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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

39. The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman

‘The Wasp Woman’ poster. Vintage Movie Posters

A declassified CIA memo shows that the Agency used Robert Maheu to find the 23-year-old visiting King Hussein “female companionship” in April 1959, during his visit to Los Angeles. Referring to the king as a “foreign official”, the memo stated: “The foreign official was especially desirous of female companionship during his Los Angeles visit and it was requested that appropriate arrangements be made through a controlled source of the [CIA’s] Office [of Security] in order to assure a satisfied visit“.

Jordan’s monarchy not being exactly top-shelf or A-list royalty, Maheu could not get any top-shelf A-list actresses to entertain King Hussein. With the Marilyn Monroe types unavailable, Maheu had to adjust his scheme, worked his way down to the B-list. He came up with Susan Cabot, a 1950s B-movie actress who had starred in low budge Roger Corman flicks such as The Wasp Woman, in which she transforms into a deadly wasp.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.