-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Breaking of a President 1974 - The Nixon Connection
Marvin Miller, Compiler
Therapy Productions, Inc.�1975
LCCCN 7481547
--[7]--
THE MURRAY CHOTINER CONNECTION
The suspicion that Richard Nixon had connections to the criminal world first
surfaced at the end of 1955 when Behind The Scene magazine called Murray
Chotiner "Nixon's Secret Link to the Underworld." Chotiner was a Beverly
Hills lawyer who also did public relations. He had a substantial reputation
in 1946 as the political manager for California's Governor Earl Warren and
Senator William Knowland. When Nixon did not do well in his primary campaign
against popular Congressman Horace Jeremiah ("Jerry") Voorhis, the
businessmen who had selected Nixon for his first attempt at elective office
sent him to Chotiner for advice. And it was Chotiner who gave Nixon the
anti-Communist, destroy the opposition by any means, battle-plan by which the
young conservative was to leap to the vice-presidency, and later to the
presidency itself.
However, Chotiner, along with his brother Jack and an early law associate
named Russell Parson, also had a substantial reputation for defending
organized crime personalities. In a recent interview with this writer,
attorney Parsons suggested that it was realy[sic] Parsons, not Chotiner, who
handled the bulk of this criminal practice, Nevertheless, according to a
published column by Drew Pearson, Chotiner had defended 221 organized crime
cases between 1949 and 1952 alone, the years when he was transforming Dick
Nixon from Congressman into Senator and then into Vice-President. Parsons and
Chotiner had separated their law practices by this time, although they were
to remain friends afterwards.
To those who know nothing about the necessarily clandestine methods of
arranging a "fix" with politicians, it may seem unfair to try to infer
anything from the fact that one of the most important men on Nixon's staff,
from his first Congressional campaign in 1946 to the presidential campaign of
1972, had a continuing relation with organized crime figures. After all, it
is the contention of this volume that organized crime has grown so large and
extensive that every American necessarily has some contact with an enterprise
controlled by criminals, whether it be a gambling casino, a restaurant, a
vending machine, or the truck that picks up the garbage.
With all this going on, why shouldn't a lawyer, in particular, have contact
with criminals without any criminal involvement being implied? The point is
that there is a difference between being victimized by gamblers or having
one's city government corrupted by bribes, and consciously being a middleman
between criminals and politicians! The nature of the transaction is
determined by what results from the seemingly accidental encounter:
victimization or profit.
And as the story of organized crime unfolds in this volume, it will be
demonstrated that there is an evidently consistent pattern in Nixon's
seemingly casual granting of favors to persons who Murray Chotiner
represented, whether they were Mafia leaders, labor racketeers or dairy
industry leaders.
INFLUENCE PEDDLING
In Nixon's first term under Eisenhower, from 1952 to 1956, Chotiner began to
swing his weight around Washington for some of his legal clients. Everyone
knew that anything done for Chotiner was a favor to Nixon. A few of these
influence-peddling cases surfaced when Robert Kennedy, then chief counsel for
Senator McClellan's Rackets Committee, called Chotiner as a witness after his
name had come up several times in other testimony during 1956.
One of the cases about which Chotiner was questioned involved Marco
Reginelli, allegedly a military uniform contractor but who was identified by
Kennedy and the Philadelphia police as "the top hoodlum in the Philadelphia
and New Jersey area." Since 1953 the government had been trying to deport
Reginelli to Italy as a result of criminal convictions for larceny, violation
of the Mann Act forbidding the transportation of women across state lines for
immoral purposes, and "other crimes." Although Reginelli had three
Philadelphia lawyers on the case, he also retained Chotiner in 1955. Chotiner
spoke to then Assistant Attorney General (and later Secretary of State)
William P. Rogers, who had previously worked closely with Chotiner on the top
planning for Nixon's campaigns. Rogers got the deportation order rescinded
and McClellan revealed that attorneys in the Justice Department had been
ordered to cooperate with Chotiner on any of his business.
In the next days Kennedy got Chotiner to admit that he had gone to White
House aide Charles F. Willis Jr. and Eisenhower's Cabinet Secretary Maxwell
M. Rabb, asking them to intervene with the Civil Aeronautics Board for two
California airline clients. (Maxwell Rabb is a Wall Street lawyer and a
director of International Airport Hotel Systems, Inc., in which Meyer Lansky,
gambler Ed Levinson and other racket personalities bold stock. Rabb, a close
Nixon friend and large campaign contributor, has also been involved in other
businesses with Lou Chesler a front man for Lansky.)
Chotiner was followed on the witness stand by William A. Parzow of Miami
Beach. Although Parzow had no known source of income, the Committee
confronted him with $74,000 in cancelled checks which had passed through his
hands from military uniform contractors to government workers. Parzow would
say nothing about these checks, and admitted only that Chotiner was the
attorney for the contractors. McClellan then strongly suggested that Parzow
was the pay-off man in a bribery scheme involving the getting of government
contracts, and that Chotiner was abusing his influence with the
Administration to help shady characters. When Chotiner resumed the stand, he
refused to discuss his relationship with Parzow or the contractors and, after
some time, the Senate Committee dropped the inquiry. McClellan said he did
not want to be accused of taking partisan advantage during an election
year�one of the very few times a Congressional committee has been so polite.
But while the investigation was on, the chief of the Secret Service, U. E.
Baughman, revealed that he had asked the FBI in 1954 to investigate the
National Research Company of Los Angeles and Washington. Baughman wanted this
Chotiner-owned company prosecuted because it was giving the impression that
it was a government agency. Somehow this matter was also smoothed over.
Eisenhower was furious with Nixon and Chotiner when he was asked by newsmen
about Chotiner's admission that two White House aides bad "given him some
assistance in some business he had with the government." Eisenhower's
attitude undoubtedly had something to do with Chotiner's disappearance from
the Washington scene following 1956. Chotiner was to return as a prominent
member of Nixon's staff after the 1960 election. But in '58 Nixon told
newsman Stewart Alsop: "It was a tragedy that he (Chotiner) had to get
involved in the kind of law business that does not mix with politics."
CHOTINER AS MACHIAVELLI
Chotiner claimed in later years not to have been overly interested in
managing a new political client when the young man from Whittier approached
him in 1946 but he did give him some advice�for a $500 consultation fee.
Chotiner said that the unknown Nixon could not defeat the popular Voorhis,
who had been elected five times previously with increasing majorities, unless
Nixon could deflate his opponent. Since the Voorhis voting record in Congress
was popular with the voters of the Congressional District, Nixon would have
to ignore the voting record and concentrate on the fact that Voorhis was
being supported by some left-wing Democrats. Chotiner urged that Nixon label
these men as "Communists" and leave every listener with the opinion that
Voorhis had their endorsement only because he was a Communist sympathizer.
Chotiner said Nixon should always stay on the attack, answer counter-charges
with generalities, and not bother to answer attacks until the opposition has
exhausted its ammunition; the public might not even be interested in the
attack. And, as Chotiner was to summarize later in a document prepared for
Republican campaigners in 1955: "If you find the attack has reached such
proportion that it can no longer be avoided in any way, when you answer it,
do so with an attack of your own against the opposition for having launched
it in the first place."
Chotiner said a candidate should start to campaign early "because you need
that time to deflate your opposition ... There are many people who say we
don't want that kind of campaign in our state. They say we want to conduct a
constructive campaign and point out the merits of our own candidate. I say to
you in all sincerity that, if you do not deflate the opposition candidate
before your own candidate gets started, the odds are that you are going to be
doomed to defeat."
Chotiner then explained what he saw as the difference between a legitimate
attack and smear. "It is not a smear, if you please, if you point out the
record of your opponent ... Of course, it is always a smear when it is
directed to our own candidate ... We never put out the complete voting record
for our own candidate, vote by vote, in spite of the demands from people
within our organization. The reason is-even if your candidate has voted 99
per cent right, according to the person who reads the record, the 1 per cent
will often turn the prospect against you."
These excerpts are from the transcript of a 14,000 word speech given by
Chotiner on his campaign policies in 1955 when he was touring the country
giving secret lectures to GOP "political schools" at the request of the
Republican National Committee. A copy of the Chotiner lecture fell into the
hands of a reporter sho[sic] released it. The Democrats, on evaluating the
strategy by which Nixon had won campaigns, described the transcript as
"probably one of the most cynical political documents published since
Machiavelli's The Prince or Hitler's Mein Kampf, . . . a textbook on how to
hook suckers."
Voorhis, however, at first did not take Nixon's vicious assault on his
supposed Communist learnings[sic] seriously.
After all, Voorhis was a member of the House Un-American Activities
Committee, had participated in the investigation of Communist Front
organizations, and consequently did not have the Communist support Nixon was
alleging. Furthermore, he was the sponsor of the Voorhis Act, providing for
registration of foreign agents, and for this and other policies was being
regularly denounced by The People's World the Communist newspaper in
California. But this was at a time when the Cold War was just beginning and
relations between Russia and the United States were already deteriorating.
Anti-Communism was to be a successful means of attracting votes until the
country became disillusioned by the reckless charges of Senator Joseph
McCarthy. The election was taking place in a state which had just experienced
a population explosion resulting from a massive migration from the East, and
the electorate was still disorganized. In these conditions, Nixon's
unsubstantiated charges proved to be attractive. Chotiner had succeeded in
marketing a candidate without reference to any of the serious issues of the
day. Nixon won by 65,586 to 49,994. It was a Republican year and they took
control of the 80th Congress. Nixon's victory pleased his backers: the
Republican bankers, insurance executives and oilmen who despised the
do-gooder impulses of Jerry Voorhis, turncoat son of a rich family. But, as
if to underscore his own political cynicism, Nixon in later years was to
admit that he and Pat actually respected Voorhis at the time of the smearing
campaign. "I suppose there was scarcely ever a man with higher ideals then
Jerry Voorhis, or better motivated than Jerry Voorhis."
Voorhis later charged that Nixon turned the voters against him by a series of
dirty tricks other than open red-baiting. He charged that writers supporting
him were evicted by their landlords; that merchants wanting to endorse him
were threatened with loss of bank credit; that false reports were circulated.
A campaign of anonymous phone calls was falsely charging Voorhis with being a
Communist Party member, and that he was trying to stop the production of beer
and liquor.
In 1950, after a career in the House which further established the young
Congressman from Whittier as an anti-Communist spokesman, Nixon decided to
run for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas, a six-year member of
Congress who had supported the Marshall Plan, reciprocal trade treaties,
expansion of the Army and Air Force, aid to Korea and other substantial
anti-Communist positions. Nevertheless, Nixon immediately launched a campaign
describing the former movie star as "a member of a small clique which joins
the notorious Communist Party-liner Vito Marcantonio in voting time after
time against measures that are for the security of this country." Misleading
leaflets were issued by Nixon headlined: "As one Democrat to another."
Chotiner wrote a campaign manual which stated in part: "We must appeal to
Democrats to help win the election. Therefore, do not make a blanket attack
on Democrats. Refer to the opposition as a supporter of the socialistic
program running on the Democratic ticket."
It was during this campaign that a small Southern California newspaper, the
Independent Review, placed the caption "Tricky Dick" above Nixon's picture.
Although Nixon had the overwhelming endorsement of California papers by a
circulation advantage of six to one, it didn't take long before references to
Tricky Dick spread throughout the state.
By 1950 Senator Joe McCarthy had replaced Nixon as the leading anti-Communist
in Congress, with his charge that the State Department was full of
card-carrying members of the Communist Party and his demand that President
Truman be impeached. Nixon and McCarthy became close friends, based on their
mutual admiration, and McCarthy, with Chotiner's blessing, campaigned for
Nixon in California against Mrs. Douglas. Speaking from Los Angeles in his
inimitable style, McCarthy said of Secretary of State Dean Acheson: "He must
go! We cannot fight international atheistic Communism with men who are either
traitors or who are hip-deep in their own failures ... The chips are down
between the American people and the Administration Commiecrat Party of
Betrayal!"
On a still lower level, an anti-semitic campaign on Nixon's behalf was
launched by professional bigot Gerald L.K. Smith and his Christian
Nationalist extreme right-wingers, on the ground that Helen Gahagan, herself
of Irish descent, was married to actor Melvyn Douglas, who was half Jewish.
Before the primary vote, Smith told his supporters that "the man who
uncovered Alger Hiss is in California to do the same housecleaning here. Help
Richard Nixon get rid of the Jew-Communists!" After the primary, Smith
continued in this vein: "Helen Douglas is the wife of a Jew. You Californians
can do one thing very soon to further the ideals of Christian Nationalism,
and that is not to send to the Senate the wife of a Jew."
Nixon finally issued a statement disassociating himself from Smith, and said
he had not asked for his support. The B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League
issued a statement exonerating Nixon of any taint of anti-semitism, but Smith
continued his bigoted attack against Mrs. Douglas, and Nixon did not
reiterate his opposition to it.
Meanwhile the manager of the billion-dollar DuPont interests in Florida had
recruited Nixon's friend, Congressman George Armistead Smathers, to run in
the 1950 Democratic primary against Claude Pepper on a crude anti-Communist
program. Smathers had the help of Bebe Rebozo in this campaign. A former
college debater like Nixon, Smathers skillfully delivered strange speeches to
evidently semi-literate back-country voters. "Are you aware," Smathers asked
rhetorically, "that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless
extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice
nepotism with his sister-in-law�and he has a sister who was once a thespian
in wicked New York! Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper,
before his marriage, practiced celibacy!" William Buckley said of this speech
that Smathers had succeeded in "making Claude Pepper a pervert by assonance."
SYNDICATE POLITICS
All the available information indicates that organized crime figures are
quite conservative politically and have approved of Nixon's stands. Meyer
Lansky is reported to have been disgusted with all the demonstrations against
the Vietnam war, and advocated that the U.S. armed forces should simply blow
up Hanoi. Although Lansky's anti-Communism possibly has to do with the fact
that Fidel Castro put an end to Lansky's gambling profits from Cuban casinos
in 1959, one federal agent was quoted by New York Times reporter Nicholas
Gage as saying: "A lot of your mob chiefs are fierce conservatives. They're
guys who came to this country with nothing and who did very well here, who
found this a land of plenty. So, in the right-wing sense of the word, they're
quite the ardent patriots."
This was verified by Vincent Teresa, one of the very few high-ranking mafiosi
to ever turn informer. In his 1973 memoirs, Teresa said: "I'm the proudest
guy in the world to be an American. Before I went to jail I had plenty of
chances to take off and go live in a villa on the Italian coast, but I
wouldn't leave this country. I'd rather spend twenty years in the can in
America than twenty years free in Italy. The reason is, I love this country,
and that's the way it is with most mob guys. The mob will not stand for
anything against this country. They'll rob from government arsenals and rob
government stock and sell it; but if they discover that anyone's trying to
overthrow the country or anything like that, they'll fight him.
"Most mob guys that I know vote. We vote whatever is the best way to make
money. If it's going to be one of these guys who is going to be on the reform
kick all the time, we'll band together an vote against him. I'm a registered
Democrat but I voted fyr[sic] Nixon in 1968, and I bet the mob really turned
out for Nixon in 1972."
Lansky is such a super-patriot that through the political influence of crime
syndicate leader Frank Costello in New York he arranged in 1949 a West Point
appointment for his eldest son Paul. The paperwork for Paul Lansky was done
by New York Congressman Arthur G. Klein, a former lawyer for the Securities
Exchange Commission, who got his Congressional seat when Costello approved of
Klein's replacing a Lower East Side Congressman who had suddenly died.
(Klein, now dead himself, subsequently became a New York State Supreme Court
Justice after having helped Costello elevate Thomas A. Aurelio to the State
Supreme Court).
Paul Lansky did well at West Point and rose to the rank of captain in the Air
Force before resigning in 1963. Paul Lansky is now an engineer in Tacoma,
Washington, and reputedly has broken with his father. Persons close to Meyer
Lansky, however, report that this is just a subterfuge to protect Paul's
reputation, and claim that father and son speak frequently on the phone.
Another son of Lansky's, Bernard, is openly involved in Meyer's legitimate
hotels and motels. A daughter, Sandra, is married to Vincent Lombardo, who
was indicted in 1970, along with Vincent Alio, Lansky's liaison with the
Mafia, by a federal grand jury for having taken part in a conspiracy to
fradulently[sic] take over a Florida investment company and manipulate its
stock. The indictments were finally dropped on a technicality but,
ironically, only after one of the crime syndicate's political fixers in
Washington was indicted and convicted of bribery in the case. This case is
worth going into in detail, as it involves the names of Murray Chotiner and
underworld political fixers Nathan Voloshen and Eddie Adams; an unreported
bribe to U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst; labor racketeer George
Scalise and his associate, New Jersey Mafia leader Angelo DeCarlo, who was
eventually pardoned by President Nixon after a criminal conviction; and
assorted Republican and Democratic Congressmen, Senators and Lansky
associates. It is a case study of how the Chotiner connection between Nixon
and the underworld worked.
SYNDICATE FIXERS IN WASHINGTON
In December 1968, a businessman named Gerald Devins bought a Miami
company and renamed it Imperial Invest-ment Corporation. A short time later,
Michael C. Hellerman and a Miami lawyer bought 154,600 shares of the
company's stock. The government indictment later claimed that Hellerman, who
had previously been in violation of Securities and Exchange Commission
regulations against the issuance of worthless stock, was acting on behalf of
Mafia leaders Carmine Tramunti, Vincent Aloi, and John (Johhny[sic] Dio)
Diogardi. By selling the stock back and forth to each other, the promoters
were able to raise the price from almost nothing to $24 a share.
At this point Devins refused to sell any more stock to the gangsters, and he
was beaten up in a Miami hotel room by Hellerman, a James Burke, a Pasquale
Fusco, and Vincent Lombardo, Meyer Lansky's son-in-law. Burke and Fusco flew
from New York to do this job. Before the beating, Devins had received some
threatening phone calls from Nathan Voloshen, a New York and Washington fixer
with crime connections. Voloshen had previously represented Hellerman in an
unsuccessful attempt to get SEC approval for a stock issuance.
Voloshen, a 72-year-old lawyer, was close friends with Speaker of the House
John W. McCormack. According to Robert Winter-Berger, lobbyist for Gerald
Ford and many others, Massachusetts Democrat McCormack was illegally renting
Voloshen a portion of his rent-free Speaker's office for $2,500 a month.
Subsequently Voloshen and Dr. Martin Sweig, chief administrative aide to
McCormack, were indicted for conspiring to misuse the influence of
McCormack's office for the benefit of various underworld Voloshen clients.
Voloshen and Sweig were charged with perjury in denying before a grand jury
that they had helped imprisoned Mafia gambling expert, Salvatore Granello to
stay at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury,
Connecticut-considered a "country club" by prisonersinstead of being
transferred, as scheduled, to the tougher federal prison at Lewisberg,
Pennsylvania. Voloshen was said to have received $5000 for this help.
Voloshen and Sweig were also accused of trying to get a parole for Manuel
Bello, a close associate of New England Mafia boss Raymond Patriarca; it was
charged that Sweig had made phone calls in McCormack's name, even imitating
his voice, for Voloshen clients to obtain an Army hardship discharge, and to
halt an investigation into a New York labor racketeer named Jack McCarthy.
Voloshen was getting these crime syndicate contacts through George Scalise, a
previously convicted labor racketeer, and Murray Chotiner. While Voloshen was
using the influence of the third most powerful in the federal government,
House Speaker John McCormack, to help his criminal clients, Chotiner was
prepared to use his influence with the top man himself when necessary, as
shall be seen in the pardons of Mafia leader Anthony DeCarlo and former
Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa.
Robert Winter-Berger, makes the strong suggestion that rather than Voloshen's
duping McCormack, they were actually business partners. Winter-Berger points
to the rental of the rent-free government office to Voloshen and an illegal
payment of $15,000 by Voloshen to McCormack, which Winter-Berter claims to
have witnessed, for the Speaker's help in getting the SEC to lift a trading
suspension in Parvin-Dohrmann stock (when P-D was claimed to have underworld
connections) Winter-Berger says that to be ignorant of what Voloshen and
Sweig were doing in his name, McCormack would have bad to be deaf, dumb and
blind-which he wasn't. According to Winter-Berger, he was also present at a
meeting with Voloshen, Sweig and McCormack at which Hellerman had been
willing to pay $10,000 to get some questionable stock issued with SEC
approval. This was before the Imperial Investment Corporation affair, and
McCormack agreed at that meeting to do all he could.
Coming back to the beating suffered by Gerald Devins in a Miami hotel room
when he wouldn't sell his remaining stock in Imperial Investment to the mob,
after the beating Hellerman and Lombardo took Devins to the company office
and forced him to give them all the blank stock certificates and company
records. The indictment also charged that an additional 21,500 shares were
obtained from other investors in the same brutal way. Hellerman then sold the
stock at the inflated price of $24, created by the pretended sales between
the defendants, even though the stock was not registered with the SEC, as
required by law. When the SEC and FBI moved in on the company, the stock
price dropped to nothing, and $2 million dollars was thereby swindled from
investors. Employees of three New York brokerage firms were among those
indicted on charges of participating in the rigged market.
Normally it would have been up to Voloshen to try to stop the investigation
into the stock swindle or get it dismissed in court, but by this time he was
under indictment himself and couldn't handle the problem. Labor racketeer
George Scalise then called in Eddie Adams, a public relations man who handled
confidential campaign contributions for Johnson and Humphrey. Voloshen and
Adams were to split the fee from Hellerman and his friends.
However, Adams only succeeded in getting himself indicted. Joseph Bald, a New
York interior decorator who had been indicted in the Imperial Investment case
along with Hellerman and company, Bald's brother-in-law Harold Blond, and
Adams went to Robert T. Carson, aide to U.S. Senator Hiram Fong, Republican
from Hawaii. They offered Carson $100,000 -to squash the investigation.
Carson was to go to then Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and
offer him $100,000 political contribution to Nixon's re-election campaign if
the Imperial Investment case was dropped. Carson took an advance of $2500 on
his bribe from Adams, according to FBI undercover agent Paul J. Brana, who
was posing as an underworld figure. Brana, who was wearing a concealed
tape-recorder strapped to his body, said that by the time of the $2500
payoff, it was agreed that there was little hope of quashing the original
indictments but it was still worth $100,000 to prevent additional expected
indictments.
Kleindienst testified that Carson came to his office on November 24, 1970.
"After we had exchanged pleasantries, Mr. Carson sat down in a chair in front
of my desk and said that he had a friend in New York who was in trouble, and
if I could help him with respect to his trouble, his friend was a man of
substantial means and would be willing to make a substantial contribution of
between $50,000 and $100,000 to the re-election campaign of President Nixon.
I asked him what kind of trouble this man had. Mr. Carson said he was under
indictment for federal offenses, and I said that under no circumstances could
I do anything about the matter, even look into it, as a result of the fact
that a grand jury had returned an indictment. That was just about all the
conversation that existed."
Cross-examined, Kleindienst admitted that he often spoke to Carson about
other matters and "worked very closely" with him in raising funds for
President Nixon. Thereupon defense attorney Joseph Brill asked: "You did not
regard that in the conversation you had with Mr. Carson that he offered you a
bribe?" "No, I did not," Kleindienst answered. "If you had regarded that
conversation as containing a bribe offer, you would have reported it
immediately, would you not?" "Yes sir, I would have."
But the fact is that Kleindienst apparently did not realize it was a bribe,
and did not report it, until a week later when Attorney General John Mitchell
showed him a memorandum on the case from J. Edgar Hoover. Whether or not-it
is believable that Kleindienst didn't recognize a naked bribe, the defendants
in the case were acquitted, including Meyer Lansky's son-in-law and Johnny
Dio, a well known gangster associate of Jimmy Hoffa. Only the messengers in
the bribe offer were convicted, Carson getting 18 months and Bald getting
four months. Perhaps the $100,000 secretly wound up in the Republican
campaign treasury after all?
THE PARDON OF ANGELO DeCARLO
There was no scandal when Angelo ("The Gyp") DeCarlo, a violent New Jersey
Mafia boss, was given a presidential pardon by Nixon in 1972 from a 12-year
1970 conviction for loan-sharking and extortion-because it was done without
the knowledge of those responsible for his conviction. One Justice Department
official commented: "Before we even knew he was up, be was out again!"
DeCarlo's petition was based on the claim that he had cancer, but the angry
FBI later reported that for the remaining year of his life out of prison
DeCarlo just went back to his normal routine of gambling, selling stolen
securities, loan-sharking, narcotics and murder. Insiders say that this was
one of the last favors asked of Nixon for organized crime by Murray Chotiner,
before Chotiner died of a heart attack after being injured in an auto
accident in January 1974, in front of Ted Kennedy's Washington home.
DeCarlo was convicted in 1970 of extortion against Louis Saperstein, a former
labor racketeer who had gone into debt $400,000 to the mob, including
interest payments of $5000 per week. At the time of the trial, Saperstein was
dead. The cause of death was listed as "gastric upset," but because
Saperstein had previously sent the FBI a letter claiming that his life was in
danger, an autopsy was ordered. The re-examination showed that Saperstein's
body contained enough arsenic "to kill a mule." The grand jury ruled the
death a suicide because there wasn't enough evidence to prove murder, but
indicted four members of the mob for conspiracy and extortion: Angelo
DeCarlo, and tavern owners Daniel Cecere, Peter Landusco, and Joseph
Polverino.
Saperstein had used the money he borrowed from the loan-sharks to buy and
sell securities simultaneously in different countries, to take advantage of
differences in the currency exchange. This is normally legal but not when
stolen securities are involved. Saperstein and his partner Gerald
Zelmanowitz, who was a prosecution witness at the extortion trial, had no
sooner opened a numbered Swiss bank account to handle their dealings in
securities, than suspicious IRS officials froze their other assets.
Saperstein and Zelmanowitz flew to Geneva, with Cecere along to protect the
mob's investment. They withdrew $100,000, Cecere deposited this in another
account in his name, and this money eventually was transferred to the U.S.
for distribution among the loan-sharks. But Saperstein was unable to continue
the exorbitant payments on the balance of the loan and went into hiding in a
New York hotel.
Saperstein was located with the help of Zelmanowitz, and promised them he
would take out a $100,000 insurance policy on his life, makes a mob member
the beneficiary, and jump out a window if they wouldn't hurt his family. But
he was taken to DeCarlo's Barn and savagely beaten. DeCarlo suspected The
Barn was being bugged, stopped the beating and ordered Saperstein to start
making $5000 weekly payments every Thursday. If Saperstein didn't repay the
total loan in three months, "he would be dead."
DeCarlo's attorney, Michael P. Direnzo, then demanded that the defense be
given copies of any wiretapping at The Barn. If the government's case had
been based on illegal wiretapping, the charges would have to be dismissed.
However, The Barn bad been bugged only from 1961 to 1965, the wiretap having
been removed a full two years before the Saperstein affair had begun. When
the federal judge agreed to make this wiretap part of the public record of
the trial, Direnzo had only succeeded in making all the details of his
client's underworld like public without giving DeCarlo freedom from
prosecution.
Only DeCarlo and Cecere were sentenced, DeCarlo to twelve years. Polverino
and Landusco were granted severances and postponement of trial because of
illness. And with Nixon and Chotiner's help, DeCarlo was back at The Barn in
two years.
THE SYNDICATE TRANSCRIPTS
The 1200 pages of DeCarlo transcripts gave a full picture of the division of
labor within a regional organized crime center. It showed how the mob's
Corrupters bribed and intimidated public officials; how the bosses picked the
candidates, put up the campaign money, dictated governmental policy and
approved appointments. The secret tapes revealed that the criminals had a
strong hold over Newark Mayor Hugh J. Addonizio. They had secretly campaigned
on his behalf and driven rival candidates out of the race with threats and
bribes. In return, the mob expected to loot the public treasury, be free to
run gambling and other rackets, and receive bribes from companies seeking
governmental contracts. At one point on the tape, DeCarlo was heard saying:
"Hughie (Addonizio) helped us along; he gave us the city!"
The transcripts revealed the function of the mob's Enforcers, who hired the
thugs to do the actual killing or breaking of legs. The transcripts also
showed the function of the mob Buffer, the gang member who preserves the
anonymity of the Boss by transmitting orders to the rank-and-file of the mob.
And finally, a detailed picture was given of the operation of the Money
Movers, the investors and re-investors of the local syndicate's funds. And
these four functions described so graphically on the regional level are
duplicated on the national level.
On December 17, 1969, a federal grand jury indicted Mayor Addonizio and
fourteen other men, including a Mafia leader and ten public officials. They
were charged with sharing in $1.5 million in kickbacks from firms doing
business with the city. In a separate indictment, charges of income tax
evasion were made. The Mafia leader was Anthony "Tony Boy" Boiardo, who was
heard on the tapes boasting about a murder that he and his father had
committed. "How about the time we hit (murdered) the little Jew," Bioardo
asked DeCarlo. "The Boot Boiardo's father) hit him with a hammer. The guy
goes down and he comes up. So I got a crowbar this big. Eight shots in the
head."
Mayor Addonizio refused to vacate his office despite the indictment, and
continued running for re-election despite the trial. He denied having any
relation with Boiardo. As the trial unfolded, it was shown how a legitimate
businessman was ordered by the mob to set up a dummy bank account under the
name of a phony supply company. Then phony bills would be sent to contractors
for non-existent supplies supposedly sold to them. The bills would be in the
amount of the kick-backs desired, and the checks received would be deposited
in the dummy account and converted to cash for disbursement.
One of the contractorc[sic], a man named Paul Rigo, told of disbursing large
sums of cash to Addonizio and of making, presumably under mob instruction, an
illegal $1000 contribution to the 1968 campaign to President Nixon and
Vice-President Agnew. Under cross-examination, Rigo testified that he bad not
been aware of the federal law prohibiting corporate contributions. Since he
was testifying under immunity, he was not concerned about being prosecuted
for his testimony. And since the check had been endorsed by a rubber-stamp
reading "Nixon-Agnew Committee," prosecution of anyone at that end was
unlikely.
After five-and-one-half hours of deliberation, the jury found all the
defendants guilty on all sixty four counts of the indictment. The judge then
sentenced Addonizio to ten years in prison. During the trial the voters bad
rejected his re-election bid. However, within weeks of taking office, the new
mayor, Kenneth Gibson, reported that he was offered $31,000 in bribes,
including $15,000 to appoint a man favored by the mob as police director.
Gibson turned the offers down but no one knew how many other officials would
hold the line, nor for how long.
pps. 279-290
=====
<photo captions>
Murray Chotiner, formerly the top political advisor to Congressman and
Senator Nixon, was investigated by Senator McClellan in 1956, when Nixon was
Vice-President, for using his political influence in Washington to help
organized crime figures. Chotiner was also questioned about what he did to
obtain government contracts for businessmen prepared to make illegal bribes
and kickbacks.
Marco Reginelli, Left, an important crime leader on the East Coast, was able
to get deportation hearings against himself stopped after the retained Murray
Chotiner in 1955 to help his other lawyers. Chotiner spoke to another close
Nixon associate, then Assistant Attorney General William P. Rogers, who got
the deportation order rescinded. On the right is one of Reginelli's
Philadelphia lawyers, John B. Brumbelow.
William P. Rogers, former Justice Department official and former Secretary of
State who helped Murray Chotiner stop the deportation proceedings of Marco
Reginelli, is shown to the left of President Nixon, with Mrs. Rogers to
Nixon's right, and Mrs. Nixon, extreme right. The occasion of this photograph
is an appreciation dinner for Mr. Rogers in the Executive Mansion.
Maxwell M. Rabb, formerly Eisenhower's Secretary of the Cabinet, and a Wall
Street lawyer with business connections to Meyer Lansky, was one of the White
House officials approached by Chotiner to do favors for Chotiner's airline
clients.
William A. Parzow of Miami Beach, Florida was questioned by Senator
McClellan's Committee in a probe of possible graft in army clothing purchase
contracts. Besides admitting that he had spoken to Chotiner, who was attorney
for the accused contractors, Parzow refused to discuss his relationship with
Chotiner, and invoked the Fifth Amendment as the basis for his refusal 47
times during his first 25 minutes in the witness chair.
Senator John McClellan (D-Ark.) and top staff members of the Senate Rackets
Investigating Committee began to probe Chotiner's relationship with illegal
activities but for political reasons did not press the inquiry. Left to
right, seated: Robert Kennedy, chief counsel; McClellan; Jerome Alderman,
assistant counsel; and Carmine Bellino, chief accountant. Standing: Don
O'Donnell, acting chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Investigating
Committee; and Kenneth O'Donnell, Kennedy's administrative assistant.
President Dwight Eisenhower forced then Vice-President Nixon to break off
relations with Murray Chotiner when the 1956 Senate investigators had
revealed some of Chotiner's questionable influence peddling during the
Eisenhower administration. But by 1962 Chotiner was back as one of Nixon's
most important advisors in the unsuccessful campaign against Pat Brown for
Governor of California. In this 1962 campaign, the Watergate cast of
Chotiner, Haldeman, Maurice Stans, Herbert Kalmbach, Herbert Klein, Caspar
Weinberger and Richard M. Nixon were found guilty by California Superior
Court Judge Byron Arnold of having prepared a fraudulent 900,000 postcard
mailing purporting to be from the Democratic Party. In 1964, when it was
proven beyond doubt that Nixon had directly participated in preparing and
approving the material (and that Haldeman had perjured himself in court to
protect Nixon), the Democratic Party settled for a few hundred dollars and a
permanent injunction against the mailing. Then Democratic State Chairman
Roger Kent believed that Nixon was finished in politics and, to his regret
during the next ten years, did not take Nixon and Company to trial for full
damages and perjury. (The final judgement of Judge Arnold in this case,
stipulated to by all parties involved, is contained as an appendix to Frank
Mankiewiezs book on Watergate, "Perfectly Clear.")
Congressman Jerry Voorhis lost his Congressional seat to Nixon in the 1946
campaign which Chotiner master-minded by smearing Voorhis with false charges
of pro-Communism.
Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, left, a six year member of Congress, was
defeated by Richard Nixon in 1952 in a race for a U.S. Senate seat. With
Chotiner's help, Nixon got labelled in this campaign as "Tricky Dick." This
photograph shows some of the women who served as Congresswomen with Mrs.
Douglas. Left to right: Rep. Douglas (D-Calif.); Margaret Chase Smith
(R-Maine); Edith N. Rogers (R-Mass.); Mary T. Norton (D-N.J.); Frances Bolton
(R-Ohio) and Georgia Lusk (D-New Mexico), all members of the House of
Representatives.
Gerald L.K. Smith, professional bigot of the Christian Nationalists,
supported Nixon's campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate.
Pointing out that Helen Gahagan, herself of Irish descent, was married to
actor Melvyn Douglas, who was half Jewish, Smith told all who would listen:
Don't send to the Senate the wife of a Jew.
Meyer Lansky, who obtained through his political contacts a West Point
appointment for his eldest son, Paul Lansky, has been a fervent supporter of
the conservative policies of Richard Nixon. He has no quarrel with Nixon's
use of undemocratic methods to get rid of political opposition. The crime
syndicate respects that use of political power.
Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), later to be censured by the Senate for
his wild unproven accusations about the widespread infiltration of Communists
in the government, was one of Nixon's closest associates in the Senate until
it became politically expedient to break with McCarthy when he became
unpopular. McCarthy is shown above during the McCarthy-Army hearings in which
McCarthy was branded as a "reckless and cruel man" by mild-mannered Special
Army Counsel Joseph Welch.
Political fixer Nathan Voloshen, to whom Murray Chotiner would channel
organized crime figures in need of federal help, was subsequently indicted
for perjury for denying that he illegally used House Speaker John McCormack's
office to help Mafia leaders in prison get parole and special treatment.
Labor racketeer Johnny Dio, a close associate of Jimmy Hoffa, was involved
with Meyer Lansky's son-in-law and known Mafia leaders in a fraudulent scheme
by which $2,000,000 was bilked from the public by the manipulation of
worthless Florida securities during 1969 and 1970. Murray Chotiner and his
political fixers in Washington did everything in their power to see that
Johnny Dio and his associates were not punished for this crime.
President Nixon consoles Julie Chotiner, daughter of Murray Chotiner, after
attending funeral services for his longtime friend and political adviser.
Chotiner, 64, died January 26, 1974, a week after he was injured in an
automobile accident near the Washington residence of Senator Ted Kennedy.
Martin Sweig, aide to former House Speaker John McCormack, was convicted with
political fixer Nathan Voloshen for perjury and influence peddling for crime
figures is shown here in July 1972 after being paroled from the Allenwood
Federal Prison Farm in Pennsylvania. Sweig served one year of his sentence.
Former House Speaker John W. McCormack is shown in his office. In the
background is a photograph titled "The Great Compromiser," showing McCormack
speaking at a political convention. The former lobbyist for Vice-President
Gerald Ford, Robert Winter-Berger, claims that McCormack knew of the illegal
influence peddling being done in his office by his former aide, Martin Sweig,
and fixer Nathan Voloshen. Winter-Berger claims that Voloshen was even
illegally paying rent to McCormack for use of his government-provided office,
and that only the direct intervention of Richard Nixon and former Attorney
General John Mitchell prevented the aging McCormack from being indicted with
Sweig and Veloshen.
Salvatore Granello, a member of the Mafia family headed by the late Vito
Genovese, and a major figure in the operation of Cuban gambling casinos
during the Batista regime, is one of the crime figures that Veloshen and
Sweig aided. Granello was in prison for income tax evasion and the Washington
fixers saw to it that he got favored treatment. When Granello's son, Michael,
did not pay anything to Veloshen, the Genovese family executed Michael
Granello in December 1968�and paid Veloshen themselves. When Salvatore
Granello got out of prison in 1969 he swore revenge against his son's killers
and refused to repay the Genovese family for Veloshen's fee. Salvatore was
found dead in Manhattan in the trunk of a rented car with four bullets in his
head on October 6, 1970. All of this goes to prove that Washington political
fixers are not ordinary gentleman and, like the Watergaters, are prepared to
condone illegal means to obtain illegal ends.
Robert Carson, left, former aide to U.S. Senator Hiram Fong, was bribed by an
associate of Nathan Veloshen to approach then Deputy Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst with an offer of $100,000 to Nixon's campaign fund if Kleindienst
would help Johnny Dio and the others involved in the Florida stock swindle
case. Carson is shown here in November 1972 with federal marshal Frank
Cottner on his way to federal prison farm in Allenwood, Pennsylvania to serve
an 18 month sentence for conspiracy. Chotiner and other intermediaries are
known to have been involved in all these conspiracies but stayed far enough
away to avoid indictment.
Senator Hiram L. Fong (R-Hawaii) reads about the indictment by a federal
grand jury of his top aid, Robert T. Carson, on charges of conspiracy to
attempt to fix a federal probe into alleged securities violation. Although
Fong's name came up in testimony as being an anticipated recipient of $100,
000 along with unnamed individuals in the Justice Department, no criminal
charges were filed against Senator Fong after he denied knowing about such a
scheme.
When then Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, left, was approached
by Robert T. Carson with the offer of a campaign contribution to Nixon in
exchange for help to those indicted in the Florida stock swindle, Kleindienst
refused because the case had already been before a grand jury. However, it
took this top government lawyer an week to realize that a bribe offer had
been made to him. In fact, Kleindienst reported the bribe only when he was
made aware of an independent FBI investigation. Nothing happened to
Kleindienst. In this photo Kleindienst is pouring a glass of water for Felix
Rohatyn, a director of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company
(ITT) during a Senate hearing into charges that ITT had offered to help
finance the 1972 Republican National Convention in exchange for help in an
anti-trust suit filed by government lawyers. Kleindienst denied knowledge of
any such deal but has since been convicted by an unusually compassionate
federal judge of a little bit of holding back in his Senate testimony.
Angelo "Gyp" DeCarlo, a prominent New Jersey Mafia leader, was given a
Presidential Pardon by Nixon in 1972 of federal extortion charges after
Murray Chotiner intervened with Nixon on behalf of the Mafia leader. A
federal top on DeCarlo's crime headquarters has led to indictment against ten
New Jersey mayors, nineteen councilmen or commissioners, four political
leaders, three present or former state legislators, two New Jersey
Secretaries of State, two county detectives and one U.S. Congressman. In
addition, Monmouth County's chief of detectives committed suicide and
Newark's Police Director was indicted for "wilfully "failing to enforce the
state's gambling laws. DeCarlo's pardon was a blatant indication of how much
organized crime can demand from the federal government.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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