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.

Goodfellas Part VI: Cliveden Games

Welcome to the sixth installment in my ongoing examination of the sinister forces behind the rise of  Donald J. Trump. This series grew out of a prior post I had published late last year examining Trump's ties to the infamous gaming interest Resorts International. As was noted before there, Resorts had extensive ties to both organized crime as well as the deep state, even owning its own private intelligence company (Intertel) heavily staffed with former US intelligence officers.

Resorts grew out of a Florida-based company known as the Mary Carter Paint Company that was widely believed to be a CIA front active in anti-Castro activities during the early 1960s. By the end of the decade it had transformed into Resorts, with its own private fiefdom on the Bahama's Paradise Island. It had contacts with such Overworld figures as billionaire Howard Hughes and President Richard Nixon while also rubbing shoulders with various Lansky associates and "rogue" financiers such as Robert Vesco and William Mellon Hitchcock.

By the time Trump took over Resorts as its CEO in 1987, the gaming interest had taken a lower profile but still had ample connections throughout the Over and Underworlds in addition to the deep state. In many ways, Trump's ascension to the CEO-ship of Resorts was a kind of coming out party, announcing that he had arrived a a major player. As was noted in parts one and two of this series, Trump's rise in such circles had begun less than a decade ago when he began making extensive contacts among the Syndicate and other curious criminal enterprises, such as The Company, a Kentucky-based drug-and-arms smuggling network extensive staffed by "former" law enforcement and US military personnel.

Andrew "Drew" Thornton, a former military man and Kentucky cop who co-founded The Company

With part three of this series I began to focus in on the man who initiated Trump into such rarefied circles, his longtime attorney and political mentor Roy Cohn. Cohn had cut his teeth as Joseph McCarthy's attorney during the Red Scare of the early 1950s before returning to New York City, where he emerged as a major pawnbroker both within the city itself and nationally. The source of Cohn's power was long reputed to be various sexual blackmail operations he was involved in. His ties to such infamous figures as former CIA director William Casey, Republican lobbyists Craig Spence and Robert Keith Gray and the Franklin scandal were considered in part four of this series.

With the fifth and most recent installment I began to consider one of Cohn's longtime associates, private detective Thomas Corbally. Corbally spent decades under covering various sex scandals across the West. His involvement in a Hollywood sex scandal that unfolded during the early 1990s was considered there.

As I was wrapping up I began to move onto Corbally's involvement in what is commonly referred to as the Profumo affair. The scandal began in 1961 when UK Secretary of State for War John Profumo began an affair with Christine Keeler, who at the time was also sleeping with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache working for the GRU (the Soviet Union's military intelligence). The scandal eventually emerged in 1963 and brought down the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

Christine Keeler

The man who set up Keeler with both Profumo and Ivanov was an osteopath named Stephen Ward. Well known among UK high society, Ward had established contacts with both MI5 and MI6 in addition to becoming a close friend of Viscount William Waldorf Astor II. As was noted in that installment, the Astor family has been one of the most powerful Anglo-American dynasties around for centuries now. Lord Astor's father had helped establish the Round Table network, from which the infamous Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs emerged from.

In the years leading up to World War II the senior William Waldorf Astor and his compatriots became major backers of Nazi Germany while frequently meeting at Cliveden, the Astor family country estate. Cliveden would later play a key role in Profumo, being the site of many trysts the British aristocracy engaged in with the assistance of Ward.

Strange Goings-On and Stranger Friends

By the time Ward made the scene at Cliveden, he was an old hand at aristocrat sex parties. Reportedly he had gotten his start in the late 1940s and had early on made contacts in very high society. He was reputed, for instance, to have hobnobbed with Prince Philip at his now infamous Thursday Club gatherings. As the 1950s set in, things appear to have gotten especially strange at these parties. 

"Ward would write, without naming names, of parties devoted to masochism and sadism...:

I remember one dinner party where all round the room were girls and men tied and gagged in various attitudes and they so remained during the entire meal. Suffering was an essential part of this enjoyment. No cruelty was done – I never myself saw any cruelty, though I certainly heard of it being practiced. 

It is a kind of ritual sadomasochism... One of the most noticeable things about these people is the high standard of intelligence among them... rather like an intellectual cocktail party. The ceremonies usually start as follows – a large collection of chairs, straps and apparently fierce instruments would be produced and laid out in a formal manner on a low table. A beautiful girl would step forward and remove her clothes. The master, as he was called, would sit on a kind of throne. The girl would kneel before him and kiss his feet... She would be dressed in a wide, studded black leather belt, high-heeled black shoes and straps around her wrists, neck and ankles... A ritual punishment was administered. Finally, long bars were fastened to hooks in the straps... in such a way that the legs were widely separated... and a gag was placed in her mouth.

Drinks would now be brought and the secured girl would be left lying or standing while the guests stood around discussing the finer points... When this was over everyone looked normal again... There we were back at a normal cocktail party again.

"Ward also described satanic rituals – he had a fascination with black magic, according to Michael Bentine. 'At one such party in Kensington, there was a huge and obscene priapic emblem in the middle of the room. All the girls, and there were about a dozen, knelt down around it and made obeisance... the spontaneous way in which it was done made me realise they had all done it many times before...' "

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pgs. 47-48)

The sadomasochistic nature of these sex parties is a reoccurring theme among the networks Corbally investigated, so do keep it in mind. Ward's interest in the occult is most interesting as well, for reasons that shall be evident in a future installment.

There are indications that these ritualistic sex parties were carried on at Cliveden in the early 1960s when Profumo was unfolding as well. In the aftermath of the scandal, Lord Astor's health deteriorated rapidly. His wife blamed this on the forces Wad had unleashed at Cliveden.

"Astor's health declined to such an extent that his wife decided to have Cliveden exorcised and as the well-known Roman Catholic exorcist Dom Robert Petipierre to perform the ceremony. A few weeks later Dom Robert returned to exorcise Ward's cottage – the new tenant had committed suicide by drowning himself in the kitchen sink. Bronwen remembers, 'Dom Robert wouldn't let me near the cottage otherwise I would have been knocked sideways. Even he could hardly walk through the door.' According to Dom Robert's own account, 'the evil powers emanating from the cottage were some of the strongest I've ever experienced.' "

(An Affair of State, Phillip Knightly & Caroline Kennedy, pg. 257)

Stephen Ward's cottage at Cliveden

If Lord Astor did in fact have an interest in the occult, he would just be carrying on a family tradition the American branch of the Astor clan appears to have been especially devoted too. For instance, in 1894 John Jacob Astor IV (one of the wealthiest men in the world who famously drowned on the Titanic) published an early science fiction novel called A Journey in Other Worlds. Set in the year 2000, the work considers the vast space exploration humanity has embarked upon, having reached both Jupiter and Saturn at the onset of the twenty-first century in this account. On Saturn they encounter spirit-like beings who provide the explorers with insights into their own deaths. Beyond Neptune, the explorers encounter an icy world known as Cassandra that houses the souls of "unworthy humans."

Clearly, A Journey has a bit of an occult flavor to it. These duel interests in the occult and science fiction had an enormous influence on Astor's daughter, Ava Alice Muriel Astor, more commonly known as Alice Bouverie. During the late 1940s, Alice Bouverie became one of the chief financial patrons of ARTICHOKE scientist Andrija Puharich. In 1948, Puharich established the Round Table Foundation with the financial assistance of Bouverie, which is curious considering the English branch of the Astor had their own far more notorious Round Table group noted above. Puharich would use the Round Table Foundation to initially explorer his theories concerning ESP, but later it would become deeply involved in early research into entheogens, specifically magic mushrooms, in the 1950s. Alice Bouverie was deeply involved in this aspect of the research as well, as was noted before here.

Alice Bouverie

On New Years Eve 1952 Puharich conducted a seance in which he channeled entities that referred to themselves as The Nine. These beings claimed to be extraterrestrials who had transcended space and time. Puharich conducted another seance to invoke The Nine in 1953 that Bouverie participated in.

And here we find that less than a decade later her distant relative Lord William Waldorf Astor II appears to have been conducting his own curious rituals at the family estate of Cliveden. Clearly, the Astor family had developed some strange interests by at least the 1950s.

Lord Astor was not Ward's only high society friend with curious interests either. There was also J. Paul Getty Jr., the son of the American oil tycoon from Texas.

"Ward knew the oil baron's executive assisting Claus von Bulow – real name Claus Borberg – a Danish aristocrat whose functions for Getty reportedly included obtaining a supply of 'rejuvenation' drugs and organising parties. Getty, a relentless womaniser, once boasted of having had sex with five women in a single day."

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 192) 

J. Paul Getty Jr. and wife Talitha Pol

Several years after the Profumo affair blew up, Getty would become one of the chief financial patrons of infamous filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger. Anger was a devotee of Aleister Crowley and his films often featured occultic and fascist themes. In the wake of the relative success of 1963's Scorpio Rising, Getty brought Anger to the UK where he quickly made in roads among high society:

"The screenings also opened up new streams of finance, as younger heirs to foundational American fortunes became entranced with the burgeoning hippie movement and wanted to participate, or at least invest. One such scion, John Paul Getty Jr., invited Anger to London, where he was scooped up by the demimonde and soon found himself at parties with the art dealer Robert Fraser, hanging with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and eventually living with Mick Jagger and his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, and later Keith Richards and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Both couples soon became interested in the occult movement and devil worship, dabbling in it to the extent that Anger’s teachings pushed them to record a new song called 'Sympathy for the Devil,' with new converts Faithfull and Pallenberg singing backup."

Anger would go on to make his most famous film, Lucifer Rising, several years later. Initially set to feature a soundtrack by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, the film starred Mansonite and convicted murderer Bobby Beausoleil (who ultimately did the soundtrack, from prison, as well). Anger is now widely considered to be an icon of underground and gay cinema, the inventor of the "Midnight Movie," an an enormous influence on the then-emerging 1960s counterculture.

Kenneth Anger

The scion of at least one other wealthy and powerful American family that would play a key role in bank rolling the American counterculture also appears to have been a part of Ward's circle. His name was William Mellon Hitchcock, whose name should be familiar to those of you who have been following this series. As was noted in the examination of Resorts International, "Mr. Billy" (as Hitchcock was known to his family and friends) had been an early investor in Resorts' Paradise Island casino.

Around the time of Profumo affair going public, Mr. Billy had hooked up with Timothy Leary and had opened up his estate at Millbrook to Leary's psychedelic evangelicalism. Mr. Billy would later become the banker for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which by the end of the 1960s had become the largest LSD syndicate in the world. To say that Mr. Billy played an enormous role in the spread of LSD would be an understatement. And given the curious interests of the Astor and Getty families, he would have certainly been in receptive company. More on Mr. Billy's role in the Profumo scandal will be noted in a moment so do keep him in mind.

Before moving along, it is worth noting one final reputed member of Ward's circle: Mary Ann MacLean, more commonly known as Mary Ann De Grimston. Along with her husband Robert, Mary Ann founded the infamous Process Church of the Final Judgment, the cult that has long been linked to the Manson and Son of Sam killings. It should be noted though that no compelling evidence has emerged linking Mary Ann to the Profumo scandal and former Process member (and apologist) Timothy Wylie is quick to dismiss such notions:

"It's been suggested in some recent articles that Mary Ann might have had some involvement with the Profumo affair, the sex scandal that brought down a cabinet minister and the conservative government. Before I joined The Process I bumped into Christine Keeler, one of the two call girls called as witnesses, who had heard nothing of Mary Ann. Besides, I'm perfectly certain that had she played a part in the scandal she'd have been only too ready to tell us all about it."

(Love Sex Fear Death, Timothy Wylie, pg. 55)

the infamous Mary Ann De Grimston

As I noted above, there really is nothing compelling to link Mary Ann De Grimston to Profumo and I only mention it because the reputed cult behind the Manson and Son of Sam killings will be addressed at length in a future installment of this saga. What's more, Mary Ann may have had very compelling reasons for keeping her ties to Ward highly secretive. For we shall see, Profumo didn't just bring down a British government, it also almost brought down an American presidency as well.

But even if Mary Ann had nothing to do with Profumo, it cannot be denied that the circle around Stephen Ward would play an enormous role in funding the American counterculture and later New Age movement. The Astor, Getty and Mellon families were all among the most prominent financial backers and here they are, engaged in bizarre sex parties featuring key members of a Conservative British government. But moving along.

The American Players

Before getting into Corbally's role in Profumo, I now need to address some of the intrigues playing out within the American deep state. Let us begin with Roy Cohn's patron, longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover ruled over the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the power few dictators enjoy, making it his own person fiefdom for decades. And like his protege, Hoover was an untouchable figure in Washington because of his proficiency in sexual blackmail. Hoover's Official and Confidential Files have become the stuff of legend.

The only real challenge Hoover faced during long tenure was mounted by the Kennedy brothers, but most especially Robert. RFK had become increasingly disillusioned with Hoover during the McClellan hearings, feeling increasingly that the director had been stonewalling him. Upon JFK's election, RFK took over the Justice Department and mounted the nation's first semi-serious war on organized crime. In the process, his disillusionment with the director of the FBI only grew and there were increasing rumblings that the Kennedy brothers would soon move against him.

Hoover has long been alleged to have protected the mob from seriously scrutiny because it had obtained sexual blackmail on Hoover. While this blackmail material may have existed since the 1930s, there are allegations that Roy Cohn, a longtime attorney for the mob, was regularly engaging Hoover in compromising activities by the late 1950s. These activities also involved Lewis Rosenstiel, the mob connected founder of Schenley Industries and a close friend of both Cohn and Hoover. It was Lewis' wife Susan who made the allegations.

"... During 1958 Susan Rosenstiel insists that she was dragged by her husband to the infamous get-together hosted by Roy Cohn in 'a beautiful suite... all done in light blue' at the Plaza in Manhattan at which the Director the FBI confronted her in false eyelashes and a black wig, his short legs crossed demurely beneath his fluffy hemline. A follow-up orgy allegedly featured the Director in a feathered boa, involved with a couple of sleek young street hustlers in a maneuver requiring – this was squeamish old Hoover, after all – rubber gloves!"

(Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh, pg. 87)

J. Edgar Hoover

While these allegations have been widely dismissed, even by some of Hoover's harshest critics, there is circumstantial evidence Cohn was up to something very unsettling at the Plaza during the late 1950s.

"One corroboratory sidelight turned up one New York attorney John Koltz began to investigate Roy Cohn on behalf of a client. Declassified New York government files and spadework by a private detective substantiated the allegation that there was indeed a 'blue suite' at the Plaza, Suite 233. 'Roy Cohn was providing protection,' Koltz discovered. 'There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That's where Cohn got his power from – blackmail.' Like scorpions investigating coitus, Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover would continue to circle each other with wary fascination for decades."

(Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh, pg. 88)

There are some interesting references to Freemasonry in Cohn's alleged suite at the Plaza. It features the number 33, which is the highest grade in the Scottish Rite. The suite was also described as blue and the most popular variation of Masonry in the US has long been the "blue lodges," which feature only the first three grades. Even more curious, however, is the presence of the number 23 in Cohn's suite. This plays into the 23 enigma. But let us return to the matter at hand.

It seems highly likely that an opening salvo in the feud between Hoover and the Kennedy brothers involved the RFK-led Justice Department's attack on Roy Cohn.

"With John Kennedy president, Cohn sensed a hardening of the atmosphere. He rang up Jim Juliana, who had worked for him on McCarthy committee before signing on with Bobby. Should Cohn be concerned? Let's put it this way, Juliana warned him, 'Hoffa's number one. You're number two. Get out of town.'...

"... Before long Cohn heard that a ten-man team of tax investigators had been detached from the IRS to dig through Cohn's affairs, the 'Get-Cohn Squad.' It was soon evident to Cohn that an extraordinary barrage of covert methodology – mail cover, wiretaps, undistinguished physical surveillance – was starting to pound in, coordinated by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Roberts Morgenthau..."

(Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh, pg. 390)

Roy Cohn

As was noted in part three of this series, Cohn and RFK had first run afoul of one another during the McCarthy hearings, but Cohn's close ties to Hoover likely made him an even more appealing target once the Kennedy brothers had assumed power. By 1963, when the Profumo affair broke, there was quite a scorpion duel unfolding between Hoover and the Kennedy brothers.

"... In the 1950s, Meyer Lansky, and other mob figures such as Sam Giancana, supplied women to John F. Kennedy, some of whom were logged into Hoover's growing files of dirt on the young senator. In the 1960s this deep-political equilibrium was threatened by Robert Kennedy's war on organized crime, which alienated Hoover. Feeling increasingly threatening, especially after the Kennedy's began to collect their own files on Hoover, both Hoover and the mob began to escalate their collection of Kennedy sexual dirt. At first Hoover gained White House influenced by protecting the Kennedys against mob blackmail, but in 1963 Hoover, desperate, began to leak some of his own dirt on Kennedy to the public."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 228)

Fortunately for Hoover, Cohn's close associate Thomas Corbally had made some interesting discoveries in the UK of late.

Enter Corbally

Corbally first encountered Stephen Ward at some point towards the end of 1962, allegedly. In Corbally's version, the two men were at a party. Corbally was having trouble with his knee from an old injury and Ward, an osteopath, treated him on the spot. From there they soon became fast friends, with Corbally alleging that at one point Ward was visiting his flat at least twice day to treat the knee. 

It is likely there was nothing chance about this encounter. In June of 1963, after Corbally had fled the UK in the wake of the scandal unfolding, he told the FBI that he had heard allegations of the Profumo affairs as far back as 1961. These were not the only claims Ward was making that interested Corbally either. Writing on BuzzFeed, Eamon Javers notes:

"... Ward liked to tell people he had been a back-channel intermediary between the Soviets and the British government during the Cuban missile crisis. 'He knew a lot of pretty girls,' Corbally told the author Anthony Summers. 'And I like pretty girls. He liked to gossip and talked incessantly about the things he knew … I entertained a lot and Stephen was around my flat a lot.' One of the people Ward brought around to Corbally’s flat was the Russian, Yevgeny Ivanov."

Essentially Ward alleged that the UK had used his friendship with Ivanov, a key figure in the Profumo affair, to establish a back channel with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Corbally told the FBI that he had been advised that this claim was accurate. Corbally then appears to have had an interest in Ward's dealings for at least a year before the two men met.

Stephen Ward

 One is thus left with the distinct impression that Corbally was involved in some type of intelligence gathering operation that ultimately led him to Ward. But plying Ward for information on the goings-on in British high society at the time was hardly the extent of Corbally's activities in the UK at this time. A subsequent FBI report noted that Corbally himself "gave wild parties in his flat" (An Affair of State, Phillip Knightly & Caroline Kennedy, pg. 200). 

This is especially interesting in light of Corbally's flatmate: 

"Sharing Corbally's London apartment was another American, William 'Billy' Hitchcock IV, grandson of the founder of Gulf Oil and a nephew of the immensely wealthy Mellon family. His monthly income was estimated at $100,000, an extraordinary sum in those days. Some of that money went to financing drug guru Timothy Leary's project to spread LSD use worldwide."

 (The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 249)

Mr. Billy is on the right

Mr. Billy would begin bankrolling Leary in 1963, months after his role in the Profumo affair would come to a close. Thus, Mr. Billy was sharing a flat in London by at least 1962 with Thomas Corbally, a former OSS and military intelligence officers long reputed to maintained ties with the CIA over the years and a close friend of far right luminary Roy Cohn. Corbally's own political ideology was considered quite conservative as well. 

Nonetheless, Corbally appears to have been running orgies out of this flat that involved Stephen Ward and the same circle of British aristocrats caught up in the Profumo affair. And in the aftermath Mr. Billy, a scion of the deeply intelligence-connected Mellon clan (noted before here), begins bankrolling Timothy Leary. And as noted above, eventually Mr. Billy would end up as the financier for the largest LSD smuggling ring in the world while simultaneously serving as an investor in Resorts International. The same Resorts International Roy Cohn's good friend and frequent client Donald Trump would end up as CEO of in 1987. While I've found no indication that Mr. Billy and Trump knew one another, both men shared at last one common friend: Thomas Corbally.

Thomas Corbally

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let us return to the Corbally/Hitchcock flat for a moment. All of this is highly suggestive of some type of intelligence operation being run by both men and subsequent events appear to bare this out. For you see, it would be Corbally and Hitchcock who would ultimately confirm the Profumo affair to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, whose government would be brought down by it.

Macmillan had been hearing rumblings about the affair for months, but in January of 1963 he turned to a most curious source to confirm or deny them. 

"Macmillan's closest American friends was the ambassador, David Bruce, a great Anglophile, with whom he lunched regularly at Bucks Club. Macmillan had been hearing rumors about Profumo and Keeler since November the previous year. He had begun to suspect that his own advisers were not telling him the truth about the affair, either because they were involved in it themselves, or they were trying to cover up to avoid a scandal. So at one of his lunches with Bruce, the Prime Minister asked the ambassador to make discreet inquiries to see what he could discover.

"Bruce went to Thomas Corbally, the American businessman who was a friend of Ward. Bruce knew of this friendship from his nephew, Billy Mellon Hitchcock, the cousin of Center Hitchcock, the American who had taken Mandy Rice-Davies to Paris three months earlier. Corbally recalls, 'Ambassador Bruce asked me to find out what was going on and to let him know as quickly as possible. I telephoned Ward from Bruce's office and arranged a lunch --Ward, me, the ambassador's secretary Alfred Wells, and Billy Hitchcock.

" 'The lunch was held upstairs at Simpson's in Piccadilly in a booth where, we hoped, none of us would be recognised. There Ward told Wells the full story, including Christine's dealings with the newspapers and the letter from Profumo she had kept which made clear her relationship with him.' "

(An Affair of State, Phillip Knightly & Caroline Kennedy, pg. 157)

In The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril give a slightly different chain of events. In their account, Ward confessed the affair to Hitchcock and Corbally on January 28th or 29th of 1963, at which point Mr. Billy promptly contacted his uncle, David Bruce, who had married into the Mellon family. Corbally was then asked to visit the ambassador, who was also quite friendly with Lord Astor and who had visited Cliveden previously, the next day. Bruce asked Corbally to get to the bottom of the matter. This led to the meeting with Ward that included Corbally, Hitchcock and Alfred Wells, Bruce's secretary, on February 13th.

David Bruce

As such, it is possible, maybe even probable, that it was Corbally and Hitchcock who formally blew the whistle on the Profumo/Keeler/Ivanov triangle. This is again highly suggestive of an intelligence agenda on the part of Corbally and Hitchcock, a possibly further bolstered by the fact that they turned to Hitchcock's uncle, US Ambassador David Bruce. 

For you see, in addition to being a member of the Mellon family, Bruce, like Corbally, was also an OSS veteran (noted before here). As such, it is quite possible Bruce and Corbally already knew each other or were at least aware of one another before the Profumo affair. What's more, this further indicates an intelligence operation as two of the three Americans initially involved in investigating the scandal on the American side were OSS veterans while the third, Mr. Billy, was related to Bruce and part of a family with extensive intelligence connections (noted before here). 

What happened next in regards to how Bruce's office handled then information they received from Corbally is a matter of much debate.

"What then of Ambassador Bruce himself? Did he or his office brief Prime Minister Macmillan in late January, as indicated by the FBI's dossier? A State Department document, an 'Eyes Only' report from Ambassador Bruce to President Kennedy sent in June 1963, offers more food for thought. It reads: 'Few people believe that Macmillan, whose private integrity has never been questioned, would have connived at a clumsy attempt to avoid an almost inevitable disclosure if he had known that Profumo had lied. Nor would it consort with the character of the PM to have done so.'

"How to explain this message, if Bruce had been given information on the Profumo case as early as January? How to explain it if, as memories of others and the file indicates, he had ordered his assistant Wells to investigate, and if Wells had informed the Prime Minister's office of what Corbally and his friend had learned from Ward, then what Wells learned directly from Ward – weeks before Profumo repeated his lie to Parliament?

"We examined not only Bruce's papers as released by the State Department, but also his journals, preserve since his death by the Virginia Historical Society. Bruce kept a meticulous record of each day's activity, down to comments on people he spoke with or met – even details of food served at dinner. The journal is almost pedantically detailed, and the entries for 28 and 29 January – when the Ambassador or his office supposedly told the Prime Minister's office what it had just learned – contain no mention of Profumo. Oddly, though, an entire page is missing from the journal at the relevant point. There is no way of knowing whether it once contained material on a tip-off to Prime Minister Macmillan.

"It may be no coincidence that, in the FBI dossier as released, Ambassador Bruce's response to a report of the FBI's interview with Corbally also turns out to be missing. So is a letter on the subject to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The FBI files indicate, moreover, that the original information given to Ambassador Bruce was not even passed to the State Department in Washington. It seems possible, therefore, that – until the case became public – Bruce simply decided to sit on it."

(The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pgs. 254-255)

In addition to the allegations that Bruce notified Macmillan of the affair, Corbally also reportedly briefed Clive Bossom, a British government official, on what he had uncovered. At the time Bossom was the Secretary of State for Air, a post somewhat akin to the United States Secretary of the Air Force, but a cabinet level position in the British government nonetheless.

Clive Bossom

And yet neither Corbally, Bruce or Hitchcock appear to have briefed any branch of the US government on these allegations until nearly June of 1963. When Corbally did talk, he approached Hoover's FBI, who in turn appear to have quietly conducted their own investigation without notifying the rest of the government of a scandal that could bring down the government of a crucial US alley. 

When the scandal finally broke in the press, the Kennedy White House appears to have called an emergency meeting that featured the Secretary of Defense, the directors of the CIA and DIA and an Assistant Director of the FBI on June 20, 1963. That meeting remains heavily censored to this day and there are strong indications that the Kennedy White House was totally out of the loop in regards to what Corbally, Bruce and Hitchcock had uncovered in the UK.

Why would Corbally and company go to such lengths to block their investigation from the Kennedy White House while working with the UK government?  And why was the Kennedy White House in turn so concerned when the scandal broke? Why did JFK initially meet with his Defense Secretary and various key figures in the US intelligence community before consulting with the State Department, which seemingly should have been who was first approached?

Is it because of a realization than an intelligence operation outside the purvey of the mainline US government had turned up something damning to the White House? All these questions and much more will be addressed in a future installment. Until then, stay tuned dear reader.