Chairman, Board of Foreign Scholarships (Fulbright Commission) 1956-1962, and Vice Chairman, United States Civil Rights Commission 1957-1963. He served and received awards from numerous local, state, national and international organizations. In 1969 the World Peace Through Law Center presented him its World Lawyer Award in Bagkok, Thailand.

 It is very possible Bedford Wynne's father Angus G. Wynne, who was the first president of the State Bar of Texas (1939-40) knew Storey, who served in that same capacity (1948-49). Robert, Jr. died in 1962 at the tender age of 41. In 1964, however, the elder Robert G. Storey appeared with colleague Leon Jaworski and others to hear testimony of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade concerning whether or not there was any evidence that Lee Oswald had been an informant.

ROBERT GERALD STOREY AND LEON JAWORSKI

Herbert J. Miller helped choose Leon Jaworski to head the Texas Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission consisted of Jaworski, Texas State Attorney General Waggoner Carr, and Attorney Robert Gerald Storey. Robert Gerald Storey was Assistant Attorney [General?] of Texas for Criminal Appeals from 1921 to 1923. From 1945 to 1946, he was an Executive Trial Counsel for the United States, Nuremberg, Trial of Major Axis War Criminals, 1945 - 1946. From 1953 to 1955, he was a member of the Commission to Reorganize the Executive Branch of United States Government (Hoover Commission). Storey was an advisor to the Korean Government on the judicial and legal profession in 1954. In 1959 he worked at the Korean Legal Center. From 1954 to 1955 Storey was State Department representative in the Far East and the Middle East to assist legal profession of friendly free nations. From 1958 to 1962 Storey was the Chairman of the Board of Foreign Scholarships (International Education Exchange).

Waggoner Carr stated that the purpose of the Commission of Inquiry was to have several lawyers who were independent of the Government, monitor the investigation of the Kennedy assassination.

Leon Jaworksi was a former prosecutor at Nazi war crimes trials in Hadamar and Darmstardt. In 1962 Jaworski was appointed Special Prosecutor in the contempt case against Segregationist Governor, Ross Barnett. Leon Jaworski was an associate of John DeMenil. Leon Jaworski was a trustee of the M.D. Anderson Foundation. Congressional Representative Wright Patman's (Dem.-TX.) Subcommittee on Foundations revealed the M.D Anderson acted as a conduit for CIA funds. It granted the American Fund for Free Jurists a half million dollars to further its work. Leon Jaworski refused to comment about his CIA connections. Jaworski was also a Director of the Republic National Bank. [Washington Post 2.18.67]

The Warren Commission took testimony from 550 witnesses, but Leon Jaworski was present at the interrogation of only nine. [Dallas Morning News 1.5.64 p14 sec. 4] Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Jaworski was present at the interrogation of JACK RUBY, who asked to be transported to Washington, D.C., so he could talk directly with the President. As a representative of the Attorney General of the State of Texas Jaworski had the power to allow RUBY to do this. He said nothing. Jaworski told the FBI he was not present during the interrogation of Ruby, however, his associate, Robert Storey, was. [FBI Inter. W/Jaworski 8.24.64 Houston, Texas] On August 24, 1964, the New York Times reported that Jaworski was being considered for the position of Attorney General of the United States should Robert Kennedy decide to run for the United States Senate in New York State.

At the wedding of Mary Margaret Ferris, and David Cochran Neale in May 1950 in Corsicana: Bedford S. Wynne was best man while the groomsmen were Thomas Moroney, James Moroney, Clint W. Murchison, Jr., Frank W. Campbell, Kenneth A. Swanson, Robert S. Watson, and Dick Reynolds. Seating guests were Royal A. Ferris, Tom Norsworthy and Manson Harris. Dallas Country Club was the
setting for a reception where string music entertained the guests.

Letters to Editor - Bennington Banner, Saturday, May 25, 1974

Propaganda from the right

It is strange that with all the upset about "what must not be read," the MAUHS Curriculum Committee has not come up with at least one suggestion as to what might be good reading. I have a candidate: "Rush to
Judgment" by Mark Lane, published by Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston.
There are no "dirty" words in this book, it has social concern, literary merit, and seeks to answer one of the most vital questions in America today — what forces conspired in the assassination of a very beloved American leader, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The reader cannot fail to sense that this book is responsible for some of the conviction on many peoples' part that the Warren Commission report was the rawest whitewash that has occurred in recent years. Recently a California attorney attempted to secure release of the testimony for scholarly research of the commission's findings, and appealed as high as the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the records must be held sealed for the originally stipulated period of 75 years.

Lane is the attorney who was to have defended Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin. His presentation is one of documented evidence that Oswald was killed to prevent a trial which would have exposed the plot as a product of ultraconservative forces in this country.
There appears to be a strong connection between Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, Larrie Schmidt, executive secretary of the John Birch Society, and Joseph Grinnan, a regional coordinator of the John Birch Society.

Why I am linking this book to the school is that I suspect that a member of the John Birch Society, is on the Curriculum Committee and the society has a long "banned-book" list of political subjects that might pollute young minds (but not with dirty words). I expect the list will shortly include insidious "Marxist" subversive
literature such as the Steinbeck novels and, such a dangerous, divisive piece of literature as the little gem entitled "Rush to Judgment."
One might ask how I would identify a member of the Curriculum Committee as a John Birchist. Simple! Where I work, in North Adams, we have a John Birch district coordinator who receives canned propaganda, and within a week after a subject is issued, our trusty local redneck puts in a letter to the editor on the same subject in the same language. It has happened three times in two years.
Censorship will rush us headlong toward the day of a local "Beer Hall Putsch." The putsch in Germany was a
takeover of the local schools and administrative units of government in Munich by a group of 

1.  German rednecks who were not taken seriously
2. Beer hall patrons who were only sporadically employed, and who found time to plot and get fat at society's expense
3. who were school dropouts, mostly unskilled, and hated college-trained intellectuals.
4. who were against the corrupting Influence of liberal Jews.

As It appears now, our society is too benevolent, and we are too well off to take this seriously. The story may be different if we have another depression caused by a conservative administration. Our local clods
might well be issued clubs and the authority to "come down hard" on dissenters. At any rate I will be a marked man for all this, and it would be better "to be dead than so led."

FRANKLIN FRANTZ

Woodford.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1963

By RONNIE DUGGER

Oswald Seen At Two Rallies

DALLAS (Special - TPNS) —Ironies continue to multiply in the wake of the assassination here. It now appears that Lee H. Oswald, the accused assassin, attended not only a rally addressed by Gen. Edwin Walker Oct. 23, but also one addressed by UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson Oct. 24.
A Dallas woman, who was seated close to Oswald at the Oct. 25 meeting of the Dallas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says here that when the Stevenson meeting of the night before was being discussed, Oswald nodded his head and said, "I was there." Oswald said this in an aside to Michael Paine, who had brought him to the meeting, the woman clearly recalled. Oswald's wife and children lived with Mr. Paine's estranged wife in Irving.

Larrie Schmidt — a conservative Dallas insurance salesman, now identified with Bernard Weissman of Mount Vernon, New York, who placed a full-page anti - Kennedy advertisement in the Dallas News the morning of the assassination — was also in attendance at the Stevenson meeting — leading a group of picketers against Mr: Stevenson. Mr. Schmidt refused to comment Sunday on anything having to do with his part in the placement of the ad that was signed Mr. Weissman. (In a New York newspaper interview Saturday, Mr. Weissman named Mr. Schmidt as the man who had telephoned him, after the Stevenson scene, and asked him to come to Dallas to help.him out in the aftermath). But Mr. Schmidt does acknowledge that in advance of the Oct. 24 Stevenson speech, he telephoned  "a friend of mine in a local university" and asked if the friend could help him find people to demonstrate against the UN.

The friend came up with 14 young picketers, and a "peaceful picketing" was organized, Mr. Schmidt said.
The persons who spat on Mr. Stevenson and struck him with a picket sign had nothing to do with his well-dressed and orderly group, Mr. Schmidt said Sunday. "We deplore and certainly do not condone the actions of those people," Mr. Schmidt says.
Mrs. Cora Richardson, the woman who held the picket sign that struck Mr. Stevenson, contends somebody "flipped" her elbow. She said. Sunday that another group were out front of the auditorium, picketing for the United Nations; she said she is convinced that the widely-publicized scene was a frame-up of some kind. As the Washington Post reported Saturday, Oswald rose during the open discussion at the ACLU  meeting and remarked  that he had attended the Walker speech two nights before and had observed anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic symptoms there. A man who attended the ACLU meeting as a guest and who sat directly beside Oswald, has been located and corroborates other recollections about Oswald's remarks at the ACLU meeting, but does not want to be identified. Mr. Paine introduced Oswald to him as "Lee Harvey Oswald." 

"Oswald stood up," the man sitting beside him said, "and said, 'well, we know about this guy Gen. Walker, he's not only anti-Semitic, he's also anti-Catholic, judging from his comments on the Pope.' "

What Oswald Said
This is exactly what Oswald said, at least in substance; and he said a few other things along this line, the man sitting beside him, said. "This source confirms his wife's recollection that Oswald said in the aside that he had attended the Stevenson rally, too. Therefore, even though they, too, refuse to be named, statements by two Dallas women that they thought they saw Oswald at the Stevenson rally become more interesting.
A Dallas businesswoman said: "In my opinion, I did see him (at the scene of the Stevenson speech). I didn't see him anywhere else, but in the lobby. He was picketing."
She had arrived early and first saw a group of well-dressed, neat youths; she remembered a sign, "Wanted For Treason," among them. Then a second group came into the lobby.
"This boy (the one she believes was Oswald) was ahead of this second line. These were different type of people. Some were young, some were old. There were five to seven of them and they were seedy looking. He was clean, but he was very shabbily dressed. I remember thinking how pathetic he was," the businesswoman said. "He was the only one who did a military-type turn. This called my attention to him," she said. Also, he had "a real, different type neck -- he walked like a soldier, did an about-face. He had a very pleased expression with himself, but not a smile."
This woman said that she became "absolutely certain" that it was Oswald she had seen, at the Stevenson scene when she saw a picture of Oswald on TV before he had been, bruised during his arrest after the assassination. She believed Oswald's group picketed and left before the disturbance broke out against Stevenson. A second Dallas, woman, a housewife, said: "I believe, he was there and he was carrying a picket sign in the lobby." Her description of  what he wore matched  the business woman's -- black leather gloves, a suit jacket with unmatching pants. She, too, mentioned his unusual neck and his military gait.

McCloy and the Rockefellers

Rockefeller Land, Bill Zeckendorf and John J. McCloy

William Zeckendorf was acting in 1946 as real estate adviser for John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and a few years later by his sons--Nelson, David, Winthrop and Aldrich.  Behind all these transactions was the attorney John J. McCloy, High Commissioner for Germany following World War II, followed by presidency and chairmanship of the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York.

 

FLUSHING, N. Y., (UP). — The United Nations general assembly plans to put its final stamp of approval today on the choice of New York City for permanent U. N. headquarters. The assembly had before it an
overwhelming recommendation of the U. N. headquarters committee in favor of building a skyscraper world capital in midtown Manhattan. Thirty-three nations voted to accept the offer of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., of land worth $8,500,000 along the East river. Seven nations — all of them Moslem nations except Australia — opposed the site.

 

Leonard Lyons column - DECEMBER 22, 1949

The Rockefeller family has retained William Zeckendorf, head of Webb & Knapp, as their real estate advisor for Radio City, the largest single privately-held parcel in the world. Nelson Rockefeller, consummated the deal with Zeckendorf, who was also responsible for selling to the Rockefellers the site on which the new U.N. buildings are being erected.

January 14, 1955

Biggest Bank Merger
Okayed By Directors

NEW YORK (AP)—The biggest bank merger in history has been approved by directors of Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Co. If the plan is approved by stockholders and the New York superintendent of banking , Chase would be merged into Bank of the Manhattan Co. to produce the nation's second largest bank.

Bank of America in California is the largest bank with total resources of around 94 billion dollars. The Chase Manhattan Bank, as it would be called, would have resources of about 7 billion. Chase Manhattan would become the largest bank in New York—a position now held by National City Bank of New York.
On Dec. 31, Chase had deposits of $5,379,000,000 and Bank of the Manhattan Co. deposits totaled $1,479,000,000. The two thus would have deposits of $6,858,000,000 compared with Bank of America's $8,270,000,000 and National City's $5,639,000,000.
 
John J. McCloy, Chase chairman, would be chairman of the new bank and J. Stewart Baker, Manhattan's chairman, would become president and chairman of the executive committee. Percy J, Ebbott, president of
Chase, would have the post of vice chairman, the two banks announced.

 We can't leave here without connecting one more dot: how Zeckendorf became involved in Texas with the Wynne family in Dallas. That, too, began with our friend Jack McCloy. Author/historian Kai Bird tells us at p. 409 in The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment (1992):

"Only three days after Eisenhower issued his 'clarification,' McCloy came to the White House for one of the president's intimate stag dinners. He was one  in The Chairof fourteen tuxedoed guests that evening. Others included such old friends as Bernard Baruch, Milton Eisenhower, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and Dr. Henry Wriston, the president of Brown University. Seated across from him at dinner was Sid Richardson, a Texas oil man who was then one of America's wealthiest individuals. Richardson had met Ike aboard a train traveling from Texas to Washington, D.C., in December 1941. The two men had kept in close touch since the end of the war, and Ike now counted the oil magnate as one of his closest friends. For years, Richardson had kept the Eisenhowers' freezer stocked with hundred of pounds of Texas beef, sausage, and hams. As president, Eisenhower consulted Richardson on oil and economic matters and used the Texan to influence the newly elected Senate minority leader, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson.

"That evening, Richardson took an instant liking to McCloy and invited him to visit his farm in Texas. In a very short time, their friendship would also include some business dealings. But on this occasion, the dinner talk was all politics."

The Texans, Sid Richardson and Clint W. Murchison, have been shown many times to have been parts of an intricate network of businessmen in Texas tied up with all sorts of "deep political" intrigue. The first researcher to make the connection was Peter Dale Scott, whose work led this writer to engage in many other research projects following up on this fascinating connection. Those links can be seen in this blog at various tags and also in another website called Minor Musings. Search key words here.

The Wynne-ers' Circle

 The Power of the Wynne Family

Excerpt from Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, pp. 285-86:

Toddie Lee Wynne, Sr., the founder of the Wynne family fortunes, had begun in the 1930s as attorney for Clint Murchison, Sr. [10]  Bedford Wynne, the senior partner in the family law firm of Wynne, Jaffe, and Tinsley, was a Washington troubleshooter for the powerful Murchison oil and construction interests in Texas; we have already seen that in 1963 his questionable lobbying activities were beginning to attract the attention of the federal government.

*****

TSHA

Bedford Wynne

Most accounts of the efforts to bring an NFL team to Dallas treated Murchison and [Bedford] Wynne as partners and Wynne clearly served as the spokesman of this partnership. Wynne was the one who announced the hiring of Tex Schramm as general manager of the proposed team in November 1959. Wynne was also present at the meeting in Miami in 1960 when NFL owners officially approved the Dallas club as a franchise.

The picture above [see photo inset to right] shows Wynne and Murchison left along with Redskins owner George Preston Marshall and Tex Schramm. Marshall had been one of the more vocal opponents of expansion especially to the Southwest.

Wynne’s story is actually quite fascinating. Born July 14, 1923 he attended high school in Longview before graduating from the New Mexico Military Institute. He spent three and a half years in the Army and then attended the University of Texas. After graduating from UT he moved on to SMU Law School and was later admitted to practice in Texas.

He came from a prominent family in East Texas. His father [Angus Gilchrist Wynne, Sr.] was a lawyer [from tiny Van Zandt County] and active on the political scene. His brother [Angus Gilchrist Wynne, Jr.] was a successful real estate developer and his uncle [Toddie Lee Wynne] was a famous oilman. Wynne joined his family’s law firm and became a partner.

His interests were diverse. He was a director with such companies and organizations as Reliance Life Insurance Company the Sweetwater Development Center Junior Achievement Children’s Development Center the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association University of Texas Ex-Students Association Highland Park United Methodist Church and the nonprofit Garrett Foundation. He was also co-owner of Wynne & Black an oil business as well as the Garrett-Wynne Angus Ranch of Longmont Colorado.

In 1959 he earned media attention when he bought a share of a famed Black Angus bull named Prince 105 which reportedly carried a hefty price tag of $230,000. During the same year Wynne was actively involved with an effort to bring top professional bowlers to the Dallas area. At that time he was an official with Great Southwest Lanes of Arlington.
When Dallas millionaire Lamar Hunt and others announced the formation of the American Football League during the summer of 1959 the NFL moved quickly to announce that the older league would expand as early as 1961. The first two cities named as possible locations were Dallas and Houston and Murchison and Wynne appeared in the newspapers constantly during negotiations. These negotiations ultimately succeeded and Dallas received a franchise a year earlier than originally announced.

Because Wynne appeared in the newspaper so often many thought he was an equal co-owner. However Clint Murchsion owned 95% of the team with his brother John while Wynne was only a minority owner along with Toddie Lee Wynne and W.R. “Fritz” Hawn. Bedford Wynne held the position of director and secretary of the Cowboys.

In 1967 Wynne decided to sell his shares in the Cowboys to help organize the expansion New Orleans Saints. He also left his law practice in 1967 and began to focus on other business ventures.

After 1967 Wynne’s name surfaced less and less. In one interesting story he won a camper at the Byron Nelson Classic in Fort Worth when he hit a tee shot closer to the mark than opponent Mickey Mantle.

He was chairman of a group that operated and managed Teen America Associates which produced a teen beauty pageant for several years and he later became president of Family Recovery Inc. a family counseling service.

Wynne died at the age of 65 on December 30 1989 of a heart attack. He was survived by three daughters and a son along with six grandchildren.

[Source: Viewed at  Sports Comet  [http://www.sportscomet.com/sports_thread/view/id-10802] no longer extant.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Continuation of Peter Dale Scott excerpt:

In August 1963 Bedford Wynne was the subject of a highly critical army audit of his "salary" from a firm with federal-government contracts (Sweetwater Development), which had been set up by the Murchisons' Tecon Corporation through the law firm of Wynne, Jaffe, and Tinsley. [11] To Wynne this must have seemed like gross political ingratitude. As recently as January 1963, Bedford Wynne had raised a half-million dollars for the depleted treasury of President Kennedy's Democratic party, after which Clint Murchison's son John was granted a mutually satisfactory interview with President Kennedy about preserving the oil depletion allowance. [12]

But it was unlikely that Wynne could escape being noticed in the mounting publicity about the scandalous activities of Lyndon Johnson's Senate protege, Bobby Baker. As noted earlier, it was in the Life issue of November 22, 1963 (p. 92A), that Bedford Wynne was first named as a member of the "Bobby Baker set" at Washington's Q Club. Subsequent Treasury and congressional investigation of Bedford Wynne and Clint Murchison established that their Sweetwater company had made payments (which looked very much like political kickbacks) to the legal firms of Bobby Baker and of Democratic Congressman Emmanuel Celler.[13]  Dallas Republican leader Robert H. Stewart III, a director of Great Southwest, had also arranged for questionable loans to Bobby Baker, via the same two Murchison employees (Robert Thompson and Thomas Webb) who figured in the Baker payoffs from Bedford Wynne.[14]

*****

The Great Southwest Corporation's Project in Texas


When Charles Hurwitz began acquiring a company called McCulloch Oil in 1978, the chairman of the
company was Charles Wood, Jr.--the man who had designed and engineered the construction of
Disneyland in 1955. McCulloch Oil had been founded by Robert McCulloch, a close business associate
of Wood. In 1960 McCulloch and Wood began to develop Lake Havasu City near Scottsdale, Arizona
around a man-made geyser and the London Bridge, which had been transported across the Atlantic and
reassembled. After Disneyland, Wood had gone on to build Freedomland in the Bronx, New York and to
work with Toddie Lee and Angus Wynne of the Great Southwest Corporation in building Six Flags in
Texas. The Great Southwest Corp., in conjunction with Webb and Knapp had gone into great debt in the
early 1960s pursuing these projects and tried to recover by selling the corporate stock to the Penn Central
Railroad owned by the Pennsylvania Company, which, at the same time, bought Macco Realty and
Arvida.

What is intriguing about this is that McCulloch Oil, the Great Southwest, Macco and Arvida were very
rich in land. This fact was no doubt known by David Murdock, who in 1964 had moved to Los Angeles
from Phoenix where he had been involved in home construction. Although he was allegedly insolvent
when he arrived in California, he founded a company that made tile to be used in construction and later
became a land developer and then a corporate tycoon. We do not know at this point whether Murdock,
whose background before that time is extremely sketchy, may have been involved with the Bonanno family which had been involved in real estate development in Arizona.


In 1956-57 the area between Westwood and Los Angeles proper, now called Century City, was owned by Twentieth Century Fox (headed by Spyros Skouras); it was the Tom Mix ranch and the backlot. But the studio needed cash and decided to sell off this 260 acres of real estate. The studio contacted William Zeckendorf--who headed Webb & Knapp--was a Rockefeller-connected developer in New York (he had hired Disney's engineer, Charles Wood, to build Freedomland park in the Bronx and who was a partner with Toddie Lee and Angus Wynne in developing the Great Southwest project in Texas). He agreed to buy the land and lease back a portion to the studio for one and a half million dollars a year.

Zeckendorf eventually sold out his interest to the Mellon family's Alcoa. He states in his autobiography that he became great friends with "General Richard Mellon," whose family has long been connected to O.S.S. and C.I.A. activities, as well as with Gulf Oil (at the time the Mellons were largest shareholders), which was an investor brought into the Zapata Corporation by the Liedtke brothers.(5) By the time Victor Palmieri went to work for Janss Investment, the Janss brothers had sold a half interest in the commercial properties, in 1955, to Arnold S. Kirkeby of Chicago, owner of a chain of hotels including the Beverly Wilshire at Wilshire and Rodeo Drive. Kirkeby changed the design of the village by bringing in highways and high-rises.

The Arizona Project, a journalistic investigation into mob activities in Arizona, which found strong financial links between Arizona real estate development and construction of Las Vegas casinos, also noted:

For [Del] Webb, the Flamingo experience (6) led to a series of deals with other developers who had their own ties to the Mob-dominated Chicago political machine, including Henry Crown and Arnold S. Kirkeby of Los Angeles,

Off the Boards

Former Mrs. George Owen

 Maureen "Mo" Kane Biner Owen (then future-wife of John Dean) was married to George Washington Owen, Jr. for a few months in 1967, but she had known him off and on since 1965. The were, allegedly, introduced by "Heidi Rikan," possibly the alias of her friend Cathy Dieter. Two years before Mo's marriage to Watergate counsel John Dean, Time Magazine wrote about another friend of George Owen--Gilbert Lee Beckley, then presumed dead:

Gilbert Lee Beckley is—or was—a valuable man to the Cosa Nostra. He helped the mob flourish in the green field of betting on college and professional athletics. Handling as much as $250,000 worth of bets daily, Beckley, 58, mastered all the tricks of his arcane trade:

• wangling information from locker rooms,

• computing odds in his head,

• occasionally bribing athletes.

Gilbert Lee Beckley

Once Beckley was discovered behind a scheme to fix college basketball games by bribing the referees. On another occasion, word flashed along his betting network that bookies need not worry about the outcome of a football game, because "the coach is betting."

Nothing if not systematic, Beckley kept his fellow bookies' identities secret. He assigned each a number, then recorded their figures in library books. Beckley, No. 11, kept his own accounts next to page 11 of the New Dictionary of Thoughts.

Two Sides. Beckley's value was not limited to the Cosa Nostra; he also worked the legitimate side of the street. He had a deal with National Football League investigators to tip them about point spreads, possible fixes and tampering with games (TIME, Aug. 22). More recently, he may have been tempted to cooperate with Government agents. Such a double life can be dangerous —even fatal. Last month, old No. 11 vanished. His lawyers have not heard from him, and he is "off the boards," or out of the play, in the betting world. Two weeks ago he forfeited a $10,000 bond by failing to appear for his trial on forgery charges in Atlanta. Some associates believe that Beckley may have fled to Belgium or Israel to escape jail. Others fear a more ominous answer. Beckley's mob associates were mindful that the N.F.L. investigators include former Government prosecutors. The mob has been worried that Beckley might try to wiggle out of his trouble by passing information to the Government. In that event, Gil Beckley would be distinctly more valuable to his friends dead than alive.

Colodny Interview of George Owen, Jr.

George Owen, Jr.

Whether it was actual fact or invention (perhaps we shall never really know), George Owen told Len Colodny, co-author of Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, in an interview in 1988 or thereabouts, that he first met Maureen Kane in 1965, and that he was introduced to her by another girl named Heidi whom he had met in Antigua. At the time he was on the island with his "running mate," Bedford Wynne, one of the co-founders of the Dallas Cowboys, and they were thinking of buying a hotel-casino owned by "Gil Beckley -- who was a world renowned gambler." This interview was transcribed and parts of it submitted as evidentiary proof in a lawsuit that would later be filed by John and Maureen Dean against the book's publisher and authors for defamation and libel, a case eventually settled.

The Portland Free Press publisher, Ace Hayes, acquired a copy of the public documents filed in the lawsuit and shared them with others. They have since been passed around digitally and have become fair use. In Colodny's book, he had made statements about Maureen "Mo" Kane (who married George Owen in 1967 and had their marriage annulled the same year) -- conclusionary statements arrived at based on dozens of interviews with people who had known Mo both before and after she married President Nixon's White House Counsel John Dean in September of 1972.

Since truth is an absolute defense to the claim of libel, Colodny submitted the interview transcripts to the court in order to show that the conclusions he made about Mo were true. We don't know whether they were true or not, and, unfortunately, George Owen is no longer alive to verify the facts. Part of his interview by Len Colodny is contained below:

OWEN: And he [Gil Beckley] was a friend of Bedford's and mine and we were going, you know, try to buy the hotel. And I walked out of my room and it was raining. And they had a little tent to walk under to the casino and there to the dining room. And I saw this girl walking a dog, a little white poodle, and this was the prettiest damn girl you ever saw in your life.

COLODNY: I'll say one thing, everybody that's ever seen this woman uses those exact words.

OWEN:"Built like a brick shit house." I said, "God damn," I said "man," and I just sat down in the mud.

COLODNY: [Laughing]
OWEN: I said, "I've never seen a son of a bitch as pretty as you and if you jump on my back I'll take you around the world barefooted." And she said, [Laughing] and I said "come on, I'll buy you dinner." She said, "Well, I want to tell you something, that is the most profound statement that I've ever seen a man do to get a date with me."

COLODNY: [Laughing]

OWEN: Yes, sir, I'll accept and so we went to dinner, drank some wine, had a good time and everything and she was going to stay there a couple of before she meets Mo, there, she's up in Washington and then she meets this guy from Texas and then she goes back to Washington and she seems to be tied pretty much to this guy.

OWEN: Oh yeah.

COLODNY: And, and now, now Mo meets you in '67 and then they go to Tahoe together. Now, what was the point of them going to Tahoe together?

OWEN: Maureen, ah, went with a guy who was a dealer up there. And she fell in love with this guy, and you know, they lost a lot of weight and a whole bunch of...

COLODNY: Yeah, she, this is the story she tells: "I chose Tahoe with, with my new and good friend who I'd met through George, Heidi Rikan, I skied, swam, gambled, played tennis, and hiked. I lost weight going from one fifteen to ninety eight pounds, to [from?] a size six to a three, George saw me once during this period and handed me two hundred dollars and said, 'My god, you're starving, go fatten yourself up.' "

OWEN: [Laughing] That's about right, that's about the size of it.

COLODNY: "And after several months with Heidi I finally decided I had to strike, straighten out my marital situation so I sought and got an annulment from my marriage to George Owen." Is that accurate? Is, as best...

OWEN: Oh, it could have been, I didn't know. I had a divorce, I didn't need a, anything like this.

OWEN: Well if you know, if you analyze the whole situation. I wasn't with Maureen very long. Well, I met her in late '65 and in '66 we, she left and out, in, and out, in, and then in '67 we got married. I went and got a Mexican divorce before we got married.

COLODNY: All right so in other words, Diane Wisdom was gone by the time?

OWEN: Oh yeah. Diane had been gone a long time. She traveled with Frank Sinatra's...

COLODNY: Right so, so she's gone and, and you had a Mexican Divorce and now you're...

OWEN: A Mexican Divorce and ah, this friend of mine, this, this guy we talked about, ah, you know, signed one of, as one of the witnesses or something like that. But any way I had the divorce and then we got married and then, then everything else happened.

The Miramar Hotel Casino in Antigua

So, George told Len Colodny he met Heidi Rikan in Antigua at a hotel/casino in which Gilbert Lee Beckley was an owner/manager before George met Heidi's friend Mo in 1965. The newspapers in 1959 were full of reports that Beckley lived in Surfside, Florida and was being questioned by a grand jury about the fixing of a boxing match, but nothing came of it until John Kennedy was elected and made his brother Robert the Attorney General. Six months after the inauguration, we read:

WASHINGTON (AP)—The Justice Department today announced indictments against 13 men for using illegal long-distance telephone hookups to conceal a nationwide horse race betting system. Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy said a 20-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in New Orleans, grew out of illegal calls to or from these 10 cities: New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., New York, City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Miami, Biloxi, Miss., and Newport, Ky.

The indictment charged that the defendants, described unofficially as including some of the biggest names in horse race lay-off gambling operations, paid telephone company employes to fix switchboards so that wagering calls went through free and unauthorized. The indictment charges them with conspiring to defraud the government of taxes and to cheat the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. of toll charges. The Internal Revenue Service investigated the case. Bench warrants have been issued by U.S. District Judge Herbert W. Christenberry for the arrest of the 13. Bond was fixed at $25,000 each.

The defendants are: Benjamin Lassoff, 53, and his brother Robert Lassoff, 41, and Myron Deckelbaum, 57, all of Cincinnati, Ohio. Gilbert Lee Beckley, 49. Surfside, Fla., and Alfred Mones, 57, Miami Beach. Sam Di Piazza, 35, and Louis E. Bagneris, 60, Arabi. La.; Eugene A. Nolan, 31, Baton Rouge; Charles A. Perez, 44, Harold Brouphy, 52, and Anthony Glorioso, 45, all of New Orleans. Alfred Reyn, 52, New York City and Peter Joseph Martino, 37, Biloxi Miss.

Part of the records released by the FBI relating to the Kennedy Assassinations includes the following document at Mary Ferrell website.

Miramar Hotel Casino in Antigua, British West Indies

Charlie "The Blade" Tourine

Gil Beckley in Antigua at Tourine's Casino

We are told that this group of mobsters was part of the Vito Genevese Family, about whom Drew Pearson in an October column in 1950 had this to say: 

Vito Genovese of New York and New Jersey — Genovese was Lucky Luciano's gunman. He gained notoriety helping Luciano terrorize tributes from New York's brothels, fled from New York to New Jersey and now is an important cog in the New Jersey Mafia. His criminal history dates back to April 15, 1917, when he was arrested in New York city for possessing a revolver and got 60 days Since then his power has grown. He has been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, felonious assault, homicide, disorderly conduct, burglary, petty larceny, and first-degree murder. Miraculously, however, he was acquitted on the murder charge.

If we return to the beginning of this essay, the interview between Colodny and George Owen, we must understand that Colodny started his research on Watergate to follow up on some of the information revealed in a book by Jim Hougan, published in 1984, called Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA. Hougan himself has continued his own research, which has been published in an essay online, in which he muses about the friend George Owens first met in Antigua, whom he called Heidi:

But what about "Cathy Dieter"? Who was she? According to Gordon Liddy, Dieter's real name was Heidi Rikan. Liddy testified that he learned this from a seemingly authoritative source: Walter "Buster" Riggin, [see Watergate Exposed for more information] a sometime pimp and associate of Joe Nesline, himself an organized crime figure in the Washington area.

Formerly a stripper at a seedy Washington nightclub called the Blue Mirror, the late Erica "Heidi" Rikan was a friend of Nesline's and, more to the point, of John Dean and his then-fiancee, later wife, Maureen. Indeed, Rikan's photograph appears in the memoir that "Mo" wrote about Watergate. [23]

While admitting their friendship with Rikan, the Deans deny that she ran a call-girl ring, or that she used "Cathy Dieter" as an alias. Beyond Buster Riggin's assertion to Liddy, evidence on the issue is slim or ambiguous. One writer who attempted to verify the identification is Anthony Summers. As the Irish investigative reporter wrote in his massive biography of President Nixon:

Excellent book by Phil Stanford

Before her death in 1990, Rikan said in a conversation with her maid that she had once been a call girl. Explaining that a call girl was 'a lady that meets men, and men pay them'---the maid had grown up in the country and knew nothing of big-city sins---she added, tantalizingly:

'I was a call girl at the White House." [24]

This would appear to confirm assertions that Rikan was a prostitute. But Summers undercuts the confirmation by reporting in that same book---strangely, and in a footnote---that he "found no evidence" of Rikan working as a call-girl. [25]

Notes:

23. Maureen Dean (with Hays Gorey) Mo: A Woman's View of Watergate, Simon & Schuster (1975).
24. Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power (Viking, 2000), p. 422.
25. Summers, p. 530.

But then, Anthony Summers couldn't see evidence of an inside job in Venice, Florida, after spending weeks with Daniel Hopsicker.



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