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Mr. Newey's Career Highlights are embodied in the following Foreword of a book being
written by Edward Baumann and Jo O'Brien entitled "The Newey Connection".
"Curious Chicagoans checking out a newly opened delicatessen in the
hectic days following World War II found themselves being hustled by
swarthy, mustached shopkeeper in a soiled apron. He shuffled his 215
pounds around the store on a 5-foot 11 inch frame, laying bananas, meats
and other food stuffs out on the counter for guests to peruse.
The "grocer" was Paul Newey, a young lawyer playing private eye, who went into the food business to get the goods on a group of dairies in an anti-trust suit. By the time he closed shop several weeks later he had enough tape-recorded evidence under his arm to persuade opposition lawyers to bestow a $1.25 million settlement upon his client. A nice piece of change in the 1940s. Paul Davis Newey - lawyer, lawman, psychologist, hypnotist, linguist and music lover - never did cotton kindly to bad guys. His earliest ambition was to become an FBI agent, but his Assyrian appearance hardly fit into J. Edgar Hoover's All-American Boy mold so young Newey went elsewhere. Life for this future under-cover agent began among the Scandinavians in Minneapolis in 1914. He came to Chicago with his parents at the age of two. His maternal grandparents, the S.M. Yonans, were early Chicago settlers and, like many of their ethnic group, became rug merchants. For the Newey side of the family, things would be different. Newey's immigrant father, the Rev. Paul S. Newey, became a Congregational minister on Chicago's North Side. One of his uncles was a Roman Catholic priest, and another was a Presbyterian minister. As a child Paul learned to speak Aramaic, the language of Christ. Reaching manhood in the tempestuous '30s, he was inspired by a movie about the fledgling federal Bureau of Investigation, and aspired to become a G-Man himself. To qualify, one had to be an attorney or an accountant, so Newey opted for law school after earning a college degree in psychology. Upon graduation from John Marshall Law School in 1940 he breezed through both written and oral FBI exams. The last hurdle would be a personal interview, but when he showed up for it bursting with self confidence he was advised he had failed the tests. It was years later before he learned the reason why. 'I did not fit J. Edgar Hoover's profile for special agents at that time,' he recalled. 'They all looked very similar in stature and ethnicity, In those days the FBI did not engage in undercover work, and I guess I looked more like a gangster than Jack Armstrong.' Undaunted, Newey set aside his FBI ambitions and joined the U.S. Secret Service in Washington, D.C., as a uniformed police officer at $1,200 a year. Two years later he transferred to the Federal Narcotics Bureau where he worked undercover as 'Chicago Blackie.' Newey returned to Chicago and opened his own law practice in 1948. That's when he covertly set up the Deli business to nail the dairy cheats. But the lure of the hunt was too much, and by 1951 he was back in Washington as a cloak-and-dagger man for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The desire to work in his home town brought him back to Chicago in 1957, not as a lawyer, but as chief investigator for State's Attorney Ben Adamowski. As such Newey commanded a force of 75 Chicago police officers and eight civilian investigators assigned to the prosecutor's office. He was the mastermind who broke the back of a corrupt police burglary ring, the general who directed a sweeping investigation of a Traffic Court scandal, and the cop who put the lid on corruption in the Cook County Assessor's office. On one occasion, Newey solved a kidnap-rape case through hypnosis, but an over-cautions judge tossed the evidence out of court. In recognition of his work as a lawman, the Special Agents Association, a distinguished organization of law enforcement officers, granted Newey life membership. His peers also awarded him the National Police Officers Association Medal of Merit, and in 1960 elected him to the National Police Officers Hall of Fame. Still practicing law today in his 80s, Newey specializes in pro bono work for churches and charitable organizations that help immigrants becomes U.S. citizens. But that investigative bug has never let go of him, and he has spent several years trying to dig out the true story behind the controversial Richard Cain. "This book is the end result of Paul Newey's bulldog tenacity, covert meetings and hush-hush conversations with undercover sources in out-of- the-way places, late-night phone calls to the authors, and a battered old suitcase bulging with top-secret files."
Organization Mmberships - Rcognitions & Awards American, Illinois and Chicago Bar Associations. International Association Investigators and
Special Police-Board of Directors. Special Agents Association Legal Counsel and 3rd Vice President since 1977 United States Treasury Agents Association-President 1970-1971. John Marshall Law School Alumni Association-Treasurer 1973-1975 International Association Chiefs of Poice. American Judicature Society. Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police. Distinguished Citizens Award Assyrian American Welfare Council 1960 Citation of Merit - John Marshall Shcool of Law 1970Copy Rights by Author. Authorized for publishing on this Web page. - Updated March 28, 1997 Return to the Profiles Page
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