Before the underworld was completely organized, Washington was a “neutral” city, where mob meetings and conventions were held. In such cities the delegates must not pack guns. Rough stuff is out by common consent. Other such open cities are Saratoga, Hot Springs, Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Miami. These were and are important resort centers, and are kept neutral because machine-gunning might scare tourists away. Washington was no-man’s-land for obvious reasons; they knew tommy-guns wouldn’t be tolerated in the Capitol’s shadow.
Commissioner Anslinger recalls such a gangster convention in the Shoreham Hotel, two decades ago. The Commissioner dropped into the Blue Room for dinner and saw Luciano, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Frank Nitti, “the Enforcer” of the Chicago mob, Izzie Bernstein of Detroit’s Purple Gang, and three other hoods, each with a bejeweled blonde. They were registered at the Shoreham under assumed names and spent a week there holding meetings.
When Anslinger lamped the boys, he went to the lobby and had Lucky called out. Luciano was offended, beefed about the interruption of his party. He said, “You can’t do anything to me. We got Constitutional rights. We’re only sight-seeing.”
Anslinger said, “That’s all you’d better do,” then glancing at the blondes, he added, “remember the Mann Act.”
A few weeks later, Jack McGurn was knocked off. It developed that this meeting was called for his trial. He had been getting out of line. So he was summoned from Chicago to meet his peers from the other cities.
The organized underworld’s influence in official Washington is incalculable. Its direct ties, even to the top, are so firm that in many instances even a political revolution will not dislodge them. They succeeded in doing that which the Communists failed to do; they infiltrated and took over the government. They are the true subversives, though that never comes out in Congress.
The Mafia’s power is built around these factors:
1) The underworld’s ownership of and contributions to local political machines. The mob has no politics or ideology. It pays liberally to both sides, so it will have a friend in court no matter who wins. Even the former American Labor Party Congressman, Vito Marcantonio, was on intimate terms with Mafia hoodlums, accepted campaign contributions from them, associated with and fronted for their racketeers in New York and in Washington, and welcomed them into his American Labor Party. He appointed the son of the infamous “Three Finger Brown” Luchese to West Point in 1946. Luchese was and is his contact in Tammany Hall.
2) The Mafia’s huge cache of currency, hidden in private safe deposit vaults and in banks throughout the world. Its earnings from illicit sources are so great, and come in so fast, the boys cannot invest it fast enough. They must hide most of the money because they failed to pay income tax on the major portion of it. It is no exaggeration to say they have billions of dollars in U.S. bills. With this bankroll they can bribe at will, elect many officials, and swing public opinion to incredible degrees.
3) The Syndicate’s interests in countless large legitimate businesses and industries give it a responsible, respectable voice in Washington through trade associations, lobbyists, law firms, banks, Congressmen who would do a favor for a local businessman but would not be seen dead with a gangster, and a considerable segment of the press, daily and periodical, and the radio.
4) The hoodlums’ tie-up with some labor, which came about when unions needed sluggers, or when tough guys muscled in to grab union treasurers, or used them as part of their extortion rackets. Lobbyists representing the unions are feared and toadied to.
5) The Italian voting bloc now controls some of the largest cities in the country. It is the largest single unit in New York, where all three candidates for mayor in 1950 were Italians. Too many of their men in office have ties to the Mafia. They can count on the votes of their countrymen in nominations and elections. The mass votes of Italians are bartered back and forth and usually can be delivered, by Black Hand threats in Italian neighborhoods, by appeal to blood relationship and national pride, or through the pages of powerful Italian language newspapers.
During his recent campaign, New York’s Mayor Impellitteri charged that Gene Pope, publisher of Il Progresso Italiano-Americano, the biggest Italian daily in the country, was an intimate of Frank Costello. We have seen them dining together on intimate terms.
No book could comprehensively cover the mob’s facets in Washington, but here are a few, at random:
The President’s military aide and poker pal, Major General Harry Vaughan, has associated with Frank Costello. They were brought together through his stooge, the convict John Maragon, who was a pal of the late Bill Helis, Greek millionaire and partner in Costello’s New York and Louisiana enterprises--as well as in a Scotch distillery.
Joe Adonis, New York mobster and lieutenant of Costello, had financial dealings with Harold F. Ambrose, former special assistant to the Postmaster General. Ambrose pleaded guilty to charges of operating a $600,000 fraudulent stamp-selling scheme. Adonis was questioned by the D.C. grand jury, but refused to talk, after which the United States had amnesia about his connection with the case. Ambrose is related to Democratic Senator O’Mahoney. His failure to go to trial protected his underworld associates.
Attorney General McGrath, who may be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice before this appears in print, was a Senator from Rhode Island and an important member of Rhode Island’s Democratic machine. That outfit has tight ties with the underworld. Within days after McGrath was pushed upstairs to the Attorney Generalship, to make way for Bill Boyle as Democratic National Chairman, McGrath made a trip to New York City. There he or his double had dinner at the Copacabana night club with Joe Nunan, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and Julie Podell, manager of the cafe. It has been frequently charged in New York that Costello has an interest in the corporation. The late Mayor La Guardia ordered police to cancel the club’s license if Podell, long an associate of Costello, was ever found on its premises again. Podell, while giddy, told one of your reporters that Costello had advanced $50,000 to open the club.
At the time of the dinner party there, the Copa was a possible defendant in a tax-action growing out of an investigation into the charges that it was owned by Costello. Since then, Podell was in Hot Springs with Costello and several other mobsters from all parts of the country, in an annual convention. McGrath has since stated there is no organized crime or vice in the country.
Former Attorney General Tom Clark, now a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was closely associated with attorneys who represented underworld figures. There were no major underworld prosecutions during his term of office. A Congressional investigation elicited the startling information that Clark’s boyhood pal, Maury Hughes, a Dallas attorney, was retained by five members of the old Capone mob, who had been convicted of extorting millions from the movie industry, to induce the federal authorities to nol-pros outstanding indictments against them and secure premature paroles.
Hughes, with other lawyers close to the administration, worked this feat of legal legerdemain. While these pages were being written, the same Maury Hughes secretly succeeded in keeping Alan Smiley, a notorious West Coast gangster who had been ordered deported, in the country. Smiley was Bugsy Siegel’s buddy, and was seated next to him on a love-seat in Virginia Hill’s Beverly Hills mansion when Siegel was ambushed and assassinated, in the only spot in the room visible to the torpedoes hidden outside, in bushes.
Until recently, Smiley had been passing himself off as an oil broker and real estate man in Houston, Texas, where he lived with his wife, a former movie starlet, in Glen McCarthy’s swank Shamrock Hotel. Smiley took up with a Texas oilman, Lenoire Josey, who liked to gamble. Smiley said he liked that, too. He knew some good places.
He and Josey went to Sam Maceo’s ornate casino, the Balinese Room, in Galveston. Then they went to the Mounds Club, in Cleveland. After that they went to the Flamingo, in Las Vegas. A trip to Phil Kastel’s (and Costello’s) beautiful Beverly, outside New Orleans, followed. When Josey counted up he had lost $500,000. Smiley “admitted to being a big loser, too.” If so, he got some back, because he owns a bit of stock in the Flamingo.
While these lines were being written, the California Crime Commission, headed by Admiral William H. Standley, Retired, castigated government aides for their ties with criminals. He said the relationship between the underworld elements and certain officials “must of necessity make it embarrassing for Federal officials to undertake prosecutions.”
A specific example was Sam Termini, described as a godson of the late Charlie Binaggio, who would have had to earn $900,000 income last year to be able to afford the cash payments made on his mansion in San Mateo County. He paid income tax on no such sum.