Albert Jolis
Albert Jolis was a World War Two OSS officer and diamond dealer.
Contents
Background
R. Harris Smith describes Jolis as an international jeweler and ex-journalist of Belgian descent.[1] According to Edward Jay Epstein;
The younger Jolis had close ties to the Ernest Bevin wing of the Labour Party.[3]
OSS
In January 1945, he was serving as assistant chief of the Secret Intelligence (SI) branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Paris. Along with Arthur Schlesinger, he rejected Noel Field's proposal to use Soviet backed exiles to infiltrate Germany.[4]
International Rescue Committee and CIA
After World War Two, Jolis was recruited to the board of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) by Sheba Strunsky, "a very close personal friend". He recruited Arthur Schlesinger to the board in 1947.[5]
Jolis served as a CIA operative during some of the agency's earliest years, and was seriously considered for a job as the CIA's liason with Averell Harriman in 1950.[6]
When the IRC's Leo Cherne sought a meeting with incoming CIA director Allen Dulles in 1953, Dulles said he had already been receiving reports on the committee's work from Jolis and another OSS veteran on the board, William Casey.[7]
Oppenheimer Venture
According to Edward Jay Epstein:
- in the late 1940s, Sir Ernest had encouraged Jolis's father to establish a diamond-cutting factory in Los Angeles, and he had promised him a supply of uncut diamonds for the venture. Then, without any prior warning, Oppenheimer decided against the Californian venture and refused to provide any diamonds for it. No explanation was ever tendered, and the Jolis family was expected to take the loss without asking any questions.[2]
DDI
Determined to break his family's dependence on De Beers, Jolis' firm, Diamond Distributors, Inc., or DDI, won a concession in the French African colony of Ubangi, later the Central African Empire, and established diamond-buying offices in Venezuala and Brazil.[2]
After Portugal withdrew from Angola in 1975, Jolis negotiated a concession with Kalandala Chipanda, the natural resources minister in the transitional government. However, the deal fell through when Unita, of which Chipanda was a member, was ousted from the government at the outset of the Angolan Civil War.[2]
In 1977, Central African dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa declared himself emperor and asked Jolis, to present him with a diamond ring. Jolis succeeded in passing off a $500 dollar diamond as a $500,000 stone.[8]
External Resources
Notes
- ↑ [R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.228.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Edward Jay Epstein, Chapter Nineteen - The War Against Competitors, The Diamond Invention, edwardjayepstein.com, accessed 16 August 2012.
- ↑ [R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.228.
- ↑ [R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.228.
- ↑ Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network, Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M.E. Sharpe, 1995, p.61.
- ↑ Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network, Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M.E. Sharpe, 1995, p.61.
- ↑ Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network, Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M.E. Sharpe, 1995, p.117.
- ↑ What are the most famous diamonds?, Baunat, accessed 16 August 2012.
