Doctors, Aviators, and Bank Failures
Part 5.1 in my series on Dr. Elias Ghanem: Dr. Feelgood, physician to the stars
Previous posts in this series:
It’s time to introduce readers to Dr. Harold Lee Feikes. I’ve called this installment “Part 5.1” because there will need to be a “5.2” - there is just too much to talk about when it come to Dr. Feikes. Not in one post: there’s too many names, too many rabbit holes.
Dr. Feikes’ name popped up in my last post on Dr. Elias Ghanem. Dr. Feikes was a co-owner in Jet Avia / Kyle Corp alongside Chris Karamanos, Dr. Ghanem, and Meyer Lansky’s frontman Allan Glick.
If you type in “Harold Lee Feikes” on Google, you will be inundated, not with search results on Dr. Feikes, but mainly with mentions of various doctors who have been awarded Nevada’s “Harold Lee Feikes Memorial Physician of the Year Award”. Wow, he must have been a special guy, huh?
Dr. Harold Lee Feikes was born in on June 6, 1932 in Dewy, Oklahoma. One of two siblings, he attended the Seventh-Day Adventist-affiliated Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska and continued on to study and graduate from the College of Medical Evangelists (CME) in Loma Linda, California. (Readers may recall this school from my post about Robert Booth Nichols Senior).
After graduating in the top 3% of his class in 1958, the newly minted doctor, along with his school friend Dr. William J. Cavin, travelled to Shreveport, Louisiana to intern at the Confederate Memorial Medical Center. It must have been easier for them to assimilate into the city given it was Cavin’s hometown.
By 1961, Dr Feikes was back at CME working on heart transplant research and building his reputation as a pioneer in cardiovascular surgery. By 1966 he had become so well known in his field that he was lured by the newly constructed Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas to open a practice. It wasn’t long before he was the head of surgery for the hospital. Dr. Cavin, also a cardiologist, tagged along. School friend Dr. Arrah Curry had been in Vegas for a few years already, so it’s likely he was the impetus for the reunion of the friends. In fact Curry was already quite influential in the Vegas community as evidenced by his appointment by Governor Paul Laxalt to the Nevada Athletic Commission Medical Advisory Board in 1968.
By all accounts, Dr. Feikes became an outstanding doctor in his field and a valuable member of the Las Vegas community until his death from colon cancer in 1990. But I have discovered a number of other activities Dr. Feikes involved himself in which suggest he may have had a less… altruistic start in Las Vegas.
In my previous post, I already mentioned how, in about 1971, he became a co-founder of Kyle Corp and Jet Avia alongside Chris Karamanos and Dr. Elias Ghanem (and, it turns out, Dr. Cavin as well). The activities and fate of Jet Avia, along with those of his business partner, Karamanos, is the first hint of trouble.
Let’s explore some of the others.
The Aviator
In October 1968, Dr. Feikes was asked to care for the reclusive billionaire industrialist, Howard Hughes. The story goes that he was engaged by Hughes’ full-time physician, Dr. Robert Buckley, to perform emergency surgery on Hughes’ head of security, Jack Hooper.
When the surgery went well, Dr. Feikes was asked to come take a look at Hughes, who by this time was allegedly frail, anemic and addicted to codeine and valium. Dr. Feikes administered a blood transfusion which Hughes liked so much he had the doctor return to do them multiple times over the following two years. Hughes had one request: he would only accept the blood of Mormons for his transfusions as he believed their blood would be untainted by various vices such as alcohol and drugs.
Over the next couple of years, Dr. Feikes found himself in the midst of an epic battle over the stewardship of Hughes’ estate. In the one corner: a small group of insiders led by his Nevada head of operations, Bob Maheu. In the other: Hughes’ aide Bill Gay and his “Mormon Mafia”, and lawyer Chester Davis.
After about two years of growing antagonism, Gay and Davis managed to secure proxy control over Hughes estate in mid-November 1970. On the night of November 25, 1970, Hughes was suddenly transferred by stealth to the Bahamas. Two weeks later, Maheu, Dr. Buckley and Jack Hooper were fired. Hughes was put up in a hotel in the Bahamas under the supervision of his newly appointed head of security, Robert Peloquin. He wouldn’t return to Las Vegas.
Bob Maheu aggressively litigated the loss of control over Hughes’ empire. Backed by Vegas powerbrokers Hank Greenspun and Governor Paul Laxalt, numerous unsuccessful efforts were made to require Hughes present himself in person to manage his Nevada affairs.
As Dr. Feikes was one of the last visitors to see Hughes in his Desert Inn hotel room, he was subpoenaed to Maheu’s lawsuits but was swiftly silenced by a motion filed by Davis claiming doctor-patient confidentiality. Dr. Feikes would later be released from this silence to serve as a key witness in the 1978 “Mormon Will” trial, providing testimony as to Hughes’ state of physical and mental health during the period where Hughes was alleged to have written a will. The controversial will, giving over $150 million to the Mormon church and another $150 million to Melvin Dummar, a Mormon gas attendant, was ultimately ruled a forgery.
The story of Hughes is deeply fascinating, particularly during the years leading up to his death. Intense speculation swirled after his move to the Bahamas about whether Hughes was alive and, if so, if he had the mental acuity required to drive and endorse the business transactions that had occurred in his name between 1968 and his death in 1976. Numerous conflicting stories surfaced of sightings of Hughes. Some said he was frail, decrepit and drug-addled, others said he was imposing, lucid and very much in control. Many questioned if his voice, handwriting and even his physical form had been impersonated by those seeking to control his empire and to delay the estate disposition and tax processes that would trigger upon his death. It is still unclear today what the truth is, and we will probably never know for sure.
I mentioned a book in an earlier post, called The Money and the Power. It has a good section that covers Hughes.
Before wrapping up this chapter of Dr. Feikes’ life, its worth giving just a little background on some of the key players involved in these last years of Hughes’ life, just to give you a flavor of the deeper dynamics at work.
Robert Maheu was not just Hughes’ chief executive of operations. He also had been known to do work for the FBI and CIA. At the Church Committee hearings in 1975, Maheu confirmed that he had played a significant role in the Fidel Castro assassination plots, serving as the CIA’s recruiter of the Chicago mob into the operation. Many also believe that Maheu had functioned as Hughes’ “handler”, leveraging Hughes’ vast wealth and business empire to conduct various covert activities for the CIA. After the departure of Hughes, Maheu would go on to work on his own business ventures, including sitting on the board of FIDCO, one of the companies that surfaced in Danny Casolaro’s Octopus investigation.
Chester Davis was Hughes’ long-time lawyer. Interestingly his real name was Cesar Simone, but he changed it after emigrating from Italy as a baby. He had litigated numerous never-ending lawsuits for Hughes, arranged pay-offs to politicians and other power-brokers, and utilized other bullying and threatening tactics to defend Hughes against the world. Davis was a key witness in the Watergate hearings about an alleged $100,000 pay-off in 1971/2 between Hughes and Bebe Rebozo for the benefit of Richard Nixon. After Hughes’ death he continued to serve on the executive committee of Hughes’ non-profit Hughes Medical Institute. Davis died in his sleep in 1983 at the age of 72 but the lawsuits over Hughes’ estate continued after his death.
Robert Peloquin, Hughes’ head of security in his final days, was a former Justice Department Lawyer and ex NSA. He founded Intertel, a security subsidiary of Resorts World International, a company widely believed to be funded by Meyer Lansky and operated as a CIA front. Prior to Intertel, Peloquin had been part of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s “strike force” on organized crime and would later have dealings with Donald Trump and Donald’s mentor, Roy Cohn.
Dr. Robert Buckley may have been able to serve as a general physician but he was best known for his focus on psychiatry. Some of his more interesting patients included Elizabeth Taylor; Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr; Hughes second wife, Jean Peters; and the son of Bing Crosby after he attempted suicide. Buckley also served as the psychiatrist who evaluated the mental health of the men who had kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son just two weeks after the JFK assassination.
Jack Hooper, before Hughes, had been a Los Angeles burglary detective. Hooper, together with his partner, John Eggenweiler, bought Bel Air Patrol, a private security company in LA. When Hughes came to Vegas, they both tagged along, working in various security and undercover functions for Hughes. When Hughes departed, they bought a local security company as well as the Mercy Ambulance Service in Las Vegas. Hooper later died in 1983 at the age of 66 from unknown causes.
Hooper, along with Hughes manager of the Sands hotel and head of his Air West division, Edward Nigro, were implicated in the Nixon payoff activities. According to Watergate records, Nigro died and Hooper became seriously ill in 1973, preventing either from being questioned.
Nigro, conveniently, had died of a heart attack on July 1, 1973, just a couple of months before an expose by journalist Jack Anderson came out about his role in the payments. His 18 year old son, Jeffery, died of an “accidental gun shot wound” just a year later. I have found a website that shows one of his other sons, Edward M. Nigro, going on to lead quite a portfolio of real estate, investment and banking ventures. The site also says Nigro co-founded Prime Health, which would make him a business partner of …. Dr. Elias Ghanem.
Poor Dr. Feikes, just an innocent cardiologist, caught in the middle of this.
Or was he so squeaky clean?
Financial shenanigans
We saw from Kyle Corp / Jet Avia that Dr. Feikes liked to put his capital to work in areas outside of his medical practice.
Sometime around mid-1969 Dr. Feikes got involved in another venture called American West Nursing Centers (Amer West). The company was founded in 1961 as a energy exploration company Cal-Oak Oil & Gas by four men: Gentry McKinney (a vice president of defense contractor Litton Industries), Major General David W. Hutchinson, Henry Mangold, and Cecil Coe. The company was repurposed and renamed to Amer West in 1969, becoming a company that constructed convalescent hospitals, managed existing nursing facilities, put together separate investment syndicates for construction of condominiums, and sold stock. In 1969, it also bought a controlling interest in a bank called Southland National Bank (Southland). Real estate developer Cecil Mays was president of Amer West at the time of the transaction. The company had two company secretaries, Dr. Del Herrick and MC (“Chad”) Horning Jr. (his father, MC Horning Sr, an Adventist doctor, was a big anchor investor).
Dr. Feikes wasn’t alone in his investment. Dr. Arrah Curry owned a substantial portion of Amer West as did Dr. William Cavin. Hughes’ security man Jack Hooper purchased a “large block” of the company as well. Maheu had apparently been interested in investing in the company on behalf of Hughes - but, as you just read, around that time things got… complicated.
Dr. Feikes didn’t just invest, he was also a director on the board of Amer West. And he was a rainmaker. He helped to recruit other investors from his vast network of Las Vegas and Loma Linda Adventist doctors and then facilitated the resulting stock transactions. The way it worked was each individual investor would take out a personal loan - from Southland of course - for an amount just under the maximum allowable loan size. They would buy the Amer West stock and, as collateral, they would pledge their shares in Amer West.
Southland sank into financial troubles in early 1970 and an emergency deal had to be approved by regulators for Southland to be acquired by United States National Bank (USNB). It was soon exposed that, under the leadership of Cecil Mays, Southland had illegally manipulated the funds of Southland to aid in Amer West’s takeover of the bank. The whole arrangement stunk to high heaven. Despite Mays financial interest in Amer West, he used his position as a controlling shareholder in Southland to influence the company’s decisions regarding Amer West. And he employed shady characters to help. During the period of investigation, the Amer West lawyer who was used to broker the deal was separately convicted and imprisoned for unrelated securities fraud crimes.
Four banking executives including Mays were indicted on 42 felony counts for the fraud. The evidence, however, came down to the testimony of three witnesses who had seen and processed the fraudulent transactions. Two of those witnesses, including company secretary Dr. Herrick, died together in a plane crash in January of 1974 and the third died a few months later. Without the witnesses the case against Mays and the other three executives was severely weakened. The case was initially thrown out but it was reinstated on appeal by the federal government, albeit with a greatly reduced scope of charges. Ultimately Mays and two of the other three men were convicted but given extraordinarily light sentences. Mays was fined just $2,500, one executive got a $3,500 fine, and the other was given 200 hours of community service.
UNSB would soon go insolvent in 1973, becoming the first major US bank to fail in the 1970s. The second, the infamous Franklin National Bank, would follow a year later. The head of UNSB, C. Arnholt Smith, a California financier and long-time confidante of Richard Nixon, was ruled responsible for the collapse and ultimately jailed three years for fraud and tax evasion. Southland, Amer West and UNSB would all be cited in the 1977 Safe Banking Act hearings, however the Act was not passed after its introduction into Congress.
As for the original founders of Amer West / Cal-Oak? I can’t find any trace online of Henry Mangold after 1971. Cecil Coe died suddenly in 1973 at the age of 53, though the specific cause is not clear. I also didn’t find much about General Hutchison. It is worth mentioning though that the General was closely connected to the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was the immediate superior officer of the man who led the covert team on the failed mission. He was also very vocal in his criticism of JFK’s role in the situation, laying the blame of the 5 Alabama men at JFK’s feet. Hutchison died in 1983.
Gentry McKinney went on to do more real estate development, moving from California to Oregon. He was convicted in 1988 along with his stepson of laundering money through Oregon banks on behalf of dope smugglers. He was also implicated in a plot to kill the local sheriff and an IRS investigator. He died in 1993 while serving his prison sentence.
Such nice, upstanding men.
Amer West ceased operations in 1972 and sold off its assets, going dormant for a number of years. Suddenly in 2001 MC Horning resurrected the company, renaming it Advantage America, Inc. intending to use it as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). He closed it down again in 2003 after no target company was found to buy. Horning continued doing what he did best, which was real estate investing and resort development via the family company, Newport Federal.
Somehow Dr. Feikes escaped criminal charges and any civil suits, as did his friends Cavin, Curry and Hooper. He and his wife Betty divorced in 1975 so perhaps things weren’t totally rosy, but he would remarry in 1977. It’s unclear if he lost any money or defaulted on any loans related to Amer West, but he seems to have landed on his feet. He would find money and appetite to reinvest, first in Jet Avia in 1974 and then in a fascinating company called Rom-Amer Pharmaceuticals.
Which I will cover in my next installment.
Stay tuned, its a big one.