Goodfellas Part VII: Jack and Bobby

Welcome to the seventh installment in my "Goodfellas" series. When I began this project in November of 2017 it was intended to explore the ties between President Donald J. Trump and organized crime. But over the preceding months it has taken on a life of its own, now encompassing the network (cult?) behind Trump's rise to power. For those of you just joining us, here is a brief recap of what has already been addressed:

The project began with a standalone piece that considered Trump's links to Resorts International, a notorious gaming interest with extensive ties to both organized crime and the US deep state. Beginning as the Mary Carter Paint Company in the early 1960s, the company was widely believed to be a CIA front used for anti-Castro operations in Florida during that era. By the end of the decade Mary Carter had become Resorts and had established its own little gaming fiefdom on the Bahamas' Paradise Island. Important early backers included billionaire Howard Hughes, President Richard M. Nixon, "rogue" financiers such as Robert Vesco and Richard Mellon Hitchcock and the inevitable Lansky lackeys. Resorts also established Intertel, it own private intelligence agency that was heavily staffed by "former" US operators, around this time.

Trump eventually became Resorts CEO in 1987. The gaming interest had most recently played a key role in opening up Atlantic City to legalized gambling as it had in the Bahamas during the prior decade. Intertel and the mob were still in league with Resorts at this time as well, giving the Orange One quite a rogue's gallery of collaborators.

In many ways Trump's CEO-ship of Resorts represented a kind of coming out party. As was noted in the first installment of this series, Trump had spent much of the prior decade cultivating contacts among organized crime circles prior to taking over Resorts. In the second and third installments I suggested that one such contact Trump made in the late 1970s involved "The Company," a drugs and arms trafficking network launched by former police and US military personnel in Kentucky during the late 1970s. Various members of "The Company" boasted of CIA links and appear to have had extensive contacts within the administration of Kentucky governor John Y. Brown. Trump himself befriended Brown during this time and became a regular on the Kentucky Derby scene, along with the Clinton family.

As I was wrapping up part three I began to consider the man who initiated Trump into this netherworld, former McCarthy attorney Roy Cohn. Cohn is widely credited as Trump's political mentor. He introduced the Orange One to many individuals who would become key figures in Trump's quest for the White House, most notably Rupert Murdoch, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Cohn also had extensive ties to organized crime, the US intelligence community, the Fascist International (personified by networks such as the American Security Council, the World Anti-Communist League and Le Cercle) and a deep seated rivalry with the Kennedy family.

During the fourth installment I began to consider Cohn's source of power: sexual blackmail. There Cohn's ties to CIA director William Casey, Republican lobbyists Robert Keith Gray Craig Spence and other key figures in the infamous Franklin scandal were considered. For those of you unaware, Franklin was believed to be a nationwide pedophile ring based out of Nebraska that thrived during the Reagan/Bush years. And Cohn appears to have been very close to several key figures involved in it.

Part five introduced another close Cohn/Trump collaborator who has appeared in various sex scandals for decades: private detective Thomas Corbally. Corbally, a veteran of both the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) and Kroll Associates, was believed to have had a decades-spanning association with the US intelligence community. Corbally was last in the midst of scandal during the early 1990s when he cropped up in the fallout from Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. Corbally had already been active in Hollywood for decades by that point collecting dirt.

But Hollywood was hardly the extent of Corbally's activities. As was noted at the end of that installment and throughout the most recent one, Corbally was a key figure in the Profumo scandal that brought down the Macmillan government in the UK during the early 1960s. The scandal revolved around a woman named Christine Keeler who slept with British Secretary of State for War John Profumo and Soviet naval attache and GRU asset Yevgeni Ivanov during 1961 at the behest of Stephen Ward, an asset of MI5 and likely MI6 as well. Later Ward would be used as a back channel to the Soviet Union by the UK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

At the center of things was the estate of Cliveden, then controlled by Astor family, a long time powerhouse within the Anglo-American Establishment. It had been the British wing of the Astor family that had done so much to launch the Round Table movement that spawned the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs around the time of the First World War. During the build up to the Second World War Cliveden had served as meeting ground for members of this network that supported appeasement with Nazi Germany. This circle became known as the "Cliveden Set."

Cliveden

By the early 1960s the social circle surrounding Cliveden was even more curious, as were the activities taking place there. As to the latter, it would appear that Ward (among others) was providing girls for orgies with occultic undertones. Ward himself was reputed to have an interest in the occult and he would hardly have been the only one. The Astor family itself, and especially the American wing, had developed quite an interest in esoteric and fringe topics by this time. Their circle would come to include J. Paul Getty Jr., eventual patron of Crowleyite and cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and William Mellon Hitchcock, heir of the powerful and intelligence-connected Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Shortly after his time at Cliveden Hitchcock became the patron of LSD guru Timothy Leary and eventually the financier for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the largest LSD smuggling network in the world by the end of the 1960s.

In other words, this circle appears to have had an enormous influence on the American counterculture that would emerge by the late 1960s, bankrolling several of its key cultural foundations. Even more ominously are the longstanding rumors that Mary Ann DeGrimston, a co-founder of the infamous Process Church of the Final Judgment, was one of the girls Ward procured for this circle. Another curious tie to the Process, not mentioned in this series previously, is that in the wake of Lord Astor's death in 1966 Cliveden was turned over to Stanford University on a 21-year lease reportedly to improve Anglo-American relations. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Stanford would play a crucial role in Maury Terry's highly controversial account of the Process. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let us return to the Profumo affair, specifically Thomas Corbally's role in it.

Honey Trapping a President

As was noted at the end of the sixth installment, Corbally appears to have learned of the Ward ring in '61 and sought to befriend Ward not long afterwards. By 1962 the two men had reportedly become quite close. When rumblings of the affair began to emerge in 1963, Corbally, along with future LSD baron William Mellon Hitchcock, appear to have been dispatched by US Ambassador to the UK David Bruce (who had married into the Mellon family) to get to the bottom of things. In some accounts, it was Bruce himself (using information dug up by Corbally and Hitchcock) to first confirm the affair to UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

However Bruce, who like Corbally had served in the OSS during WWII, did not appear to pass along what he learned to Washington at the time. When news of the affair broke in June of 1963, the Kennedy White House seems to have gone into a panic. For all sakes and purposes, it appears that Bruce, Corbally and Hitchcock were running a private intelligence operation the Kennedy White House was totally unaware of. This came at time when Attorney General Robert Kennedy was at war with Roy Cohn and his patron, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. And that is where things stood as I left off.

The panic the Kennedy White House was feeling almost surely derived from the fact that hints were being dropped that JFK himself had been ensnared in this ring and that Hoover was the one leaking this particular entrapment to the press.

"Hoover's sexual dirt on the Kennedys began to surface in late June 1963, after the President's 'peace speech' at American University with its appeal, 'Let us reexamine our attitude towards the Cold War.' On June 20, the United States and the Soviet Union signed an agreement establishing a 'hot line' between the Kremlin and White House. A week later, there was a flurry of veiled hints linking the President to the Profumo story, such as the Drew Pearson-Jack Anderson column for June 29: 'Britishers who read American criticisms of Profumo throwback to question "What high American official was involved with Marilyn Monroe?" '

"On the same day, in a front-page story, the Hearst paper in New York, the Journal-American, linked the Christine Keeler-Stephen Ward sex ring itself to a 'high U.S. aide,' 'one of the biggest names in American politics.' Back in 1960, after his election but before his inauguration, the President had slept with two members of the ring, including Mariella Novotny (a former stripper in London's Club Pigalle)."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 228-229)

J. Edgar Hoover

These trysts appear to have occurred in New York City in December of 1960. Mariella Novotny ended up in New York City as a result of a sex party she had attended earlier that year. It was at this particular party where she first met Stephen Ward and was shortly thereafter asked to travel to NYC to effectively work as an upscale prostitute. It is interesting to note that the party that brought Ward and Novotny together and paved the way for her time in NYC was thrown by American oilman, filmmaker and A & P supermarket heir Huntington Hartford.

Curiously, a year or so prior to this faithful party, Hartford began to invest heavily in a certain island in the Bahamas.

"....Between 1959 and 1965 the eccentric heir poured $28,000,000 into Hog's 685 acres, renaming the island Paradise. Whatever its name, it was proving to be a financial catastrophe: removed from the Nassau mainland by four hundred yards of water, the island was an awkward place to visit and, once you got there, there wasn't much to do the couldn't be done better somewhere else. What the island needed was a tourist attraction – gambling – and a bridge connect it with Nassau proper. Hartford, however, was in no position to obtain permission for either...

"While Groves and Lansky prospered a few miles to the north, Hartford watched in horror as his own investment, bolstered by additional millions, withered in value until the multimillionaire found himself without the cash to continue. Accordingly, he sought a buyer, and found one in the Mary Carter Paint Company."

(Spooks, Jim Hougan, pgs. 380-381)

Huntington Hartford

Yes dear reader, that would be the same Mary Carter Paint Company that eventually became Resorts International. In other words, Huntington Hartford was the man who developed Paradise Island prior to Resorts moving in to launch their infamous casino there. Hartford would retain a stake in the island and, as Hougan later notes, became a shareholder in Resorts.

Thus, Ward's social circle included two future shareholders in Resorts --Hartford and William Mellon Hitchcock --the gaming interest that Trump eventually became CEO of 1987. And here they are in the early 1960s involved in a sex ring being managed MI5 and unknown American partners targeting powerful political figures in the US and UK, including JFK. But moving along.

The other woman linked to JFK in this ring was Suzy Chang. Its possible Kennedy affair with Chang had begun even earlier, during the 1960 election campaign. In some accounts Novotny's affair with Kennedy is said have resulted from her "filling in" for Chang in NYC. There is little doubt that Chang had both powerful backers and was close to several key figures in this scandal, most notably Ward and Corbally.

"This heavily censored FBI and US Immigration Service documents reveal that Chang traveled to New York in 1960 and 1961, and over the Christmas period of 1962. Earlier in 1962, she applied to get on to the Chinese visa quota for the United States. Chang's mother, who was already living in America, filed a petition to the Immigration Service on her daughter's behalf. He did so through the prestigious New York law firm of Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine. William Donovan, who started the firm, had been the founder of the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, and the law firm had always had strong connections with the government in power.

"This was a surprisingly powerful helping hand for a minor actress. 'Someone,' a former FBI official told us, 'was protecting her ass. They wanted someone with real clout to carry the ball, to run interference for her...' Suzy Chang got on to the visa quota within a fortnight.

"A 19 July 1963 report in the Immigration Service file – soon after the flap over the Journal-American article hinting at the President's involvement in the Profumo case – reflects an extensive investigation of Chang. The report lists nine people, most of them British models, who had been linked to Chang. All the names are blanked out. Another document shows that the authorities had combed to the file on Mariella Novotny prostitution case, looking for a connection to Chang. They did not find one.

"The most suggestive document is dated well after the Profumo case, in 1965. It notes that Chang 'arrived in the US at New York via flight 701, on 22/12/63. She was the [blanked-out section in report]... she was question regarding the "Profumo affair," and alleged to be a close friend of Stephen Ward.'

"As this book went into its first edition, the authors finally traced Suzy Chang, who had taken a new name and lived on the eastern seaboard of the United States. She confirmed that she had known many celebrities, including Anthony Armstrong-Jones and key figures associated with the Profumo affair – notably Thomas Corbally, who played a leading role in alerting the American ambassador in London to looming scandal, Kennedy, and Stephen Ward."

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pgs. 308-309) 

William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS founder whose law firm aided Chang

Earlier Summers and Dorril had also noted that William Mellon Hitchcock was chummy with Chang as well, describing her as "one of Stephen's girls" (pg. 308). As such, it would clearly seem that Corbally and Hitchcock, who shared a flat in the UK together in the early 1960s, were aware that Ward's ring had ensnared JFK in addition to various key figures among the British Tories. And both men reportedly held orgies out of their flat during this time as well, only increasing the amount of sexual blackmail material available to them.

Clearly, it would seem that Corbally and Hitchcock were running some type of honeytrap in the UK shortly before the Profumo affair was exposed. There were even rumblings from journalists at the time that this was the case:

"On 10 June, in the United States, a crack appeared in the wall of silence. The New York Daily News, reporting from London, said US officials were sure the women around Ward were 'only part of a bigger set-up with American ramifications.' It was a reference to the prostitution case, two years earlier, of Harry Towers and Mariella Novotny – the young woman who had claimed following her return to Britain, that one of the men she had had sex with was the man who was now president, John F. Kennedy. The News now further reported that there was 'an American-based organization' attempting, through vice rings, to blackmail 'influential people'.

"The London correspondent who had filed this story, Henry Maule, told labor MP George Wigg – who was still energetically collecting information – that he had been pursuing the story for many months, and had been looking especially into the activities of the wealthy American Thomas Corbally. Corbally, according to Maule, had made a practice of finding out the names of men been associated with Rice-Davies and Keeler for the purposes of blackmail. Maule also brought up Harry Towerss name, and that of another American who, he said, had left the country. His information, he told me, was coming from reliable sources."

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 291)

Thomas Corbally

The New York Daily News' investigation into Profumo would be a brief one. Shortly after the newspaper linked Corbally publicly to the story, he threatened a million-dollar lawsuit. The story then promptly died at the Daily News, but was then taken up by the Journal-American. The Journal-American was at the time owned by the far right Hearst family, who were close to Hoover. It is believed that Hoover himself would at times use the Journal-American for leaks and this seems to be very much the case in this instance.

"He had long used the Journal-American, like other Hearst papers, to fuel fears about the Red Menace. There were even former FBI men on the paper's staff. Edgar's phone logs showed that he talked regularly with Richard Berlin, head of the Hearst conglomerate. Berlin oversaw an editorial policy of fierce opposition to the policies of the Kennedy administration.

"He and Edgar, moreover, were both close to Roy Cohn, who was acting as attorney for an American involved in the Profumo case and said by a central figure in the scandal to have 'arranged sex parties for JFK in London.' A telltale handwritten note on one of the FBI's Profumo documents reads: 'Roy Cohn has this info.' "

(Official and Confidential, Anthony Summers, pg. 309) 

The Journal-American, learning from the mistakes of the Daily News, hinted at Kennedy involvement in Profumo while leaving out Corbally or any blackmail angle. The Daily News shall make at least one other appearance is this strange saga, so do keep it in mind dear reader. For now, let us return to Corbally and allegations that he was digging up sexual blackmail material on JFK as he is almost surely the American indicated in the above quote believed who "arranged sex parties for JFK in London."

There are indications that Corbally had made other attempts to set Kennedy up with various women prior to cozying up to Stephen Ward's ring. Eamon Javers, the closet thing we have to a Corbally biographer, noted that the private detective had personally tried to talk at least one actress into sleeping with JFK in 1962, Writing on Buzzfeed, Javers noted:

"In January 1962, Corbally was in Palm Beach, Florida, hanging out with an 18-year-old actor named Nancy Czar. Czar was promoting her new beach-blanket movie Wild Guitar and newly single after a relationship with Elvis Presley.

"As Czar (now Nancy Bretzfield and living in Los Angeles) remembers it, she, Corbally, and a few friends ended up at the Kennedy compound: the Mediterranean-style mansion on North Ocean Boulevard that the rest of the country knew as the Winter White House. Czar told me that during the party Corbally tried to set her up alone with President Kennedy in the library, even as the first lady entertained guests in another room."

Nancy Czar

Czar turned Corbally down, but it would seem by the end of the year Corbally had come into contact with at least one woman who had carried on an affair with the president. Not long afterwards, the leaks to the press started in earnest.

Deep Implications

It thus seems clear that Corbally was a key figure in a blackmail ring that had targeted President Kennedy during the early 1960s. And it seems equally clear that Corbally was taking orders from his attorney, Roy Cohn. It was Cohn who had threatened that million-dollar (in some accounts, six-million dollar) lawsuit against the Daily News on Corbally's behalf and it was Roy Cohn who served as Corbally's attorney when he met with the FBI after fleeing the UK in in June of 1963.

"... It is clear, though, that the FBI was keenly interested in hearing from Thomas Corbally, the American citizen who – as reported earlier – had given information on the case to the US embassy in London. Corbally was now back in the United States, and gave information both directly to the FBI and through his attorney Roy Cohn. Much of the information he gave to Roy Cohn is still classified today."

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 288)

Think about that for a moment dear reader --the information Corbally told Cohn regarding a sex scandal in the UK was so sensitive that its still classified over a half century later. Clearly, Cohn was in possession of some truly bombshell revelations. And such information likely couldn't have come at a better time.

Roy Cohn

As was noted in the prior installment, RFK had brought the full force of the Justice Department to bare against Cohn during the early 1960s. RFK was effectively in a stealth civil war with Cohn and his longtime patron, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover, being aware of JFK's indiscretions with Judith Campbell and Marilyn Monroe, was already somewhat protected, but Cohn does not appear to have had an insurance policy until Profumo. What's more, Profumo would have been far more damaging to JFK than affairs with either Campbell or Monroe. Soviet and British intelligence were also at work in Profumo in addition to the hints of occultism and the fact that many of the women used in this ring were barely legal (and in some cases, still minors when they started). Profumo was essentially full blown Eyes Wide Shut and could have easily brought down both governments in the US and the UK.

But in addition to Kennedy, it is likely Cohn and his allies in the American far right saw it as an opportunity for some house cleaning across the Atlantic. At the time the British Conservative Party, as was indicated in part five of this series, was still heavily influenced by Lord Astor and other Round Table fellow travelers. It would seem that Profumo took out many globalists and paved the way for a much more conservative approach from the Tories that became evident by the early 1970s with the launch of the far right Monday Club. As was noted before here, many Tories used the Monday Club to forge ties with Le Cercle and other components of the Fascist International. This transformation would ultimately result in Brexit decades later.

Profumo then provided much needed ammunition to Roy Cohn in his war with RFK while also paving the way for a firm nationalist component in a major political party in a crucial US alley. This was no small feet for Cohn, and several crucial players in the Profumo affair would end up launching Resorts International by the end of the decade, that mysterious gaming interest that would solidify Donald Trump as a major player by the mid-1980s. As such, Profumo was clearly a pivotal event of 20th century deep politics even though it remains shockingly under examined by most alternative researchers.

But in addition to the deep politics, there's also the curious figures in Ward's ring such as the Astor family, William Mellon Hitchcock, Paul Getty Jr. and possibly even Mary Ann DeGrimston that would play such key roles in launching the 1960s counterculture and New Age movements just a few years later. These elements would once again aide Cohn in the late 1970s and early 1980s during a series of shocking murders that unfolded across the United States --murders that appear to have been the work of a well connected and well funded cult. In the next installment we shall consider such things. Stay tuned dear reader.