The History of AIG (Part I)

[Linda Minor]

According to a 1966 syndicated story by Ken McKenna in the Herald Tribune Service:

Cornelius V. Starr is probably the most dedicated skiing businessman. A man of scattered interests, he built his fortune in China as owner of the Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury, was deported in 1940 and returned to expand his wealth through insurance investments.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...elPageId=3

Notice that E. Howard Hunt's early career was somehow connected to Starr's newspaper the Shanghai Post, a fact that the CIA chose to obscure from the public in 1974.

American Spy pg 31, by Hunt, E. Howard (2007)
THE END OF WAR 31 Once free Shanghai quickly came back to life and even the Shanghai Post started back into operation. Reading the paper one fateful day I was shattered to see a headline proclaiming...

Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent pg 48, by Hunt, E. Howard (1974)
case He suggested we might have a vodka one day in a cafe I agreed and we parted. But from then on Marusha and I met much more circumspectly. Then one morning I read in the reopened Shanghai Post that...

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.bac...dhunt.html

...In the process of pursuing the case, I was required to obtain a certified copy of Dorothy Hunt's death certificate, which I did, obtaining it from the Cook County Coroner's office. A link to a scanned image of this document is at the end of this article. Note the clear copy of E. Howard Hunt's signature. Also note that while Dorothy Hunt was officially pronounced dead on December 8th, 1972, it wasn't until November of 1973--nearly a year later--that the Coroner's signature is dated. Also interesting on this certificate is the lack of a Social Security number.

Dorothy Wetzel Hunt was also an employee for the CIA in the late forties, stationed in Shanghai, China, where she met her future husband. E Howard Hunt lives in southern Florida with his second wife where he continues to write. One of his latest novels (1992) is Body Count. ...

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...eId=378207
This is a 1953 document:
Dorothy Louise Wetzel Goutiere
She worked at ECA after making application with CIA. She met Hunt in Shanghai in 1948 when he was working on Averell Harriman's staff in China. [At that time, it should be noted that Harriman had been a business partner of Prescott Bush for several years in investment banking firm.]

Dorothy had been married in France and divorced in 1948 from Peter Joffre Goutiere, a Frenchman, in Polk County, Florida.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...Id=1158771

----------
Keep in mind that when AIG was started, there was no OSS and no CIA, but there was an unofficial intelligence service operating overseas.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon279.htm
by Jon Christian Ryter
... Internet searches suggest that AIG was created in 1919 by a 27-year old named Cornelius Vander Starr, a recently discharged US Army buck private from Fort Bragg, California (a military installation from 1859-64). However, the facts don't support the legend. ...
Legend would have us believe a 27-year old, with no advanced education and no money, who served 8 months in the army at the end of WWI—and who never fought in the war and never took officer's training—was discharged as a 2nd Lieutenant after 8 months of service. Legend would have us believe he joined an insurance brokerage firm, Shean & Deasy and virtually overnight became its manager, yet quit his dream job after only a few months to become a mail clerk with the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. Starr, the legend goes, wanted to see the world—which was why he purportedly joined the Army. (Note: In 1914 the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., was purchased by AIC to get the US mail contracts for Asia, and to serve as a toehold in Asia for AIC. AIC in 1914 had already embarked on the path to creating a global economy. The first attempt by the money mafia to create world government would come in the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. The United States never signed it.)

C.V. Starr, who was born on Oct. 15, 1892, graduated from Fort Bragg [California] High School in 1909. He began selling life insurance for the James Nelson Realty Co. in Fort Bragg [Mendocino County] around 1913. In 1914 he moved to San Francisco to sell auto insurance for the Pacific Coast Casualty Co.

{NY Times, November 13, 1902--The Pacific Coast Casualty Company has been organized in San Francisco, with the following officers: President—Edmund F. Green; Vice President—William M. Pierson; Secretary—F. A. Zane.}

{In June 1914 charges were brought and soon dismissed against Edmund F. Green for embezzlement, as reported in Oakland, CA, which indicated he was a member of the Bohemian Club.}

In 1917 he went to work for an insurance brokerage firm, Shean & Deasy, leaving them to join the army.

{Cornelius J. Deasy was a long-time supervisor of San Francisco, who formed the insurance company in 1916, and who died in 1933 at the age of 59.
"The former supervisor was born in Antioch, Contra Costa County, and for 21 years was an employee of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company...and was one of the first advocates for the building of the Hetch Hetchy project. (Oakland Tribune, 10-18-1933). For more on Hetch Hetchy, see Brechin's Imperial San Francisco. http://books.google.com/books?id=UKFaw7g...t&resnum=1.}

Logic suggests he came out of the service 8 months later when the Armistice was signed as a buck private. As a soldier, he went no where and did nothing at a time when soldiers might spend one whole hitch waiting for one stripe. Some of Starr's biographers claim he came out of the army as a sergeant, others claim he made lieutenant. Neither makes sense and sound like someone remodeling Starr's past to give him a biography worthy of a wealthy man's latter-year stature.

Starr and Frank Raven formed American Asiatic Underwriters—an insurance agency selling policies, not issuing them. Raven had been selling insurance in China since 1904, and had been very successful. He amassed several million dollars, enough to begin underwriting policies. That history's probably correct. At some point, Starr and Raven formulated plans to create an insurance company that would actually insure the policyholders. That, too, is correct. But, that company was not AIG. It was AAU.

Starr returned to the United States and convinced several American insurers—in particular Globe Life, Rutgers and National Union—to act as a re-insurer, covering AAU's risk. There may have been a stipulation that forced AAU to open sales offices in the United States since that happened. But now, at age 29, Starr was on his way. But not with AIG. The new company was American International Underwriters [AIU].

(My research revealed an American International Group IPO to purchase AIU. I could not determine the date of the IPO.) Starr and his partner managed to build a very lucrative, very successful insurance company with relatively low capital in about two decades. They were so successful that AIU was under contract to manage all of AIG's overseas property-casualty business. Using guesswork alone it's likely the IPO was exercised sometime between 1947 when Mao overran China and 1950 when Starr created a new entity, CV Starr & Company. Or, at the latest, in 1955 when he formed the CV Starr Foundation whose wealth was comprised largely of AIG stock that is now worth about $3.5 billion. None of the various websites contain the history of AAU, AIU, AIG or AIC. It's almost like all of them encourage legend building.

The third layer of secrecy like the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh layers of secrecy are, well...heavily shrouded secrecy. Piled on, layer after layer, to make it impossible for anyone to learn the truth about the wealth of the wealthiest families in the world. That wealth is so vast that it simply can't be measured in terms of dollars and cents.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...lPageId=78