Hitler's American business friends

And the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency

In February, we launched what we hoped would be a quick look into the NBA and Jeffrey Epstein. Why did he intersect so profoundly with the NBA’s most important source of cash? What happened next was, for me, a crash course in leverage: The kind of leverage that gets you the money to purchase an NBA overlaps with … stuff that never came up in high school U.S. History.

Thank you for coming along on this journey as I learn, and for supporting TrueHoop in this work. (Your subscriptions are essential.) After pausing for the playoffs, draft, trades, and free agency, today the series enters its final few posts, with a peek at the secret business history of America’s most powerful—doing business with Hitler, represented by lawyers who went on to become the founders of American intelligence.

• PART 1: Apollo Global, deep pockets with ties to the NBA, Jeffrey Epstein, and Buzzy

• PART 2: The earliest days of Sears Roebuck, the CIA, and United Fruit

• PART 3: 1950s and 60s: Buzzy at Princeton, the CIA mes…