Bruce Aitken (radio host)

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Bruce Aitken is a radio host and the author of the book Mr Clean - Cash, Drugs and the CIA: The True Story of a Master Money Launderer, in which he writes about laundering money in the 1970s and 1980s.[1][2]

Biography[edit]

Aitken grew up in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.[1][3] He graduated from Hasbrouck Heights High School in 1963 and played as pitcher for the Florida Southern Moccasins baseball team, graduating from Florida Southern in 1967.[4]

He moved to Vietnam in 1969, during the Vietnam War, to work for American Express.[3] He later moved to Hong Kong.[3]

In 1989, he was arrested in Thailand and sent to the United States on money-laundering and drug-trafficking charges. He was later sentenced to five years in jail and served less than one as part of a plea bargain.[3]

Aitken has broadcast his religious-themed radio show The Hour of Love since 2004.[3] In an article for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong's The Correspondent magazine in August 2020, he wrote of the show: “On the radio programme, real letters from inmates are received and read live into the public realm.”[5]

Speaking of his broadcast work to The New York Times in 2017, Aitken said: “Maybe I do it for my own personal penance.”[3]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Drugs, cash and the CIA: money launderer Bruce Aitken's book Mr Clean". South China Morning Post. May 21, 2022.
  2. ^ "Club Lunch- Money Laundering: Catch Me If You Can!". The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong | FCC.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Ives, Mike (2017-09-09). "Ex-Inmate Takes to Hong Kong's Airwaves, and Prisoners Tune In". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  4. ^ "Social Gleanings Hasbrouck Heights", Herald News, May 23,1967. Accessed August 22, 2022,via Newspapers.com. "Bruce Aitken, son of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Aitken, 271 Williams Ave., has graduated from Florida Southern College, Lakeland, receiving a B.S. degree in economics. A pitcher, he was named on the collegiate All-American baseball team in 1965. He is a 1963 graduate of Hasbrouck Heights High School."
  5. ^ "The ex-convict now broadcasting to a captive audience of Hong Kong prisoners". The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong | FCC. Retrieved 2022-05-30.