Hot Stocks in the 1950s

 MAY 25, 1954

Uranium Boom Hits

Salt Lake City Brokers

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)—A uranium boom swamped Salt Lake City brokerage firms yesterday, with an estimated five million shares of uranium stocks changing hands in over-the-counter trade—which accounts for most of the uranium stock business. Issues listed on the Salt Lake Stock Exchange also were active and made substantial price gains. E. N. Bagley, manager of the J. A. Hogle and Co.  office, attributed the brisk trade to demand that has been "building up for several days." He said "a lot of outside money," coming mostly from Texas, New York and California, boosted the volume and also the prices.

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The Steen family in 1952

THE OGDEN (UTAH) STANDARD-EXAMINER 

SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 13, 1954

Old Hands Laughed at Charlie Steen's Ideas

On Uranium, but He Hit It Rich on Second Try

MOAB (AP) — Pockets are jingling on the Colorado Plateau today as miners, speculators, prospectors and a score of amateurs pour cash and sweat into a mushrooming uranium boom.

Mining men place the plateau, a desert area fanning out from the point where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico come together, just behind Africa and ahead of Canada in uranium production. But they'll tell you that despite rosy prospects and a booming industry, putting money into uranium is speculative at best.

If you want to invest, you deal with men who are optimists, who feel that lady luck is just around the corner. But uranium ore isn't everywhere on the plateau. A section of land next to one major new strike reportedly sold for one million dollars. But nobody has found uranium on it yet.

Money is being made here in two major ways: Actual mining, or getting into a development at the prospecting stage and later selling or leasing land where a strike has been discovered. 

He Made A Fortune 

Charlie Steen made his fortune the first way. Until he made his strike, Steen was just another youthful prospector with visions of wealth, tramping through the sagebrush and scrambling up and down gulches. He had theories about ore deposits, based on his training at the Texas College of Mines. Old-timers listened to them—and shook their heads, or chuckled derisively.

But Steen, a smallish 34-year-old  Texan, stuck to his ideas. He rented a shack for $15 a month—it was home for him, his wife and four young sons. On his second try for uranium, Steen made his strike. His mother had grubstaked him to $1,000 and early in 1951 he staked out a dozen claims in the big Indian country, 40 miles from here.

He got some more backing and managed to build a crude road into the area so drilling equipment could move in. The core drill first bit into rock July 3, 1952. Three days later Steen struck ore. "It was July 16 before we knew what we had," Steen says. 

Things Happen Fast 

Production finally got under way in December, 1952. The first ore was shipped to mills two days later. Since then things have happened fast to Steen. "With his mother, Mrs. Roselie Shumaker, he formed the Utex Exploration Co. Later they set up three more: The Mi Vida Mine, Inc.. Big Indian Mines, Inc., and Moab Drilling Co.

Steen branched out into merchandising and banking and is prominent in a syndicate planning a new uranium mill to be built here. It will be the largest in the United States when completed. He's also in on a housing development, has an interest in an airport and is leveling and above Moab for a new home. Steen's fabulous mine, which he calls, with feeling, the "Mi-Vida" (my life) is turning out some 7,000 tons of high-grade ore every month. He envisions the day, not too far in the future, when it will yield 1,000 tons a day.

Causes Grief For
But the m i n e has brought Steen more harassment than happiness. "It was a lot of fun finding it," he says. "But I've had grief ever since." Steen has become a controversial figure here—mostly because of envy. And he is constantly badgered with potential backers and buyers. "I can't walk down the street without two or three people talking to me about one thing or another," he says. "A lot of their ideas are good ones, but I could use up 10 million dollars If I tried all of them."

In his neat, paneled office here, Steen tries to keep his fingers on his various enterprises. He keeps in touch by short wave radio with his mine and the planes he has flying around the area. He sees 39 to 40 people a day, darting from conference to conference and making frequent trips to a mining laboratory he maintains. 

Mechanical Operation
Steen considers mining "a mechanical operation." The actual recovery of ore bores him, and a lot of experienced miners think thousands of dollars are slipping through his fingers because of some of the methods at "Mi Vida."

Neither Steen nor the Atomic Energy Commission will agree to that. Both feel he knows what he's doing. It was a year after the strike, Steen says, "before I did any good financially." Money—in six figure amounts —goes through his hands every month. Only about 10 per cent of it stays with Steen.

"I'm getting enough to live on —damned well," he says. He refers to Uncle Sam as "my silent partner" because of taxes. "I don't think anyone in uranium has a bigger stake than I have," Steen argues earnestly. "I'm mining and paying most of it out in taxes. I could have sold and taken advantage of capital gains."

He Won't Sell Mine
But Steen makes it clear that Mi Vida "is not for sale for a million dollars, or 10 million or 150 million. I'll sell anything else I own, if the price is right, but not the mine."

While they're waiting for their new home to be built, Steen, his wife, "M.L." and their sons Mark, 4; Charles, 7; Andy, 5; and John, 8, live in a comfortable house here. He likes inexpensive shirts and trousers, and looks anything but a mining baron as he sits nervously in his office, clean shaven, bespectacled and serious. Most uranium men say Steen's case is something of an exception; more cash is being made trading claims and floating companies than from actual digging of ore and selling it to government-licensed buyers. 

Companies Being Formed
Mining and allied companies, they point out, are being organized by the dozen and assorted stocks are finding their way to the public. You can buy some of them for a dollar a share, or a dime, or even a penny. Demand is good. Many investments come from people who want either to make a quick profit or who want the thrill of being in on one of the great booms of our time. In a few years, some of this stock will be worth a lot of money. Other shares will be only worthless pieces of paper to recall faded dreams. More money is coming in from big business, looking for investments to cut immediate tax bills. It's a loose financial situation and a lot of reliable uranium men are worried about it. They caution prospective investors to go slowly.

Men like Steen are operating against a background of great tax pressures and the big promoter. Successful miners and prospectors are selling out to companies, many of them newly formed, because of the heavy burden of federal taxes. This gives the promoter a big chance. In a legitimate enterprise, the promoter plays a useful and necessary role. But there are complaints here that some promotions are running wild.

There's a story that one promoter asked to buy a few claims to get a couple of shipments of ore out of it so he could sell stock on the strength of the shipments. But the men who are striking it rich in uranium are, for the most part, plowing a lot of their earnings back into the industry. Because of expansion, many of them still owe money to banks, but it doesn't seem to bother them.

Many like the attitude of Steen. A geologist by training and a prospector at heart, Steen looks wistfully at the hills and says: "We've only scratched the potential of the Colorado Plateau."

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUGUST 3, 1954
Utah County, Utah DAILY HERALD

Restaurant Habitues Trade In Utah Uranium Securities

By MURRAY M. MOLER

United Press Staff Correspondent

Boys in the back room?

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (UP)—When they see what the boys in the back room will have at a certain men's restaurant here, it's probably uranium stock, not food. The back room at the "Grabeteria" used to be adorned with pictures of bathing beauties. But it's been turned into a brokerage office, and where the pin ups used to hang you find lists of stock offerings.

These are less shapely than beauty queens, but just as exciting.

It's all part of the boom in "penny" uranium shares that has been sweeping Salt Lake City, the focal point of uranium production in the vast Colorado Plateau of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada.

At the Grabeteria you can order your coffee and doughnuts and take your change as a few shares of your favorite company. Hanging on the wall beside the menu is a list of 39, uranium companies offering shares from as little as two cents up to $1.62. Thousands of Salt Lake City residents have dug into their savings to buy stock. They are warned by federal and state stock exchange officials that their investments are extremely risky, but trading has boomed. 

As many as seven million shares have been sold in a single day. Most of the companies have never produced any uranium. They own mining claims in various parts of the Colorado Plateau, and it's yet to be seen whether their parcels of windswept land contain anything but rocks and rattlesnakes. The uranium which Uncle Sam is buying for atomic bombs and their nuclear projects is produced mostly by old, established companies whose stock is not for sale on the open market.

Even the more conservative stock brokers who take a dim view of the recent feverish buying and selling, admit uranium holds a terrific potential for the Colorado Plateau. They say a lot depends on the future use of uranium as a fuel for generating electric power. "It's just a question of separating the cats from the mink," one expert said.

Turning Gold into Uranium and Vice Versa

Yellow Mud

South Africa's Prime Minister Daniel Malan pressed a stubby finger to a small gold button one day last week and touched off a $112 million uranium industry. There had been hints that South Africa was in the atomic business, but this was the first firm news that the country was producing uranium on a scale that is expected to net $84 million a year. 

Back in 1945 the late Prime Minister Jan Christian Smuts phoned Calvin Stowe McLean, president of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines: 

"Is it true that there's uranium in our gold mines?" 

McLean told Smuts: "Yes, but it is of no commercial value." 

Said Smuts (who knew about the Manhattan Project): "I want to know how much there is and how we can get it out." 

General Smuts in uniform: Canada, So. Africa, UK, NZ and Aus. Prime Ministers

From this conversation grew a plan to combine uranium production with gold production (both from the same ore). In his Atomic Energy Act, Smuts put a clamp (20 years in prison, $15,000 fine) on all discussion of the project, so that South African newspapers did not dare even reprint articles from overseas newspapers. The area chosen for the development was the West Rand Consolidated gold mine on the Witwatersrand field near Johannesburg. 

After removal of the gold by the cyanide process, the tailings (i.e., waste) are treated by a secret chemical process to produce uranium oxide, which in its exportable form looks just like yellow mud. The project will extend to all other Rand mines, which will jointly share a giant uranium refinery. Chief buyer of South African uranium oxide will be the U.S., with Britain, which put up some of the capital, making purchases on a smaller scale. Said Prime Minister Malan: "It must give satisfaction to our partners in America and Britain that this valuable source of power is in the safekeeping of South Africa." 

[Source: Time Magazine  10/20/1952, Vol. 60 Issue 17, p42, 1p]

Although the first nuclear weapon was built on American soil, it was not without a great deal of help from men from other countries, and the uranium used in those first devastating bombs was all derived from sources in Canada and the Belgian Congo. Although uranium had been detected in gold tailings at the Witwatersrand gold mines as early as 1921, South Africans ignored its significance until in 1944, according to an article by C.S. McLean and T.K. Prentice on the history of uranium mining in South Africa:

an American geologist, Weston Bourret, visited the Witwatersrand when on his way to Madagascar, and he submitted a secret report to the United States Government on the occurrence of uraninite in amalgamation barrel residue. This led Dr. G. W. Bain, Professor of Geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts, and consultant to the United States atomic bomb undertaking, the Manhattan Project, to make a radiometric examination of two specimens of Witwatersrand ore in his possession, which confirmed the presence of radioactive minerals in these ores. He made a secret report to the combined American and British Authorities and, as a result, these two Governments approached the South African Government in 1945 about the possibility of extracting uranium from Witwatersrand gold ores. At the same time, Dr. Bain and Dr. C. F. Davidson, Chief Geologist of the Atomic Energy Division of the Geological Survey of Britain, visited South Africa. The first quantitative assessment of the uranium potentialities of the Witwatersrand goldfield in the light of modern requirements was made by these two men and Dr. Davidson's report in October, 1945, to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in London ended with these significant words: "Present evidence appears to indicate that the Rand may be one of the largest low-grade uranium fields in the world." The findings of Bain and Davidson indicated that the uranium in Witwatersrand ores was many times more plentiful than gold.

This same basic story was later told by General Leslie R. Groves in his autobiography, Now It Can Be Told.

The covert nature of the cooperative effort among the Allies during those war years is revealed by Stephen Dorril in his book about the British equivalent of the CIA--
MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service--in which he recounts that the Combined Development Trust, code-named "Murray Hill Project," was in charge of "allocating scarce and vital uranium ores," and was often referred to by insiders as the "insecticide committee."

British Banker Sir Charles J. Hambro was appointed to represent the project on behalf of Britain, having already been knighted in 1941 for outstanding service in obtaining war materials. A director of the Bank of England, he was sent to Washington, D.C. as the head of the British raw materials mission, succeeding Sir Clive Baillieu, in January 1944. One goal in the spring of 1945 was to find and confiscate the uranium ore (over a thousand tons) the Germans had seized from Belgium in the early days of the war and had removed it to an area deep in the Russian Zone, Strassfurt. Not only did Hambro and his men recoup this ore, as Dorril says in MI6, he and his associates found a nest of German bomb-making scientists dubbed "Hitler's Uranium Club"--giving them a "heaven-sent opportunity for Britain to get back into the atomic intelligence game." (p. 139)

Excerpt from MI6 by Stephen Dorril, p. 139

The "Farm Hall Transcripts" were never declassified until recent years, and these transcripts appear to reveal how little the German scientists captured and housed near Cambridge, England really knew.

URANIUM ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU

Getting Back on Track

 

A little update is in order, just so you don't think the windmills that Quixotic Joust has been chasing, besides flapping their arms, are jumping around as well. There is, in fact, some method to our madness.

The phase of research now being pursued began with the intention of determining who the Morris D. Jaffe connected to LBJ really was and what he was up to. During that initial effort, QJ found that Jaffe owned a uranium company with headquarters in Dallas. While investigating that tidbit, QJ discovered that D. Harold Byrd also owned a uranium company operating in Utah, which was sold to Canadians with strong ties to Israel at a time when Israel was building its own nuclear weapon. That fact led to connections between one of the associates of the Byrd uranium company's buyers, Bryan Newkirk, and Permindex associate and Bobby Kennedy nemesis Roy Cohn.

Fiction by Chinle Miller

Since Roy Cohn was mentioned significantly in the Torbitt Document, QJ then determined to learn more about its author, David Copeland, writing under the alias of William Torbitt. That research was interesting but seemingly a dead end, requiring QJ to backtrack a few steps and pick up a new trail. 

 

That brings us up to date and explains the reason for this new tack.

Hopefully, that at least partially explains the reason for QJ's fascination with the fictional book called Uranium Daughter by Chinle Miller, that I recently read on Kindle. Uranium Daughter was recently featured and proved to be an excellent read, as well as providing insight into the American lands within the uranium boom of the 1950's. 

 

Miller inspired me to learn more about the true history of Charlie Steen and his associates, which led me to Raye Carleson Ringholz and her book, Uranium Frenzy: Saga of the Nuclear West.

 

Uranium Frenzy:

 

"has become the classic account of the uranium rush that gripped the Colorado Plateau region in the 1950s. Instigated by the U.S. government's need for uranium to fuel its growing atomic weapons program, stimulated by Charlie Steen's lucrative Mi Vida strike in 1952, manned by rookie prospectors from all walks of life, and driven to a fever pitch by penny stock promotions, the boom created a colorful era in the Four Corners region and Salt Lake City (where the stock frenzy was centered) but ultimately went bust. The thrill of those exciting times and the good fortune of some of the miners were countered by the darker aspects of uranium and its uses. Miners were not well informed regarding the dangers of radioactive decay products. Neither the government nor anyone else expended much effort educating them or protecting their health and safety. The effects of exposure to radiation in poorly ventilated mines appeared over time," according to its publisher, University Press of Colorado.

 

 ***

 

Raye C. Ringholz also wrote in the Uranium Mining section of the Utah History Enclopedia:

Prior to World War I, radium mining dwindled but a new bonanza was identified in the tailings dumps of the mines. When it was determined that the discarded vanadium added to molten steel would greatly increase the tensile strength and elasticity of the metal, Utah's vanadium industry flourished. One of the dominant figures in the resultant boom was Howard Balsley of Moab, who sold carnotite ores to Vitro Chemical Corporation of Pittsburgh for medicaments and luminous paint.

It wasn't until twenty-five years later, as a result of the atomic age and subsequent arms race of the Cold War, that uranium, previously considered a waste product of the vanadium mines, came into demand as a key element for nuclear weaponry. In the beginning, almost 90 percent of the United States' uranium supply was imported from the Belgian Congo and Canada. But scanty amounts being filtered from abandoned radium and vanadium dumps on the Colorado Plateau gave promise of an untapped domestic source. The Manhattan Project of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, charged with development of an atom bomb to end the war, instituted a covert program to mine uranium from the vanadium dumps and sent geologists to scour the region in search of new lodes.

With the end of World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission replaced the Manhattan Project and launched the first federally-sponsored mineral rush in history. The AEC constructed roads into the back country, promised $10,000 bonuses for new lodes of high-grade ore, guaranteed minimum prices and paid up to $50 per ton on 0.3 percent ore, constructed mills, helped with haulage expenses and posted geologic data on promising areas tracked by federal geologists using airborne scinillometers and other sophisticated radiation detection instruments.

The Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet, suddenly teemed with prospectors in the greatest ore search since the gold fever days of the previous century. Amateurs and experts, alike, followed AEC guidelines and used radiation detectors called Geiger counters to test promising sandstone formations for uranium deposits. Concentrating on exposed outcroppings along canyon rims, they searched primarily for the grayish Salt Wash member of the Morrison formation. When a likely claim was located, they used diamond drills to core test holes to determine if mineable ore was present.

In 1952 Charles Augustus Steen, an unemployed oil geologist from Texas, effectively proved there was significant uranium ore on the Colorado Plateau.

Colorado Plateau

 Settling his wife and four young sons in a tarpaper shack near Cisco, he took off alone to seek the precious mineral. Unable to afford a geiger counter, he took a broken down drill rig into the back-country, ignored standard uranium-seeking technology, and used oil exploration geology to locate the Mi Vida mine in the Shinarump conglomerate of an area the AEC had deemed barren of ore. What had been ridiculed as "Steen's Folly" resulted in the nation's first big uranium strike in the Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab. Steen's find triggered more.

Vernon Pick claimed the Delta Mine northwest of Hanksville, later selling it to international financier Floyd Odlum for nine million dollars and an airplane. Pratt Seegmiller staked the lucrative Freedom and Prospector claims near Marysvale. Joe Cooper and Fletcher Bronson discovered uranium in their played-out Happy Jack copper mine near Monticello and netted over $25 million. Between 1946 and 1959, 309,380 claims were filed in four Utah counties. A center of activity, the once sleepy farming town of Moab became known as "The Uranium Capitol of the World." 

By 1955 there were approximately 800 mines producing high-trade ore on the Colorado Plateau [see inset map above]. Utah alone had produced approximately nine million tons of ore valued at $25 million by the end of 1962. But then the industry almost came to a standstill. The AEC, now holding ample reserves, announced an eight-year limited program, and finally completely stopped buying uranium in 1970. Private industry triggered a brief second boom when nuclear power plants came on line in the mid-70s, but foreign competition, federal regulations and nuclear fears virtually put an end to domestic uranium mining.

During the uranium heyday, the federal government built several buying stations and a number of milling and reduction centers on the Colorado Plateau. Utah's AEC milling facilities were in Salt lake City, Monticello, LaSal, Blanding, and Mexican Hat.

In 1957 Steen opened the Uranium Reduction Company, the nation's first large independent uranium mill, in Moab. Sold to Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation in 1962, the facility shut down in 1984. The federal mills were sold to private industry and finally disbanded.

Uranium excitement was not limited to the redrock desert. In the 1950s and 1960s, Salt lake City became known as the "Wall Street of Uranium Stocks." Triggered by a promoter named Jay Walters, Jr., a mania for buying penny stocks to finance developing uranium mines swept the country. The first offering was sold in 1953; by the end of 1954, eighty-one uranium firms were listed with the Utah Securities Commission. Housewives, schoolteachers, auto mechanics and insurance executives stood in line to buy certificates to finance large corporations such as Uranium Corporation of America, Standard Uranium, Federal, and Lisbon, and scores of false claims that didn't have a whiff of ore.

Steen aka Utex sells to Atlas in 1962.

 

After selling to Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corp., Steen seemingly could have settled down to a relaxed life in Reno, Nevada, where he was found to be insolvent in 1969. What happened to all those riches?

 

 Ringholz's article cited above ended with these words: "Although uranium mining in Utah and other western states has ceased, experts indicate that there is still substantial ore deep underground. Should demand for nuclear power revive and the market become viable, the Colorado Plateau may once again teem with the mines and mills of the atomic years."

 

 

Update on David Copeland

After catching a brief glimpse into the life of the Torbitt Document's alleged author, David G. Copeland in a previous post, we now turn to the document itself, written under an alias as early as 1970, describing the "cabal" which worked together to kill President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

In the "About the Author" section of the Torbitt Document, Copeland told us that he prosecuted criminal cases during 1949, 1950, and part of 1951, but the only details he furnished were that this occurred:

"in the southwestern part of the United States ...  where professional Mexican assassins have been used to commit political murder. He has also participated in the trial of cases in the southwest involving gunrunning activities through Mexico to Cuba, both before Castro was successful and after Castro succeeded and became the subject of overthrow by gunrunners from the southwest."

To the above, he added:

Close relatives of the gambling syndicate members have used the legal services of Torbitt in complicated cases involving tracing of financial dealings of organized crime in Texas and their foreign connecting links."

Certain other tidbits of information we have learned without help from his book. For example, a son, Kippie, born in Waco during his first marriage, died before his third birthday in 1953. Between then and January 1960, when he married Jayne Baker, a divorce occurred.

About Copeland, however, through newspapers we learn that in 1962 as head of the campaign for liberal candidate Don H. Yarborough (no relation to the U.S. Senator, Ralph Yarborough), he organized a group called Texans for a Two-Party Texas following the primary elections, attempting to force conservative Democrats into the Republican Party. This group would unwittingly make it possible for George H.W. Bush to be elected as a Congressman in Texas.


Copeland knew, or thought he knew, facts proving that LBJ and Governor John B. Connally had been involved in the murder of President Kennedy, and he campaigned repeatedly after 1963 for their more liberal opponents, in 1968 calling LBJ's war on poverty a political gimmick.

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

The cogent questions, phrased in Watergate-ese, are: What did Copeland know, and how did he know it? Was he told by an insider, or did he simply make conclusions based on a combination of stories he heard and his own research?

We know from our research into his background that Copeland was married to Aline, a teacher, while living in Fort Worth (Tarrant County) in 1946, according to this page from the City Directory that year:

Click image to enlarge.

He was a student, perhaps in law school at Texas Wesleyan School of Law, which was located a few blocks from their residence. Seven miles to the west was the bomber-making plant where Aline had worked during the war before obtaining her teaching position at the junior high school. Nevertheless, he says in his self-published manuscript that he had a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. The manuscript also claimed to be "an enlargement of a working paper furnished to Torbitt by two agents -- one with the Customs Department and the other with the Narcotics Bureau. This is wholly at odds with what Jim Marrs claimed in his book about who Copeland's federal sources were.

The Fort Worth Bomber Plant

In attempting to discover who the two agents were, we have gone back through Copeland's life to review where he was at certain times in order to determine with whom he was in contact. For example, the plant where Aline Copeland worked while her husband was a student would become an important tool leading up to the NASA space program.

Tarrant Field Airdrome originated in 1941 and became Fort Worth Army Air Field on January 2, 1942. The site of the base was originally selected in 1941 as a Consolidated Vultee factory for the production of B-24 bombers. A separate contract was let for a landing field, Tarrant Field, to be built to support the aircraft factory. The construction of an air force base on the east side of Tarrant Field was authorized after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Tarrant Field Airdrome was assigned to the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command in July 1942.

The base became one of the first B-24 transition schools to begin operation. After more than 4,000 students were trained in B-24s at the base, its mission was changed to B-24 transition because of the nearness to the Consolidated factory. In 1945 the mission was changed from B-24 to B-29 aircraft training. The base was assigned to the newly formed Strategic Air Command in March of 1946.

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation was formed by a merger of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, founded by Reuben H. Fleet in 1923 in Buffalo, New York, and Vultee Aircraft, a California airplane builder. [The timeline of corporations is set out at the Aerospace Legacy Foundation website.] In Texas it operated a mile-long facility, known locally as the Bomber Plant, built in 1942 on 563 acres on the west side of what is now Carswell Air Force Base at Fort Worth. The company used the site to fulfill contracts for planes it had no room to build at its San Diego factory and produced more than 3,000 B-24s, as well as C-87 cargo planes there.

Vultee Aircraft, based in Downey, California, had acquired the assets of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, which had been dissolved in bankruptcy, and became Consolidated Vultee Aircraft, commonly known as Convair for short. Between 1942 and 1948 the Vultee Field division of Convair was awarded government contracts that gave it a step ahead in designing long-range missile weapons systems for the military. Project MX-774 would study a subsonic, jet engine cruise missile and a rocket-powered supersonic ballistic missile.

Vultee's engineers in California focused on the ballistic missile concept, taking data about the German V-2 rocket with plans to build a guided missile that would carry power equipment allowing it to travel outside the atmosphere of the earth--described as a "streamlined" version of the German V-2. The Downey/San Diego plant, which was designated North American Aviation by 1949, was headquarters for the Fort Worth plant, where Copeland's first wife Aline had been employed during the war years. A 1952 classified document, released in 2009, indicates that beginning in December 1948 the North American Aviation plant in Downey had been working on a project to construct a low power research reactor "to produce plutonium at low cost." In some of the reports of the file, reference was made to a thorium converter reactor, graphite-moderated reactors and the Hanford Cooperative Program. Persons in charge on various reports included G. M. Inman, T. Fahrner, E. E. Motta, R. L. Stoker, C. Malmstrom, H. P. Yockey, R.L. Carter, W.E. Parkins, C. Starr and others, many if not all part of the Manhattan Project headed by Robert Oppenheimer.

We do know that Aline Copeland returned to Waco before her second marriage and that she was apparently working at James Connally AFB, a bombardier and navigator flight training center between 1951 and 1962--the most likely place for Aline to have met and marry an Air Force officer who had been a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII.  An officer by that same name was Communications Officer for the 601st Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron at the radar work site, "Gunpost," in Rothwesten, Germany in 1959. Nothing could be found on where Aline and Campbell met, or on whether that Major Campbell was in fact married to an exceptionally attractive German woman named Erika Horn, mentioned at the 601st ACWS website.

If anyone has any other information about how all these details came together, please comment below.

David Copeland--the Man Behind the Torbitt Mask

According to Jim Marrs, William Torbitt, writer of the underground manuscript known as the Torbitt Document, or Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, was an attorney in Waco, Texas, whose real name was David Copeland and who, Marrs claims, told him in an interview that the information written under the alias had been given him by two federal employees, one with the Secret Service and the other with the FBI. We have also heard that Copeland was a prosecutor of criminals and may have learned details from men he represented who were connected to organized crime or hired as assassins. But was all this cover to protect the real source of the information?

The following research into who David Copeland, alias William Torbitt, was shows us that:

B-24 Bomber made in Fort Worth, TX

• His first wife designed B-24 bombers in Fort Worth for Convair. It was this very plant where she worked during World War II, while she was married to Copeland, where Max Clark headed the security at the time he told George De Mohrenschildt that returned defector, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a "harmless lunatic."
• After his divorce from Wife No. 1, she married a former prisoner of war who had been held in Germany before war's end and then advanced to the rank of Lt. Col. in the Air Force during the cold war, stationed in German outposts.

Fashion Logo

• Wife No. 2 became a fashion designer/manufacturer for children's apparel and was often in Dallas, the center of the Texas cotton textile mart, which employed a number of "White Russians" known to have been somehow connected, if only collaterally, with the Kennedy assassination--people who were discussed in the Torbitt Document.

 The curious reader wants to know:

Who was David Copeland?

David Copeland's Family

David Goddard Copeland died in 1981. We can piece together his life from various studies and notices that appear online. His parents James P. Copeland and Sarah "Sallie" Goddard married in 1909 in Belfalls, a small farming community in Falls County, east of Temple, Texas. He  died in 1967 in Kerrville, Texas, not far from LBJ's ranch in Johnson City. Sallie had been born in 1886 in Bosque County near Waco and was the youngest daughter of Dr. Andrew Goddard, from Chattanooga, Tenn., who came to Texas after being a prisoner during the Civil war. In Alabama he married Nancy Parker and brought her to Cedar Bayou, Texas near present-day Baytown, where he taught school. Together they reared fifteen children. After two of their children died from whooping cough, the Goddards relocated to the Bosque River area west of Waco. In 1880 Dr. Goddard was elected president of the Sunday School Institute of Waco Association, and according to the 1897 history of that organization, he and his wife were 

"members of Dr. [B. H.] Carroll's church. Their residence is No. 1904 South Seventh street."  

Dr. Goddard was a medical doctor but in later years wrote an astronomy column for the newspaper in Waco. He also was county surveyor, in which he was succeeded by his son Joe Goddard. 

A Waco news article in 1955 reported on a family reunion held at the home of David Copeland's mother -- 425 University Avenue--close to the Baylor campus. David, already an attorney, and his wife Jayne then lived at 4217 Erath in Waco, some miles west of Baylor. David was a criminal defense attorney whose name sometimes appeared in the Waco paper owned by LBJ's close supporter Charles Marsh. She and the Goddard family were also the subject of a feature article written by Helen Baldwin that appeared in 1964.

Copeland was campaign manager for Democratic nominee for state attorney general, Tom Moore from Waco, who was supported by former U.S. Senator Tom Connally, also from Waco.

When Copeland ran for a place on the Texas Supreme Court in 1964, he was described as "a former Waco assistant district attorney, campaigner for Houston attorney Don Yarborough and a member of the Texas Association of Plaintiffs Attorneys." Four years later he opposed the favorite-son status of former governor John Connally, while leading the Texas campaign of anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy.

David Copeland's First Wife, Aline

Copeland was married first to Aline Buehrer, who died in 2010:

Aline Doris Campbell August 26, 1920 - October 22, 2010 Aline Doris Campbell of Alamo, formerly of Waco, passed away Friday, October 22, 2010 at St. Catherine Center. Graveside services will be 11:00 a.m, Nov. 13, at Waco Memorial Park. Aline was born August 26, 1920 in Brenham, Texas, the only child of Fred and Flora Buehrer. She graduated from Brenham High School in 1938. She attended Baylor University and graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor of Music Degree. To support the War effort, she worked in the design department of Consolidated Aircraft in Fort Worth, which produced the B-24 bombers. Following the war, she was a Registered Music Therapist at the VA Regional Medical Center in Waco and Director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation programs at James Connally AFB, Waco. She was preceded in death by her parents, Fred and Flora Buehrer of Brenham; her beloved son, David G. (Kippie) Copeland, Jr.; her late husband, Lawson D. Campbell; and her first husband, David G. Copeland. She is survived by her first cousin, Franklin Raschke and wife, Genevieve, of San Antonio; niece, Kathy Copeland Papke of Austin; nephew, Randy Copeland of Houston; cousin, John Toland and wife, Deborah, of Tucson, AZ; cousin, Nancy Fontaine Woods of Braddford, England; and cousin, John Barrett of Austin. Memorials may be made to the Wounded Warriors Project.

Aline's grandfathers were Swiss and German, though both men married Americans.


The history of the Consolidated Aircraft plant is described as follows:

Air Force Plant 4 was opened in 1941. It was operated by the Fort Worth Division of Consolidated Aircraft Company (later Convair) for assembly of the B-24 bomber. In 1942, during World War II, Air Force Plant 4 became operational when Consolidated Aircraft began manufacturing the B-24 Liberator bomber. Over 3,000 B-24s were constructed in the first 2 years of operation. Later, the plant produced 124 B-32s, the successor to the B-24. Later, the plant began producing aircraft components, as well as delivering completed aircraft.
Many innovative aircraft were produced at AFP 4, including the first intercontinental bomber (B-361, the first supersonic bomber (B-58), and the first swing-wing aircraft (F-111). In 1953, General Dynamics took over operation of the manufacturing facility. Since then, Air Force Plant 4 has produced the B-36, B-58, F-111 and F-16 aircraft. Between 1947 and 1954, 383 B-36s were built, and afterwards the Mach-2-capable B-58. By 1966, the plant had expanded to 4.7 million square feet, and by 1968 it had expanded further to 6.5 million square feet, to accommodate production of the F-111.

B-24 Bomber plant in Fort Worth

After Aline and David Copeland divorced, she married Lawson D. Campbell, who would retire from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel and, upon his death in 2008, be buried at  Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1942 and was held as a prisoner of war in Germany beginning in 1944 for almost a year. He was an Air Force communications officer, whose photo and one of his German wife, Erika Horn, are shown at a website dedicated to the 601st-615th Aircraft Warning Battalion stationed in Germany during the 1950's:

Captain Campbell, our next Communications Officer, was also revered by many who worked for him. At the 601st reunions there are always stories told about how he handled various situations. He was humorous, but could also be very firm.  Arthur Harman wrote:

"...a snapshot taken of, then, Major Lawson D. Campbell, around 1959 or, perhaps, 1960-61. It was taken in his office at Ramstein Germany where he commanded the local communications organization and facilities." ...

Erika Horn.  Later Erika Campbell
Long-time German National employee.  Officially, a civilian clerk/typist  Unofficially, the Commander's secretary
Wrote and spoke idiomatically perfect American English with no trace of a German or British accent
Married Capt. Lawson Campbell, 610st [sic] Communications Officer, in Kassel in 1959 and went to live with him in the States.

Jayne Copeland--David's Second Wife

Copeland's second wife, Jayne Baker Copeland, would get into the news when she started her own clothing manufacturing company several years before Kennedy's assassination.

David and Jayne Copeland divorced in 1978, three years before he died. In 1981 Jayne married Milton Douglas Solomon. Both are now deceased. According to Milton's obituary, he was 

"General Manager for Barber Boats and Motors in Dallas, Texas. Following a long and successful tenure at Barber Boats, Milton retired with his wife, Jayne Baker Solomon, to the city of his birth and his circle of cherished friends." 

The obituary for Jane's mother, Lillie Baker, stated:

"She partnered with her daughter and only child Jayne in the design and manufacturing of the Jayne Copeland line of children’s wear. She later opened and operated Lillie’s Bridal and Formals on South 8th Street where customers fondly regarded her as 'Miss Lillie.' She retired at age 80 after 25 years in the bridal business to devote her time to her great-grandchildren. Lillie is survived by her daughter Jayne Solomon and son-in-law Milton Solomon, grandchildren Kevin Copeland, Michael Copeland and Kasey Frederick. She leaves four adored great-grandchildren: Jessica Steakley, David Copeland, Kristin Copeland and Max Pfeiffer-Frederick, as well as brothers Robert, Eldridge, and Charles Blain."

From this information about Lillie's surviving siblings we learn that Lillie Mae Blain had married William Judson Baker, who died in 1950. Jayne's name was listed in Texas birth records as Evelyn Jane Baker. In 1930 the Waco directory listed W. Judson Baker and wife Lillie living with his parents, two brothers and two sisters, at 1912 Franklin Avenue. Judson and Lillie worked at an ice cream stand, which sold "frozen custard." Four years later the couple lived at 1000 S. 8th Street, and his parents lived on the same street a few blocks to the east, an address now within the Baylor campus. Before his in 1950 at age 40, Jayne's father, Judson Baker, was a used car dealer in Waco who had started a Christmas "fling," in 1946 by throwing dimes off the roof of his office to the scores of children below. In 1947 he switched to pennies, throwing 40,000 off his roof.

 
The Jayne Copeland line of clothing continues, as does the widespread fame of William Torbitt's document.