Scuttling the plans of Don Pierson ....

Don Pierson's 'Radio KLIF London' was to be an automation station, but that plan was scuttled. So too were his plans for the automated 'Radio England' and 'Britain Radio'. Strangely enough and maybe not, the person who scuttled that second plan was a person brought in at the last moment to replace the original Program Director. In his own memoirs which are still online, Ben Toney who had been the Program Director for Don Pierson's 'Radio KLIF London', and who later worked with Hagger in the Nineteen Eighties, also resorted to lies and distorted variations of the real story about Don Pierson and Mervyn Hagger.

The original Program Director for 'Radio England' and 'Britain Radio' was Rick Crandall (who abbreviated his last name to Randall). At the very last minute he was replaced by Ron O'Quinn. Again, strangely enough, the first time Hagger began to relate the real story behind this twin station misadventure, Ron O'Quinn who then spent years playing a part originally scripted by Ronan O'Rahilly as a front man, then popped-up years after the event to physically threaten Hagger. Claiming to be a former Green Beret or the equivalent, he seemed agitated that someone was investigating this story and finding discrepancies in what everyone had been told as the true story, and what was the real story. It seems to be a matter of vanity by puffery in order to satisfy a feeling of self-importance, that Ron O'Quinn did not want the real story to be told by anyone at any time.

But it was Ron O'Quinn who became part of a second team that scuttled Don Pierson's business venture for an automated broadcasting station. Because of 'Quinn's intervention, once again Pierson's plans for a successful business were doomed by a top-heavy expensive operation that outstripped its ability to create an income. A further nail in that coffin was sealed when the counterpart of Philip Birch signed an exclusive contract with the cinema advertising firm of Pearl and Dean which had recently formed an alliance with the U.S. American Broadcasting Companies (ABC).

As if that was not enough punishment, Don Pierson then used that same ship 'Olga Patricia' to commence the first of two disastrous Freeport ventures, first in Haiti and then in Dominica. We will come to the details of that part of this story in due course. But it was following that episode that Larry West and Mervyn Hagger began their business relationship with Don Pierson by introducing him to Herb Jepko. It is only now that most of the pieces of this gigantic geopolitical story are now coming together and they are being told to the world.