Who Really Controls Raymond Davis' Hyperion Protective Consultants?

On February 17 Jim White, writing at Firedoglake presented documentation under his headline "Does Raymond Davis Recruit Intelligence Agents in US?" of the following:

Because the Davis case has all the hallmarks of Davis' being an intelligence operative of some sort, there has been much public speculation about his US business activities.  Not all of the information that is circulating appears to be correct.  For example, many stories state that the Florida version of his business has never been registered with the state.  Here is a partial screenshot from Florida public records indicating that Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC filed registration paperwork in February, 2007 but was then dissolved by the state in September, 2008 for lack of an annual report: [see above link for screen shot]

The registered agent for the business in this filing is Gerald L. Richardson, Jr, who also is listed with the state as registered agent for a clothing business, Grynd Wear, LLC but doing business as Grynd Wear, Unlimited at this website [myspace, which disappears after a few seconds unless you log in].  Grynd Wear and Hyperion listed the same Orlando address for their retail locations, but multiple reports indicate that the storefront is now empty.

An online resume for Richardson notes his association with Hyperion and indicates that before joining Hyperion, he worked as Prevention/Security Manager for a large firm in Orlando.

From this resume we see that Richardson finished high school in 1989 in Leesburg, FL, followed by four years of college at two separate Florida colleges, where he was in ROTC. Normally, if ROTC pays for the education, the student is expected to go into the military afterward, but Richardson indicates no military service. Instead he became an expert in security compliance and worked from 1996 through 2007 for Transpo -- "the worldwide leader in rectifiers, regulators, ignition modules and other automotive electronic devices with manufacturing in Shanghai China and worldwide distribution in China and Europe (Germany)." 

During his tenure with Transpo, in 1999, Richardson supposedly founded Hyperion, but did not register Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC until 2006. His job description for Hyperion on his resume is to "Manage Security, Health, Safety, Risk and Loss Prevention for all contracted and walk-in customers."

Jim White's article continues:

Although the Florida business has been dissolved by the state [most likely for non-payment of franchise taxes], an entity with a very closely related name is registered and still active in Nevada.  There, it is incorporated as Hyperion Protective Services, LLC and lists Raymond Davis and his wife as Managing Members, unlike the Florida filing,where there is no mention of Davis. The address listed for the business appears to be a post office box in a UPS Store. I have not yet found any definitive information on the Nevada registered agent, who is listed as Rachel Bender.

The address listed for Ms. Bender in Las Vegas is a newish two-story residence in Las Vegas which was recently removed from the market, although an older website indicates she was the owner of the home in 2008.

A very poorly written web description of the Nevada business links to the website of the Florida business, and so there is a direct connection between these similalry named businesses.

The website referred to above, pertaining to the Hyperion branch of the business, located in Las Vegas, says:

The conception of our company came about from the simplest of reasons," Demand". Potential customers requested of our founder Gerald L. Richardson in 1999 to find ways to guide them through the often foggy areas of loss and risk management. Armed with this request he set out to find other like minded professionals to fill this need. The requests more specifically stated can we reduce our dependence on outside entities. Which are costly in the long run, and has many limitations in its effectiveness. The answer was "Yes", and a plan was drafted to bring this method to all safety and cost conscious companies. The protection and service of our client is our business.

The listed phone number-- (520) 401-3133--also turns up the following address:

Hyperion Protective Services, LLC  10839 S Hrtbreak Ridge Place Vail, AZ 85641-2546
and states: "Hyperion Protective Services, LLC in Vail, AZ is a private company categorized under Detective Guard and Armored Car Services. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of 99,000 and employs a staff of approximately 2. Companies like Hyperion Protective Services, LLC usually offer: Criminal Investigative Services, Background Investigation Contract Services, Computer Investigative Services, American Investigative Services and Safety Investigative Services." It shows it to be operated by Rebecca Davis Principal  Vail, AZ is located a few miles southeast of Tucson.

Although Davis has had multiple residences in the US, a Denver television station reported that he was living in the Denver area at the time of his arrest and even interviewed his wife. The Nevada company is registered to operate in Colorado:

 The screenshot attached by Jim White for Hyperion, registered in Denver, is in the name of Shadd Pease.
At this point we have to be becoming more and more amazed by this maze of business, but even more so when we learn who Shadd Pease is.

At this point Jim White's article begins discussing the fact that the "International Security program at the University of Denver held a “Global Security Career Fair” last October, where the CIA joined a number of other security agencies in recruiting..." but he seems to miss the real impact of the information revealed by Pease about his venue choice for his masters degree.

Exactly who is Josef Korbel?

In May of last year at a fundraising event on behalf of The University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies (the graduate program in which Pease was enrolled) presented the 2010 Josef Korbel Outstanding Alumni Award to former W. Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. The award was presented by "Madeleine Albright, the 64th Secretary of State, who is the daughter of Josef Korbel, who founded the school in 1964." More about Rice and Albright and the women's mentor, Josef Korbel, was written by Linda Minor in 2004. The article traces the history of how such officials, who get appointed to be in charge of America's foreign policy, back to the days of Herbert Hoover. It is quite instructive, especially in the context of who is really in control of these foreign-policy matters.

It is easy to just blame the CIA for the foreign policy, as JimWhite seems to do. Such agents are given extremely wide latitude in their dealings, but we cannot assume they are in control of the planning. Rather, we need to recognize that these people are ultimately following orders, and we need to ask:

"Who is issuing the orders and by whom are they being controlled?"

Wheeler's Wife Klyce says, "Just sounds like a pro to me."

Christopher Beam of Slate has written an excellent story about the facts surrounding the last days of John Wheeler and his wife, Katherine Klyce. 

The last time Katherine Klyce saw her husband, John Wheeler, she was mad at him. It was the day after Christmas, and she was looking forward to a relaxing few days at home in New York City. "I like the week between Christmas and New Year's because you can lie around and go to the movies," said Klyce. But Wheeler said he had to go to Washington, where he'd held numerous posts in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, and where he currently worked for a defense technology firm. Klyce was upset, but she didn't sense anything wrong. "He seemed just like Jack."

...As the investigation has dragged on, Klyce has become increasingly frustrated with law enforcement. "If you write anything, I hope you write that the cops just made our lives miserable," she said.

Some facts are relatively straightforward: On Dec. 26, Wheeler apparently boarded an Amtrak train from New York to Washington. Two days later, he hopped back on the train to Wilmington, Del., a 20-minute drive from the family's home in nearby New Castle. Then things get hazy.

• At 11:30 p.m. the night of Dec. 28, firefighters discovered a smoke bomb in the half-built house across the street from Wheeler's house in New Castle....[L]ocal news organizations have reported that police found Wheeler's cell phone in the new house.

• The next morning, Dec. 29, a cabbie picked Wheeler up at the Amtrak station in Wilmington and dropped him off about 12 blocks north. He was then off the radar until 6 p.m.

• Wheeler stopped by a pharmacy near New Castle called Happy Harry's at 6 p.m. He asked one of the pharmacists for a ride back to Wilmington. The pharmacist offered to call Wheeler a cab, but Wheeler declined and left.

• Sometime later he was at a courthouse in Wilmington, where he told a garage attendant that his brief case had been stolen and he was looking for his car. (His car turned out to be at the Amtrak station three blocks away.)

• Dec. 30 Wheeler was wandering around downtown Wilmington. That afternoon, he showed up at the offices of the law firm Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutch, (which specializes in intellectual property law) asking to speak with a partner. When the receptionist returned, Wheeler had left.

• Security cameras later caught Wheeler wandering around the Rodney Square area north of where he'd been (in Wilmington), now wearing a sweatshirt and heading toward the city's relatively dangerous East Side.

• What happened next is the big question. Wheeler's body was first discovered coming out of a dump truck at the Cherry Island Landfill in Wilmington by a spotter, there to keep an eye out for hazardous waste. The spotter called the Wilmington police, who then phoned the Newark police, since the truck's route originated in their jurisdiction.

• On Jan. 30 Klyce and Wheeler family announced a $25,000 reward for information that led to the arrest of Wheeler's killer. No one has responded.

 "I think perhaps no one has been on the reward because they've already been paid," Klyce reportedly told Slate. "Then there's the way Wheeler's body was apparently moved from Wilmington to the dumpster in Newark. 'The way they disposed of his body, it's a miracle anybody ever found it. That just sounds like a pro to me.' Klyce isn't the only one to raise the possibility. Citing Wheeler's involvement in the military and government, Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force officer, told ABC News: 'A man with that experience, it could have been foul play to get some of the secrets he had.' "

Task Force 373--America's own Death Squad

During World War II, the Nazis had mobile killing units called "Einsatzgruppen", German SS and police squads tasked to murder political enemies behind German combat lines. Today we have our own; we call it Task Force 373.

CIA Spy Captured Giving Nuclear Bomb To Terrorists

Posted by EU Times on Feb 11th, 2011

The Nato coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed "black" unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a "kill or capture" list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritised effects list. In many cases, the unit has set out to seize a target for internment, but in others it has simply killed them without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path.

The United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights, Professor Philip Alston, went to Afghanistan in May 2008 to investigate rumours of extrajudicial killings. He warned that international forces were neither transparent nor accountable and that Afghans who attempted to find out who had killed their loved ones "often come away empty-handed, frustrated and bitter".

Now, for the first time, the leaked war logs reveal

Afghanistan war logs: the glossary

What do all those military initials mean? This is our guide 

Datablog: Guardian selection of key events data

details of deadly missions by TF 373 and other units hunting down Jpel targets that were previously hidden behind a screen of misinformation. They raise fundamental questions about the legality of the killings and of the long-term imprisonment without trial, and also pragmatically about the impact of a tactic which is inherently likely to kill, injure and alienate the innocent bystanders whose support the coalition craves.

On the night of Monday 11 June 2007, the leaked logs reveal, the taskforce set out with Afghan special forces to capture or kill a Taliban commander named Qarl Ur-Rahman in a valley near Jalalabad. As they approached the target in the darkness, somebody shone a torch on them. A firefight developed, and the taskforce called in an AC-130 gunship, which strafed the area with cannon fire: "The original mission was aborted and TF 373 broke contact and returned to base. Follow-up Report: 7 x ANP KIA, 4 x WIA." In plain language: they discovered that the people they had been shooting in the dark were Afghan police officers, seven of whom were now dead and four wounded.

Did Frank Gardiner Wisner, Sr. work for Bechtel before 1942?

Vijay Prashad

"Frank Wisner, Jr., is seasoned State Department official, a very close friend of Mubarak, a man more committed to stability than democracy, and, yes, an employee at Patton Boggs, where one of the portfolios is for Patton Boggs to lobby on behalf of the government of Egypt."

--VIJAY PRASHAD    

Removing the Velvet Glove

Recently interviewed by Amy Goodman, Prof. Prashad from Hartford, Connecticut's Trinity College summed up the contradictions present in the ongoing diaglogue in Egypt by saying: 

"On the one side, you have sections in the State Department under the illusion that they are carrying forward a policy based on freedom and human rights, and on the other side, there is this much darker foreign policy apparatus conducted by the CIA special envoys, who are actually better called "proconsuls," and of course the United States military. There seems to be this contradiction at work, but it may not in the end of the day be a contradiction, because on one side you can say that the iron fist is being shrouded by the velvet glove. So, Margaret Scobey talking about human rights, going to see ElBaradei, talking about supporting the kind of upsurge of democracy, and on the other side, in much darker, more dangerous rooms, people like Frank Wisner, perhaps the CIA chief, discussing with Mubarak and Omar Suleiman how do we maintain your authority and change perhaps the face of that authority before the Egyptian people and the world."

Dark and Dangerous Rooms

What are these dark and dangerous rooms of which Prof. Prashad speaks?
 It has only been fairly recently that we have come to understand the true significance of the role this man's father--Frank G. Wisner, Sr.--played in shaping the world following the second world war. Attorney and author, John J. Loftus, has fought for many year to disclose the secrets contained in documents handled by Frank Gardiner Wisner, Sr. At long last he was able to publish a newly updated, declassified and uncensored version of the original work The Belarus Secret (nominated for the 1982 Pulitzer in history). The CIA's velvet glove was finally removed from the iron fist (to use Prashad's metaphor), thus revealing the true horror of what Loftus, as an attorney fresh from law school, discovered about the American justice system.
He says in the Introduction of this new edition of his expose, entitled America's Nazi Secret:

Declassified!

"My new boss shook my hand and said, 'Welcome to the Justice Department. You now represent the most corrupt client in the world, the United States Government.' I thought he was kidding."

Despite all the documents Loftus found and was forbidden by his employer from revealing to the world until now, Loftus still maintains that it is not the government per se which is corrupt--only its law firm, that is, the Justice Department.

That dichotomy posed by Loftus demands further attention. He does not place the blame for the criminal activity on the Central Intelligence Agency, but instead on the State Department and Justice Department lawyers who were working within the agency, compartmentalized from the agents, with all their files hidden from the records of the CIA itself. These are the dark and dangerous rooms on which we must shed light in order to understand how attorneys hired to represent the interests of "the government," i.e. the people as a whole, divert government policy so as to work for the interests of the few.

Conflicts of Interest
Perhaps it is the nature of the legal profession which allows some attorneys to work on behalf of their private clients' interests without seeing the inherent conflict with the interest of their public client.

Take Frank Gardiner Wisner, for example. What more do we really know about this man from Mississippi who attended an elite Episcopal boarding school in Virginia, graduated from the University of Virginia in 1931 and then from its law school in 1934? He was tapped for the Seven Society, the University of Virginia's version of Skull and Bones, according to Evan Thomas in The Very Best Men. Burton Hersh tells us, however, in The Old Boys, that Wisner didn't really fit into the mold from which most Wall Street attorneys are formed. Hersh instead paints a picture of a barefoot boy from the old South, a typical stereotype that tends to rile most southerners.

Frank's father, Frank George Wisner, was on the War Industries Board of the lumber branch during World War II, while his banking partner, Philip Stimson Gardiner (Frank Senior's maternal uncle), was secretary of the War Council of the YMCA, going to France and England for service with the American Expeditionary forces in 1917. In those days, that was the closest thing there was to a civilian intelligence agency.

Frank's mother, Mary Jeannette Gardiner, had married Frank George Wisner in 1897 in Iowa, and her first cousin, Sarah Gardiner, married Lauren Eastman. The Wisner and Eastman families originally set out west from Penn Yan, New York, after the Civil War and met up in Iowa with the Gardiners (who descend from Lion Gardiner of Long Island); they moved their families south, virtually building the town of Laurel, Mississippi, such as it was, from scratch.

Wisner, Gardiner and brother-in-law A. Field Chisholm ran the local Laurel Bank. The Gardiners and Eastmans engaged in the lumber business under the name of Eastman, Gardiner & Company, and Frank headed the Laurel Cotton Mills and handled the banking for all the businesses. While the men were 32nd degree Masons, the women joined the Daughters of the American Revolution. All attended the local Episcopal Church.

Young Frank attended the Laurel high school initially, but then was sent to an Episcopal prep school called Woodberry Forest, about halfway between Washington, D.C. and Lynchburg, Va. to force some discipline into the rebellious. When his father:

"...directed his only son to forget collegiate sidelines [two years after finishing law school he was hoping to win a place on a 1936 Olympic team] and get into something, Frank trooped along to Wall Street, where Woodberry Forrest classmates helped snag him a trainee berth at Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, attorney to the Stock Exchange, where Franklin Roosevelt practiced." (Burton Hersh, The Old Boys)

Of course, Roosevelt wasn't practicing law in 1936. He was President of the United States. He had begun there as an associate in 1907 at the same time as Grenville Clark, who would become a member of Harvard Corporation in 1931. But FDR stayed only one year before dabbling in politics. Twelve years later he returned to the law, forming a new firm with Grenville Emmet and Langdon Marvin.

But Wisner was at Carter, Ledyard & Milburn for seven years, all of that time working on litigation "on behalf of the engineers at Bechtel."

So something is missing from what we have been told up till now.

The Missing Link

The missing link is a man named John Lowery Simpson. He was the uncle of S.D. Bechtel's wife, according to his obituary that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1981:

In addition to the Bechtel connection, it must not be overlooked there is also a United Fruit Co. link as well through John Lowery Simpson. He was chairman of the board for 15 years of International Railways of Central America!

United Fruit owned the Int. Railways of Central America

"Under dictator Jorge Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company gained control of 42% of Guatemela's land, and was exempted from taxes and import duties. The other two of Guatemala's three main enterprises -- International Railways of Central America and Empress Electrica -- were controlled by United Fruit."

J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp. was one of the primary clients of another Wall Street law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, home to John Foster and his brother Allen Dulles. After William J. Donovan recruited Allen for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS):

"Eleanor Roosevelt would complain in a memo to FDR that Allen, a recurring personage in 'Bill Donovan's outfit,' was 'closely tied up with the Schroeder [sic] Bank, that is likely to be representative of the underground Nazi interests after the war,' one of a 'great many people who are pretty close to the business side.' " (quoted in The Old Boys, p. 89)

 As it would turn out, Eleanor was spot on about the Dulles brothers and their Nazi friends. Nevertheless, little has ever been said about Wisner's own connection to the same bank. Although it is considered by some to be anathema to use Eustace Mullins as a source, the paragraph below was taken from his book, Secrets of the Federal Reserve, because it is factual and accurate:

If anyone supposes this is all ancient history, with no application to the present political scene, we introduce the name of John Lowery Simpson of Sacramento, California. Although he appears for the first time in Who’s Who in America for 1952, Mr. Simpson states that he served under Herbert Hoover on the Commission for Relief in Belgium from 1915 to 1917; U.S. Food Administration, 1917 to 1918, American Relief Commission, 1919, and with P.N. Gray Company, Vienna, 1919 to 1921. Gray was the Chief of Maritime Transportation for the U.S. Food Administration, which enabled him to set up his own shipping company after the war. Like other Hoover humanitarians, Simpson also joined the J. Henry Schroder Banking Company (Adolf Hitler’s personal bankers) and the J. Henry Schroder Trust Company. He also became a partner of Schroder-Rockefeller Company when that investment trust backed a construction company which became the world’s largest, the firm of Bechtel Incorporated. Simpson was chairman of the finance committee of Bechtel Company, Bechtel International, and Canadian Bechtel. Simpson states he was consultant to the Bechtel-McCone interests in war production during World War II. He served on the Allied Control Commission in Italy 1943-44.

He married Margaret Mandell, of the merchant family for whom Col. Edward Mandell House was named, and he backed a California personality, first for Governor, then for President. As a result, Simpson and J. Henry Schroder Company now have serving them as Secretary of Defense, former Bechtel employee Caspar Weinberger. As Secretary of State they have serving them George Pratt Schultz, also a Bechtel employee, who happens to be a Standard Oil heir, reaffirming the Schroder-Rockefeller company ties. Thus the "conservative" Reagan Administration has a Secretary of Defense from Schroder Company, a Secretary of State from Schroder-Rockefeller, and a vice president whose father was senior partner of Brown Brothers Harriman.

We also learn that this same John L. Simpson in 1954 was a director of the San Francisco Chamber of
Commerce, as reflected in  BAY REGION BUSINESS, Vol. II (1954):

Rogue Element Running Amok

 

Rogue elements

Staff Reporter

Daily Times

1 November 2010

Copyright © 2010. Daily Times. 

Rogue Element Running Amok

RAWALPINDI: A senior US Air Force official, Michael Furlong, has been found in quite a precarious position according to a report published by the New York Times. Based on a Pentagon inquiry report, Mr Furlong has apparently gone too far in gathering intelligence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan by violating executive orders and the US Defence Department’s rules of engagement in war zones. Accused in March this year of siphoning off funds from legitimate US military programmes related to studying the culture and landscape of Afghanistan, Michael Furlong is charged with using these funds to gather intelligence on insurgent camps and militants with the use of private contractors after which insurgents would be rounded up or even assassinated. Such covert tactics are the stuff of clandestine operations that the CIA has employed in many a war-torn land. It should be remembered that the US has a different military policy for the public and another one for clandestine operations.

Michael Furlong’s programme, called Information Operations Capstone, was operated under a $ 22 million contract run by Lockheed Martin Corp, a major manufacturer of fighter jets. What Mr Furlong was running was not just a stealth operation, it was one where private contractors were said to be running amuck in Afghanistan and Pakistan, gathering intelligence and doing whatever they pleased.

Such James Bond-style escapades ought to serve the intelligence and military in Pakistan with a wake-up call. Afghanistan is a land under US and NATO occupation but Pakistan is not. For the report to quote Pakistan is a frightening reality. With rumours making the rounds of the presence of Blackwater in the country (now known as Xe Services LLC) and allegations of Mr Furlong’s programme being firmly supported by the Pentagon, it will not bode well for us to easily dismiss such a shadowy presence. Whatever tattered sovereignty Pakistan has left, such private contactors roaming around the border and broader areas of the country should not be tolerated, and that too from an ally. Lord knows what they are up to. Playing hanky panky is one thing but operating on an ally’s soil without so much as a nod in its direction is unacceptable. Our intelligence agencies must take note of this report and probe into the matter, after which it should be taken up with the American authorities.

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

How an ‘Off-the-Books Spy Operation’ Happens

By Spencer Ackerman

March 15, 2010

This is Michael D. Furlong, a strategic planner for the Joint Information Operations Warfare Command based in Texas [at Lackland AFB]. According to a baroque story in today’s New York Times, Furlong is under criminal investigation for diverting money from a program that hired contractors to gather information about Afghanistan and Pakistan and used it to run what the paper terms an “off the books spy operation” to kill militants in the region.