Surrey & Morse

Surrey & Morse

A Washington DC lawfirm created by Walter Sterling Surrey and David A Morse, which became a major lobbyfirm for the tobacco industry (and probably a few other industries). (aka Surrey, Karasik and Morse in 1973)

David A Morse had been the legendary Director-General of the International Labor Organisation in Geneva. Walter Surrey had been a top Secret Service administrator during World War II who still maintained the CIA connections. The pair had some very useful United Nations and also US Catholic links. They effectively ran the US Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM - Knights of Malta) which awarded papal knighthoods. The Knights of Malta is recognised in some region as 'a sovereign state', and afforded diplomatic privileges (as if a nation) by a number of countries.

Walter Surrey was working for Philip Morris back in 1961. He was clearly able to provide the company with introductions and intelligence on the tobacco industries and prospective companies to purchase in various countries around the world. He originally worked as a lobbyist through Surrey, Karasik, Gould & Green for the sugar industry. Surrey and Morse appear to have joined forces in June 1973 when they were working for Philip Morris in arranging meetings in Moscow with the USSR's Minister of foreign trade.

Morse had a number of close tobacco industry friends from his days in Switzerland where he mixed with an ex-pat group which became the top triumvirate of Philip Morris in New York. On his return to the USA, he established himself as a key lobbyist for the tobacco industry, setting up their

• Libertad operation (a freedom-to-advertise pressure group) under Andrew Whist with the International Advertising Association, and then
• the Institute for International Health & Development, which he later passed over to Paul George Dietrich and Laura Jordan Dietrich

The IIHD was claimed to be "a non-profit, tax-exempt education research foundation devoted to examining public health and economic development policies affecting developing nations" and at various times they claimed that it was "affiliated with" the Catholic University, Washington DC."

Paul and Laura Dietrich took over the IIHD operation in December 1988 shortly before Morse's death and began to specialise in attacking the priorities of World Health Organisation (WHO) and infiltrating (succcessfully) Pacific American Health Organisation (PAHO) for having anti-smoking programs on their lists of priorities. Walter Surrey also died about the same time (30 Jan 1989).

Paul Dietrich briefly joined Surrey & Morse in 1989 after he graduated in the Class of 1989 from the Northern Virginia Law School (Juris doctor Law, Arlington, Virginia), but the firm appears to have disintegrated on Morse's death, and Dietrich transferred to the law firm of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue in 1990-91. taking the IIHD with him.