Secret Services, Creative Exposures

Q: What do a dead spook and child pornography have in common? A: They're both created in CIA brothels that are protected by federal and local cops! (Not a joke.)

For a couple of days late in July, 1982, newspapers across the United States ran stories on an explosive public hearing held by the New York State Select Committee on Crime. Sporting headlines like “Boy Prostitutes Linked to Spies”¹ (Newsday) and “BOY SEX RINGS SAID TO PEDDLE CLIENT DATA TO FOREIGN AGENTS”² (The New York Times), the articles described testimony from detectives and researchers outlining a sophisticated nationwide network of pedophile rings that operated in at least six major cities and sold information on clients to agents of British, Israeli, and Soviet intelligence. The intelligence-related allegations came to light courtesy of Dale Smith, who went undercover for the committee in 1977 to investigate the forces behind the production of child pornography and sex trafficking of boys along the East coast.³ Although Smith refused to elaborate further to journalists, committee counsel Jeremiah McKenna stated that the data sold to intelligence services referred to “government officials” and that the child trafficking rings were “making more money selling information than on the prostitution itself.”⁴

These are stunning claims printed in eminent newspapers: a national child sex trafficking network was alleged to be generating blackmail on government officials and selling it to spies from America’s closest allies and most bitter enemy. It will get even weirder when we dig into an aspect that the papers apparently avoided reporting. But before pulling further on that thread, I want to back up and outline the informative chain of events that triggered the New York State Select Committee on Crime’s probe into issues of child sex trafficking and pornography.

Operation Together

In 1977, NY Select Committee officials began this joint investigation with NYC and state law enforcement officers in order to shed light on “‘organized‐crime involvement in the Manhattan sex industry,’ including the alleged takeover of bars and the recruitment of teen‐aged boys and girls for prostitution.”⁵ The effort emerged due to frustration among detectives who had been involved in a previous NYPD/NYDA mob probe dubbed Operation Together, which several officers alleged had been prematurely axed in 1976 by higher-ups.⁶ Two of the involved law enforcement officials claimed to have been demoted in retaliation for their role in the investigation.⁷ A “high-echelon police source reported that pressure to discontinue the probe had come from ‘strong, outside influences.’”⁸ And in an interview with author Phillip Crawford Jr. for his 2015 book The Mafia and the Gays⁹, a retired NYPD detective who worked on Operation Together reportedly “identified some individuals at the highest levels in NYC politics, power and society who allegedly were implicated [by the investigation] in [an] underage boy sex ring.”¹⁰

Operation Together arose in response to a strange series of deaths from 1972 to 1974 that detectives suspected were related to mafia ambitions to consolidate control over illicit gay bars in Manhattan.¹¹ Hints of the presence of US intelligence quickly emerged. Things kicked off in 1974 in response to a routine re-examination of the unsolved 1972 murder of Shelley (or Shelly) Bloom (or Blum; a.k.a. Allan Gold)¹², co-owner of a gay Manhattan disco that reportedly doubled as a “drug drop and mob hangout.”¹³ Bloom was found beaten and shot to death “the night before he was to testify before a Federal grand jury investigating a South American cocaine smuggling network.”¹⁴ It’s worth quoting the New York Times piece on the background of Operation Together and the Select Committee’s investigation:¹⁵

According to a confidential police report, the murder of Mr. Bloom may have been connected to the attempt by organized crime to control homosexual bars, to eight other unsolved homicides, to the procurement and prostitution of young boys and to narcotics trafficking.

The investigation linked the Bloom murder with a series of mysterious deaths from 1972 to 1974, including those of:

Edgar F. Luckenbach Jr., a shipping millionaire who was found dead in the apartment of a woman identified in police reports as an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and who had been previously arrested with Mr. Bloom on charges of intent to distribute cocaine.

The rest of the murders described in the article are interesting, but Edgar Luckenbach Jr.’s death takes the cake and merits further scrutiny. First, Luckenbach wasn’t just “a shipping millionaire” (though he was that, and his death brought about the demise of the venerable Luckenbach shipping dynasty¹⁶). He was also a rather decorated Naval intelligence officer who served in World War II and Korea. An obituary printed in the August 11th, 1974 edition of the Miami Herald noted that Luckenbach was a “captain in the Naval Reserve and until recently served as commanding officer of the New York Naval Intelligence Reserve,”¹⁷ and, among other commendations, he was recipient of the “Naval Intelligence Award”¹⁸ and the “Naval Intelligence Reserve Distinguished Service Medal.”¹⁹ All of which makes it even more intriguing that Mr. Luckenbach ended up dead in the apartment of an informant for the CIA and DEA who was also somehow tied into the trafficking of people and cocaine.

Death of a Spook in a House of Ill Repute

None of the obvious questions—how? why? who? what? huh?—appear to be answerable when it comes to Luckenbach’s death. The circumstances are truly bizarre. No cause of death seems to have been determined,²⁰ despite “superficial abrasions”²¹ and bruises²² on Luckenbach’s face, neck, and the back of his head. Medical examiner John Firey immediately termed the death suspicious²³ and later stated “I have certain things in mind but can't go into them now because of the many ramifications of this most unusual case.”²⁴ Even after a full autopsy and chemical analysis of the internal organs, those “scratches and tiny bruises”²⁵ perplexed investigators.

Luckenbach’s body was supposedly found by a woman named Lee Berliner lying spread-eagle beside a bare, untouched bed on the bedroom floor of an apartment in Manhattan. Berliner, who claimed to have been his “business associate,”²⁶ apparently “waited about five hours before notifying the police and…made the telephone call from somewhere other than the apartment.”²⁷ The cops discovered another woman, an “unemployed office worker” named Esteen Bernhardt, passed out on a nearby couch in the same apartment, but she claimed that she “had taken a sleeping pill early Friday and did not know the circumstances of Mr. Luckenbach's death.”²⁸ The apartment was said to be in the name of an individual named Elizabeth Reed, who had been sub-letting the flat to yet another woman, identified only as “Taylor,”²⁹ who had been absent lately. Other articles noted that Berliner or Bernhardt or both had been residents or sub-letters as well.³⁰³¹ Suggestively, neighbors noted that “they had frequently seen well‐dressed, middle‐aged men entering the apartment.”³²

I’m still not entirely sure which of these women was the one who was “identified in police reports as an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and who had been previously arrested…on charges of intent to distribute cocaine.”³³ Since the apartment was in Elizabeth Reed’s name and Luckenbach “was found dead in the apartment of”³⁴ the CIA/DEA informant in question, Reed seems like a strong candidate, but I haven’t been able to find anything else about her. Sub-letter “Taylor” is similarly untraceable without more identifying information. Interestingly, the New York Daily News reported that couch potato and possible apartment resident Esteen Bernhardt “was later convicted on unrelated cocaine charges,”³⁵ but I failed to turn up any details about that or any further mentions of Bernhardt separate from the Luckenbach case. However, the apartment’s fourth resident, Ms. Lee Berliner, discoverer of Mr. Luckenbach’s body, did appear in a few other reports that help to clarify some things, while also raising new questions.

It turns out Luckenbach wasn’t the only fellow to end up dead in an apartment occupied by Ms. Berliner. In 1978, in a flat shared by Berliner and her associate Earl Adams at 370 E. 76th St. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (a 12 minute walk from the apartment where Luckenbach died in 1974³⁶), two young men were shot to death after allegedly making an attempt on Ms. Berliner’s life.³⁷ Unlike the reports on Luckenbach’s death, which seemed to strenuously avoid discussing Berliner’s background, the Daily News article on this shoot-out provides us with a crucial piece of context: Ms. Berliner was “well-known in police circles as a prosperous operator of East Side brothels.”³⁸ Seems relevant! And that tidbit sheds light on a strange beauty salon³⁹ she opened in Manhattan a decade earlier, in 1968, with “former movie actress”⁴⁰ Shirley Kaye. Every Tuesday night, Kaye and Berliner’s Collage de Beaute hosted a “Male Call” to provide men with “services not always available in a barbershop” which could be “given in a private room in the rear of the salon”⁴¹ if a customer so desired. Celebrities like New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath reportedly partook.⁴²

So, to recap, Edgar Luckenbach Jr., a US Naval intelligence officer and shipping magnate, died inexplicably in a Manhattan apartment that was almost certainly a brothel controlled by Lee Berliner, a well-connected, high-status East Side madam who labeled Luckenbach a “business associate.” Berliner, or possibly the person she was renting the apartment from, was alleged by the New York Times to be involved with mob-linked cocaine smuggling and informing for the CIA and DEA. Given the fact that Berliner was also “well-known in police circles” and was still active in the vicinity as late as four years after Luckenbach’s death, she clearly had tacit official approval for her activities, whatever they were. There are obvious reasons a woman in such a position might be useful to US intelligence services (expanded on later), suggesting a clear reason New York detectives would have been pressured to shutter Operation Together, which had apparently begun poking around these inconvenient areas.

Pulling on a Thread

There is a lot more to be explored there (a LOT) and I may return to those events in a future post. However, right now I'm going to bring us back to the New York State Select Committee investigation into child pornography and prostitution, which arose in 1977 in the wake of Operation Together. In particular, I want to identify and examine an instructive omission in the press coverage describing committee investigator Dale Smith’s testimony at the public hearing in 1982 about the sale of call-boy client data to Soviet, Israeli, and British intelligence. Maybe unsurprisingly, it will lead us right back into the orbit of the CIA.

The newspaper reports that I’ve seen—mostly remixes of wire reports from UPI and AP—almost all suggested that Smith’s source for the claim about selling client data to intelligence services was an accountant for several call-boy rings⁴³⁴⁴⁴⁵ named Robert Kohler.⁴⁶ A few reported a slight variation, naming Kohler as the source for the claim about British and Israeli intelligence while alleging that a member of Soviet intelligence told Smith about the sale of data to Soviets.⁴⁷ However, neither of these narratives about the sourcing for Smith’s claims is exactly borne out by his testimony, which only became publicly available in 2017, when now-defunct internet outlet Disobedient Media landed a copy of the transcript of the first day of the hearings.⁴⁸ The document is archived on the Wayback Machine.⁴⁹

Although the hearing transcript confirms that a call-boy ring accountant named Robert Kohler did tell Dale Smith about the sale of client information to foreign intelligence, it also shows that Smith didn’t actually specify which nation(s) Kohler referred to.⁵⁰ And although Smith claimed he’d “had contacts with foreign intelligence officers,”⁵¹ he didn’t specify where they were from or whether one of those officers was the source of the claim about purchases by Soviet intelligence.⁵² Smith did, however, specifically name the person who told him about the sale of call-boy ring information to the Brits and Israelis. Somehow, this individual wasn’t mentioned in a single newspaper article about the hearings (at least, none of the ones available through Google or newspapers.com).

According to Smith’s testimony, data was being sold to British and Israeli agents from a pair of call-boy rings called “Brian’s Boys” and “Fantasies Unlimited” by a “call service operator in Alexandria, Virginia, by the name of Jonathan Christopher Reynolds, III.”⁵³ Why would newspapers avoid disseminating this name? They had no problem naming Robert Kohler, with some even misidentifying him as the source of the claim that Reynolds made, so clearly the omission wasn’t out of any kind of privacy concern. Of course, it’s entirely plausible that this oversight was just a result of sloppy reporting by the journalists that sent out the wire dispatches that served as the sources for most of these stories. But a closer look may point toward something more interesting.

Reynolds III may not have been mentioned in articles about the NY Select Committee’s hearing, but he did appear in a couple of illuminating Washington Post reports by Stephanie Mansfield in May of 1979. In the first, Mansfield reported on the existence of three male escort rings in Virginia—the aforementioned “Fantasies Unlimited” and “Brian’s Boys,” along with a third called “Secret Services”—plus a “nude photography salon” named “Creative Exposures.”⁵⁴ Run by business partners Michael Parker (a.k.a. Brian Anderson, the Brian in “Brian’s Boys”) and our guy “J.C. Reynolds III,” all of these services had operated from a historic Alexandria townhouse since March of that year.⁵⁵ Given the likelihood that boys were being photographed for pornography and coerced into sex there, the description of the property’s interior is pretty chilling: “Behind the wooden shutters of the $100,000 rented town house at 807 Duke St. are three bedrooms, a bank of telephones and a ‘dungeon’ outfitted with sado-masochistic equipment for the homosexual clientele...”⁵⁶ Out-calls were on the menu as well, with escorts circulating to Virginia, D.C., and Maryland.⁵⁷

The article makes it abundantly clear that both federal and local law enforcement officials were aware of the operations, which were taking place just “two blocks from the U.S. Attorney's office”⁵⁸ at the time. An interviewed FBI agent’s explanation for not preventing interstate child sex trafficking was simply, “[t]he Mann Act doesn't cover men," while a local cop claimed “the city's vice squad is undermanned and unable to conduct a thorough investigation to obtain enough evidence to support a search warrant.”⁵⁹ The buck was also passed by Mr. Charles R. Hooff III, the businessman whose company leased the property for its unnamed out-of-town owners. In an interview conducted a week prior to the publication of the Post article, Hooff shrugged his shoulders: “I just can't fathom it. Either law enforcement is lax or our laws are lax. But there's nothing we can do about it. They have a valid lease."⁶⁰

The somewhat unflattering picture presented in the first piece might have triggered a change of heart for Mr. Hooff. Despite his initial abrogation of responsibility, a report appeared in the Post the next day with a semi-positive update: “Yesterday, Charles R. Hooff III, the rental agent, said, ‘We made an inspection of the property. We asked [Parker] to leave.’ According to Hooff, ‘He's leaving.’”⁶¹ Of course, in the absence of any arrests, this eviction didn’t necessarily solve the problem, since the pimps could easily just move to a new building. In an interview for the same article, J.C. Reynolds III attempted to distance himself from the operations, claiming that his partnership with Parker “was limited to ‘Creative Exposures,’ a photographic service.”⁶² Obviously being a pornographer at a child brothel would be bad enough on its own, but the statement also seems to be a lie, since we now know that Reynolds told investigator Dale Smith that he’d been operating both “Brian’s Boys” and “Fantasies Unlimited” and selling their data to British and Israeli intelligence.

Realtor Hooff’s initial response—he couldn’t do anything about the prostitution and pornography businesses operating out of a property leased out by his rental agency—is kind of puzzling. Why would it take the publication of a Washington Post article to light a fire under his ass to figure out a way to evict human scum like that? Perhaps his hands really were legally/contractually tied, but an aspect of the man’s background makes me question that.

Since Hooff was a pretty prominent businessman and a member of multiple old Virginia families, upon his death in 2021 the Virginia State Senate passed Resolution No. 513, titled “Celebrating the life of Charles R. Hooff III.”⁶³ In it, we learn that “in 1965, he was recruited by Air America, the passenger and cargo airline established by the Central Intelligence Agency, with which he supported covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.”⁶⁴ A Washington Post article from 1978 adds a bit more detail, noting that he had served as an “accountant and contract negotiator”⁶⁵ for the CIA front.

To me, that feels suggestive. We’re talking about a pornography and prostitution ring serving “professional men, married and single, from the Washington area…”⁶⁶ operating with the apparent knowledge of federal and local law enforcement…circulating escorts, some of whom were children, to Maryland, DC, and Virginia…allegedly selling client data to British and Israeli intelligence agents…and it turns out it’s being operated from a property leased by a former CIA contractor’s real estate firm. What are the odds? I acknowledge this is all circumstantial and proves nothing. After all, Charles R. Hooff, Inc. was a regionally significant company that administered many properties, so it could be a complete coincidence that they happened to be the ones handling this lease. Further digging is warranted.

Karma Doesn’t Exist

If we believe the testimony from the NY Select Committee’s public hearing, J.C. Reynolds III and call-boy accountant Robert Kohler both essentially admitted treason to Dale Smith. It’s clear that Smith would have informed his law enforcement contacts about the sale of call-boy client data to foreign intelligence agents. Anyway, we know he announced it in front of multiple public officials at the hearing in 1982. One would think that the punishment for selling sexual blackmail on government employees to foreign nations would be severe and life-altering, up to and including death. Nope! Just a couple months after the public hearing, charges against Kohler for his role as an accountant for the Stables (one of the other call services described in hearing testimony⁶⁷) were dropped in exchange for his cooperation.⁶⁸ And similarly, as we’ll see, J.C. Reynolds III didn’t seem to suffer many consequences for his exposure as a blackmail-peddling child pimp and pornographer operating under a lease administered by a CIA contractor.

A few months after the 1979 eviction of Reynolds’ and Parker’s child brothel in Alexandria, VA, Reynolds did briefly run into some hard times and legal trouble. A March, 1980 report in the Winston-Salem Journal described the plight of a “J. Christopher Reynolds III” from Alexandria, who had recently defrauded a series of banks in North Carolina out of small sums of cash by falsely claiming to be an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune.⁶⁹ He pulled this off with the use of some real credentials: the actual street address and phone number of a genuine R.J. Reynolds heir, William Reynolds II, which apparently provided him enough credibility to fool a few bank tellers. The article notes that Will Reynolds did not know how J.C. had managed to get his address and number, which were not publicly available. I’m suspicious that the wealthy William may have inadvertently provided his personal information to J.C. through one of his outcall prostitution services, but I have no proof of that. The article indicates that Reynolds spent at least a month in jail for this, though I couldn’t find any follow-ups about the outcome.

However, after this minor bump in the road, things look to have taken a much more positive turn for the wily Jonathan Christopher Reynolds III. The next place I was able to pin him down was an August, 1985 Maryland Sentinel newspaper article, "Stately Howard Hall Retains its Dignity,” reproduced in a report prepared by the Maryland Historical Trust.⁷⁰ Somehow, despite having filed an “affidavit of indigency”⁷¹ during his court proceedings for petty fraud in 1980, by 1984 Reynolds (again posing as an heir to the tobacco fortune) had purchased a then-$335,000 mansion with his “uncle,” Dr. Stewart Gordon, a musician and academic.

A 1987 New York Times article provides an update: Dr. Gordon and a man now labeled his “brother,” going by “Chris Gordon” (Jonathan Christopher Reynolds III), flipped the aforementioned Howard Hall in 1985 and purchased “an eight-bedroom, five-and-a-half bath, 70-year-old brick Georgian mansion”⁷² in Queens for $395,000. By 2004, Gordon and Reynolds had apparently decamped together to California, where they appeared in the Palm Springs Desert Sun showing off their Santa collection.⁷³ Stewart Gordon’s bio on his personal site suggests that their relationship stretched all the way back to 1979 (the same year as Reynolds’ brothel eviction) and that J.C. Reynolds III eventually died happy and comfortable:⁷⁴

Starting in 1979 Stewart shared [his] home with Christopher Reynolds (1947-2016). Stewart is an animal lover, having as part of his family dogs, cats, and tropical fish. The dogs have been mostly bull terriers with names drawn from history: Plato, Apollo, Andromeda, Hercules, Zeus, Galahad, Lancelot, Socrates, Sampson, and Louis XIV. He makes his home just outside of Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, overlooking the Pacific ocean.

It sounds like they led a beautiful life together, but it’s quite a trajectory to morph from an apparently-treasonous child trafficker into a guy that buys and sells enormous mansions with your semi-famous musician/academic boyfriend. I wasn’t able to confirm what Reynolds was up to between when he was jailed for impersonating a tobacco heir in 1980 and when he purchased Howard Hall with Stewart Gordon in 1984, but based on Gordon’s bio, it sounds like they were already living together at the time of Reynolds’ legal troubles. To me, that calls into question whether Reynolds was ever as broke as his “affidavit of indigency” suggested, though then we’re faced with the conundrum of why he would’ve been going around defrauding banks for a few hundred dollars at a time.

There are two puzzling issues here: How did this wealth and luxury suddenly materialize for J.C. Reynolds III? And why did newspapers studiously avoid mentioning his name when Dale Smith alleged that he had been selling call-boy data to foreign intelligence? One potential explanation is that Reynolds was under some sort of protection. After all, we already noted that his brothel in Alexandria (which, again, was being leased out by a former CIA contractor) was operating despite the full knowledge of federal and local law enforcement. Admittedly, at first glance it’s difficult to see how the idea of Reynolds as a US intelligence asset could comport with the notion that he was selling data to spooks from other countries and lived to tell the tale, but I think one more little tangent can lead us toward a plausible explanation.

One More Little Tangent

Let’s back up again to the New York State Select Committee on Crime’s investigation into pornography and prostitution. Recall its origin story: an earlier law enforcement investigation called Operation Together began digging into similar issues, brushed up some against very touchy areas (e.g. a CIA-tied brothel where a decorated Naval Intelligence officer died inexplicably), and was allegedly closed down by top brass after powerful people were implicated in boy sex rings, among other things. If that narrative is even partially true, it’s difficult to imagine the power players that halted Operation Together just allowing the NY Select Committee’s investigation to pick up where its precursor left off. A simple way to control such an investigation while maintaining the illusion of independence would be to staff it with at least one “insider” who could keep tabs on things and guide lines of inquiry away from sensitive topics.

As it happens, one of the individuals involved with the committee’s investigation is a dead ringer for the role of mole: the first investigator to speak at the 1982 public hearing, DC detective Carl Shoffler.⁷⁵ Firstly, Officer Carl holds the distinction of participating in the arrest of the Watergate burglars in 1972.⁷⁶ If you’re acquainted with the machinations that surrounded Watergate, that is already a notable connection, but I’m trying to stay focused, so I’m not going to veer off into an outline of the web of prostitution, blackmail, and CIA assets that drove those events (as tempting as that might be). However, the perfect place for you to start acquainting yourself with that important bit of history is Jim Hougan’s classic The Secret Agenda - Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA,⁷⁷ and I’m going to pull quite a bit from it on the subject of Carl Shoffler to illustrate how suggestive it is that he was involved with the Select Committee’s investigation. To wit:⁷⁸

Shoffler…is no ordinary cop. Prior to joining the police department in Washington, he had served for years at the Vint Hill Farm Station in Virginia. This is one of the NSA’s most important domestic “listening posts.” Staffed by personnel assigned to the Army Security Agency (ASA), Vint Hill Farm is thought to be responsible for intercepting communications traffic emanating from Washington’s Embassy Row.

So, we have a detective with an intelligence background and a history of proximity to quite sensitive information. In fact, “Shoffler…had assisted the CIA in the past, …was personally acquainted with General Paul Gaynor”⁷⁹ and received the nickname “Little Blick”⁸⁰ after becoming protege to former Washington Police captain Roy E. Blick.⁸¹  According to Hougan, “He seems to have ‘inherited’ many of his namesake’s files when the latter retired and, like Blick, liaised regularly with his FBI and CIA counterparts.”⁸² If Gaynor and Blick aren’t familiar, don’t worry. A lengthy quote from Secret Agenda crystallizes the significance of Shoffler’s connections to those individuals and helps to lace a lot of this post together [emphasis added by me]:⁸³

Headed by the late General Paul Gaynor, [the CIA’s Security Research Staff (SRS)] managed the literally mind-boggling Bluebird and Artichoke programs, and coordinated many of the domestic spying activities associated with Operation Chaos and Project Two [“an operation that entailed infiltration of the Black Power and antiwar movements in the United States, supposedly for the purpose of training CIA undercover agents for assignments abroad.”⁸⁴]. Most important, the SRS was the primary, hands-on counterintelligence unit within the CIA. Its central function was to seek out and expose security risks, as well as to identify Soviet penetration agents not only within the CIA but also in other branches of government.

[…]

In many ways, the SRS was unique. A critical component of the CIA’s internal security apparatus, it was effectively immune from scrutiny. Whenever a new employee was hired or an agent induced to work for the CIA, details of that relationship would be forwarded to the Office of Security for background checks and approval. This was a well-known procedure, but what was less known was the fact that this information was also routed to the Security Research Staff, where, as sometimes happened, earlier approvals were vetoed by General Gaynor and his staff. A lifelong counterintelligence specialist, fascinated by the idea of a ‘Manchurian candidate,’ General Gaynor was separately provided with this information so that he might compare the names of new personnel and agents with dossiers in his legendary ‘fag file.’ The file consisted of details concerning more than three hundred thousand Americans, mostly homosexuals, who had been arrested at one time or another for sexual offenses.

Here we have touched upon a matter that impinges directly on the Watergate affair: the compilation of dossiers on the sexual habits of selected Americans. Supposedly the information in Gaynor’s file was used to screen applicants for employment at the agency, and to keep tabs on employees and agents who might become involved in activities that would render them vulnerable to blackmail. But these were not the only purposes to which the file was put, and neither was it the only such file to which the SRS had access. General Gaynor worked closely with the deputy chief of the Washington Police Department, Captain Roy E. Blick. […] A source for both J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and the CIA under Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, Captain Blick maintained exhaustive files on the subject of sexual deviance, files that are said to have included the names of every prostitute, madam, pimp, homosexual, pederast, sado-masochist, and most points in between, of whatever nationality, who came to the attention of the police in the country’s capital. Inevitably, because of the seizure of ‘trick books’ during police raids, those files also contained the names and sexual preferences of many of the prostitutes’ clients, including those of congressmen, diplomats, judges and spooks.

[…]

The working relationship between Blick and Gaynor was useful to the CIA in a number of ways. As columnist Jack Anderson has reported, “Through field offices scattered around the country, the Office of Security maintains close ties with state and local police. In each field office, a ‘black book’ is kept of the males and females who can be safely recruited to entertain the CIA’s visitors. The black books contain names, telephone numbers and details, gleaned largely from local vice squads. In Washington, for example, CIA agents paid regular visits to the police department’s vice squad to photograph documents. The late Deputy Chief Roy E. Blick, who headed the ‘sex squad’ for years, kept exhaustive records on ‘perverts’ and ‘miscreants’ around the country. He had a close, backroom relationship with the CIA.…”

Among those visitors whom the CIA had occasion to entertain were foreign leaders, agents in transit and defectors. But entertainment was by no means the only purpose served by the agency’s liaison with local vice squads around the country. Blackmail was another function, and, toward that end, the Office of Security maintained safehouses—literally, houses or apartments untraceable to the CIA—in a number of American cities.

There is a lot of relevant information packed into that passage, and I’m sure Hougan’s clear prose is a breath of fresh air after slogging through 5000 words of my writing. The key high-level takeaway is the existence of a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship between the CIA, state and local vice squads, and selected human trafficking operations. Significantly, it turns out that Carl Shoffler’s mentor, former DC police chief Roy Blick, was directly wired into this nexus (Blick actually received friendly letters thanking him for his service from CIA directors Walter B. Smith⁸⁵ and Allen Dulles⁸⁶). Blick worked hand-in-glove with CIA counterintelligence specialist Paul Gaynor, each building massive collections of files on the sexual predilections of thousands of people. Gaynor ran an extremely powerful office within the CIA that maintained and operated multiple brothels within the United States. As an aside, Jack Anderson’s reports⁸⁷⁸⁸ place two of those CIA blackmail brothels in New York and San Francisco, which happen to be two of the six cities named in the interstate child trafficking circuit outlined in the NY Select Committee public hearing.⁸⁹ Considering “Little Blick” Shoffler also knew Gaynor, also liaised with the CIA, and also inherited chief Blick’s extensive sex files, it seems likely that he succeeded Blick as the DC point guy for the CIA’s “sex squad.”

Can you imagine a person better suited to steer a sex trafficking probe away from areas US intelligence might want protected? Even without the circumstantial evidence in this post for spook ties to the brothels investigated by Operation Together and the NY Select Committee, officer Shoffler’s involvement would be a red flag. But taken together with the CIA connections to the stories of Lee Berliner and Jonathan Christopher Reynolds III, I think "Little Blick’s” presence graduates to something closer to a smoking gun.

The information in the Hougan quote also suggests a potential counterintelligence-related explanation for J.C. Reynolds III’s claim that he was selling client data from his call-boy rings to British and Israeli spooks. If we take seriously the hypothesis that the Alexandria child brothel was part of a CIA operation, it’s possible that Reynolds was lying to investigator Dale Smith (and presumably others in these circles) in an attempt to attract foreign intelligence officers to a sort of meta-honey trap. Obviously US security services were aware that agents from other nations had a great interest in obtaining sensitive blackmail on well-to-do people in the DC area. One way to identify and neutralize these foreign operatives might be to dangle some irresistible bait, like rumors of a child brothel supposedly willing to sell information on US government employees. When foreign spies come calling, they can be surveilled, tailed, captured, or disposed of, depending on the situation. It’s a bit of a byzantine scenario, but it’s also really not that wacky by Cold War espionage standards, and it would help explain the bizarrely charmed life trajectory of J.C. Reynolds III despite the gravity of the allegations about his activities.

Conclusion

Maybe this post isn’t all that surprising or interesting at this point. After all, for those who have eyes to see, the flood of revelations over the past few years about Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement in elite child sex trafficking and blackmail have concretely confirmed that these sorts of spy games are still being played. The historical research of Whitney Webb and Edmund Berger among others demonstrates that Epstein’s activities fit firmly within the long sweep of collaboration between intelligence services and organized crime that has characterized the 20th and 21st centuries.⁹⁰⁹¹ Investigations of other child trafficking cases like the Franklin scandal and the Finders cult have uncovered similar connections and motives.⁹² Considering all this, evidence of a CIA hand behind the events examined throughout this post would just constitute one more instance among many. Still, given the unbelievable depravity required to use people in these ways and the importance of understanding the mechanisms of control exerted by intelligence services, I think there’s intrinsic value to bringing further examples to light.

As a closing observation, it’s interesting to note that Epstein’s surveillance-wired,⁹³ child-porn-filled⁹⁴ Manhattan townhouse at 9 E. 71st St.⁹⁵ happens to have been a short walk from the death-filled brothels Lee Berliner operated in Manhattan in the 70s.⁹⁶ So, if you get nothing else from this post, hopefully you’ll at least know to stay the fuck away from sex houses on the Upper East Side in the future.

---

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Richard Booth (

OKC Facts📝

) for the use of his newspapers.com account to make clippings. And thank you to George from CAVDEF for pointing out the fact that detective Carl Shoffler arrested the Watergate burglars, which led me to the illuminating sections on Shoffler, Gaynor, and Blick that I quoted from Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda.

1. “Boy Prostitutes Linked to Spies.” Newsday, July 27, 1982. New York.

2. Associated Press. “BOY SEX RINGS SAID TO PEDDLE CLIENT DATA TO FOREIGN AGENTS.” The New York Times, July 27, 1982. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/27/nyregion/boy-sex-rings-said-to-peddle-client-data-to-foreign-agents.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20220717093440/https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/27/nyregion/boy-sex-rings-said-to-peddle-client-data-to-foreign-agents.html

3. Pichirallo, Joe. “Sale of Male Sex Client Lists Unconfirmed, Ex-Investigator Says.” Washington Post, July 28, 1982. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/07/28/sale-of-male-sex-client-lists-unconfirmed-ex-investigator-says/991e1c74-640e-4108-bfb9-b0d093c0fcbe/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20180131035629/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/07/28/sale-of-male-sex-client-lists-unconfirmed-ex-investigator-says/991e1c74-640e-4108-bfb9-b0d093c0fcbe/

4. “Boy Prostitutes…” (n1).

5. Blum, Howard. “Investigation of the Sex Industry Begun by New York State and City.” The New York Times, May 13, 1977, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/13/archives/investigation-of-the-sex-industry-begun-by-new-york-state-and-city.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20201109021536/https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/13/archives/investigation-of-the-sex-industry-begun-by-new-york-state-and-city.html

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Federici, William, and Thomas Collins. “Spotlight Turned On Deadly Sex Trade Here.” Daily News, May 12, 1977.

9. Crawford, Phillip. The Mafia and the Gays. Middletown, DE. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.

10. Crawford, Phillip. “‘Top Brass’ At NYPD Shut Down Investigation Into Mafia-Tied Prostitution Ring Involving Underage Boys Which Allegedly Implicated Powerful Men.” Reddit Post. R/Lgbthistory, August 8, 2020. www.reddit.com/r/lgbthistory/comments/i63rnj/top_brass_at_nypd_shut_down_investigation_into/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230616033645/https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbthistory/comments/i63rnj/top_brass_at_nypd_shut_down_investigation_into/

11. Blum. (n5).

12. Ibid.

13. Federici and Collins. (n8).

14. Blum. (n5).

15. Ibid.

16. de la Pedraja, Rene. A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. Pg. 321-324.

17. The Miami Herald. “Shipping Magnate E. Luckenbach.” Obituary. August 11, 1974.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. The New York Times. “LUCKENBACH DEATH REMAINS A MYSTERY.” August 22, 1974, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/22/archives/luckenbach-death-remains-a-mystery.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230918044456/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/22/archives/luckenbach-death-remains-a-mystery.html

21. Treaster, Joseph B. “Death of Executive Here Under Inquiry.” The New York Times, August 11, 1974, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/11/archives/death-of-executive-here-under-inquiry-men-seen-frequently.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20221201053641/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/11/archives/death-of-executive-here-under-inquiry-men-seen-frequently.html

22. Smith, Jim. “Shipping Tycoon’s Death a Mystery.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition), August 12, 1974.

23. Treaster. (n20).

24. The New York Times. “KUH OFFICE STUDIES LUCKENBACH DEATH.” August 21, 1974, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/21/archives/kuh-office-studies-luckenbach-death.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230918074526/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/21/archives/kuh-office-studies-luckenbach-death.html

25. O’Connor, Rory. “Luckenbach Death Offers No New Clues.” The Tampa Tribune, September 12, 1974.

26. Treaster. (n20).

27. Treaster. (n20).

28. Sheppard Jr., Nathaniel. “Luckenbach Death Held Natural But Some Suspicion Remains.” The New York Times, August 12, 1974, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/12/archives/luckenbach-death-held-natural-but-some-suspicioon-remains-no.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230918035850/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/12/archives/luckenbach-death-held-natural-but-some-suspicioon-remains-no.html

29. Treaster. (n20).

30. Smith. (n22).

31. Sheppard Jr. (n27).

32. Treaster. (n20).

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Federici and Collins. (n8).

36. Google Maps walking route between Madam Lee Berliner’s murder brothels

37. Harney, James. “Two Die in Brothel Shootout.” Daily News, December 5, 1978.

38. Harney. (n35).

39. Klemesrud, Judy. “Men Gather At Beauty Salon For Tuesday’s ‘Male Call.’” The Index-Journal, March 10, 1969.

40. McHarry, Charles. “On the Town.” Daily News, September 25, 1968.

41. Klemesrud. (n39).

42. Ibid.

43. “Boy Prostitutes…” (n1).

44. Associated Press. (n2).

45. Picharillo. (n3).

46. United Press International. “Investigator Says Ring Sold Material.” The Daily Journal, July 27, 1982.

47. United Press International. “Boy Porn Network Sold Tips on Clients to Foreign Agents.” The Times-News, July 27, 1982.

48. Whittle, Kenneth. “Disobedient Media Releases FOIA On East Coast Trafficking Networks.” Disobedient Media, June 16, 2017. http://web.archive.org/web/20170715184621/http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/06/disobedient-media-releases-foia-on-east-coast-trafficking-networks/

49. “A Public Hearing to Consider the Boy Prostitution and Pornography,” New York State Select Committee on Crime, July 26th, 1982. https://web.archive.org/web/20190225212253/https:/disobedientmedia.com/dm/NY_Sex_Trafficking.pdf.

50. Ibid. pg. 58.

51. Ibid. pg. 62.

52. Ibid. pg. 61.

53. Ibid. pg. 59.

54. Mansfield, Stephanie. “Limit of the Law.” Washington Post, May 9, 1979. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/05/09/limit-of-the-law/0f166026-6bdb-4e23-bd92-8e3c7d58dbd3/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230921030409/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/05/09/limit-of-the-law/0f166026-6bdb-4e23-bd92-8e3c7d58dbd3/

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Mansfield, Stephanie. “Rental Agency Evicts Homosexual Operation.” Washington Post, May 10, 1979. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/05/10/rental-agency-evicts-homosexual-operation/2e88ef8b-36e3-4105-a6bd-b3f4cd63a12a/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230921061046/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/05/10/rental-agency-evicts-homosexual-operation/2e88ef8b-36e3-4105-a6bd-b3f4cd63a12a/

62. Ibid.

63. Senate Resolution No. 513: Celebrating the life of Charles R. Hooff III. Accessed September 17, 2023. https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?212+ful+SR513.

64. Ibid.

65. Willmann, John B. “Hooff Firm Is Enlarging.” Washington Post, February 11, 1978. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/realestate/1978/02/11/hooff-firm-is-enlarging/4f616299-6345-4d2f-b328-fd2adea067d7/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20170828152942/https://www.washingtonpost.com/web/20170828152942/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/realestate/1978/02/11/hooff-firm-is-enlarging/4f616299-6345-4d2f-b328-fd2adea067d7/?utm_term=.3fdc861ea680

66. Mansfield, “Limit…” (n54).

67. “A Pubic Hearing…” (n49). pg. 55-57.

68. Bohlen, Celestine. “Gay Outcall Service Figures Plead Guilty.” Washington Post, September 19, 1982. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1982/09/19/gay-outcall-service-figures-plead-guilty/196533d8-b15d-405f-bfea-4c9e061d7578/.
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20230922202117/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1982/09/19/gay-outcall-service-figures-plead-guilty/196533d8-b15d-405f-bfea-4c9e061d7578/

69. Poindexter, Jesse. “Reynolds ‘Heir’ Pleads Guilty.” Winston-Salem Journal, March 13, 1980.

70. Shulman, Roberta F. "Stately Howard Hall Retains its Dignity," The Sentinel, August 15, 1985. Reproduced in a report prepared for the Maryland Historical Trust by Kimberly Williams and Michele Naru.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230923003551/https://mcatlas.org/tiles/06_HistoricPreservation_PhotoArchives/Padlock/HAR60640006/Box047/23-62_Belmont%20Site%20&%20Cemetery_19019%20Gold%20Mine%20Rd_01-24-2000.pdf

71. Poindexter. n69.

72. The New York Times. “ON LONG ISLAND; Two Villages Lure Big-House Fanciers.” January 11, 1987, sec. Real Estate. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/realestate/on-long-island-two-villages-lure-big-house-fanciers.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20171107085819/https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/realestate/on-long-island-two-villages-lure-big-house-fanciers.html

73. Hardy, Joanne. “Santa Collection a Gift That Keeps on Giving.” The Desert Sun, December 18, 2004.

74. Gordon, Stewart. “Stewart L. Gordon.” Accessed September 16, 2023. http://stewartgordon.com/.

75. “A Pubic Hearing…” (n49). Pg. 4.

76. Pearson, Richard. “CARL SHOFFLER DIES.” Washington Post, July 15, 1996. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/07/15/carl-shoffler-dies/d9f50a97-3788-408c-827f-89e8d6cafbba/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230923030310/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/07/15/carl-shoffler-dies/d9f50a97-3788-408c-827f-89e8d6cafbba/

77. Hougan, Jim. Secret Agenda - Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA. 1984. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2022. E-book edition.

78. Ibid. Pg. 383.

79. Ibid. Pg. 384.

80. Ibid. Pg. 386.

81. Hougan, Jim. “Carl Shoffler, Robert Merritt and the Scandal That Dare Not Speak Its Name.” Blog. Investigative Notes (blog), July 22, 2011. http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?p=230.

82. Ibid.

83. Secret Agenda. n77. Pg. 26-27.

84. Ibid. Pg. 41. Book footnote 38.

85. Smith, Walter B. “LETTER TO CAPTAIN ROY E. BLICK FROM WALTER B. SMITH.” November 20, 1950. http://archive.org/details/LETTERTOCAPTAINROYEBLICKFROMWALTERBSMITH80R01731R0030002000083.

86. Dulles, Allen. “LETTER TO INSPECTOR ROY E. BLICK FROM ALLEN W. DULLES.” February 12, 1958. http://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80B01676R003800020105-5.

87. Anderson, Jack, and Les Whitten. “CIA Love Traps Lured Diplomats.” Washington Post, February 5, 1975. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250052-9.pdf

88. Anderson, Jack, and Les Whitten. “The CIA’s ‘Sex Squad.’” Washington Post, June 22, 1976. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210015-4.pdf.

89. “A Public Hearing…” (n49). Pg. 13-14.

90. Webb, Whitney Alyse. One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein. TrineDay, 2022.

91. Webb, Whitney Alyse. One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 2: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Organized Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein. TrineDay, 2022.

92. Vos, Elizabeth. “Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers & Spy Agencies.” Consortium News, August 23, 2019. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/23/long-before-epstein-sex-traffickers-spy-agencies/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20190824000838/https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/23/long-before-epstein-sex-traffickers-spy-agencies/

93. Spargo, Chris. “Jeffrey Epstein Had Cameras throughout NYC, Little St James Properties.” Mail Online, August 14, 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7357357/Jeffrey-Epstein-surveillance-cameras-room-NYC-Little-St-James-properties.html.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230429122354/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7357357/Jeffrey-Epstein-surveillance-cameras-room-NYC-Little-St-James-properties.html

94. Lapin, Tamar, and Ben Feuerherd. “Take a Look inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Creepy Manhattan Lair.” New York Post, December 7, 2021. https://nypost.com/2021/12/07/take-a-look-inside-jeffrey-epsteins-creepy-manhattan-lair/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20220131010414/https://nypost.com/2021/12/07/take-a-look-inside-jeffrey-epsteins-creepy-manhattan-lair/

95. Widdicombe, Ben. “The Secret History of Jeffrey Epstein’s New York Townhouse.” Town & Country, May 27, 2020. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a28340797/jeffrey-epstein-townhouse-upper-east-side/.
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20230220010719/https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a28340797/jeffrey-epstein-townhouse-upper-east-side/

96. Google Maps walking route from Lee Berliner's murder brothels to Epstein's townhouse