Interference (31 page)

Don Dawson told me that Len Dawson had had an opportunity to get the gambler off the hook with his statement—but didn't. “I drew a lot of criticism,” Don Dawson says. “Lenny saw me in the newspapers, and he knew what was going on. He said that he casually knew me, but he's a fucking liar. As far as Lenny goes, yeah, he was doing plenty of gambling. And that was way before my thing ever erupted. I had no connection or further conversation with Lenny after he left the Browns. He wasn't gambling with me anymore. He was then with the Civellas in Kansas City, but I was the one who got all the publicity. And I was the one who got arrested.

“I imagine Lenny said what he said for his own protection—for which I don't blame him. But he should have called me later to apologize, because I was hung out to dry.”

NBC, which never interviewed Don Dawson, did not back off its original story. Matney says that he received “complete support” from the network. However, James Ritchie of the Strike Force lambasted the news report, saying, “The peacock is NBC's trademark, and the peacock has turned out to be poppycock.” U.S. attorney James Brickley of Detroit angrily said, “There is no federal process against these persons named by NBC, or any other sports figures.”

Matney said that soon after his report aired “I got a call from the Washington [NBC] bureau and one of the guys in the office said that Attorney General John Mitchell was ‘furious.' Then I got a call from my source. He said two things were happening: One, that Mitchell had ordered an investigation within the department to find out who leaked the information and, two, the [Strike Force] was going to be forced to change its
modus operandi
. Instead of calling the players to testify in person, it was going to dispatch agents to see them, avoiding any appearance in court.”
⁸

On January 11, 1970, under an overcast sky and on a wet field, the Kansas City Chiefs, who were thirteen-point underdogs, upset the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7. Despite the new NFL gambling scandal, oddsmakers in Las Vegas refused to take the game off the boards.
⁹
It was the second consecutive year that the AFL champions defeated favored NFL teams.

Before the game, President Richard Nixon, an avid football fan and a longtime gambler, had called Hank Stram and told him,
“Dismiss it [the gambling scandal] from your mind and go out and play like champions. I know there is nothing to the rumors about Dawson. He shouldn't be upset about them. Would you tell him that for me?” Nixon also called after the game to congratulate Len Dawson.

Dawson, who had missed six games during the regular season because of his knee surgery, completed twelve of seventeen passes for 142 yards and one touchdown. Only one of his passes was intercepted. The thirteen-year-veteran quarterback deservedly was selected as the game's most valuable player. Gate revenues from the game were nearly $4 million. Super Bowl IV captured the largest television audience of any prior single-day sporting event.

Len Dawson told me, “After the victory, [CBS sportscaster and former New York Giants star] Frank Gifford was interviewing me. Before the cameras went on, he said, ‘Christ, everyone on the Giants team knows that guy [Don Dawson]. He was just one of those guys who seemed to get acquainted with football players.'”

When I asked Len Dawson how he was able to play so well in the Super Bowl under such conditions, he replied, “Throughout the week, once I hit the practice field, I was able to concentrate and focus my attention on what I had to do. On the day of the game, I knew what was there. I knew the pressures on me. My back was against the wall. I was guilty until proven innocent. I was there, and I was the story. I was the center of everything.

“You look for little signs that this might be your day. When I was warming up before the game, my arm felt great. That was one thing I could erase from my mind. The first play was a play pass, and I hit Mike Garrett for a first down. That really helped.”

CBS-TV, which broadcast the game, never directly mentioned the gambling charges in its four hours of coverage—and only referred to the “extra strain” Dawson had suffered.

With the investigation blown by the timing of the NBC report and without wiretap authorization or the cooperation of any of the gamblers or players involved, the 1970 probe into sports gambling collapsed. On February 13, federal officials—who had promised “several dozen” more arrests in the gambling case—instead dropped all charges against several of those already arrested in early January.

However, ten more gamblers were indicted on February
24.
¹⁰
Don Dawson and Howard Sober were among them. Dizzy Dean was named as an unindicted coconspirator. Don Dawson pleaded guilty and spent nine months at Lewisburg and Allenwood in Pennsylvania. One month after Dawson's release, former attorney general John Mitchell entered Allenwood after his conviction for his role in the Watergate cover-up. Mitchell's attorney was Bill Hundley, the former chief of NFL Security.

After the Super Bowl, the heat on Len Dawson was still not off. The IRS began a lengthy audit of his income-tax returns because he had allegedly failed to report a portion of his income. “Dawson's wife claimed that the omission of his income had been a mistake on her part,” an IRS official says. “The revenue agents did not believe this explanation but were forced to accept it because of ‘pressure on high.'“ The official says that the pressure came from the U.S. Department of Justice.

When I asked Dawson about this charge, he told me that he was not aware of any pressure from the Justice Department for the IRS to back off the investigation. To the contrary, he says that the IRS took a year and a half to conduct its probe of his finances.

“They came in after the Super Bowl,” Dawson says. “A guy from Detroit and the guy from the IRS sat down in our family room and told me, ‘You better have your lawyer with you.' They were honest. They were looking for some money in a secret bank account I supposedly had that had not been claimed. Really, they were looking for a payoff.

“They went through all the microfilm at the bank. In fact, I was on the board of the bank that I dealt with. They [the bank officers] were telling me the number of man-hours they [the IRS agents] spent going over everything—every deposit, every check. It was unbelievable.

“In the end, my wife was taking care of the books and maybe didn't report a couple of things. It had nothing to do with anything major. We're talking about a few hundred dollars. There was no hidden bank account, and that's what they were looking for. They found virtually nothing, except maybe a couple of hundred bucks from a speaking engagement—but nothing of any wrongful intent.”

24 Restaurants and Hotels

WITH THE PUBLIC PRESSURE off the World Champion Kansas City Chiefs, new little-known investigations involving the Chiefs and other NFL personnel were launched.

In December 1970, the Chiefs' Johnny Robinson purchased a swimming and tennis club/restaurant in Kansas City from Edward P. “Eddie Spitz” Osadchey, who had been described in U.S. Senate testimony as a “part of the Kansas City organized-crime structure.”
¹
However, Robinson was not buying the business straight out. Osadchey was holding a $275,000 promissory note on the sale, which was to be paid in monthly installments until 1980. Also, Robinson's partner in the club was Jim Moran of New Orleans, who had also been described by law-enforcement authorities as a close associate of both Carlos Marcello and New Orleans Saints owner John Mecom.

“We've managed to bring New Orleans cooking to steak and potato country,” Robinson told reporter Peter Finney. “In the fall, when our menu is extensive, Jimmy [Moran] comes up on Fridays and Saturdays [from New Orleans] to do the cooking himself.”

When the Kansas City Crime Commission began to investigate the transaction, Robinson said that he had bought the business with the permission of the NFL. “I went through the proper channels on this,” Robinson told me. “I notified the NFL and told them what I was going to do, and they told me to go ahead.”

Reflecting on the Robinson-Osadchey controversy, Aaron Kohn says, “Robinson placed himself in the total financial control
of this mob-connected guy because he owed all that money to him. This situation was evidence of the fact that the NFL was not meeting its responsibilities to the public. It demonstrated that they do not accept the high standard of responsibility to keep the sport untouched by compromising influences.”

Pete Rozelle, who had been supplied information about the relationship between Marcello and Moran by Kohn's Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, publicly denounced the Kansas City Crime Commission for its investigation of Robinson and called the transaction a “simple purchase of property.”

A similar arrangement was also made in 1970 by New Orleans running back Ernie Wheelright, who had formerly played with the New York Giants. He had opened two clubs in New Orleans. However, the real ownership of Central Park South, one of Wheelright's nightclubs, was traced directly to Carlos Marcello and Marcello's brother and son. The other lounge, the Zodiac Club, was owned by Anthony Glorioso, who had been indicted for his role in an interstate-gambling operation.

Once again, even after the NFL, the Saints, and Wheelright were notified of the underworld involvement in the clubs, the sales were permitted. The Saints' chief of security even helped to arrange them.

Rozelle, though critical of Wheelright's decision to go ahead with the deals, held a hearing on the matter at the NFL's New York offices. “The hearing showed that he wasn't culpable,” Jack Danahy told me. “He hadn't violated any rule.”

Wheelright quit football at the end of the 1970 season.

The same month that Robinson went to the NFL for permission to buy his restaurant, the FBI raided a Miami restaurant, the Bonfire, a popular hangout owned by fifty-nine-year-old Sam “Radio” Winer, a convicted bookmaker, who was another principal in the Beckley/Sklaroff bookmaking network. An FBI report described Winer as “a well-known Miami hoodlum.” Involved in the world of Bahamian gambling, Winer had also been a close friend of Mafia capo Mike Coppola and Lou Chesler. In October 1969, Earl Faircloth, the state attorney general in Florida, charged that the Bonfire was “controlled by Mafia money.” One law-enforcement official also said, “Winer was tight with Sklaroff and every O.C. [organized crime] figure on the beach.”

FBI supervisor Ralph Hill remembers the Bonfire raid and says, “Among the things we discovered were some sheets reflecting what we refer to as bottom-line figures which bookmakers
keep. Coach Hank Stram of the Kansas City Chiefs, his numbers were on these records—private, unlisted telephone numbers at home and his private, unlisted numbers at the field office. As a result, we interviewed Coach Stram about these numbers.”

The FBI interviewed forty-six-year-old, Chicago-born Stram in Miami in February 1971. Hill says, “Coach Stram denied any complicity with Sam Winer other than having been a patron of his restaurant when he was in Miami as an assistant coach at the University of Miami [and later] … When questions were proffered to [Stram] about the unlisted telephone numbers,” says the FBI agent, “his explanation was, ‘Well, I felt that he was calling me as a nice person, as a friend, to inquire about the health of ballplayers.'

“When questioned about the bottom-line figures [that were over $10,000] that were named on the sheets, he [Stram] said, ‘Well, it must have been a restaurant bill' that he incurred when he was in Miami during the Super Bowl the previous year. And it was explained to him that the Super Bowl was not played in Miami the previous year [rather it was in New Orleans], and the interview was concluded at that point.”

Hill added that the federal grand jury investigating Winer's operations had considered a subpoena for Stram to testify—but the Strike Force chief in Miami decided against issuing it.

When I asked Stram how his name ended up in Winer's address book, Stram explained, “Winer was a good friend of the University of Miami when I was an assistant coach there in 1959. Winer was also a great friend of Andy Gustafson, who was the head coach at the time. So anytime we had to entertain visiting players or any dignitaries, Andy would say, ‘Take them down to Radio's and have dinner.'

“So this one particular time, my wife, Monsignor Mackey, and I went over to Radio Winer's for dinner. We had a great dinner. And my wife loves stone crabs, and I do too. So during the discussion about the good meal we had, I mentioned to Radio, ‘God, I wish we could get stone crabs where we are [in Kansas City], because we like them so much.' He said, ‘That's no problem. I'll just send them to you.' I said, ‘Can you do that without any trouble? Won't they spoil?' And he said, ‘No, I'll package them up and send them to you in Kansas City.' I said, ‘How much will they be?' And he said, ‘Don't worry about that. I'll send them to you, and then let you know.'

“I gave him the address and phone number at my home and
office. I told him to call me before he sent them so that I knew when to pick them up.”

Stram says that he has no idea why his name appeared on Winer's bottom sheets and insists, “I have never gambled on anything in my life.” He added that whenever he went to Miami, “I would stop by to say hello to Radio and have dinner.”

Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt later pushed out Stram as head coach, saying, “I am determined that the Chiefs are going to be a source of pride. I am confident that this announcement will begin a new era in that respect.” Stram, who had been with the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs since the inception of the AFL, then became the head coach of John Mecom's New Orleans Saints.

In March 1970, San Diego Chargers owner Gene Klein
²
was registered at the twenty-one-room Acapulco Towers in Mexico during a meeting of major underworld figures. The meeting was reported in a confidential memorandum prepared by the Illinois Bureau of Investigation (IBI). Among those in attendance were Meyer Lansky and Morris Dalitz.