Vicki Morgan Sex Tapes 2/3
art guerrilla
Still Vicki, who never pretended to be a sophisticate,
didn’t fully comprehend what Alfred expected of her.
Once when she overstayed a brief vacation Alfred
braced her: “I sometimes forget your age but you ob-
viously don’t know what a mistress is, Vicki. So let me
explain... It’s like my other wife, meaning, Vicki, you
just don’t call me every day and tell me where you are
and how tan you’re getting, how lovely this place is and
that place is. You’re here to be here for me.” Yet it was
Alfred who proposed changing the nature of their
relationship, promising to divorce Betsy and marry
Vicki. “He proudly told several of his friends that I was
having his child,” Vicki testified. But when the child was
conceived Alfred backed down, instructing her to have
an abortion.
Considering the public exposure their affair was get-
ting, it was only a matter of time until Betsy found out
about it. Apparently Nancy Reagan realized what was
going on in the first year but didn’t tell her confidante
Betsy. “Nancy Reagan had seen us [together] along with
quite a few other people,” Vicki disclosed. “At the time,
I’m still young and naive. I don’t know who Nancy is. I
don’t know who a lot of Alfred’s friends were ... but he
would say to his friends that I was his daughter. I’d say,
‘Alfred, I don’t look like your daughter.”’
One day Betsy and daughter Lisa were in the Beverly
Hills shopping area when they spotted Alfred dropping
off Vicki at the hairdressers, and it was not merely a peck
on the cheek with which he bade her goodbye. Accord-
ing to Sheldon Davis, for 25 years a Bloomingdale
consultant, that night was a stormy one inside the
Bloomingdale residence. It was, Davis told The Rebel,
a “major confrontation” with Betsy reading Alfred the
riot act. Alfred called Davis for advice, but there was no
pat solution. When all the fuss died down, however, he
went back to funny business as usual.
By 1975 Vicki had had enough of Alfred’s Marquis de
Sade hangups and ducked out on him, changing phone
numbers and apartment to evade his spirited pursuit. She
married a struggling young actor named John David
Carson, but this didn’t dissuade Alfred, who found out
her phone number because he knew the chairman of the
board of the telephone company. Alfred tried to buy off
Carson, but the young man wasn’t cowed by his power.
“I went into his office, grabbed his collar one day and
told him, ‘You son of a bitch, leave my wife alone!
Carson said. Bloomingdale calmly replied. “I’ll see that
you don’t get any work.”
Although Alfred succeeded in breaking up the mar-
riage, he didn’t get Vicki back immediately. There was
a hiatus during which she took refuge in the Los Angeles
mansion of Bernie Comfeld, the high-flying entreprenr
eur whose wings had recently been clipped. Comfeld
was the whiz kid who dreamt up Investors Overseas
Services (LOS), which sold tax-dodge muZual funds to
Americans in Europe. By 1969 los was teetering,, the
victim of Comfeld’s dubious transactions and expensive
lifestyle. Like a shark to bloody water Robert Vesco
moved in, bailing out LOS and deep-sixing Comfeld.
Vesco, a heavy contributor to Richard Nixon’s 1968 war
chest, has long been a fugitive from U.S. justice. Vicki
met Comfeld through her father, Delbert Morgan, who
had been, according to Vicki’s onetime attorney Paul
Caruso, “burned badly by Robert Vesco.” Vicki had
retained Caruso to pursue a financial settlement with
Alfred, which was quietly worked out for “an undis-
closed cash settlement between them. She and Al settled
it privately.”
Vicki’s stint in Comfeld’s Camelot was not all pool
parties and frolic. As author Michael Dorman has des-
cribed Cornfeld’s lifestyle, “Surrounded by beautiful
women, he drifted constantly among a succession of
luxurious homes in various parts of the world. He owned
two castles, plus numerous apartments, chateaux, villas,
and townhouses. He had his own fleet of airplanes and
yachts.” But all of this had been scaled down by the 105
denouement. For pocket money he ran, according to a
source close to Vicki, an international call girl operation.
The clientele tended to be exotic, as Vicki found out
when she was ticketed to a Saudi prince straight out of
the Arabian Nights.
In 1976 Vicki returned to Alfred, lured by his unceasing
blandishments and vows to forsake his sexual aberra-
tions. He paid her $10,000 a month in advance. But
Alfred, not wanting her to accumulate a nest egg that
would reduce her dependence on her, advised her to
lease a Mercedes, hire a security guard and otherwise tie
herself up in economic bondage. Despite the la dolce
vita, Vicki felt unfulfilled. Once again Alfred promised
her, “I’ll divorce my wife. We’ll tell her and we’ll be
married.” But as Vicki lamented, “he told me that hun-
dreds of times.”
In 1978 Vicki again attempted to purge Alfred from her
life by marrying real estate developer Robert Schul-
mann, but, as in the past, Alfred hounded her. Schulmann
confronted Bloomingdale and, as Vicki described it,
“they grabbed shirts, they were going to fight.” Bloom-
indale contended Vicki was into him for $10,000 in cash
and merchandise, but Schulmann wrote out a check in
that amount on the spot. Nevertheless the marriage
lasted only six months before Vicki returned to Alfred’s
arms.
Somewhere around this time Vicki was given a pro-
prietary interest in the swank Marina Bay Club in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida. Although Alfred had retired in 1970
from the presidency of Diners Club, he had a number of
holdings on both coasts. He had a substantial piece of
the Show Biz Pizza Company, a national franchise oper-
ation, the Journey’s End in Marietta, Georgia, and the
Marina Bay Club, a hotel property. When Bloomingdale
and his co-investors bought the Marina Bay Club there
was an exchange of equity, according to IRS documen-
tary tax stamps, of only $250,000. Bloomingdale re-
ceived a 40% interest for a mere $39,000, although the
property is worth millions. Obviously, other considera-
tions were involved.
The footprints lead east, toward the Bahamas, where
the secretive banking laws were copied from Switzer-
land’s and gambling casinos contribute immeasurably to
the gross national product. An investigator who has
probed Bloomingdale’s investments in the region re-
ports that about the same time as the Marina Bay Club
purchase he acquired one of the myriad islands in the
Florida Keys for $100,000, again only a fraction of what
it was worth. As Alfred bragged to one of Vicki’s male
acquaintances, “The airplane to get back and forth cost
that much.” The Keys are only a stone’s throw from the
Bahamas where, Sheldon Davis says, Bloomingdale
figured in International Floatels, another leisure-time
venture. The scenario inevitably raises the possibility of
a money wash through offshore banks, which is not at
all farfetched given Bloomingdale’s longstanding as-
sociation with the dapper mobster Johnnie Roselli. Ac-
cording to Davis, Roselli was an “extremely close friend
of Al’s” and a business associate dating from the 1940s
and 1950s.
Under a written contract over Alfred’s signature, Vicki
was to receive $4,000 a month from the revenues of the
Marina Bay Club. She made trips there to act as “hos-
tess,” a role that included “servicing” special guests.
Before or after the 1980 election practically all of the
Reagan inner circle, with the exception of James Baker,
who was considered George Bush’s man, were on the
club’s guest list.
During the campaign of 1980 Bloomingdale played a
key backstage role. In her deposition Vicki divulged:
“Alfred continuously confided in me by telling me his
private opinions about influential and important people
with whom he was intimately involved, such as Ronald
and Nancy Reagan, and he would relate specific instan-
ces involving them, and he told me about his involve-
ment in secret and delicate matters such as campaign
contributions for Mr. Reagan.” At Alfred’s insistence,
Vicki herself volunteered as a mailing-list checker in the
campaign headquarters. She received an invitation to the
Inaugural Ball in Washington.
Following the landslide victory an elated Alfred told
Vicki “about his judgments concerning Ronald Rea-
gan’s appointments, the Reagan cabinet, and his role in
Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.” He donated $10,000 for
interior redecorations in the White House, and, although
disappointed at being credentialed to the Court of Ver-
sailles, took up his dual intelligence posts.
But in the spring of 1981 Bloomingdale was admitted
to UCLA Hospital suffering from cancer of the eso-
phagus. When Betsy learned that Vicki was a frequent
visitor, she ordered her barred. So Vicki bought a nurse’s
uniform and came and went freely. Alfred drew up a
contract that gave Vicki one-half of his equity in Show
Biz Pizza plus two years of a monthly allowance of
$10,000. By this time Vicki’s original role as a kind of
mercenary sex therapist had matured into a genuine
bond of love.
After coming home briefly Alfred was admitted to St.
John’s hospital in Santa Monica, where Vicki visited in
the disguise of a nun. It was perhaps fitting that Alfred
should die in St. John’s, for although born a Jew he had
for over 25 years been a highly devout if private Roman
Catholic, and was in fact a Papal Knight, the loftiest lay
level in the church. On Aug. 20, 1982 Alfred passed
away. The New York Times reported that the burial was
“attended only by immediate family and a few close
friends.” But Vicki remonstrated, “They buried him like
a dog.”
There was no mention of Vicki in Alfred’s will, but he
may have anticipated that Betsy would legally contest
any bequeathal to Vicki and decided to take care of her
through the Marina Bay Club and Show Time Pizza
contracts. Vicki was also trying to take care of herself.
When Alfred was hospitalized Betsy had been forced to
handle the family finances and discovered Vicki’s
monthly allowance. She immediately cut it off. Vicki
countered by retaining attorney Marvin Mitchelson,
who pioneered palimony suits in the Lee Marvin case,
to prepare one for her. It was filed only days before
Alfred’s death, a straightforward document based on the
contractual agreements that was given only a one-day
roll in the press.
It was on Friday the 13th of August that Vicki gave the
explosive deposition that revealed Alfred’s kinky sex
splurges in juxtaposition to his role as a Reagan adviser
and confidante, as for example his disclosures “about his
involvement in secret and delicate matters such as cam-
paign contributions for Mr. Reagan.” As Ann Louise
Bardach analyzed it in the LA. Weekly, “Morgan almost
certainly buried herself and her case that day by discuss-
ing the sexual and financial relationships with Bloom-
ingdale. Most attorneys concur that mixing sex and
money together when suing for breach of contract will
quite likely raise the legal specter of prostitution.” But
Vicki’s paramount concern seems to have been the poli-
tical implications of the pillow talk, since it would be
assumed that she knew much, much more than she told
in a legal forum. One of her closest friends told Bardach,
“Vicki was all for letting everything hang out and mak-
ing it public in the days before Bloomingdale died ...
she is scared to death, this shit goes so deep and so high
... it combines big money, big politics, and big society.”
The shit hit the fan when some of Vicki’s more sensa-
tional revelations were incorporated in Mitchelson’s
legal filings and became public knowledge. Mitchelson
was “invited” to the White House by Morgan Mason, the
son of actor James Mason, who was a Reagan special
assistant for political affairs (the attorney had repre-
sented the actor’s wife Pamela in a divorce contest 18
years earlier). Mitchelson has confirmed that the Mor-
gan palimony suit was the subject of discussion, but will
go no further. It would not be rash, however, to conclude
that the White House devoutly wished the wraps to be
kept on as tightly as possible.
Vicki was extremely upset by the premature publicity
in her case, all the more so because the press was
comparing her to Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-
Davies in the Profumo Affair sex scandal that rocked
Britain two decades ago, and salivating about an im-
pending Bloomingdale Affair. She tended to blame
Mitchelson, and dismissed him from the suit in favor of
Michael Dave, a decade-long friend. At the end of a
media-circus trial, a judge tossed out most of her causes
of action, leaving only a skeleton case.
For the first time in her 12 years with Alfred, Vicki was
adrift without a predictable source of income. She dis-
posed of the Mercedes and moved into a rented condo
in Studio City. To help make ends meet she took on a
roommate, Marvin Pancoast, whom she had known for
a number of years. Since Pancoast was an out-of-the-
closet gay, it was a platonic relationship. The scandal-
mongering press coverage had made a virtual recluse out
of Vicki. Alone with her phobias, taking increasingly to
drugs and alcohol, Vicki struck on an idea that would be
at once therapeutic and financially rewarding. She
would write her memoirs, tentatively called Alfred’s
Mistress. Michael Dave drew up a contract with the
freelancer Vicki had chosen to collaborate with, Gordon
Basichis. They began taping Vicki’s life story, storing
the tapes in a safe deposit box. Vicki was adding another
degree of imperilment to her life.
Three days after Vicki was murdered last August and
Marvin Pancoast was jailed as the suspect, a short young
woman with a Gucci purse strode purposefully into the
law suite of Steinberg & Bugliosi on Wilshire Boule-
vard in Beverly Hills and left a package for Steinberg.
In it were three videotapes.
The tactic of secretly filming people in compromising
positions is not new. In the early 1960s the late Col.
George White, chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics,
ran a “sex apartment” in New York City whose hidden
camera focused on unsuspecting clients steered there by
the CIA. And after the Sharon Tate murder police found
films of orgies at her mansion whose participants in-
cluded several VIP's While Bloomingdale originally
may have captured his guests’ exertions for his own
kicks - the tapes are said to date back to 1979 - it is
likely that after he knew his days were numbered he
viewed them as a form of life insurance for Vicki. As
Sheldon Davis reveals, Bloomingdale was grateful to
the young woman who had “preserved his sanity since
1970.” On his deathbed, a hospital source says, he and
Vicki whispered their fears to each other of what could
happen to her after he was gone.
(continued on 3/3)
Jane Shelton
BARBARA WISE
Was Barbara Alice Wise Tortured to Death.
Did Reagan era appointee, Wise, discover what was behind the illegal
contact between Bill Clinton, Ron Brown, and operatives of the Chinese
government, John Huang and Wang Jun? John Huang, long time friend of Bill
Clinton, Democratic Party bagman and agent of the Chinese, was hired by
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and privy to classified documents. Ron Brown
died tragically in an airplane crash. When John Huang left the Commerce
Department to be bagman/fundraiser for the DNC, he was retained on
contract to the Commerce Department, by Charles Meissner, Assistant
Secretary of Commerce for International Economic Policy. Under this
arrangement with Meissner, John Huang kept his security clearance and
remained in phone contact with agents of the Chinese government. Charles
Meissner has since died tragically in a plane crash. Barbara Alice Wise
was suspected of leaking Commerce documents exposing the Chinese
espionage. On November 29, 1996 Barbara Wise was found dead and bruised
>from head to waist in a locked Commerce Department office. According to
a news report on WRC TV, he body was found partially nude. On that same
morning President Clinton inexplicably left Camp David where he was
vacationing for the weekend and flew to the White House on Marine One, the
presidential helicopter. Questioned by reporters regarding this sudden
visit on the same morning that Barbara Wise's mottled body was discovered,
Mike McCurry, on behalf of the President, told an obvious and, as yet,
unchallenged lie:
John Belmont, ABC News: President Clinton took time out from his holiday
weekend at Camp David to stop by the Oval Office this morning to pick up
some poetry.
Jerry King, ABC Reporter from the White House: "Says Mike McCurry
(Presidential Press Secretary)," 'The program for the President's January
inauguration has to be completed by Monday. Mr. Clinton did not have some
of the books he wanted to research for example to find poetry to be read
at the event. So, he flew in the official helicopter, Marine One, back to
the White House to pick up the books.' [Reporter] Could the research not
have been delivered cheaper? McCurry says, "Well, sure."
There have been numerous news reports that President Clinton tinkered with
his inauguration speech well into January of 1997. As for the poem that
the President had to have that day--its as forgotten as poor Barbara
Alice Wise. Why did the White House lie about the President's unusual
behavior that day?
How seriously incriminating are the documents at the Commerce Department?
Here is James F. Hoobler, Bill Clinton's Inspector General of the U.S.
Small Business Administration writing a letter in the November 21, 1996
Wall Street Journal, a scant eight days before Barbara Wise's death. "In
respo Pour Nov. 5 editorial (CIA Takes Commerce Files): Let me make it
perfectly clear that no files have been taken by the CIA or any other
agency. All files remain in my custody. In addition, I took custody of
the safe and its contents at the request of the SBA's Office of General
Counsel, not in response to a subpoena....As for the classified documents,
Executive Order 12958, Section 4.2, prohibits disclosure without the
authorization of the agency that originally classified the document.
Examine these news stories filed by Reuters, Associated Pressed and UPI
respectively.
12:01 p.m. Friday November 29, 1996 Reuters: Body found in deceased's
office, where the International Trade Administration has offices. Cause of
death not yet determined. Police say the city's medical examiner would
perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of her death. Case
being investigated by Homicide branch.
5:21 PM Friday, November 29, 1996 [AP]
"The name of the 48-year-old woman was being withheld
pending notification of relatives. District of Columbia police spokesman,
J. C. Stamps said that an autopsy was being performed."
Clinton reviewing inaugural plans
by Helen Thomas UPI
29-NOV-1996 14:29
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- President Clinton briefly interrupted
his Thanksgiving holiday weekend at Camp David Friday with a quick trip
to the White House to gather data he wants to study in planning his
second inauguration and then returned to the mountaintop retreat.
The president, still suffering from a raspy voice, and ordered by
his doctor to rest his vocal chords, carried a briefcase as he strolled
to the waiting helicopter to return to Camp David. He wore a leather
jacket and was followed by an aide carrying a huge box of inaugural
papers.
Did the President orchestrate the unusually hurried autopsy of Barbara
Wise during his mysterious trip to the White House? Given the homicide
rate in DC, the shortage of medical examiners and the backlog of
suspicious deaths awaiting autopsy, how was the body of Ms. Wise able to
jump to the head of the line and go under the knife less than 10 hours
after being discovered. Was the huge box of "inaugural papers" actually
Commerce Department files similar to those buried in the SBA's safe?