Practically anything he ever did in his life depended on not talking, on keeping confidences, on maintaining a low profile. His family in New Jersey believes that it started with his intelligence work in Japan during the Korean War, which had been so sensitive he was not allowed to talk about it. In Europe he had operated out of Lichtenstein like a character in a spy movie, always one step ahead of the immigration police, and only by keeping a low profile in Monaco were his ex-GI salesmen able to operate without work permits. When selling booze to the Fleet in Europe, he and Bob Miller had to rely on classified information on Fleet movements, and their car sales in the Pacific depended on no one else knowing about it. Similarly in the United States his monopoly on the five-bottle import scheme only flourished until competitors found out and muscled in. The whole edifice of Duty Free Shoppers was based on secrecy. If a rival company learned how much Duty Free Shoppers planned to bid for a major concession, they could outbid them and force them out of business. The key to getting some of the most profitable concessions was not letting airport authorities know just how much money they were making. As a private company they did not have to declare their profits to anyone. Top managers in Duty Free Shoppers had to sign strict confidentiality pledges about financial returns, and there was a written agreement among the four Duty Free Shoppers owners that they would give only one response to press queries: "I would like to answer this question but I am bound not to."