-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Breaking of a President 1974 - The Nixon Connection Marvin Miller, Compiler Therapy Productions, Inc.©1975 LCCCN 7481547 --[13b]-- THE SYNDICATE IN LAS VEGAS In the mid- 1960’s Howard Hughes started to buy Las Vegas, purchasing many of the hotel-casinos, an airline terminal, a local TV station and many mining properties throughout Nevada. Before Hughes’ actions can be evaluated, it is first necessary to establish organized crime’s relation to Las Vegas gambling. In our section on The Annenberg Connection it was related how the National Crime Syndicate in the mid-1940’s financed Bugsy Siegel’s dream of building a huge hotel and gambling casino in Las Vegas. Nevada was the only state which had legalized gambling, but until Siegel built his Flamingo, practically all the action had been in Reno. However, even before the Flamingo began making a profit, the Syndicate began to suspect that Siegel was secretly sending his girl friend, Virginia Hill, to Europe to deposit cash stolen from the Flamingo’s building fund. The largest gathering of Syndicate leaders since the early 1930’s was called for Christmas week of 1946 in Havana, Cuba. Everyone was invited except Siegel. Lucky Luciano, recently deported to Italy, had arrived back in the Western Hemisphere with the benefit of two new Italian passports. His reservation at the Hotel Nacional in Havana had been made by Meyer Lansky, who also took care of most of the other conference and party arrangements. The New York delegation included Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Joseph Bonanno, Albert Anastasia, Willie Moretti, Thomas Lucchese, Augie Pisano, Mike Miranda, Joe Profaci, and Joseph Magliocco. Chicago was represented at the Havana conference by Tony Accardo and Al Capone’s cousins, Charlie and Rocco Fischetti. The Fischetti brothers brought along Frank Sinatra, who gave Luciano a gold cigarette case inscribed: "To my dear pal Lucky from his friend Frank Sinatra." Carlos Marcello and "Dandy Phil" Kastel came from New Orleans. Santo Trafficante arrived from Florida, Stefano Magaddino represented Buffalo, and Lansky’s go-between with the Mafia, Vincent Aiello (Alo) was present, along with several representatives of organized crime from Cleveland, Detroit and Los Angeles. Thirty-six hotel suites were required to house all the important gangsters who came to pay their respects to Luciano. There were discussions about narcotics, crime jurisdictions and rivalries. Also a tentative decision was made to eliminate Bugsy Siegel, whose Flamingo Hotel opening the very week of the Havana meeting had attracted relatively few customers. By May 1947 the Flamingo began to show a profit, but word had reached Lansky that Virginia Hill had taken another trip to Europe and there was possibly as much as $500,000 of Syndicate money in a numbered Swiss bank account belonging to Siegel. Siegel was executed in Virginia Hill’s Beverly Hills mansion on June 20, 1947, and within minutes the Syndicate’s men had taken over the Flamingo. In the decade that followed hotel-casinos proliferated in Las Vegas. Everyone assumed that Lansky had a piece of all of them, but a lot of guessing went on as to who else owned what. Lansky is known to have financed the Thunderbird, while Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn was 74 per cent owned by the Cleveland Syndicate—former bootleggers Moe Dalitz, Sam Tucker, Lou Rothkopf, Mom’s Kleinman, Thomas McGinty and others. The Sands, opened in 1952, was controlled behind the scenes by Lansky, Frank Costello, Joseph "Doc" Stacher, former Florida bookmaker Ed Levinson, Minneapolis crime figure Isadore Blumenfeld, and Joe Adonis. Frank Sinatra owned 9 per cent. The Sahara was also opened in 1952 with money from Syndicate backers in Chicago, Cleveland and New York. The Riviera was backed by Tony Accardo, the Fischetti Brothers and Sam Giancana. The Dunes was controlled by New England Syndicate leader Raymond Patriarca; the Tropicana by Costello and Kastel; and the Stardust by Dalitz and Company. Caesar’s Palace was backed by money men Patriarca, Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana from Chicago, Jerry Catena representing Vito Genovese from New York, and Vincent Alo, Lansky’s shadow. Comedian Alan King is said to have remarked of the ancient Roman decor of Caesar’s Palace: "I wouldn’t say it was exactly Roman-more kind of early Sicilian." Jimmy Hoffa, whose Central States Teamsters Union pension fund invested at least $50 million in the hotel-casinos, hospitals, golf courses and various other businesses of Las Vegas, was a major financial figure there, along with the National Crime Syndicate leaders. Another person who became a major figure on the Las Vegas scene was Albert Parvin, a former interior decorator who had sold some of the first Las Vegas hotel-casinos their carpets. Parvin, eventually to be listed on the Justice Department’s list of organized crime figures, was closely examined in 1970 by then Republican Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, Ford was then seeking the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas. The fact that Douglas had received money from the Parvin Foundation was a substantial part of Ford’s attack on Douglas. GERALD FORD ON ORGANIZED CRIME On April 15, 1970, Gerald R. Ford delivered a speech in the House of Representatives against Albert Parvin, Justice Douglas, Las Vegas gamblers, Meyer Lansky, organized crime and various Democrats who had relations with organized crime. It is a remarkable speech, which showed that Ford and his aides had done a considerable amount of research into organized crime. And while there is a definite bias against the Democratic Party in the speech, an avoidance of any suggestion that non-partisan organized crime also has relations with Republicans, there is a sense that here is one politician who knows his criminals. This is important because the National Crime Syndicate undoubtedly will try, if it has not already tried, to make contact with President Ford and the men about him. Ford’s 1970 speech, a portion of which follows, to fill in some details in our story and to acquaint ourselves further with the new President, shows that whatever Ford does in relation to organized crime, it will be with his eyes wide open: ". . . Albert Parvin was born in Chicago around the turn of the century, but little is known of his life until he turns up as president and 30 per cent owner of Hotel Flamingo Inc., which operated the hotel and gambling casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was first opened by Bugsy Siegel in 1946, a year before he was murdered. "Bugsy’s contract for decorations and furnishing of the Flamingo was with Albert Parvin and Company ... After the gangland rub-out of Siegel in Los Angeles ... the Flamingo passed into the hands of Gus Greenbaum . . . [who] was later murdered. Next Albert Parvin teamed up with William Israel Alderman-known as Ice-Pick Willie-to head the Flamingo. But Alderman soon was off to the Riviera [Hotel] and Parvin took over [in 1955]. "On May 12, 1960, Parvin signed a contract with Meyer Lansky, one of the country’s top gangsters, paying Lansky what was purportedly a finder’s fee of $200,000 in the sale of the Flamingo . . . for a reported $10,500,000 to a group including Florida hotelman Morris Lansburgh . . . His attorney in the deal was Edward Levinson, who has been associated with Parvin in a number of enterprises . . . "In November of 1960, Parvin set up the Albert Parvin Foundation. Accounts vary as to whether it was funded with Flamingo Hotel stock or with a first mortgage on the Flamingo taken under the terms of the sale. At any rate, the foundation was incorporated in New York and Mr. Justice Douglas assisted in setting it up, according to Parvin . . . There is additional evidence that Mr. Justice Douglas later, while still on salary, gave legal advice to the Albert Parvin Foundation on dealings withn an Internal Revenue investigation. "The ostensible purpose of the Parvin Foundation was declared to be educating the developing leadership in Latin America. This had not previously been a known concern of Parvin or his Las Vegas associates, but Cuba, where some of them had business connections, was then in the throes of Castro’s Communist revolution. "In 1961 Mr. Justice Douglas was named a life member of the Parvin Foundation’s board, elected president and voted a salary of $12,000 per year plus expenses. There is some conflict in testimony as to how long Douglas drew his pay, but he did not put a stop to it until last May [1969], in the wake of public revelations that forced the resignation of Mr. Justice Fortas . . . "In April 1962, the Parvin Foundation applied for taxexempt status. And thereafter some very interesting things happened. "On October 22, 1962, Bobby Baker turned up in Las Vegas for a three-day stay. His hotel bill was paid by Ed Levinson, Parvin’s associate and sometime attorney. On Baker’s registration card a hotel employee had noted: ‘Is with Douglas.’ "Bobby was then, of course, majority secretary of the Senate and widely regarded as the right-hand man of the then Vice-President of the United States [Democrat Lyndon Johnson]. So it was unclear whether the note literally meant that Mr. Justice Douglas was also visiting Las Vegas at that time, or whether it meant only to identify Baker as a Douglas associate. [Editor’s Note: Douglas was out of the country at the time.] "In December 1962, I have learned Bobby Baker met with Juan Bosch, soon-to-be President of the Dominican Republic, in New York City. "In January 1963, the Albert Parvin Foundation decided to drop all its Latin-American projects and to concentrate on the Dominican Republic. Douglas described President-elect Bosch as an old friend. "On February 26, however, we find Bobby Baker and Ed Levinson together again-this time on the other side of the continent in Florida-buying round-trip tickets on the same plane for the Dominican Republic . . . "Also on hand in Santo Domingo to celebrate Bosch’s taking up the reins of power were . . . Albert Parvin . . . and . . . William 0. Douglas . . . Again there is conflicting testimony as to the reason for . . . [their] presence . . . One story is that the Parvin Foundation was offering to finance an educational television project for the Dominican Republic. Another is that Mr. Justice Douglas was there to advise President Bosch on writing a new constitution for the Dominican Republic. "There is little doubt about the reasons behind the presence of a singularly large contingent of known gambling figures and Mafia types in Santo Domingo, however. With the change of political regimes, the rich gambling concessions of the Dominican Republic were up for grabs . . . This brought such known gambling figures as Parvin and Levinson, Angelo Bruno and John Simone, Joseph Zicarelli, Eugene Pozo, Santo Trafficante Jr., Louis (‘Sleep-Out’) Levinson [Ed’s brother], Leslie Earl (‘Killer Kane’) Kruse, and Sam Giancana to the island in the spring of 1963. "Bobby Baker, in addition to serving as go-between for his Las Vegas friends . . . was personally interested in concessions for vending machines of his Serv-U Corporation, then represented by the Washington attorney Abe Fortas. Baker has described Levinson as a former partner. " . . In August 1963, President Bosch awarded the [gambling] concession to Cliff Jones, former Lieutenant Governor of Nevada who, incidentally, also was an associate of Bobby Baker’s. When this happened, the further interest of the Albert Parvin Foundation in the Dominican Republic abruptly ceased. I am told that some of the educational-television equipment already delivered was simply abandoned in its original crates . . . "Meanwhile, through the Parvin-Dohrmann Company which he had acquired, Albert Parvin bought the-Fremont Hotel In Las Vegas in 1966 from Edward Levinson and Edward Torres for some $16 million. [They remained on the payroll.] In 1968, Parvin-Dohrmann acquired the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in the same Nevada city, and in 1969 was denied permission by Nevada to buy the Riviera Hotel, and took over operation of the Stardust Hotel. This brought an investigation which led to the suspension of trading in Parvin-Dohrmann stock by the SEC, which led further to the company’s employment of Nathan Voloshen. But in the interim Albert Parvin is said to have been bought out of the company and to have retired to concentrate on his Foundation HUGHES IN LAS VEGAS It is well known that in the mid- 1960’s Howard Hughes began to buy up Las Vegas. As a result of an adverse court decision, he had sold his TWA stock at a considerable profit and had at his disposal almost half a billion dollars in cash from that transaction alone. In a relatively short time he spent about $200 million, taking over a number of the casinos built by organized crime as well as other properties. He bought the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Frontier, the Castaways, the Landmark, the Silver Slipper, the North Las Vegas Air Terminal, Alamo Airways, the Krupp Ranch and Hank Greenspun’s television station, KLAS-TV. For the record, the men listed on the gambling license of the Desert Inn when Hughes bought it were former bootleggers Moe Dalitz, Mortis Kleinman and Sam Tucker (the Cleveland Syndicate). Also on the gambling license was Ruby Kolod (actually Reuben Koloditsky), who had worked with the Cleveland Syndicate since 1939. Another licensee was Allard Roen (Rosen), whose father was Frank Rosen, office manager for the Cleveland Syndicate at the Hollenden Hotel. Allard Roen graduated from Duke University in 1943 with a business administration degree, and was typical second -generation with a totally clean record until he was indicted in a securities swindle and pleaded guilty. Up to this time Allard Roen had been general manger of the Desert Inn, but once he had acquired a record he was demoted to "superintendent of construction." The other names on the Desert Inn’s gambling license were Cornelius J. Jones, Frank Soskin, Sam Solomon, Martin Kutzen, Cecil Simmons and John Joseph Licini. And to underscore the fact that the mob was really accommodated in Hughes’ purchase of the Desert Inn, gangster Johnny Roselli received a $50,000 "finder’s fee." In May 1970 Hughes bought his first Northern Nevada gambling resort, Harold’s Club in downtown Reno, for a reported $11 mill-ion. In June 1970 he spent $8.5 million for the El Rancho Vegas hotel site. In March 1972 he sold the Krupp Ranch to Los Angeles car dealers Fletcher Jones and Bill Murphy. And besides casinos and real estate, Hughes bought up 2700 mining claims throughout Nevada, not a single one of them operating. It is not known how ,many of these are inactive gold mines, but given the present price of gold and the fact that private ownership of gold has been approved by the Ford Administration for the end of 1974, these mines can ,possibly be the most valuable of Hughes’ Nevada properties. They could increase his worth overnight by as much as a billion dollars. When Hughes started to buy the gambling casinos, the rumor was that the aging mob leaders were cashing in their Las Vegas chips and retiring. The general expectation was that Howard Hughes would clean up the casinos and stop the skimming. Profits from the casinos were estimated at one billion dollars per year, a full 20 per cent of the five billion dollars per year the tourists were presumably leaving in Las Vegas. And perhaps 25 per cent of that amount, or $250 million a year, was never reported as taxable income, and was spirited away by courier to secret Swiss bank accounts. However, what house-cleaning Hughes did can now be seen as only a surface job. There were 8000 people on the Hughes’ payroll by 1970, getting $50 million annually. Many of the actual casino employees continued to be persons with organized crime links, kept on because their experience was irreplaceable. Moe Dalitz, while no longer an owner was retained on the Hughes payroll as a gambling, consultant. On May 11, 1972, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Internal Revenue Service had opened a probe of the Hughes gambling empire with 20 full-time agents, because of allegations that huge sums of money which should have gone to Hughes had found their way to foreign countries; underworld figures may have siphoned off casino profits; entertainers may have had to kick-back to underworld figures from 10 to 15 per cent of their paychecks; Hughes mining properties may have been purchased at inflated prices; and casinos were reporting marginal profits despite massive investments. When Robert Maheu took Hughes to court for slander following Hughes’ 1972 telephonic press conference charging Maheu with being "a no-good, dishonest son of a bitch and he stole me blind," many previously unknown facts concerning Hughes finances became available to the public. It was learned, for example, that an August 1970 profit-and-loss statement showed that the Hughes gambling empire lost over $12 million from 1967 through the date of the statement. So Hughes fired Maheu in 1970 and brought in Intertel to supervise the casinos. But if the IRS is getting involved in 1972, that probably means that Intertel didn’t cut the losses. (See The Bahamas Connection in this volume for Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun’s educated opinion that Intertel may be "the intelligence service" of the "International Gambling Cartel"). At this point in time it is hard to say what is going on in Las Vegas. The IRS has been careful to say that so far it is not pointing the finger at Hughes, suggesting rather that Hughes is being stolen blind by his employees, with a traditional cut going to Meyer Lansky and his heirs. Others infer that Hughes may have merged with the mob, and is skimming from his own casinos with Intertel’s experienced help. Still others insist that the invisible Hughes is actually dead and his empire is being run by organized crime, with an experienced actor or two on staff to provide the extremely rare personal appearance, as in Nicaragua, or the equally rare phone conversation. Whatever is happening in Las Vegas, there is a lot of loose money around, and the legal proportions are not going into Uncle Sam’s pockets. The federal court trying the Maheu slander case learned that in one year alone Hughes made $1 million in political contributions, $600,000 of which came in cash from his Silver Slipper casino in Las Vegas; $50,000 of the cash given to Bebe Rebozo by Hughes for Nixon in 1970 came from the Silver Slipper, while another $50,000 for Nixon came from a personal Hughes bank account in Los Angeles. Most of the $1 million political contribution went to Nevada state and local politicians. Having such amounts of money available for payoffs breeds the kind of divorced-from -reality arrogance that has characterized the Watergate scandals. And it has long been speculated among political theorists that the only way to conquer the sprawling United States from the inside is first to take over the government of a sparsely populated state, elect the two U.S. Senators, and then work from that base. Is this what the Hughes empire is doing in Nevada? NEW FORCES IN LAS VEGAS Before leaving the subject of the mob’s influence in Las Vegas, it would be worthwhile to do an extended footnote on the fact that it is alleged in recent years that the influence of the Teamster Fund as a means for financing Las Vegas gambling casinos has been largely superseded by a giant Texas insurance company, American National Insurance Company (ANICO) of Galveston. Two Texans in the former Nixon administration are involved in ANICO, former Treasury Secretary John Connally (now under indictment) and former Assistant Attorney General Will Wilson. ANICO has loaned more than $40 million to Las Vegas casinos as well as $13 million to Jimmy Hoffa’s attorney, Morris Shenker. Shenker holds at least 35 per cent of the stock of Continental Connector Corporation, which in turn owns the Dunes Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas. Will Wilson was head of the Criminal Division of the U. S. Justice Department until October 1971, when his resignation was forced by disclosures tying him to the scandal-rocked financial empire of Frank Sharp. Wilson got $297,000 in loans from Sharp, including a $30,000 loan after the SEC began investigating Sharp. Wilson was also accused of buying stock in the name of Ted Bristol, a federal bank examiner checking Sharp’s books. Bristol was indicted for receiving a bribe, and Wilson resigned from the Justice Department. ANICO has been accused by dissident stockholders of being linked to organized crime through a Galveston law firm. ANICO has also made loans to two Florida companies with connections to Richard Nixon—$1.75 million in 1966 to the Mary Carter Paint Company, and $3 million in 1970 to a subsidiary of Worldwide Realty, which had interlocking directorates and shared some large stockholders with the Miami National Bank. Both Worldwide and the Miami National Bank were staffed with Lansky associates. Another relatively new influence in Las Vegas is Kirk Kerkorian, who started his own one-plane airline in 1947. By 1968 he had sold his airline to Transamerica Corporation for $78 million after taxes. With an additional $73 million unsecured loan from the Bank of, America, Kerkorian made some Las Vegas purchases: The Bonanza Casino, 40 acres of land soon to be developed into Caesar’s Palace, and the Flamingo Hotel-Casino. Then he built the International Hotel. The International and Flamingo assets were combined to form International Leisure Corporation, whose stock price zoomed from $12 to $66.50 a share, enabling him to make loans to buy control of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Hollywood studios. Then Kerkorian began to sell MGM assets in 1972 to raise money for the new 2000-room Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Kerkorian brought out into the open what many had suspected before-an intimate connection between Las Vegas casino money and the Hollywood film industry. Incidentally, the Grand Hotel and Casino was built on 26 acres of land purchased from Moe Dalitz for $1.8 million. However in 1969, the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime asked a peculiar series of questions of Charles "The Blade" Tourine, a member of the Gerardo Cateno (formerly Genovese) Mafia family who worked for Meyer Lansky in Cuba: Q. Do you know a person by the name of Kerkorian? A. Yes. Q. How long have you known Mr. Kerkorian? A. Several years. Q. When you say several years, about how far back would that go? A. Fifteen years. Q. Have you ever received money from Mr. Kerkorian? A. No, I have not. Q. Have you ever given money to Mr. Kerkorian9 A. No, sir. Q. Have you ever received money from a person named George Raft which came from Mr. Kerkorian? A. No, sir. Q. Have you ever given money to George Raft? A. George Raft received money from the casino in Havana, Cuba, which I was the manager of. Tourine was recalled before the committee on January 16, 1970 and brought along an attorney. He pleaded the Fifth Amendment to all questions. Then the committee played a tape recording of a conversation made when Tourine called Kerkorian at his home in Beverly Hills on October 5, 1961. The monitored conversation revealed that Kerkorian was sending Tourine a check for $21,300. George Raft was going to carry the check, but Kerkorian didn’t want Tourine’s name on it as endorser, because there was "a lot of heat around." Tourine told Kerkorian he could get the check cashed without his name on it. Kerkorian issued a denial in Los Angeles that he had ever associated with underworld figures. However, he didn’t volunteer to appear in person and answer questions under oath. And the New York State committee couldn’t subpoena him in California. The latest rumors suggest that Kerkorian may be selling the Grand Hotel to Japanese interests. And the May 15, 1974 Los Angeles Times reported that the Tropicana Hotel has a commitment for a $70,000,000 loan from a Saudi Arabian oil company for construction of a new high-rise resort complex. And Howard Hughes reportedly will sell his Las Vegas holdings for $900 million. Does all of this mean the end of mob control? Probably not. pps. 345-358 <photo captions> Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was born in 1905 in Houston, Texas. Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire recluse, contributed heavily to Nixon’s election campaigns and obtained many financial benefits in return. For many years Hughes has had suspicious financial dealings with organized crime. This is a photograph taken in 1957. Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell (right) mav have approved the burglary and bugging of the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee in 1972 to recover documents relating to Howard Hughes contributions to Richard Nixon. At left is Sen. Herman E. Talmadge (D -Georgia). Howard Hughes (seated right) calls four witnesses to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee in November 1947. The witnesses (standing, left to right) are: John B. Parkinson, Edward Schwartz, E. A. Peterman and Glen Odekirk. Hughes’ attorney, Tom Slack, is in left foreground: Howard Hughes (right) and Jack Frye (second from left), then President of TWA Inc., are shown in 1944 after they co-captained the flight of a Giant Constellation transport plane from California to the East Coast in the record time of six hours and 58 minutes. William P. Rogers, shown here in the State Department’s operations center in 1970 when he was Nixon’s Secretary of State, was chief counsel for Senator Brewster’s 1947 investigation of Howard Hughes. Rogers was a secret supporter of Hughes and probably had something to do with the fact that the investigation failed to prove very much. Major General Bennett E. Meyers was the only man who really got hurt in investigation of Howard Hughes’ poor Performance delivering military aircraft during World War H. Meyers helped Hughes because he was promised a civilian job heading Hughes Aircraft. However, Hughes never honored this promise, and out of the Senate hearings came a charge that Gen. Meyers had accepted a pay off from a sub-contractor. The general was convicted and sentenced to seven years in federal prison. Howard Hughes (right) listens to Sen. Homer Ferguson (R -Mich) (center seated) at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee investigating Hughes. Sen. Owen Brewster (standing with left hand on microphone) was accused by Hughes of offering to call off the inquiry if Hughes would merge TWA with Pan American Airlines. When Brewster called Hughes to task for soliciting government contracts by hiring a publicist, Johnny Meyer, to wine and dine military officials and politicians, Hughes replied: "All the aircraft companies were doing the same thing. I believe Meyer patterned his work after what he saw in other companies ... and it certainly did not seem fair for all of my competitors to entertain while I sat back and ignored the government and its officials ... You, Senator [Brewster], are a lawmaker, and if you can pass a law that no one can entertain Army officers and you can enforce it, I’ll be glad to abide by it. Donald Nixon, brother of former President Richard Nixon, received a secret loan of $205,000 from Howard Hughes in 1956. The text details the valuable favors Hughes subsequently received from the government. Robert A. Maheu, head of the Hughes Nevada operations until 1970, spoke to then Vice -President Richard Nixon in 1956 about the dangers involved in Hughes’ secret loan to Nixon’s family. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hubert Humphrey is said to have received a secret $50,000 cash contribution from Howard Hughes in 1968, at the same time that Hughes secretly arranged to send Republican Richard Nixon $100, 000 through Bebe Rebozo. Mrs. Hannah Nixon and Francis Anthony Nixon, parents of former President Richard Nixon, at their Whittier, California, home in 1952 as their son received the vice-presidential nomination on the Republican ticket. In 1956, a $13,000 piece of property owned by Mrs. Nixon was put up as collateral for the $205, 000 loan from Howard Hughes. The late President John F. Kennedy did not personally make a political issue out of the Hughes-Nixon loan in the presidential campaign of 1960, but there were enough rumors about the loan circulating during the campaign to substantially hurt Nixon. Allegedly the late Robert Kennedy had negotiated with a Los Angeles attorney, Ben Levin, to buy documentation of the loan for $500,000. A typed agreement to that effect was circulated but was unsigned. When John Kennedy won the presidential election, however, he considered it inappropriate to have the Justice Department headed by his brother pursue the former Vice-President about the political payoff aspects of the loan. Roy L. Ash had worked as acting comptroller under Charles Thornton at Hughes Aircraft. An outside audit ordered by Noah Dietrich, Hughes’ chief executive, showed that Hughes Aircraft had overcharged the government $43 million. Ash and Thornton dis-puted this but Hughes Aircraft had to make the refund. A few months later Ash and Thornton left Hughes Aircraft and bought a small firm, Electro-Dynamics Corporation, that grew into the giant defense -oriented Litton Industries. Litton executives admit to con-tributing $156,000 to Nixon’s 1968 campaign, (in amount more than any other defense contractor. >From 1968 to 1970 Litton’s share of defense contracts was considerably increased. In De-cember 1972, Nixon appointed Roy Ash director of the Office of Management and Budget. Ash tit the time was under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission for having illegally abused his inside knowledge by selling $2,600,000 worth of Litton stock in 1970. Shortly after Ash sold out, the stock price dropped by half when the public learned of mismanagement tit Litton. Gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel was the first of many gambling casinos that the National Crime Syndicate was to build in Las Vegas. Our text shows that to develop his own Las Vegas gambling empire, Hughes bought many casinos which were mob-controlled and, despite the change of ownership, they possibly remained mob-controlled. Siegel (left) s being embraced by his old friend, actor George Raft, who taught an entire generation the gangster style he admired. In 1965 George Raft (born Ranft) was indicted on six counts of tax invasion. The government claimed that Raft’s ties with organized crime might have extended to part ownership of Cuban gambling casinos, suspicious (and undeclared) payments from mob-controlled businesses, as well as failure to report film income. Raft was permitted to plead guilty to one count and was fined $2500. One year later, in 1966, the 71 -year-old actor was living in high style in London, fronting for Lansky in "George Raft’s Colony Sporting Club." Raft did not own the club. He was just a shill for the gambling casino, doing the same job for Lansky in London that he had previously done for the same employer in Cuba. In 1967 Raft was declared an "undesirable" by the British government and deported. Sam Giancana, for many years allegedly head of the Chicago Mafia, was a prominent participant in the large Syndicate conference in Havana during Christmas week of 1946, where the death of Bugsy Siegel was ordered. Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell, who had a respectable image as a $30,000-a-year public employee until a search of his belongings after his October 1970 death revealed $800, 000 in cash and other assets of more than $2 million, had issued Giancana a special unlisted automobile license plate. Singer Frank Sinatra, (left), shown here being fingerprinted in Los Angeles by Deputy Sheriff Bob Rogers in 1947 when Sinatra applied for a permit to carry a gun, accompanied Mafia leaders Charlie and Rocco Fischetti to visit with Lucky Luciano in Havana the previous Christmas. It is claimed that Sinatra was at all the mob parties during the four days he spent in Havana, but was exclude from the business meetings. Carlos Marcello, alleged boss of the New Orleans underworld, as another prominent participant in the National Crime Syndicate conference in Havana in December 1946. Robert G. "Bobby" Baker, former U.S. Senate aide to then Vice-President Johnson, is shown in 1972 leaving Allenwood Federal Prison Farm near Lewisberg, Pennsylvania. Baker was Paroled after serving 18 months in prison for grand larceny, attempted tax evasion, transportation of stolen money and fraud. It was then -Congressman Gerald Ford who revealed Baker’s business involvements in the Caribbean, including his status as gobetween between Las Vegas interests and gambling in the Dominican Republic. Edward Levinson, formerly involved in ownership of Cuban gambling casinos and the Flamingo and Dunes Hotels in Las Vegas, was Bobby Baker’s traveling companion in the Caribbean, according to former Congressman Gerald Ford. Allard Roen, former general manager of the Desert Inn until he pleaded guilty in a securities swindle case, was to continue at the Desert Inn in a less visible capacity until Hughes purchased it. Roen, son of a Cleveland Syndicate executive, is shown here in April 1969 when he was tournament director at the La Costa, California, golf course. La Costa has the reputation of being a gangland resort. Former bootlegger Moe Dalitz (right) sold the Desert Inn in Las Vegas to Howard Hughes but remained on the Hughes payroll as a gambling consultant, while using his cash to build the La Costa resort in Southern California. This photograph was taken in 1966 as Dalitz was walking into a Nevada Gaming Commission hearing on the charge that the underworld was skimming casino profits. Behind Dalitz is Jack Donnelley, formerly executive vice-president of the Desert Inn and Dalitz’s attorney Gangster Johnny Roselli, shown as he looked in 1943, received a "finder’s fee" of $50,000 when the 600-room Desert Inn and casino was sold to Howard Hughes on March 22, 1967, for a price of $13.2 million. Hughes paid $6.25 million in cash and assumed outstanding liabilities. Since Hughes was already living on the top floor of the Desert Inn before he decided to buy the hotel, it’s hard to understand what Roselli had to "find" for Hughes. Kirk Kerkorian bought the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Hollywood studios with money and credit he had earned from Las Vegas gambling casinos. In 1969 and 1970 a New York State crime investigating committee charged that Kerkorian had some unexplained financial dealings with an important Mafia leader. Robert Maheu (left), former head of Howard Hughes Nevada operations until he was fired in 1970, sued Hughes for $17.5 million, charging that Hughes had slandered him publicly as being "dishonest." A Los Angeles jury agreed on July 1, 1974, that Maheu was slandered, and now has to decide what money damages to award Maheu. Maheu, a former FBI agent, is shown here with his son Peter, a former CIA agent. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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