Revealed: How the CIA helped Disney conquer Florida and buy super-cheap land that is 'above the law'
Disney conspired with the CIA to buy
up cheap land in Florida for Disney World and orchestrate a unique legal
situation that makes the theme park above the law, a new book claims.
The company took advice from former CIA agents and lawyers to engineer statutory grounds which still allow Disney World avoid taxation and environmental regulation, it is alleged.
The special legal situation underpinning the site is not only unconstitutional, it is claimed, but allows the company to avoid any inconvenient decisions democratically taken at the local level.
In
2005 the then chief of Florida's Bureau of Fair Rides Inspection summed
up the impunity with which Disney World operates when he admitted: 'We
don't have the authority to close the park down or close the rides.'
The allegations have been made in a new book, Finding Florida: The True History Of The Sunshine State, by investigative journalist Timothy Allman, extracts from which have been published by the Daily Beast.
Best known for his work on the CIA's 'secret war' in Laos and interviews with world figures as foreign correspondent for Vanity Fair, Allman has now turned his attention closer to home with this exposé of Florida's murky past.
In Finding Florida he claims
that Walt Disney conspired with William 'Wild Bill' Donovan - the
so-called 'Father of the CIA' - to establish a state-within-a-state
where he could 'control the overall development' of Disney World.
Donovan, founding partner of New York law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, whose attorneys included future CIA director William Casey, provided lawyers to help Disney distract attention from its plans, says Allman.
These attorneys, it is claimed, provided fake identities for Disney agents, set up a secret communications centre and organised a disinformation campaign to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their property.
In this way, Disney was from the mid-Sixties able to snap up 40 square miles of land in the Sunshine State for a knockdown price of less than $200 an acre.
Disney and his advisers then sought a
way to 'limit the voting power of the private residents' of the area, to
control the impact that local democracy might have on the company's
plans.
They employed a scheme devised by senior CIA operative Paul Helliwell to establish two phantom cities populated by hand-picked Disney loyalists around which Disney World would be based.
The cities were based around Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, two artificial reservoirs Disney engineers created by obstructing the area's natural water flow.
The company could then 'use these fake governments to control land use and make sure the public monies the theme park generated stayed in Disney's private hands,' Allman writes.
Teams of Disney lawyers working out of Donovan's New York law firm drafted the legislation to establish the two pseudo-cities, which was passed by the Florida legislature in 1967.
However, in violation of both
the U.S. and Florida Constitutions, the carefully drafted laws specified
that any elected office holder must own property within the cities.
The law, which states that each candidate for office 'must be the owner, either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated in the City', ensured any local politician would be intimately linked with Disney.
The company took advice from former CIA agents and lawyers to engineer statutory grounds which still allow Disney World avoid taxation and environmental regulation, it is alleged.
The special legal situation underpinning the site is not only unconstitutional, it is claimed, but allows the company to avoid any inconvenient decisions democratically taken at the local level.
Magic Kingdom: The CIA helped Disney World
acquire a unique legal status which makes it exempt from local
democratic government, a new book sensationally claims
The allegations have been made in a new book, Finding Florida: The True History Of The Sunshine State, by investigative journalist Timothy Allman, extracts from which have been published by the Daily Beast.
Best known for his work on the CIA's 'secret war' in Laos and interviews with world figures as foreign correspondent for Vanity Fair, Allman has now turned his attention closer to home with this exposé of Florida's murky past.
Guests walk by the entrance to Disney's
'Monsters Inc.' show: The company took advice from CIA agents and
lawyers to engineer statutory grounds which still allow it avoid
taxation and regulation, it is alleged
Impunity: Guests wait in long lines at Disney
World's Dumbo ride. In 2005 then chief of Florida's Bureau of Fair Rides
Inspection admitted: 'We don't have the authority to close the park
down or close the rides'
Donovan, founding partner of New York law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, whose attorneys included future CIA director William Casey, provided lawyers to help Disney distract attention from its plans, says Allman.
These attorneys, it is claimed, provided fake identities for Disney agents, set up a secret communications centre and organised a disinformation campaign to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their property.
In this way, Disney was from the mid-Sixties able to snap up 40 square miles of land in the Sunshine State for a knockdown price of less than $200 an acre.
Investigative journalist Timothy Allman's book
claims to reveal that Disney World's creators worked with the CIA to
circumvent local law. At its opening, Walt Disney, above, boasted in a
recording made before he died about creating a new kind of America
They employed a scheme devised by senior CIA operative Paul Helliwell to establish two phantom cities populated by hand-picked Disney loyalists around which Disney World would be based.
The cities were based around Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, two artificial reservoirs Disney engineers created by obstructing the area's natural water flow.
The company could then 'use these fake governments to control land use and make sure the public monies the theme park generated stayed in Disney's private hands,' Allman writes.
Teams of Disney lawyers working out of Donovan's New York law firm drafted the legislation to establish the two pseudo-cities, which was passed by the Florida legislature in 1967.
Puppet regime: Disney World's Boardwalk Inn on
the shores of Lake Buena Vista, one of two artificial reservoirs around
which Disney set up phantom cities with local governments the company
could control
The law, which states that each candidate for office 'must be the owner, either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated in the City', ensured any local politician would be intimately linked with Disney.