14: Pawley's Caribbean Oyster

With his Doolittle Special Study Group’s work done, Pawley continued pursuing his lucrative Latin American activities. He was issued a regular passport on December 14, 1954 “to visit Venezuela for an undetermined stay on personal business.”1 As a teenager, he had ridden a donkey into the Venezuelan jungles “to sell stearic acid and paraffin” and in his early twenties returned “to sell diving suits” to pearl hunters. Two decades later, he and Edna “spent Easter in Caracas, Venezuela with Walter Donnelly and his wife.”2

Like his father, the Caribbean region became the focus of Pawley’s expanding financial wealth. In his autobiography, Pawley detailed how he became entwined in business with Trujillo while the guest of honor at the head table of a large dinner attended by “400 Dominicans and Americans, evenly divided.” He “sat between Trujillo and our Ambassador [William Townsend] Pheiffer.” The discussion turned to “mining and oil ventures which led into the subject of the need for the Dominican Republic to develop its abundant natural resources.” Pawley soon became an adviser to Trujillo on how to profitably exploit the island nation’s natural resources and the “results were spectacular, especially in the development of one of the most valuable nickel mines anywhere.3

Read more »

36: Back to Business: Talisman Sugar

Pawley’s re-approval for covert activity in 1964 had a focus on the Miami business community. However, CIA documents about Pawley all but disappear for years. Even a review of his activities in the next decade assumed that his involvement with the agency ceased the same year his status was renewed: “Subject appears to have remained of interest to the WH Division and the DCI until as late as 1964.”1

In that year, Pawley became president and chairman of Talisman Sugar Corp. in Belle Glade, Florida, which ranked among the largest private properties in Central Florida. As his manager of Talisman, he appointed Mike Cervera, a participant in the Bay of Pigs invasion.2 Talisman already employed a number of other opponents of Castro. The FBI looked into employees Angelito Goitia on October 16, 1961, and Octavio Ledon Baradania on December 11, 1962.3

Prior to Pawley taking control of the company, the Chief of Station of JMWAVE received a dispatch in September 1962 regarding Dr. Fernando De La Riva’s plan to organize “50 Cubans to come to Brazil [where Pawley had been Ambassador] to engage in anti-Castro activities ... De La Riva is owner or manager of the Talisman Company in Miami and also owns a part of Usina Baixa Grande sugar refining company located in Campos, Rio de Janeiro state ... De La Riva’s empire is associated with the Ford family’s financial interests.”4

The following year, FBI Special Agent Leman L. Stafford, Jr. reported on December 30, 1963, an interview with Jesus Sanchez-Martinez, an electrician at Talisman Sugar Mill, who claimed to have been invited along on a fishing trip from Miami Marine Stadium by Orlando Ramirez and Evelio Alpizar. When they got out to sea headed toward Cuba, U.S. Customs intercepted the boat and found bombs onboard.5

Read more »