43: Sunset

On January 7, 1977, while many Americans were coping with one of the worst winters in U.S. history, an 80-year-old Miami Beach resident, whose fortune had been made off the public’s desire for refuge from the cold, composed a note in his Sunset Island home. Then he lifted a pistol to his chest and fired a bullet into his heart.1 

He was still alive when the ambulance arrived, “but died a short time later” according to the Miami police who told reporters William Pawley “had been in failing health.”2 His death came as Frank Sinatra fans mourned the death of his mother, Dolly Sinatra, in a plane crash that also claimed the life of her close friend from New Jersey, Ann Carboni, coincidentally the wife of the former China National Aviation Corporation dentist in Calcutta.3

That night, the national broadcast of CBS Evening News devoted less than half-a- minute to reporting that William Douglas Pawley, a former Ambassador to Brazil, had committed suicide. 4

The Washington Post two days later referred to him as an aviation expert and devoted 309 words to his life.5

The New York Post announced “‘Flying Tigers’ Founder Dies” and noted that Pawley had raised over $250,000 for the election campaign of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and another $100,000 for Vice President Nixon's unsuccessful race against John F. Kennedy in 1960.6

Time magazine noted William Pawley’s passing in its customary inch of coverage which stated that in 1958 President Eisenhower had dispatched Pawley to Cuba on a secret mission to persuade President Fulgencio Batista that a caretaker government should be installed to prevent revolutionaries from taking control of the island.7 Batista refused to step down, and three weeks later Fidel Castro took power. The underpinnings and aftermath of the incident would lead to animosity between Pawley, State Department members and the next President, John F. Kennedy.8

Pawley’s life as a world financier, envoy and philanthropist merited 15 inches in The New York Times.9

Down in South Carolina, where an island is named for the Pawley family, The Florence Morning News obituary pointed out that General James Doolittle had “once served as a test pilot for Pawley” when he sold planes to China.

As a pioneer in outsourcing to India, Pawley had “organized and became president of Hindustan Aircraft Manufacturing Co. in India in 1940.” Pawley’s “38 technicians trained 11,500 Indian aircraft workers who later helped in the war effort” supplying planes needed by the Flying Tigers to engage the Japanese pilots in air battles over Burma.

The Florence Morning News also stated that Pawley had moved to “Havana, Cuba in 1949 to found a bus company but returned to Washington in 1951.” After retiring, he served on the board of the “George C. Marshall Research Foundation, U.S. Strategic Command, the Eisenhower Presidential Library Commission and the Boys Club of America.”10

The U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska trained Air Force pilots for doomsday combat in the event of nuclear war.11 The introduction to Pawley’s autobiography was completed by his friend, Gen. Bruce K. Holloway, on June 21, 1975.12 Holloway’s career that took him from flying prop fighter planes against the Japanese in World War II to overseeing, during the first term of the Nixon Administration, the Strategic Air Command’s nuclear strike force including “more than 1,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 500 long-range jet bombers.” Holloway’s responsibilities included listing potential nuclear targets and determining what weapons should be used on them. His early training in such matters was gained during the Cuban crisis when he was deputy commander of the U.S. Strike Command stationed in Tampa at MacDill Air Force Base.

Holloway and Pawley had an earlier common bond that predated the threat of communism in the Caribbean. From January to July of 1942 Holloway was in China with the Flying Tigers while they were “under contract to the government of Chiang Kai-shek” prior to being absorbed into the U.S.14th Air Force. Holloway outlived Pawley by more than two decades.13

William Douglas Pawley was survived by his second wife, Edna Cadenhead Pawley; two daughters from his first marriage, Annie Hahr McKay and Irene Baldwin; and a son, William Jr.;14 and a niece and long-time secretary and sharer of CIA anti-Castro secrets, Anita Pawley, who said he suffered with painful, incurable shingles for more than a year.15 Anita lived four decades longer, passing away on January 9, 2023, a month shy of her 100th birthday.16

Anita was the daughter of William’s older brother George Plummer Pawley who died in 1936—motivating William to bring his other brothers, Eugene, Edward and Wallace, into his business ventures.17 William also employed Anita’s sister, Marcia Ragsdale Pawley, at his Miami Transit Company. She passed away in 2011.18

Seven months after William’s death, the Florence Morning News announced the July 10th death in Graham, Texas of one of William’s surviving brothers, the 71-year-old “Eugene D. Pawley, a descendent of one of South Carolina's earliest families, for which Pawley's Island is named.” Survivors included his wife, two sons, “numerous distant relatives in this area of South Carolina” and his brother, Edward P. Pawley of Coral Gables who had worked with William in China, the Dominican Republic and at Talisman Sugar, Eugene and his brothers were aviation trailblazers “before and during World War II and helped found the Flying Tigers which operated in Mainland China before the Mao regime takeover.” Unlike his brother William “Cuba” Pawley, Eugene actually was born in Cuba. After he attended school in South Carolina, he spent the 1920s and 30s in Miami. During World War II, he was among a group of Americans who escaped internment following the fall of Hong Kong to the Japanese. He then served “in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. as head of the China desk.”

Eugene then joined William in Havana where they founded a public transportation system which served locals and tourists visiting the Mafia controlled casinos. In the 1950s, Eugene moved to “Mexico to set up a silver mining enterprise with a group of Mexican businessmen.”

In 1964, Eugene was living in Belle Glade, Florida as a vice president of Talisman Sugar at the time William took over the company. After the sugar cane workers went out on strike and the troubled company was sold in the early 1970s, Eugene moved to Graham, Texas and founded Pacific Oil Company.19 He was living in the town, two- and-a-half hours west of Dallas, when his brother committed suicide.

Wallace Pawley was born in 1908 in New York City where he eventually worked for William out of the Intercontinent office in Rockefeller Center. Later he was a U.S. Coast Guard Reserve pilot who happened to observe William’s Flying Tiger II as Operation TILT was getting under way in Florida waters.20

Shingles can be triggered by stress. Pawley’s disease spread across his body and feet as Watergate hearings focused attention on the Cuban exiles he had helped organize and the DRE’s involvement with TILT and Oswald came into focus. By the time Gaeton Fonzi wanted him to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the shingles had become so excruciating that Pawley exited his illustrious life.21

Circa October 1975 Pawley was interviewed by Soldier of Fortune for the spring of 1976 article about the “Bayo-Pawley Affair” (TILT).22

Gaeton Fonzi, investigator for the 1975 Church Committee and 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote in his 1993 book, The Last Investigation, that on his first day as a HSCA investigator, “I sent to Washington a list of witnesses I planned to interview and notified those I thought should testify under oath. William Pawley was near the top of the list.” When I spoke to him by phone after reading the HSCA report, Fonzi told me Pawley was the first person he would have called to testify.23

Pawley’s animosity toward Kennedy had never subsided. When he worked with Richard R. Tryon on Why the Communists are Winning as of 1976, the manuscript included his sentiments about the slain Commander in Chief whom he wished Admiral Arleigh Burke had mutinied against along with himself.

    When I reflect upon all of this today, and the narrow margin between the success or failure of my mission, I often     wish that I had violated my instructions, as I believe that the Admiral commanding at the Bay of Pigs should have     violated the orders he was to receive from President Kennedy. Either violation could have saved Cuba from            Communism. Under normal conditions, a government official is honor-bound to abide by his instructions. But in     a time of such unusual crisis, the admiral could have answered Kennedy, “Sir, I didn’t get your message in time.”

    I am compelled to conclude that the deliberate ouster of Batista by Wieland and Matthews and Rubottom                combined, is nearly as monumental a tragedy as the surrender of China to the Communists by a similar group of        State Department officials, abetted by others, a decade earlier.

Fonzi also revealed that during his questioning of Clare Boothe Luce “she simply sweetly smiled” when he asked why “she had concocted the name of Julio Fernandez” when she called CIA Director Colby with her DRE tale linking Oswald to Castro. “I also discovered that Clare Boothe Luce was on the Board Of Directors of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers ... formed in 1975” by “the Agency’s top-psych warfare expert ... David Atlee Phillips.”24

Clare Boothe Luce lived well into the next decade.25 Her sources for claims about Oswald being pro-Castro were never substantiated.26

A September 7, 1976 document revealed that Pawley was “verbally advised that the proposed interview [by the FBI] would concern knowledge he might have concerning Cubans coming to this country at any time in the past for the purpose of carrying out any plot against former United States President John F. Kennedy in retaliation for alleged plots on the part of CIA against Cuban Premier Fide Castro. He was further advised that this inquiry was being conducted pursuant to an Obstruction of Justice inquiry into the causes for which John Roselli had been recently murdered and his body found in Dumfoundling Bay, Dade County, Florida.” 

In response, Pawley stated that he personally had no knowledge whatsoever nor had he heard any rumors concerning individuals coming to this country from Cuba or any other location with the purpose of carrying out a plot against President Kennedy. He noted that he had many Cuban friends and contacts over the years but that he never received any indication that such activity had occurred.”27 A carefully stated denial if one considers that Pawley’s “hitmen” and friends in the DRE already were in America.

On April 30, 1986, Pawley’s first wife, Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley, died at 88 in Miami Beach.28 She was the mother of William D. Pawley, Jr., whose dark hair, movie-star good looks led to his 1949 brief engagement to beautiful 17-year-old actress, Elizabeth Taylor, which the media reminisced about in 1995.29 William Jr. had cooperated with Anthony Carrozza on the writing of the biography of his father and passed away a few months after its March 2012 publication.

Annie’s other son, Clifton Pawley, had died of polio in Mexico in 1951. A decade after Annie’s death, her grandson, Clifton Pawley, Jr.30 was gunned down in the driveway of his Coral Gables home near Riviera Country Club in April of 1996, and lay there for two hours before he died. “Defending the family's white Toyota Land Cruiser and black 1995 Buick from an intruder, the father of three collapsed beneath the spreading oaks, mortally wounded in the chest, handgun at his side, just a few hundred feet from the driving range of one of Dade's most exclusive country clubs. Pawley was 45. His violent death closes a chapter in the saga of his well-connected family.”31

The shooting of Clifton Pawley was believed to be part of a pattern of crime—“robberies, driveway carjackings and the brutal double murder on the University of Miami campus”—unrelated to the murders and bombings in the Cuban exile community.32

A $25,000 reward was offered, but there were no takers.33 A year later, a Metro-Dade homicide detective said there was an unnamed suspect.34 They were still seeking evidence against the suspect in November when another Coral Gables resident, Dr. Rolando Gomez was shot in his Alhambra Circle driveway.35

William Douglas Pawley’s second wife, Edna Cadenhead Pawley, had passed away at age 98 in the Sunset Island home where she had resided for sixty years, nearly half of which were without him. Survivors at the time of her August 28, 2004 death had included her stepson, William D. Pawley, Jr., and stepdaughters, Annie Hahr McKay and Irene Baldwin.36

Only the Miami Herald truly recognized Pawley’s importance in the world and made his suicide the front-page feature headline with a separate, virtually full-page article inside devoted to “A Swashbuckler in Gray Flannel Suit; Arch Conservative Left his Mark Around the World” which detailed Pawley’s extraordinary life and his willingness to personally pay for Fidel Castro’s assassination in 1959— “‘Find me,’ he said, ‘one man, just one man who can go it alone and get Castro. I’ll pay anything — almost anything.’”37 But Pawley retracted his offer two days later. “‘I’ve talked to someone myself,’” he said, ‘and they’re all doubledealers these days.’”38

One of the writers of the Miami Herald article about Pawley’s self-inflicted death was Jim Buchanan who had stamped “‘Communism killed Kennedy’” on each copy of Frank Fiorini’s IACB monthly bulletin.

Pawley’s suicide eliminated any questioning of him about TILT; Luce; the DRE’s interaction with Oswald; assassination plots against foreign leaders; his relationships with the CIA, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Fiorini/Sturgis, Bernard Barker, the other anti-Castro Cubans at Watergate; and Pawley's activities surrounding JFK’s assassination in Dallas.

On Sunday, October 30, 1977, the “House Select Committee on Assassinations staff members Elizabeth Palmer, Patricia Orr, Jonathan Blackmer, and William Triplett” met the liaison “at Agency Headquarters to review sanitized DDO material relating to the Bayo-Pawley Action. Staffer notes were classified and retained for review by DDO.”39

The coverage of William Pawley’s death failed to note that he was not only one of the wealthiest men of his era but had been among the most powerful men in the nation as a member of the Doolittle Committee reviewing the effectiveness of the Central Intelligence Agency. The top-secret Doolittle Special Study Group (DSSG) report would lead to a deadly CIA covert policy that was at odds with the principles of diplomacy and democracy—and would be cited twenty years after it was written as perhaps the darkest document in U.S. history, sanctioning Federal government lawlessness, both domestically and internationally.40

Some eight months before Pawley’s death, Senator Frank Church asserted that the DSSG report created the atmosphere in which the CIA found it acceptable to violate the rights of U.S. citizens by opening the public’s mail, breaking into homes and offices, interfering with the Constitutional right to free assembly, compiling derogatory information on critics, and plotting to overthrow foreign governments41 as well as assassinate world leaders.42 During World War II, Senator Church had been a U.S. Army intelligence officer in the China who became disgusted with corruption thriving within Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalists43 which probably did not sit well with the Generalissimo’s friend Pawley.

Ten months after William Douglas Pawley took his life, I called William Franke. He said he had kept in touch with Hadley and Doolittle but was shocked to hear that Pawley had taken his life. “I will call Doolittle’s wife about it,” Franke said. When I told him Hadley rambled some when I interviewed him, Franke said, “I heard he was ill but decided not to call.” He added, “I’m 83 now, my voice is in better shape than my body.”44

Attorney Hadley died at home in New York City on January 19, 1979 at age 84.45 Ex-Navy Secretary Franke in his beloved Rutland, Vermont on June 30, 1979 from gall bladder surgery complications at age 85.46 Daredevil General Doolittle in Pebble Beach California from a stroke at age 96 on September 27, 1993.47

The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon ended most cries for restraint on the CIA. Intelligence failures would be blamed on the prohibitions placed on the Agency in the 1970s by Congress. While the new millennium should have seen an investigation to determine if the CIA had been hijacked by the political agenda of those whose vision of America’s role in the world is distorted by the military-industrial complex, religious fervor, and paranoia stoked by media looking for ratings, the CIA instead was absorbed into a super apparatus created for homeland security.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act so that the CIA answers to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) which in turn provides daily reports to the President. Robert Gates, who turned down being named as DNI because of its cumbersome bureaucracy, eventually agreed to return to Washington to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and continued to hold the position into the administration of President Barack Obama.

In July 2008, Gates expressed concern that foreign policy was being eroded by “creeping militarism”48 echoing President Eisenhower’s concerns in 1961 about the growing power of the military-industrial complex. Less than seven years after Ike’s creation of the Doolittle Committee and in contrast to Pawley’s own military-industrial background, Eisenhower stated, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Eisenhower asserted that the U.S. “must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”49

Before he died William Douglas Pawley got in some praise for the Luces and final jabs at President Kennedy and his policies. In Russia Is Winning, Pawley noted it was “in 1935 that I first began to feel a growing alarm at the threat of world communism ... the subject of this book.” He noted that “Less than twenty years ago, my good friend Henry Luce of Time, Inc. proclaimed the ‘American Century.’ Today Americans of equal responsibility and intellectual distinction are asking not whether the century belongs to us, but whether we can survive as a nation.”50

Pawley called for continuing the fight against communism through “the vital rebuilding of our defenses, military and otherwise.” This was “ably stated by Clare Boothe Luce, former member of Congress and former U.S. ambassador to Italy. This true statesman, a keen observer of both domestic and foreign affairs, [made her statement] in a speech before the Association of the United States Army” on the Army’s 200th anniversary. In her 1975 speech, Luce asserted that democracy’s weakness is “‘its inability to formulate, support and conduct a coherent foreign policy ... I plead that on the matter of our national survival as we face the Communist challenge, we unite as one great people.’”51

Pawley lamented, “JFK on China scoffed at us ‘witch hunting’ and ‘red happy.’”52 Then he turned his focus to JFK and Cuba. “I did all in my power to help Cubans prevent the forces of Communism from taking over their country–-only in part because they have been my cherished friends; my first concern was the welfare of my country. Without question, the Latin American Affairs Division of our State Department must bear the full responsibility for the loss of Cuba to Castro, while others outside government like Herbert Matthews of the New York Times and other members of the media must also share the blame. True, John F. Kennedy took the responsibility for State Department officials answerable to him. No matter, and I hate to have to say this about an assassinated President for the Bay of Pigs and for his surrender of American interests, while he was praised for fortitude, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, young John Kennedy may well go down in history as the worst President we ever had. More than courage was needed. As a result of his helmsmanship and navigation from the bridge of the ship of State, the Monroe Doctrine was scuttled and along with it the entire fabric of inter- American security that had thus far been so painstakingly woven.53

A year after William Pawley’s suicide, a man entered the U.S. State Department, received his “top secret” security clearance, and began to spy on the U.S. for Cuba for the next three decades. Walter Kendall Myers of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, were indicted in June 2009, just as the Obama administration sought to normalize relations with Cuba nearly half a century after the nation’s suspension from the Organization of American States.

The couple had first been contacted in New York and eventually passed information to Cuban intelligence agents in over half-a-dozen countries in the Caribbean, Central America and South America through means as imaginative as switching of supermarket shopping carts to hand off secrets. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered a comprehensive review of the case to provide insight that would feed into decision- making regarding administration policy on issuing security clearances.54

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at the University of Kentucky on April 9, 2010, was asked about normalization of relationships between the U.S. and Cuba. Pawley would have liked her response: “unfortunately, I don’t see that happening while the Castros are still in charge ... because they would then lose all of their excuses for what hasn’t happened in Cuba in the last 50 years.” Clinton explained that it was “the first time, a lot of countries that have done nothing but berate the United States for our failure to be more open to Cuba have now started criticizing Cuba because they’re letting people die. They’re letting these hunger strikers die. They’ve got 200 political prisoners who are there for trivial reasons. And so I think that many in the world are starting to see what we have seen a long time, which is a very intransigent, entrenched regime that has stifled opportunity for the Cuban people, and I hope will begin to change and we’re open to changing with them, but I don’t know that that will happen before some more time goes by.”55

For another politician, Florida Republican U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, the spy incident was the perfect opportunity to revive Pawley’s old Cold War fears of an assault from the island, rather than to suggest that the island was keeping an eye out for its interests after witnessing invasion plots, bazooka attacks, assassination plots and the bombing of one of its airplanes. Senator Martinez asserted that the spying was “‘a stark reminder that just 90 miles from our shores, there is a government hostile toward the people of the United States, a regime that seeks to do us harm and works against our interests around the world.’” The Senator commended the FBI and called upon the Obama administration to counter Cuba’s unwavering conspiracy against America—the Castro “‘regime’s clandestine assault against the U.S.—an assault that has continued for more than half a century.’”56 After becoming the first Cuban-American member of the United States Senate, Mel Martinez announced he would not run for re-election in 2010 but resigned before his term was over to become a lobbyist and then a Latin American regional banker at at what is now JP Morgan Chase.

In 2023, President Biden announced that he would be withholding from release the final 4,000+ documents relating to the JFK assassination for national security reasons to the dismay of researchers like myself. Soon thereafter, he made the CIA Director a cabinet position for the first time.57    

FOOTNOTES:

1 “William D. Pawley, Financier Dies at 80, Ex-Ambassador and Philanthropist Found Shot at Miami Beach Police Call Death a Suicide.” The New York Times, January 8, 1977. Page 22.

2 “Former Ambassador William Pawley Dies in Florida.” The Florence Morning News, January 8, 1977. 

3 “Body of Frank Sinatra’s mother and three others found at crash site in 1977.” New York Daily News, January 10, 1977.

1977 CNAC Association Newsletter.

4 Roger Mudd, CBS Evening News, January 7, 1977.

5 “William Pawley, Ex-Envoy to Brazil, Aviation Expert.” The Washington Post, January 9, 1977, Metro Section, Page 27.

6 “William Pawley” obituary. New York Post, January 8, 1977. 

7 “Milestones.” Time, January 17, 1977.

8 “Communist Threat to the United States Through the Caribbean. September 2 & 8, 1960 Testimony of William D. Pawley.” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eight-Sixth Congress. Part 10. Pages 724-726.

9 “William D. Pawley, Financier, Dies at 80; Ex-Ambassador and Philanthropist Found Shot at Miami Beach Police Call Death a Suicide.” The New York Times, January 8, 1977. Page 22.

10 “Former Ambassador William Pawley Dies in Florida.” The Florence Morning News, January 8, 1977. 

“Industrialist [Eugene] Pawley Dies in Graham, Texas.” The Florence Morning News, July 26, 1977. 

11 “Doomsday Option: Air Force Trains Crews for Fighting Limited Nuclear War.” The Modesto Bee, June 15, 1975. Page 1.

“About Stratcom.” U.S. Strategic Command website

U.S. Strategic Command, or USSTRATCOM, is headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. The command is one of nine U.S. unified commands under the Department of Defense.

USSTRATCOM is a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence.

USSTRATCOM is also the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction. http://www.stratcom.mil/about.html

12 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Introduction by Bruce K. Holloway.

13 “Gen. Bruce K. Holloway, 87, Head of Strategic Air Command.” Richard Goldstein. The New York Times, October 9, 1999.

14 “Former Ambassador William Pawley Dies in Florida.” Florence Morning News, January 8, 1977. 

“William Pawley Services Today.” The Miami News, January 10, 1977. Page 4A.

15 “William Pawley.” The Valley News (Van Nuys, California), January 9, 1977.

16 “Anita Wallace Pawley, February 21, 1923—January 09, 2023.” Miami Herald, February 9, 2023

Coral Gables, Florida - ANITA WALLACE PAWLEY passed away on January 9, 2023 entering into her one hundredth year. She was born February 21, 1923 to Marcia Ragsdale and George Plummer Pawley. Her early years were spent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, New York and Pennsylvania before moving to Miami in 1936.

Anita was an alumni of Miami High School, Catherine Gibbs College and the University of Alabama. She enjoyed a career as the Executive Assistant to her uncle, William Douglas Pawley. Mr. Pawley served as Ambassador to Peru and Brazil under President Truman in the late 1940s and in the Defense Department in Washington, DC in the 1950s. She thrived in this role that entailed travel, introductions to world leaders and acting as liaison for government functions and affairs with various heads of state.

Anita and her late sister Marcia were devoted patrons of the arts in South Florida for decades. She was a founding member of the Young Patronesses of the Opera (Florida Grand Opera) and an active member of Beaux Art at University of Miami's Lowe Gallery. She was a proud legacy sister of the Coral Gables Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution as well. Anita was an avid reader in both English and French and loved classic movies and music.

Anita was a studied genealogist, visiting churches and gravesites throughout the southeast to record the Pawley family history. She was beloved and fashionable guest at dance recitals, graduations, birthdays, weddings and baby showers.

She will be interned with her family at the Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery at a private family service. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the arts program of your choice in her memory.

17 “George Plummer Pawley.” Family Search website.

George Plummer Pawley was born on June 9, 1893, in Florence, Florence, South Carolina. He married Marcia Treadwell Ragsdale on 1 September 1920, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lived in Cuba in 1910 and Yonkers, New York, in 1930. George died on December 19, 1936, in Manhattan, New York City. His daughter, Marcia Ragsdale Pawley, worked for her Uncle William’s Miami Transit Company.

18 “Marcia Ragsdale Pawley.” Miami Herald, January 20, 2011.

Marcia Ragsdale, a beautiful soul, passed away Tuesday, January 18, 2011. Marcia was born September 1, 1921, to George P. and Marcia Ragsdale Pawley. Her early years were spent in Port- au-Prince, Haiti, New York and Pennsylvania before moving to Miami in 1936. She graduated from Miami High School in 1940 and attended Florida State College for Women, then worked for Pan American Airways and for her uncle’s Miami Transit Company until retirement. While at Pan Am, Marcia took flying lessons and soloed on small seaplanes, but never used her license. Marcia was the second president of Beaux Arts, support groups for the Lowe Gallery of the University of Miami. Her creative Beaux Arts Ball costumes are legendary and she won grand prize more than once. She was a founding member of Young Patronesses of the Opera, in which she continued to have an active interest. She was a member of Coral Gables Chapter DAR as well as the U of M Woman’s Guild and also met regularly for lunch with the Miami High Alumni group. She was a dedicated supporter of the Arts and many philanthropic organizations. Marcia’s warm and caring personality drew people to her and she had a wide circle of friends of all ages in addition to her beloved sister Anita and a large and loving family. Private family services will be held. Marcia’s family invite her friends and those who wish to offer condolences and help us celebrate her life to join us for an informal gathering at VAN ORSDEL CORAL GABLES on Saturday January 22nd, 2011 from 2–4 pm. For those wishing to make a memorial contribution, we suggest the Salvation Army, her favorite charity.

19 “Industrialist Pawley Dies in Graham, Texas.” Florence Morning News, July 26, 1977. 

“American Eludes Hongkong Prison.” The Miami News, September 13, 1942. Page 5D. 

“State Leases 1,280 Acres to Talisman.” Palm Beach Post, September 1, 1964.

“William Pawley Services Today.” The Miami News, January 10, 1977. Page 4A.

20 Anthony Carrozza, William D. Pawley. Pages 7, 53 & 260.

21 “Bill Pawley had acquired a severe case of Shingles years earlier” according to nephew Cash Pawley. Reported by John Simkin. Spartacus Educational website.

However, a relative Cash Pawley, has argued: "Bill Pawley had acquired a severe case of Shingles years earlier, which had progressed across his entire body (even the soles of his feet). He had been unable to lay down, stand or become comfortable in any position. The pain was excruciating, and there was no modern medicine(s) for a cure or even proper pain management at the time. Therefore, Mr. Pawley suffered day in and day out, until he just could not do it anymore. This was the reason for his suicide."

22 “The Bayo-Pawley Affair.” By Robert K. Brown and Miguel Acoca, Soldier of Fortune, 1975, Pages 18- 19

23 Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993). Page 57.

8/1980 David Price Cannon phone call from Montclair, NJ to Gaeton Fonzi, 7532 West Treasure Drive, North Bay Village, FL.

24 Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation. Page 59.

25 “Clare Boothe Luce Dies at 84: Playwright, Politician, Envoy.” By Albin Krebs. The New York Times, October 10, 1987.

26 Chapter IX. Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). House Select Committee on Assassinations.

27 NARA 124-10289-10035 ~ [No Title]. Subjects: JRO, Homicide, Crime Scene, Assoc, LCN Members, Susp, Pep, Background, Ident Records, OC, ACA, Intv. From Edward J. Dunn, Jr. To: Director, FBI. Page 20 of 20.
>> RESEARCHER ALERT: There are multiple versions of this document at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. They range from a few pages to 88 pages; heavily redacted and without redactions.

28 “Annie Hahr Dobbs.” Ancestry website.

29 “Weekend Page.” The Guardian (London), February 11, 1995. Page 12.

30 “Social Scene: Here From Havana.” The Miami News, July 25, 1951. Page C1.
>> This society page article indicated that Clifton was a year old in 1951, while his brother Bill Pawley, Jr. was old enough to be engaged in business in Texas. Clifton was living in Havana at the time. William Douglas Pawley at the time had just returned to Miami from “a trip around the world.”

31 “The Pawley Family Moved from Coconut Grove, Seeking a Safer Place to Live. Murder in Coral Gables Driveway.” By Patrick May. The Miami Herald, April 25, 1996.

“Griese, Fellow Gables Residents Plead for Police Patrols.” Miami Herald, May 15, 1996.

>> Clifton Pawley lay in his driveway for two hours after he was shot.

“Pawley Services 11 A.M. Saturday.” Miami Herald, April 1996.

>> Among those Clifton Pawley II left behind were his wife, Carol Adams Pawley, Clifton “Dobbs” Pawley III, Clayton DePass Pawley, and a daughter, Devon Capra Pawley.

32 “Crime Shakes Coral Gables.” By Elaine de Valle. Miami Herald, April 28, 1996. Page 3. 

33 “Gables Murder Tip Could Bring $21000 Reward.” Miami Herald, May 5, 1996. 

“$25000 Reward Offered in Gables Murder Case.” Miami Herald, July 18, 1996. 

“Information Still Scarce in Gables Killing.” Miami Herald, October 24, 1996.

34 “One Year Later, No Murderer Named.” Miami Herald, April 24, 1997.

35 “Does Gables Need Own Homicide Unit? City Has Very Few Murders Annually.” By Elaine de Valle. Miami Herald, November 27, 1997.

36 “Pawley, Edna Cadenhead, widow of former Ambassador William D. Pawley.” Death Notice, Miami Herald, August 28, 2004.

37 “William D. Pawley Kills Himself: He Suffered a Painful Skin Disease.” By Sam Jacobs and Arnold Markowitz. Miami Herald, January 8, 1977. Page 1.

38 “A Swashbuckler in Gray Flannel Suit: Arch-Conservative Left His Mark Around the World.” By Jim Buchanan and Earl DeHart. Miami Herald, January 8, 1977. Page 12-A.

Outraged at Castro’s takeover, Pawley sought out a Miami newsman. “Find me,” he said, “one man, just one man who can go it alone and get Castro. I’ll pay anything — almost anything."

Two days later Pawley withdrew the offer. “I’ve talked to someone myself,” he said, “and they’re all doubledealers these days.”

39 NARA 104-10142-10134 ~ “Sunday 30 October 1977.” Journal Office of Legislative Counsel, (Unclassified—RSG). George L. Cary, Legislative Counsel.

>> Cc: O/DDCI; Mr. [REDACTED]; Ex. Sec.; DDA; DDS&T; Mr. Lapham; Mr. Hetu; SA/DO/O; IC Staff; Compt; NFAC.

NARA 104-10126-10316 ~ “Friday 9 December 1977.” Journal Office of Legislative Counsel, (Unclassified—RSG)

>> A meeting at CIA Headquarters with the Liaison [Joannides?] and Pat Orr, Betsy Palmer, Edwin Lopez, Gaeton Fonzi, Gary Cornwall, G. Robert Blakey to review: Cuban Counter-Revolutionary Handbook, Bayo-Pawley Affair, William Pawley, Frank Sturgis, sanitized IG Report on Book V. Notes were “classified, sanitized and couriered to the Committee offices. Other notes for Pat Orr were retained until Monday.”

40 Doolittle Committee: Special Study Group Report to President Eisenhower, 1954.

41 Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book IV, Final Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, April 23, 1976. Pages 52 and 53.

42Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, An Interim Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities. November 20, 1975.

43 James Risen and Thomas Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy (Little, Brown and Company, May 9, 2023).

44 Phone interview with William Franke, Rutland, Vermont, by David Price Cannon from New York Public Library phone booth, November 18, 1977.

45 “Morris Hadley, Began Law Firm.” The New York Times. January 18, 1979.

46 Ex-Navy Secretary William B. Franke. Advocate of Modern Defense.” The Washington Post. July 2, 1979.

47 “General James Doolittle Dies.” The Washington Post. September 30, 1993.

48 “Defense secretary Gates wants to spend more on U.S. diplomacy.” By Peter Spiegel. Los Angeles Times July 16, 2008.

>> Gates noted that the Pentagon had an outsized budget which made it called upon to “handle activities that traditionally had been the responsibility of civilian agencies. The trend has led critics to charge that U.S. foreign policy is dominated by the military, a view Gates said was ‘not an entirely unreasonable sentiment.’”

>> Gates also criticized marketing-based solutions to foreign policy problems. “‘The solution is not to be found in some slick PR campaign or by trying to out-propagandize Al Qaeda, but through the steady accumulation of actions and results that build trust and credibility over time,’ Gates said.”

49 “Farewell speech of U.S.A. President, Dwight Eisenhower.” January 17, 1961.

50 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 8.

51 “Speech to the Association of the United States Army.” By Clare Boothe Luce. Delivered June 18, 1975. 

52 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 20.

53 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 450.

54 “State department teacher accused of being Cuban spy.” By Daniel Dombey. The Financial Times, June 6, 2009.

55 “Remarks on Nuclear Nonproliferation at the University of Louisville as Part of the McConnell Center's Spring Lecture Series, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.” Delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, April 9, 2010.

56 “Martinez says Cuban spy case should be wake-up call for Obama.” By Mark Matthews. Orlando Sentinel, June 5, 2009.

57 "Biden elevates CIA director to Cabinet, a symbolic nod to central role." By Kevin, Liptak. CNN, July 21,2023.