RALPH COX
Another good friend and Cape May neighbor of mine and friend of Fletcher Prouty was Ralph Cox, a
former US Navy pilot during WWII who after the war purchased a dozen Air Force
Cargo planes as surplus and started the US Overseas Airlines out of Wildwood,
NJ.
A major player in the air cargo business for over a decade, active during
the Berlin airlift and in the creation of the state of Isreal, US Overseas
airlines suddenly lost all of the government contracts to a number of new
airlines that Cox later learned were wholly owned subsidiaries of the CIA, and
he sued the CIA over it.
CIAir
CIAIR
Dr. Ralph Cox and USOA vs. CIAIR – Weak Link
in the Covert Action Chain
When Dr. Ralph Cox left the military after serving
as a Navy flyer during World War II he didn’t return to his Pittsburgh dental
practice but instead bought some government surplus airplanes and began the
United States Overseas Airlines, based in Rio Grand, near Wildwood, New Jersey.
In 1947 there were hundreds of similar, small,
independent airlines like Cox’s USOA, mainly servicing remote areas that were
considered unprofitable routes for the large scheduled airlines.
By 1962 USOA was one of the largest, most reliable,
safe and financially stable supplemental air carrier in the country, operating
six DC6s and 12 DC4s, most of which were clear of any debt.
A few years later the planes were grounded and the
company bankrupt, mainly because their long-held and properly serviced Military
Air Transport (MAT) government contracts were suddenly and mysteriously
diverted to a few, newer, smaller and untested airlines, including Southern Air
Transport (SAT).
Although Cox suspected political schennigans were
somehow involved at the time, it is now well known that SAT was a wholly owned
subsidiary of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the other
airlines who received the diverted contracts had secret intelligence
connections.
“The CIA put us out of business,” said Cox, who has
been running a camp ground at the Jersey Shore, not far from the Cape May
County International Airport where the USOA once operated.
When the CIA’s connections to Southern Air Transport
were first revealed in 1975 by Victor Marchetti and John Marks in their book
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, both Cox and Richard Newman, of
California Air Charter both separately sued the CIA and the Civil Newman failed
to get monetary restitution and Cox’s case was thrown out of court on a
technicality, both men wanted to get back into the air and fly again.
At his home Cox sifts through reams of files he
claims supports his case while he explains how, even before the CIA buried
them, the CAB tried to suppress the small independent airlines to the benefit
of the major carriers. This was done not only to the detriment of the industry,
but also hurt the pockets of the general public and even endangered the
nation’s security, as well as eliminating their jobs and livelihoods.
“We were a good, solid airline, and not a
fly-by-night operation,” Cox asserts. “We owned all our own equipment and
planes and had good, dependable employees.” Newspapers and magazine clips of
the period show that USOA developed one of the first flight simulators to train
pilots, successfully serviced remote points that were unprofitable to the major
carriers – like Alaska and Okinawa, pioneered group charters and was the frits
airline to employ native stewardesses, breaking a once stringent segregation
barrier.
USOA, along with other small, independent carriers,
were branded “Non-Scheduled Airlines” by the Civil Aviation Board (CAB) and
nicknamed “non-skeds.” They were the little guys in the same business as TWA,
United, Eastern and Delta. They’re the ones who provided emergency airlift
relief and support to Berlin, Israel, the Congo, Korea and the Defense Early
Warning (DEW) outposts in the artic. The industry’s collapse made the
evacuation of South Vietnam a major fiasco.
Although the CAB has been disbanded and the industry
“deregulated,” the non-skeds are still out of action. They not only lost their
business, but their wings, and they want to fly again.
The non-skeds’ case against the CIA became a
newsworthy issue in the 1980s because of the SAT involvement in the Iran-Contra
affair. In fact the whole secret operation came unwound when the Sandinistas
shot down a SAT Contra supply plane in Nicaragua. Baggage handler Eugene
Hasenfus survived the crash and was captured. In his pocket was the name and
phone number of Feliz Rodrigez, the Cuban Bay of Pigs Brigade veteran and
personal friend of George W. H. Bush.
This was not the first time a CIA operation was
blown by an airman who survived being shot down over enemy territory. In 1958
Allen Pope was shot down and captured while working on Gen. Ed Lansdale’s
“Indonesian Operation.”
Pope was a Civil Air Transport (CAT) pilot who, once
he was released from the Indonesia prison in 1962, went to work for SAT. Alex
E. Carson, the attorney for SAT at the time, was also the lawyer for
Double-Check Corporation and CARAMAR – the Caribbean Marine Aero Corporation,
the CIA front companies that hired the Alabama Air National Guard pilots to fly
during the Bay of Pigs, some of whom were killed during the invasion. Secret
CIA operations in Indonesia, Cuba and Nicaragua were all blown by the weak link
in the covert action chain – the air link.
One of the most significant players in the
Iran-Contra deal was Al Schwimmer of the Israel Aircraft Industry, who first
proposed the United States swap arms for American hostages in Iran in the first
place.
Adolph “Al” Schwimmer, an American born Israeli
citizen and close advisor to former Israel President and foreign minister Simon
Perez, helped instigate the Iran-Contra affair by suggesting the American
hostages in Iran could possibly be exchanged for military hardware. Israel then
refused to permit Schwimmer to testify before Congress on the special
prosecutor investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.
According to Cox, Schwimmer used to operate out of
the Burbank, California airport. “He leased one of my planes to assist the
early government of Israel,” said Cox, “but eventually they ended up stealing
the plane.” Since they used the USOA plane to ferry diplomats, arms and other
cargo to the fledging country of Israel, U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay
threatened to shoot it down for violating U.S. neutrality laws.
“When the Israelis learned about LeMay’s threat,”
relates Cox, “pointing to a Life magazine article and photo, “they appropriated
the plane, painted El Air markings over the USOA insignia and used it to begin
their national airline.” Cox said he was later paid the insured value of the
plane, but not for the time it was used by Schwimmer.
Stewart Steven, in his book The Spymasters of
Israel, reports that, “….Al Schwimmer, the remarkable American Jew who, in
1947, became one of the founding fathers of the Israel Air Force by purchasing
old aircraft in the United States and cannibalizing them to produce serviceable
planes for Israel. Since then, Schwimmer had risen to become president and chief
executive of Israel Aircraft Industries, which he started from nothing and
which now employs 15,000 people.”
Steven also details Schwimmer’s role in the 1968
covert operation that led to Israel obtaining the blueprints for the French
Mirage jet fighter aircraft, and refers to him as one of the world’s most
knowledgeable arms dealers.
According to the President’s Tower Commission Report
on the Iran-Contra affair, Schwimmer was initially responsible for suggesting
the arms for hostages deal with the Iranians, and for leasing the cargo
aircraft that was used to ferry U.S. missiles to Iran.
A private, commercial air cargo plane had to be
leased because, as one insider put it, “jaws would drop if a plane with Israel
or U.S. markings landed in Iran.”
But when it came time to transfer the arms,
Schwimmer’s lease for the planes had expired, and retired General Secord was
called to acquire new planes, and he resorted to the old CIA standby – Southern
Air Transport – SAT.
SAT was founded in Miami, Florida in 1949 by F.C.
“Doc” Moor and Stanley G. Williams. On October 1, 1960 the CIA paid $500,000 fo
the little airline that had only $100,000 in assets, and according to
Christopher Robbin’s book Air America, “….immediately began to fly
international MATs contracts to undisclosed destinations.” While Air America
ran the CIA’s Far Eastern routes, Southern Air Transport took care of the Latin
American routes. The CIA also owned Air Asia, Intermountain Aviation and
several other air charter companies.
The whole Iran-Contra connection began to come
unraveled when the SAT plane was shot down by Sandinistas in Nicaragua while
delivering arms to the Contras, and Eugene Hasenfus survived. Although the CIA
maintained that it no longer owned SAT, agency attorneys and corporate managers
with intelligence connections maintained control over the airline. “I don’t
care what they say,” said Cox, “I believe SAT is still controlled by the CIA.”
“At first we had to fight the CAB,” Cox relates,
“but they were a political entity, and we could deal with them, but how do you
fight the CIA? We had to fight the federal government every step of the way.”
The CIA has acknowledged that it owned SAT from 1962
until 1973.
The CAB, by over-regulation, had forced the Non-Skeds
to rely on Military Air Transport (MAT) contracts to survive, contracts that
were safely and successfully fulfilled for many years.
But suddenly millions of dollars in MAT contracts
were cut off and given to the small, relatively unknown Southern Air Transport.
“Although we had a spotless record, without one
passenger ever getting so much as a scratch, they grounded our planes,”
explained Cox, “and the military was banned from using the types of planes we
had. So all of a sudden, we had ten planes rotting on the runways.”
The independent airlines that ferried U.S. troops
and relief supplies around the country and the world for years, to Israel in
1948, Hungry in 1955, Belgian Congo in 1960 and Berlin in 1962 were suddenly
grounded.
On September 24, 1964, $250 million in MAT contracts
were diverted from some 30 independent airlines, including USOA, and given to
SAT and five other CIA linked carriers. USOA filed for bankruptcy.
“We didn’t
know what happened until ten years later,” said Cox bitterly. As a
conservative, Republican, anti-Communist veteran, Dr. Ralph Cox didn’t suspect
secret government collusion at first, and really didn’t learn the specifics
until 1974, when Marchetti and Marks wrote about the CIA links to the airline
industry in their book.
“There was dirty works at the crossroads all the way
through,” said Cox, “but we didn’t know it. We naively thought that we were
dealing with the federal government, like the Post Office, a neutral, unbiased
entity. Well, we’ll never believe that again.”
The CIA didn’t even underbid the other airlines. “In
some cases, they even charged more,” Cox said.
According to a congressional aide who looked into
the matter for then Congressman William Hughes, “This whole story is kind of
intriguing. It’s the kind of thing you expect to find in a cloak and dagger
mystery novel. But actually it had quite an impact on Cape May County’s
economy. If they had been able to stay in business and grow, they would be
quite significant players in the airline industry today.”
By the mid-1950s the approximately 500 supplemental
airlines had been widdled down to 150 Non-Skeds, and in 1962, the 30 airlines
that had shared the $250 million in MATS contracts were suddenly shut out and
the contracts given to six small, relatively new air carriers. Two of them, Air
American and Southern Air Transport, were wholly owned subsidiaries of the CIA.
Although he didn’t know the CIA was involved, Cox
did notice that Southern Air Transport and the five other airlines that
received the MAT contracts were all represented by Coates Lear or connected to
Lear’s National Air Carriers Association (NACA).
Since Cox’s USOA had serviced a U.S. Navy contract
that was picked up by the Air Force, Cox knew that Lear worked out of the D.C.
law office of Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger.
Mr. Eugene Zuckert, a senior partner in the firm,
was the Secretary of the Air Force, and Coates Lear was his law partner. Both
Lear and Zuckert served as presidents of the NACA. Gerald Scoutt later replaced
Ed Daley as Chairman of the Board of World Airways.
Lear was attorney of record for World Airways,
Capitol Airlines, ARCO and a major stockholder of Overseas National Airlines,
all companies that received the MATS contracts. (The other airline that
received MATS contracts was Los Angeles Air Services, which became
Trans-International, which was under Ted Burwell, another CIA connected
officer).
Because of its destructive, below cost military
contracts, ONA reported a minus net worth of nearly $4 million in 1960, and
used a number of DC7s that American Airlines had made available to General
Leasing Corporation, a subsidiary of the Convair Division of General Dynamics.
Continental Airlines hired Pierre Salinger as a
corporate officer. Salinger possibly knew of the CIA connections to the
airlines because of his position as President Kennedy’s assistant.
Continental also obtained government contracts,
including lucrative troop transport contracts delivering soldiers to Vietnam.
Continental opened a Nevada based subsidiary, Continental Air Services, and
made Robert Rousselot president. Rousselot, an ex-Marine pilot, was an old CIA
China hand who had worked for CAT for 17 years.
Recognizing Lear’s influence in the awarding of the
MATS contracts, Cox went to Lear and asked him to help arrange for the USOA to
continue receiving the MATS contracts in order to stay in business. Lear told
Cox, “the boys won’t let you in,” as if it was some elite private club for
members only. Cox called the CIA connected airlines “MATS Mistresses.”
In 1962 Cox testified before a Congressional
committee that the new policies, “…practically eliminated independent
supplemental air carriers, even though Congress has always held them to be a
vital part of our economy and our national security.”
The too-few of Ed Daley’s World Airways planes were
sent to evacuate Saigon and Da Nang, which certainly indicted how the failure
of the supplemental airline industry was a direct threat to our national
security. The two World Airways planes that landed in Da Nang to evacuate
civilians were swamped by thousands of refugees, some of whom hung on to the wheels
of the jets as they took off. South Vietnamese soldiers beat off women and
children to make the flight.
Eventually Congress decided to investigate these
matters, but when Robert Roussoulet was scheduled to testify before a
Congressional committee in 1976, he mysteriously failed to appear, and never
did testify.
One CIA director eventually asked the simple
question, “How many planes does the CIA own?” But the answer came back that
they really didn’t know. In fact, one of the CIA airlines had more employees
(30,000) than the CIA itself.
On February 5, 1963 the CIA airlines were formally
organized under the umbrella of EXCOMAIR – the Executive Committee for Air
Proprietary Operations. EXCOMAIR was, “to provide general policy guidance for the
management of air propriety projects and review recommendations for approval of
air proprietary project actions.” Lawrence Houston was appointed chairman of
the committee.
In the fall of 1963 Coats Lear was killed by a
shotgun blast to the head. Although some suggested it was suicide, others
believe he was murdered.
Lear was a law partner in Eugene Zucker’s firm, and
Zuckert, as Secretary of the Air Force, was involved in the awarding of
contracts.
Ed Driscol, the man who handled the administration
of many of the MATS contracts at the Pentagon, became Executive Director of the
Civil Aeronautics Board after the death of Lear. Later, Driscol became VP at
World Airways, one of the companies he funneled MATS contracts to from the
Pentagon and CAB.
Driscol was the Director of Transportation under
Joseph Imire, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and John H. Rubel, the
Asst. Secretary of Defense. With CAB chairman Alan S. Boyd, they effectively
ended the competitive bidding for MATS contracts and arbitrarily awarded them
to their favorite airlines connected to the CIA and/or Lear & Zuckert.
Ruble, Imire and Driscol all resigned shortly before
the death of Lear. While Driscol went on to the CAB and World Airways, Ruble
and Imire became Vice President of Litton Industries, a major defense
contractor.
Another explanation for Lear’s death is provided by
Amos Heacock, another independent airline owner put out of business by the CIA,
who believes that is a connection between Lear’s demise and the assassination
of President Kennedy shortly thereafter.
Heacock believes Lear’s law partner, Eugene Zuckert,
as Secretary of the Air Force, had something to do with the scheduling of the
President’s visit to Texas. He may have been responsible for the upkeep of Air
Force One and Two, the planes provided for Executive office use by the
President, Vice President and the cabinet.
According to this theory, Zuckert, as Secretary of
the Air Force, obtained foreknowledge of the assassination, information that
was also picked up by Lear. This either drove Lear crazy enough to kill
himself, or made him unstable and a threat tothose planning to kill the
President, so Lear also had to die.
Zuckert, a graduate of Yale University, served as
the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force from 1947-1952 and was a member of the
Atomic Energy Commission from 1952-1954. He left the Nuclear Science and
Engineering Corporation of Pittsburgh (no longer listed in the phone book)
where he worked from 1960-61, to become Secretary of the Air Force. The
NE&E Corp. is described in “Elites in American History” as “a relatively
small Pittsburgh based concern which was backed by various financial interests,
chief of which was probably New York’s Lehman Brothers, a concern with great
politico-economic influence.”
One of the most important decisions Zuckert made as
Air Force Secretary concerned the F-111 jet fighter contract. Although every
independent study recommended that the contract be awarded to Boeing, which
designed both a less expensive and better performing aircraft, the contract
went to General Dynamics.'
This decision was made by four men – Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatrick,
Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth and Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert.
Gilpatrick was a former Wall Street law firm of
Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and had previously represented General Dynamics,
while Korth was president of Continental National Bank of Ft. Worth, Texas.
General Dynamic’s Ft. Worth Plant eventually received the bulk of the contract.
UPDATE: Since this was written, Gene Wheaton's two videotaped interviews were released in which he explains how he became the head of one of the CIA's propriety airlines - National Airlines, a cargo airline with a dozen planes. Wheaton's chief operating officer, based in Washington D.C., was Carl Jenkins, who Wheaton lived with when in Washington. Jenkins was a former USMC Captain who started the USMC Reserve unit in New Orleans, and was cross-posted to the CIA to train the anti-Castro Cubans for the Bay of Pigs, Mongoose and JMWAVE. Wheaton said that over the course of years with Jenkins he learned from him and the Cubans he trained at JMWAVE that one of the CIA plans to kill Castro was redirected to JFK in Dallas.
PLEASE SUPPORT JFKCountecoup:
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