Maurice Bernard Houghton (1920, Texas – 2000) was a US businessman with links to the US intelligence community, including involvement in the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

-connected

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

-based Nugan Hand Bank in the 1970s. He settled in Sydney in 1967, and founded several bars in Kings Cross, New South Wales, becoming a significant enough local figure to have a bust erected in his honour in 2002.

Career

After serving in the US military in World War II, Houghton had various jobs over the next 20 years (

Alfred W. McCoy Alfred "Al" William McCoy (born June 8, 1945) is an American historian and educator. He is the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.ngabout the country for twenty years in various jobs with no particular direction"). From 1964 to 1967 Houghton spent three years in Southeast Asia taking advantage of the business opportunities offered by the Vietnam War. Former US intelligence officers speaking to

Jonathan Kwitny Jonathan Kwitny (March 23, 1941 – November 26, 1998) was an American investigative journalist. Biography Kwitny was born in Indianapolis.

said that Houghton traded in many things, including slot machines and

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

. Australia's Joint Task Force looking into the Nugan Hand Bank later reported that Houghton was "part of the intelligence community" at this time. In 1967 Houghton moved to

, founding several bars in Kings Cross, New South Wales to take advantage of the $9 million a month trade of US servicemen taking rest and recreation from the Vietnam War; Houghton was said to have "reaped a good chunk" of this trade. His best-known establishment, the

Bourbon & Beefsteak The Bourbon & Beefsteak, latterly The Bourbon, is a pub in Kings Cross, Sydney, Australia. It was opened in October 1967 by Bernie Houghton with a 24-hour licence. At the time Kings Cross was a popular venue for United States G.I.s on rest and ...

, survived until 2010.Michael Duffy, ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper i ...

'', 4 July 2010
A whiskey on the Bourbon
The Bourbon and Beefsteak was founded in October 1967, a month before the first US servicemen arrived, with the support of Australian property magnate Sir Paul Strasser. According to

Abe Saffron Abraham Gilbert Saffron (6 October 1919 – 15 September 2006) was an Australian hotelier, nightclub owner and property developer who was one of the major figures in organised crime in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century. For sev ...

as well as John D. Walker, the CIA's Australian station chief from 1973 to 1975.

Alfred W. McCoy Alfred "Al" William McCoy (born June 8, 1945) is an American historian and educator. He is the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.972,''"The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Drug Trade'', Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago; , pp. 461–472 Houghton's connections to the intelligence community, whilst unclear, were strong enough that when he arrived in Australia in 1972 without a visa, he called the state director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, who vouched for him to enable entry. He had previously obtained a security clearance from the ASIO in 1969. In 1972 Houghton also met Richard Secord, whom he would occasionally meet socially throughout the 1970s.

Jonathan Kwitny Jonathan Kwitny (March 23, 1941 – November 26, 1998) was an American investigative journalist. Biography Kwitny was born in Indianapolis.

, '' Mother Jones''
Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA: Crimes of Patriots
Aug-Sep 1987, pp17-23 In 1975 Houghton flew to Washington, D.C., with two Nugan Hand Bank employees as part of supporting

Michael Jon Hand Michael Jon Hand (born 8 December 1941, New York City) is a US ex-Green Beret known for co-founding the Nugan Hand Bank. He has more recently been the owner of TOPS Knives. Career Hand grew up in New York City, where he attended De Witt Clinton ...

's efforts to arrange arms deals supplying weapons to groups in southern Africa. As part of this venture Houghton made direct contact with

Edwin P. Wilson Edwin Paul Wilson (May 3, 1928 – September 10, 2012) was a former CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence officer who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya. It was later found that the United States Department of Justice and ...

, then working for the Office of Naval Intelligence. The same year Houghton worked with Wilson to supply Iran with a high-technology spy ship, working with "funds…and…payouts" according to a key federal witness against Wilson in his 1982 trial. Australian immigration records showed Houghton flying to Iran in March 1975 in the company of a US Army Colonel. In 1976 Houghton began to take a more active role in Nugan Hand Bank, following the bankruptcy of his bar business with debts of nearly $1M. Houghton recruited "an old friend", US Admiral

Earl P. Yates Earl Preston "Buddy" Yates (December 23, 1923 – September 13, 2021) was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. Yates graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1944 and was, in 1967, one of the youngest male graduates of the 20th cent ...

, to become president of the bank in early 1977. In late 1978 Houghton joined the bank's staff (having worked with the bank informally for the previous five years), and opened a bank branch in Saudi Arabia in January 1979. Here Houghton and his staff collected at least $5M in cash deposits from US expatriates, all of which disappeared with the bank's collapse in 1980. In 1979 Richard Secord introduced Houghton to

Thomas G. Clines Thomas Gregory Clines (August 18, 1928 – July 30, 2013) was a Central Intelligence Agency covert operations officer who was a prominent figure in the Iran-Contra Affair. Background Clines served in the 1950–1953 Korean War, and was awarded th ...

, leading to a deal with the support of

Ted Shackley Theodore George "Ted" Shackley, Jr. (July 16, 1927 – December 9, 2002) was an American CIA officer involved in many important and controversial CIA operations during the 1960s and 1970s. He is one of the most decorated CIA officers. Due to his ...

to sell Philippine jeeps to Egypt. According to witnesses speaking to Australian federal investigators, shortly after Frank Nugan's death in January 1980 Clines and

Rafael Quintero Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero Ibaria (September 16, 1940 – October 1, 2006) was a CIA operative. Biography Quintero was born in Camagüey, Cuba on September 16, 1940. In the 1950s, he joined the resistance movement against Cuban dictator Fulge ...

went through a bag of Houghton's documents which he had left at

's Geneva office aiming to keep Secord's name out of the investigation. Houghton left Australia in mid-1980 (around the same time as

), accompanied by Clines, returning in October 1981 when it appeared that the investigations were unlikely to legally endanger him. After Houghton's death in 2000, a plinth was erected in Sydney's Fitzroy Gardens in his honour in July 2002, with a sculpture of Houghton's head by a local artist. The move, partly in recognition of Houghton's circa $1.5M charitable donations, was approved by

South Sydney Council The South Sydney City Council was a local government area covering the inner-eastern and inner-Southern Sydney suburbs of Sydney. It was forcibly merged with the Sydney City Council by the New South Wales State Government in 2004. The council ch ...

. Its mayor at the time said that it was because of Bernie that the King's Cross community was "vibrant, alive, and so diverse".Louis Nowra (2013),
Kings Cross: A Biography
', New South Books, pp182-3.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houghton, Maurice Bernard 1920 births 2000 deaths Businesspeople from Texas 20th-century American businesspeople American military personnel of World War II American expatriates in Vietnam American expatriates in Australia