The Outfit (58 page)

Bobby Kennedy’s obsession with destroying the underworld provoked him to trample the civil rights of his targets, the very laws he had sworn to defend. In 2000, attorney and syndicated columnist Sidney Zion wrote of his experience as a foot soldier in the Kennedy Justice Department:

I worked under Bobby Kennedy as an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. I can tell you true that there never was and hopefully never will be an attorney general who more violated the Bill of Rights. It was Bobby who took this country into eavesdropping, into every violation of privacy ever feared by the Founders. He used his office as if he were the Godfather getting even with the enemies of the Family. Liberals cheered as he went after Jimmy Hoffa and Roy Cohn, but libertarians understood that what he did went far beyond these guys, that there was nothing more un-American than the decision that the ends justify the means.

Predictably, like the U.S. attorneys who had to carry out Kennedy’s controversial orders, the underworld reacted strongly to the tactics of the new regime. FBI bugs soon began picking up the hoods’ response to the goings-on at the Justice Department. In New York, they listened as mobster Michelino Clements told an associate, “Bob Kennedy won’t stop until he puts us all in jail all over the country.”

Pennsylvania boss Mario Maggio was heard saying, “[Bobby Kennedy] is too much; he is starting to hurt too many people, like unions. He is not only hurting the racket guys, but others.” Maggio added that he feared “they are going to make this a family affair and [Bobby] wants to be president.”

In Chicago, the FBI overheard Mooney remark to associate Potsie Poe, “I never thought it would be this fucking rough. When they put his brother in there, we were going to see some fireworks, but I never knew it was going to be like this. This is murder. The way that kid keeps running back and forth, I don’t know how he keeps going.”

As if to cast opprobrium at his own father, Bobby Kennedy took a personal interest in the persecution of Papa Joe’s election-fraud accomplices in Chicago. Soon after taking his oath, Bobby traveled to the Windy City, where he met with the local G-men. From the Presidential Suite at the Hilton, the very hotel where his father’s Outfit cohorts had worked so hard for Jack’s election, he set up briefings with the FBI’s special agent in charge (SAC), Marlin Johnson. On this first of his many trips to Chicago, Bobby Kennedy sat attentively in the local FBI office as agents set up a reel-to-reel tape recorder and played some highlights from their illegal bugs and taps. The first tape Kennedy heard was a recording from the First Ward bug nicknamed Shade. Although likely unknown to Kennedy, the first voice he heard belonged to the man who had brought Mooney Giancana to Joe Kennedy when the election deal was cut, ward boss Pat Marcy.

Demanding numerous replays of the tape, an enthralled Kennedy listened as Marcy and two bought-off cops discussed a plan to murder another uncorruptable cop. Agent Bill Roemer described Kennedy’s reaction, writing, “This tape really got under Bob’s skin. A Democratic politician plotting murder - of a police officer yet!” Kennedy, of course, never informed Roemer that Marcy’s boss, Mooney Giancana, was at that very moment in Florida plotting the murder of the leader of a sovereign country - at the behest of another Democratic politician, Bobby’s brother Jack.

During his tenure, Bobby Kennedy often returned to Chicago, where he brought his informal style to the briefings. In a 1996 article in
Real Crime Digest,
Roemer wrote, “Off would come his shoes and tie. With sleeves rolled up, he would go to the refrigerator, take out bottles of Heineken for all of us, and get down to business.” Often, the business included the playing of more surveillance tapes. Four years later, when the courts finally put an end to the eavesdropping, Kennedy would allege, much as he would with the Castro assassination plots, that he had no knowledge that such a thing had occurred on his watch. (Bobby’s moral stance was especially disingenuous given that he and his brother were simultaneously secretly recording many of the most secret Oval Office gatherings, unbeknownst to the other participants.) According to Roemer, Kennedy “said [the surveillance] was a violation of civil rights and that if he had known we were doing that, he would have put a stop to it.” Although Roemer had grown to like Bobby, the fraudulent disclaimer destroyed their relationship. “Our friendship did not end smoothly,” Roemer wrote. “When he came to Chicago [after 1965] . . . he never called anybody in the FBI again . . . I never heard from him again.”

There can be no doubt as to the veracity of Roemer’s side of the Hilton listening-party story. Immediately after the first tape-playing episode in Chicago, the cunning FBI director made certain the event was preserved for history. “Never a man to let an opportunity go by,” wrote Hoover’s intelligence chief, William Sullivan, “Hoover insisted on and got sworn affidavits from every agent present stating that Kennedy had listened to the tapes and had not questioned their legality.”

For Curly Humphreys, 1961 saw a return to business as usual. High on his agenda was the brokering of a final intergang agreement on how to divide the shares of the skim from Las Vegas’ Stardust Hotel. After negotiating with Moe Dalitz at his St. Hubert’s Grill in the Loop in January, Humphreys returned to Celano’s, where the FBI listened in as the exultant Humphreys crowed about this most recent triumph, which assured the Outfit a 35 percent cut of both the Stardust and the Desert Inn.

“We’re right at the point where we can hit him [Dalitz] in the head,” said Curly. He went on to brag that 35 percent was pretty good, given that Dalitz was “a Jew guy.” Not coincidentally, the Outfit-controlled Teamster pension fund soon bequeathed $6 million to the Stardust Group for the construction of the Stardust Golf Course and Country Club. A similar Teamster loan had already financed the Desert Inn’s golf course. These additions were viewed by the investors to be integral to selling lucrative housing lots that would ring the courses.

“Anyway, we got harmony now,” Humphreys said. “It’s all worked out . . . We didn’t have to go through a showdown.” As the Bureau tracked the activity of courier Ida Devine, they learned that the monthly split from Vegas now sent $80,000 to Miami, $65,000 to Chicago, $52,000 to Cleveland, and $50,000 to New Jersey. However, due to the illegal manner in which the Bureau was obtaining most of its current intelligence, it was unable to bring charges against the skimmers.

Joe Accardo used his share of the bounty to finance a very public show of familial affection. While the disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (sans Castro’s murder) self-destructed, Accardo gave his daughter Linda Lee away at a lavish wedding, with the reception held at Mooney’s Papa Bouche’s Villa Venice Restaurant in Norridge, Illinois. Giancana had owned the facility since 1956, using as fronts owners-of-record such as Alfred Meo, and later, Leo Olsen. It was the same ploy he had used with the Cal-Neva and dozens of other properties he wished to hide from the IRS.

The reception was to be Accardo’s last great shindig, and the boss made it his biggest. Among the more than one thousand attendees were the entire Chicago Outfit, with the exception of the imprisoned Paul Ricca. In addition to the Accardo family, Ricca’s wife and children, Rosselli, the Humphreys, Giancana (with Jack Kennedy’s mistress Judy Campbell), and virtually all the local underbosses, the heirs apparent, were present, among them Gussie Alex, Frank Ferraro, Jackie Cerone, Joey Glimco, James “Cowboy” Mirro, Phil Alderisio, Ralph Pierce, Hy Godfrey, Butch Blasi, Chuckie and Sam English, Joey Aiuppa, Pat Marcy, John D’Arco, Frank LaPorte, Joe Lombardo, Tony Spilotro, Dave Yaras, Ross Prio, Rocco and Joe Fischetti, Lou Lederer, Johnny Formosa, Frank Buccieri, and Marshall Caifano.

The attendance of the local bosses was no surprise, given their obsequiousness to boss Accardo. But what was most impressive was, as G-man Roemer wrote, “any mobster of stature anywhere in the country attended.” With the press and undercover G-men outside taking names and photos, a virtual who’s who of organized crime paid their respects to the most successful mob boss in the country.
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While the Outfit celebrated in Chicago, the Kennedy White House was in mourning. Only three months into the Kennedy brothers’ regime, the disastrous failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion threatened to permanently cripple the new administration almost before it was up and running. Although Jack Kennedy surely knew that he shouldered the lion’s share of the blame, since he had scuttled key components of the plan just days before its implementation, his knee-jerk reaction was to crack down on the CIA, the invasion’s operational planners. In this effort, the president harkened back to something his father had said: “Bobby can protect you.” Thus, at the request of brother Jack, Bobby agreed to place a name above Mooney Giancana’s on his “list,” Fidel Castro. The indefatigable thirty-six-year-old Bobby, with no experience in either the realm of intelligence or a criminal court, was now the boss of both the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the most powerful nation in the world. Few government careerists believed the nation would escape the period unscathed.

Although Bobby Kennedy’s embroilment with Castro would sputter along fruitlessly, his war with Giancana was slowly driving the Chicago boss to self-destruction. Mooney’s skirmishes now with the G demonstrated to all that the swarthy wheelman from the Patch possessed not a fraction of the prudence of his masters, Accardo and Humphreys. Jeanne Humphreys remembers that when she’d first met Mooney, Curly had warned his rapier-witted wife, “Don’t be a wise guy with this fella. He’s not the same as the rest of the fellas. He’s different.” It was now clear that Bobby knew how to push Giancana’s buttons, using an illegal tactic that would have destroyed his own brother: He authorized the FBI to bug the bedrooms of Mooney and his lovers.

Since his ascension to boss, Mooney Giancana, ignoring the lessons of Capone, had escalated his high-profile lifestyle, to the continuing dis- may of the Outfit brain trust. Of late, he had been squiring singing stars Keely Smith, after her divorce from bandleader Louis Prima, and Phyllis McGuire, of the popular McGuire Sisters singing trio. FBI bugs at Mooney’s Armory Lounge headquarters often overheard Mooney demanding that the restaurant’s jukebox be purged of all Smith records when Giancana was bringing over McGuire, and vice versa if Smith was in town. In the summer of 1961, Mooney was accompanying Phyllis as her group traveled the country on a concert tour. The unlikely lovers had met in 1960 at the gang’s Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas. Over the last year, Mooney had lavished on McGuire, whom he nicknamed Wonderful, such love tokens as a brand-new white Cadillac convertible. He also arranged for Phyllis’ markers in the gang’s casinos to be erased, or “eaten.”

With Giancana busy partying in Las Vegas, the chore of running the gang’s business there typically fell to the overwrought Curly Humphreys. The gang elder statesman watched in disbelief as Giancana’s name, linked with the likes of Phyllis McGuire and Keely Smith, appeared over and over in local papers. On one occasion, when a local journalist requested an interview with Curly, the hood vented his feelings to an associate at Celano’s: “I don’t give a shit who the newspaper guy is. Why should I talk to him, I said, and don’t you speak to any of our other guys.” When Giancana actually showed up at Celano’s, Humphreys seized the opportunity to set him straight. “Don’t play around with the newspapers,” Humphreys barked. “Just stand in the background. That’s what I would do, Moe. You stay in the background.” And on another occasion: “Giancana spends so much time away from Chicago when he has business here.” Once when Mooney missed a meeting, Curly was unnerved. The FBI eavesdroppers summarized what happened: “Giancana got a hurry-up call and appeared to be unable to make the appointment that night. Humphreys sarcastically felt the call was from one of Giancana’s girlfriends and appeared angered that Giancana let pleasure interfere with business.”

The unsolicited extra responsibilities only accelerated Humphreys’ desire to retire, but he knew that was impossible. In one monitored call to his ex-wife, Clemi, in Oklahoma, Humphreys waxed nostalgic about life before the Kennedy crackdown. “It’s so bad now,” Humphreys said, “that the coppers are even afraid to take money because they’re afraid of the G . . . Honey, things were a lot different then, when you were here.” His daughter, Luella, remembered a constant refrain whenever her father visited Oklahoma. “I’m so tired,” he’d say. “I want out so bad, but I made my decision and I have to live with it.” The FBI heard him say, “I got to sit around and control the underworld here.”

The G-men summed up the growing tensions within the Outfit hierarchy: “Humphreys and the other leading Chicago Hoodlums have been unhappy with Sam Giancana . . . Humphreys and Frankie Ferraro apparently met with Giancana’s predecessors, Tony Accardo and Paul Ricca, to discuss their feelings.” In their powwow, the Outfit old-timers, who were old enough to remember Big Jim Colosimo’s disastrous infatuation with a young singer named Dale Winter, worried about Mooney’s infatuation with singers Phyllis McGuire and Keely Smith.

Mooney was not the only one shirking his responsibilities. Johnny Rosselli was increasingly absent from his Sin City post in favor of participating in CIA derring-do and bedding Vegas showgirls and Hollywood starlets. “Johnny became starstruck, like Mooney,” remembers Jeanne Humphreys. “And he talked too much. The very first time I met him, he laughed about how he had whacked the wrong guy once by mistake. Murray was appalled that he would talk like that to me.” In one Celano’s conversation with Giancana, Curly spoke of how he had to repeatedly discipline Rosselli: “I’ve known Johnny, and I’ve always kind of liked him. But after all, you have to be honest when you talk to him.” Curly recalled how he once scolded Johnny, saying, “Listen to me, you fucker. When I talk, this is it. Don’t you give me this shit. I’m one of the old-timers. I’m not a young punk. You’re talking to the wrong guy.” Humphreys added, “So then he changed his mind.”