---
category: "Authors & Journalists"
tags:
  - Person
  - HankMessick
  - MiamiHerald
  - OrganizedCrime
  - Wackenhut
  - FBI
  - MeyerLansky
  - Florida
summary: "Miami Herald crime reporter fed leads by the FBI, who joined Wackenhut's Florida crime war in December 1966 and quit after six weeks calling it a cruel hoax upon the people of Florida."
location: "Miami, Florida"
created: 2026-09-21
updated: 2026-09-21
---

Hank Messick was a crime reporter under contract to the [[Miami Herald]] whose articles on gambling and corruption in [[Dade County, Florida|Dade]] and [[Broward County, Florida|Broward]] counties led grand juries to indict the sheriffs of both in 1966. An internal memorandum of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] records that the bureau had "made available lead information to Hank Messick, veteran crime reporter of the Miami Herald."[^1]

He resigned from the newspaper on December 13, 1966, and joined the [[Wackenhut Corporation]], which Governor [[Claude Kirk]] engaged the following month to conduct a war on organized crime in [[Florida]]. On January 13, 1967, FBI headquarters ordered its Florida offices to give the company's men nothing: "The Bureau does not recognize the Wackenhut Corporation as a properly constituted law enforcement agency."[^1]

Messick left in February. "I quit the Wackenhut Corp. because I have reluctantly concluded a cruel hoax is being perpetrated upon the people of Florida," he told reporters. He said later: "As far as the war on crime is concerned, they've done absolutely nothing; they haven't even scraped the surface." His objection was that the company kept as a private client Sir [[Stafford Sands]], a former minister of the [[Bahamas]] with gambling interests, while it was supposed to be pursuing [[Meyer Lansky]]. [[George R. Wackenhut|George Wackenhut]] answered: "I do not find it necessary to dignify Mr. Messick's remarks with a reply."[^2]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, headquarters and Tampa files on the Wackenhut Corporation. https://archive.org/details/WackenhutCorporation Airtel to SAC Jacksonville, January 13, 1967, and undated headquarters memorandum.
[^2]: "Wackenhut Aide Quits; 'Cruel Hoax,'" *The Tampa Tribune,* February 17, 1967, and *St. Petersburg Times* clipping, in the FBI's Tampa file on the company.