Editing Paul Helliwell (section)

==CIA Career and Proprietary Companies== 
In 1947, Helliwell joined the newly formed CIA, where he became a master of covert financing. In 1951, he established the **Sea Supply Corporation** in Bangkok, a CIA front that supplied arms to Thai police and Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang, or KMT) forces in Burma fighting Mao Zedong’s communists. According to *Prelude to Terror* by Joseph J. Trento, Sea Supply’s planes, after delivering arms, transported opium from Burma to Taiwan, Bangkok, and Saigon, generating funds for KMT leader [[Chiang Kai Shek]] corrupt regime. Helliwell also played a key role in founding Civil Air Transport (CAT), a Taiwan-based airline, which evolved into [[Air America]], both CIA proprietaries used for covert logistics and drug trafficking to finance operations, per *The Iran-Contra Connection* by Peter Dale Scott.

In the late 1950s, Helliwell helped modernize the drug trade for allies like General Vang Pao in Laos, whose 30,000-man army fought the Pathet Lao. William Corson, in *The Armies of Ignorance* (1977), notes that Helliwell’s introduction of portable heroin processing facilities, developed by the CIA’s Technical Services Division, boosted profits, some of which funded unofficial CIA operations. These activities, while denied by the CIA, are corroborated by declassified documents and former operatives, though specifics remain redacted.