Airlines and the national security state

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anthony Sampson, "Empires of the Sky" (Random House, 1984):

However commercially adventurous the international airlines, they could not
ignore their dependence on Washington. The legendary influence of Pan Am
continued to excite its political opponents, and in 1956 the tough old nut
Emmanuel Celler, the chairman of the House Anti-trust Sub-committee,
conducted hearings to investigate Pan American?s monopoly. His report found
that Pan American accounted for over half the total route mileage of all
American airlines abroad, serving 111 cities compared to TWA?s twenty-six;
and it complained about Pan Am?s "sharp business practices" to exclude
rival airlines. But Pan American no longer dominated the air-routes as it
once did. In the post-war years each Latin American nation soon insisted
upon owning its own airline. Cuba, where Trippe had his first foreign
beachhead, nationalised Compania Cubana in 1954. Aeronaves de Mexico, of
which Pan Am had bought forty per cent in 1940, was nationalised in 1959.
Panair do Brasil was nationalised in 1961?only to disappear in 1965 when
its European routes were taken over by Varig. The China National Aviation
Corporation (CNAC) which Pan Am had part-owned, saw its routes dwindle as
the Communists took over China: eventually its managing director defected
to Peking with a fifth of the fleet and Trippe sold out his remaining
share. But in the meantime Pan Am was also making new links in other parts
of the world, in ways which aroused suspicions that it was acting as an arm
of government.

While Trippe was moving out of China he was moving into the Lebanon, giving
the newly formed Middle East Airlines three old DC-3s in 1949 in return for
thirty-six per cent of the stock; but the Lebanese were not very welcoming
to Pan Am, and Trippe soon sold out to the Intra Bank in Beirut. In 1956,
pressed by the State Department, he agreed to buy a half-share in the new
Afghan airline, Ariana, with the help of a loan from the Export-Import
bank. And Pan Am, like TWA, was encouraged to provide technical assistance
to other airlines?including the Turks, Thais, Iranians and Pakistanis.

Though Pan American was no longer the sole chosen instrument it retained
its special relationship with Washington, doing and receiving favours.
Trippe liked to explain that his airline was helping to save the world for
democracy, but he was well recompensed for his efforts. Foreigners
suspected all American airlines of being closely linked to the CIA, but
particularly Pan American?with some reason. Trippe had high-level access to
the intelligence world through his well connected board, including David
Bruce, one of the original OSS team. The wartime collaboration with the
armed forces continued into peacetime: Pan American could provide in-
valuable cover for agents to watch or trail passengers, and in the key
listening-posts like Panama or Miami it could enable the CIA to keep track
of political figures. Trippe?s lobbyist Sam Pryor, who provided the chief
link with the CIA, was involved in plans to discredit President Sukarno in
Indonesia, arranging to bug a Pan Am plane chartered to him, and hiring
Hamburg prostitutes to dress up as stewardesses.

But other overseas airlines also offered irresistible temptations to the
CIA, whether as the means to keep track of suspects or to provide mobility
to its agents. Just after the war the American businessman Orvis Nelson set
up Transocean Air Lines which was later subsidised by the CIA and which
helped to set up a succession of other new airlines, including Air Jordan,
Iran Air and Pakair. Thomas Braniff, the right-wing founder-president of
Braniff Air- ways, provided links with the Agency in Latin America. Flying
Tigers, the daring airline in China run by General Claire Chennault, had
been set up by William Pawley, the ex-head of the Pan Am subsidiary CNAC,
and later turned into Civil Air Transport, which was run by the CIA from
Taiwan with their other interlocking "proprietary" airlines including Air
America and Air Asia. Their pilots and crews, wrote Ray Kline who
supervised them in Taipeh, "were true soldiers of fortune and accepted
enormous risks on long, clandestine missions over hostile territory".

Louis Proyect
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