-Caveat Lector-
From:
Behind the Scene
March 1956 Vol. 1, No 12
JB Publishing Corporation�1956
220 w 42nd St
New York, 36, NY
-----
Dick Nixon�s Secret Link To The Underworld!
by Marvin Higgins
In his swift rise to the top of the' political heap, young Richard has picked
up some strange companions! But none stranger than a certain Influential
gentleman who pulls the strings backstage for "Tricky Dick" Nixon . . .
Sometime during the early morn-ing of December 11th, 1950, a lawyer named
Samuel Rummel was blasted into eternity by a 12- gauge. shotgun in the
driveway of his swank Hollywood:, home.
The day after lawyer Rummel was wafted to the Supreme Bench, the police got a
clue.
It was a strong clue. It might have cleared up a lot of mysteries. But the
cops never' got the chance to follow It up.
An attorney named Murray Chotiner made a few phone calls, talked to a few
influential people and, when he was finished, the clue became a dead end.
Rummel's death and a whole story of gangland violence, illegal gambling
syndicates, police corruption and vice in California ended in a blank wall.
The Man Behind Nixon,
Murray Chotiner, who was instrumental in building that wall, is the
right-hand man of Richard M. Nixon, Vice-President of the United. States!
And if, through the sudden death of the President, Nixon should take over the
White House, the same Murray Chotiner will probably be the chief adviser to
the nation's Chief Executive!
What kind of secrets did Sam Rummel take to his grave�secrets which
Murray
Chotiner apparently did not want revealed?
Between 1945 and 1950, seven important figures in the West Coast
underworld died violent deaths. With the exception of Bugsy Siegel, their
names were not well known to the public.
They included such picturesque characters as Benny "Meatball" Gamson, Harry
Hooky" Rothman and �Needie� Herbert.
All had one thing in common. In one way or another, all were involved with
Mickey Cohen, Rummel's client., And Mickey Cohen, In turn, was involved with
the West Coast gambling syndicate, which masqueraded under the name of the
Guarantee Finance Co.
At the time of Rummel's death, however, three separate agencies were
investigating the operations of Guarantee Finance.
A special -grand jury, for Instance, was scheduled to open its sessions on
the very morning Sam Rummel was killed. One of the questions it wanted
answered was:
"What cop or cops got a $108,000 payoff from Guarantee Nuance, the bookie
syndicate?"
To help answer this question, the grand jury had subpoenaed Sheriff's
Capt. Carl H. Pearson. But before Pearson could testify, Rurnmel�who knew
where all the bodies were buried�was killed.
Meeting Ends In Death
Then came the clue the police had been waiting for.
Pearson admitted that he and Sheriff's Deputy Lawrence C. Schaffer were
probably the last persons to see Sam Rummel alive!
Pearson confessed that he, Schaf-fer and Rummel had, held a conference, at
the lawyer's request. Pearson said that he had brought with him, to the
meeting, the complete police files on the Guarantee Finance Co!
The meeting ended at 10:40 p.m., December 10th. And the following morning,
some time around 1:30 a.m., Rummel was dead.
Pearson and Schaffer knew what had been discussed at that meeting with
the gamblers' lawyer. And when they appeared before the grand jury, many
things about the syndicate's op-erations were bound to come to light.
The Big Fix
Schaffer, realizing the spot he was in, picked up a phone and called Murray
Chotiner. What he said will probably never be known. But Chotiner�who packs a
lot of weight in California�fixed it, so that Schaffer got off the hook.
That doused any light that might have been shed on gangland violence,-
the $108,000 payoff and the compli-cated operations of California's book-ies.
And the man who engineered the blackout�Murray Chotiner�is a key figure In
California's Republican hierarchy. He Is the �man to see" if you want any
favors from the Vice President of the United States!
Why should Murray Chotiner�who pulls the strings for Nixon�be interested in
helping to cover up the workings of a giant bookie syndicate?
One clue was recently unearthed by a West Coast reporter from the files of
the Superior Court of Los Angeles County.
Between 1949 and June, 1952, a single law firm represented defendants in 220
bookmaking cases in that court.
The Bookies' Friend
The name of the firm�the bookies' friend, for a price�was, of course,
Chotiner & Chotiner!
. The same reporter could not find a single criminal case of any other type
in which Murray Chotiner's firm acted during the same period!
In other words, the professional career of a man who may one day be a White
House advisor depends largely on defending illegal bookmakers! ,
How did this singular circumstance come to be?
Young Dick Nixon first came to Chotiner's attention in 1946, when the future
Vice President first decided to throw his hat in the political arena.
Chotiner was already well established in California politics. In 1942, he had
been campaign manager for Gov. Earl Warren. Two years later, he got himself
elected president of the state's Republican assembly.
And in 1946, at the very time Nixon came to see him, Chotiner was, directing
the campaign of another rising California Republican�Sen. William S.
Knowland, now GOP leader in the Senate.
A Campaign Gimmick
Chotiner is a shrewd lawyer and a shrewder politician. He looked Nixon over
and weighed the odds. The election of this political newcomer was not going
to be easy.
Nixon had picked himself a whopper for his first battle. He was running for
Congress against a veteran campaigner, the Democratic incumbent, Jerry
Voorhis.
Also, Chotiner decided, Nixon had other odds against him. He lacked
campaign funds, an organization and an issue. Most of all, he needed a smart
handler.
And, in the estimation of Murray Chotiner and of less-interested observers,
Chotiner is among the smartest.
The lawyer had already worked out what looked like a perfect campaign gimmick
for Knowland. There was no reason, he decided, why it wouldn't work for Nixon
as well.
Smear Target
So, with Murray Chotiner doing the tailoring And, fitting, Richard Nixon
donned the shining white armor of an anti-Communist crusader. And with slight
alterations by the master, as occasion demanded, the armor carried him
through Congress and the Senate all the way to the nation's second-highest
job.
Possibly from his bookie clients, Chotiner had learned never to give a
sucker�in this case the voters�an even break. He had discovered, long before
other political manipulators, how effective it was to smear the opposition
with a Red brush.
Chotiner did it much more efficiently than his later imitators ever, dared
hope for. He got the opposition Democrats to smear their own candidate!
In 1946, Knowland had an especially tough opponent, former Rep. Will Rogers,
Jr., son of the late humorist and very popular in Southern California in his
own right. But the People's World, a pro-Communist daily, had once boasted
publicly that�long before�Rogers had made a contribution to its f und drive.
Chotiner took the Reds' word for it. He also "arranged" to get the
information to the State Democratic committee. The news raised hell among the
Democrats, tearing them into two camps.
And for the rest of the campaign, Will Rogers, Jr.�who had amply demonstrated
his patriotism by resigning from Congress to join the army during World War
II�had to carry on without the organized support of his own party.
Knowland, of course, was a shoo-in. And with Chotiner employing similar
tactics, Nixon, too, went to Washington.
Murray Chotiner�mouthpiece of the bookies�was on his way to the big time!
The GOP Overruled
Chotiner appointed a good friend and fellow-lawyer, Dave Cannon, to the key
job of chairman of the lawyer's committee for Knowland.
The only trouble with Dave Cannon was that�like Chotiner�he was a bookies,
attorney, having been the chief counsel for the aforementioned Guarantee
Finance Co.
To be precise, Cannon had defended certain officials of the syndicate, when
they were finally brought to book before the bar. His clients were convicted.
But Cannon's work had apparently been satisfactory: he got Chotiner's nod.
California Republican bigwigs blew their stacks about Cannon's
appointment�but he stayed.
Chotiner convinced the GOP bosses that Cannon was harmless. And what was even
better, the illicit gambling crowd on the Coast could do much�in a quiet
way�to swing votes in the right direction.
Chotiner's sucqess in getting Nixon the Vice Presidential nomination was his
biggest coup and a masterpiece of slick maneuvering in a, field where
candidates are usually the result of cut-and-dried deals in smoke-filled
rooms.
Wanted � A Veep
The battle between Dwight Eisenhower and the late Sen. Robert A. Taft
occupied the attention and talents of the politicians during the 1952 GOP
convention. Only after that issue was settled did they start looking around
for a suitable running mate for Ike.
It was the President himself who revealed that he was only indirectly
involved in picking the No. 2 man on the Republican slate.
Eisenhower was asked point-blank at a recent news conference if Richard Nixon
was "your personal selection?"
The President candidly admitted that he was a novice in politics at the time,
"And so I wrote down the names of five, or maybe it was six, men, younger men
that I admired, that seemed to me to have made a name for themselves.
"And I said, 'Any of these will be acceptable to me,' and he [Nixon] was on
the list."
But how Nixon got on the list and how every other rival was eliminated during
a three-hour parley among 30 GOP big-wigs is a sort of left-handed tribute to
the ability of Murray Chotiner, master puppeteer.
During the top-level huddle at Ike' headquarters on the 11th floor of
Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel, it was finally agreed that the Vice
Presidential candidate must come from the West. Only Nixon and Knowland
filled the bill.
In the end, it was Nixon who got the nod. Chotiner's behind-the-scene string
pulling had paid off, but it also led to what was perhaps the biggest
challenge in his career of backstage machinations.
That was when the press uncovered that nasty business about a $16,000 private
slush fund, raised by certain real estate and business Interests to cover
Nixon's senatorial "campaign expenses."
TV Soap Opera
Nixon's opponents dug up his Senate voting record. Many of his; votes on
important domestic bills could be viewed as benefiting the interests of the
contributors to his secret campaign fund.
There was an understandable public demand that Nixon tell what had been done
with the money, since it had not been listed among regular campaign
contributions as required by law.
Murray Chotiner outdid himself. Faced with a tidal wave of questions which
the GOP, couldn't afford to ignore, the bookies' lawyer became a dramatic
impresario.
"We'll give 'em a soap opera," he decided. And that was just what he did.
It was Chotiner who was instrumental in dreaming up the script for the famous
television appearance of "Poor Richard" Nixon, in which the clean-cut boy
wonder confessed that his wife Pat didn't even have a mink cost.
It was Chotiner who saw the dramatic possibilities in the Nixon dog,
Checkers, and made the poor beast the most famous pooch in the country.
(Although nobody could ever figure out what Checkers had to do with the
$16,000).
In short, it was the sophisticated Chotiner who cast the Vice Presidential
candidate in the role of Rube, the barefoot farmboy�pulling a TV rabbit out
of a hat and Nixon out of a hole.
The opposition mollified Chotiner then turned to dangers in Nixon's own camp.
McCarthy Out-Maneuvered
A lot of people had been borrowing Chotiner's anti-Commie technique to get
themselves elected. And several of these were threatening to wrest the title
of No. 1 Red-hunter from Chotiner's boy, Nixon.
One of these, of course, was Joe McCarthy. Chotiner took care of him by
advising Nixon to play an on-again, off-again game during the 1952 race.
Nixon proclaimed at first that he would support all GOP candidates
everywhere. Then he decided�with an eye on the Wisconsin Whirlwind�that maybe
he wouldn't support all of them.
Then Nixon switched again. And again. And again, until not even McCarthy�much
less his constituents�knew whether he had the backing of the No. 2 man on the
GOP ticket.
In California, too, a lightweight Commie-hunter was making a strong bid for
the middleweight title. That�in Chotiner's mind�represented a distinct threat
to his own champ, Nixon.
Rivals Eliminated
So, although State Sen. Jack Tenney was also a Republican, Chotiner set out
to blast him from the ring.
Tenney entered the GOP congressional primary on his record as chairman of the
state legislature's unAmerican activities committee. Running against him was
Joseph E. Holt, son of one of the men who had kicked in to the $16,000 Nixon
fund.
Although already burdened with running the Knowland and Nixon campaigns,
Chotiner also became the mastermind behind Holt's primary race. Against that
kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Tenney didn't stand a chance. When the
ballots were in, he was just another former Commie-chaser.
But Chotiner�who has had no trouble defending bookies against the law and
"natural" candidates against flyweights�is facing the biggest job of his.
String-pulling career in 1956.
When the GOP national convention opens in San Francisco next year,
California's 70-vote delegation will be headed by Gov. Goodwin J. Knight.
That means trouble for Nixon�and Chotiner.
Goody Knight and the boy Vice President have been rivals in California
Republican circles for a long time. And there are many who say Knight is
against Nixon only because Chotiner is for him.
Nixon vs. Ike?
In any case, the governor has made no secret of his feud with the
Vice-President. Not too long ago, Knight was invited to attend a luncheon
honoring Nixon. Instead, he very pointedly appeared at a teamsters' union
affair held at the same time.
Adding insult to injury, the Nixon luncheon was snubbed also by the
lieutenant governor and the whole state Republican committee.
When the convention rolls around, Goody Knight can make lots of trouble for
Chotiner's man.
With the approach of 1956, Nixon�probably on Chotiner's advice�has been
feeling his Vice Presidential oats. He has gone so far as to challenge
President Ike Eisenhower himself.
When Ike returned from the Big Four meeting in Geneva, for instance, he and
all the brass that met him at the airport got a thorough soaking in a summer
downpour.
The reason was that Nixon had ordered all umbrellas confiscated from the
greeting party�because, he said, umbrellas might be taken as a, symbol of
appeasement, harking back to the famous rolled umbrella of Neville
Chamberlain when he returned from the Munich conference in 1938!
Another Rabbit Trick?
Washington circles were astounded at this obvious crack by Nixon. It seemed
to have occurred to nobody but the Vice President that umbrellas would have
any significance. And many felt that it was Nixon himself�or was it the
ubiquitous�Chotiner?�who wanted by this stratagem to connect Eisenhower with
appeasement in the public mind.
Ike, to be sure, didn't miss the point, either.
The unexpected illness of Eisenhower knocked the Republican Party's plans
into a cocked hat. Even from this distance, politicos see the GOP convention
as a free-for-all.
For at the same time as they deplore the 'calamity that befell Ike,
Republican hopefuls are springing up all over the country.
If Eisenhower should decide not to run, the GOP convention certainly will
turn into a free-for-all.
But Nixon�who reportedly wants the Presidency so bad he can taste it�will
have a tough job cornering California's 70 votes, controlled by Goody Knight.
It's not even certain that Murray Chotiner could help him, since the bookie
bloc does not yet control the California GOP delegation.
Still, Murray Chotiner has pulled a lot of rabbits out of his hat,
He was instrumental in squelching an important probe into California's
underworld, a probe which conceivably could have ruined some big political
people, including the legal voice of the bookies himself.
And if anyone can squeeze Nixon in the Presidential race, that man is Murray
Chotiner.
From there on in, it's tip to the people. And if the vote should go to
Richard Nixon, you can be sure that Murray Chotiner�mouthpiece for
gamblers�will be around the White House, running things for the Chief.
pps.14,15, 62-66
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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