The Arrogance of Power (91 page)

10.
The Lansky associate in question was Gil Beckley, whose name appeared in Fincher's coded address book in 1966. Two years later some of Beckley's mob colleagues were convicted in a major stolen stocks case in which Rebozo featured controversially, as reported later in this chapter. (Moldea,
Interference,
op. cit., p. 292–; Sifakis, op. cit., p. 314.)

11.
Berg was quoted by
Newsday
in 1971 as saying Nixon “got a substantial discount.” The company's vice president, Francisco Saralegui, said he thought Nixon should have been given the sites for nothing. In his interview for this book Berg denied that Nixon got a special deal. (
Newsday,
Oct. 13, 1971; int. Donald Berg.)

12.
Berg acknowledged negotiating with a Lansky associate, Lou Chesler, about a planned deal in the Bahamas. See reference chapter 20 and chapter 20, Note 4. (Berg acknowledged:
Newsday,
Oct. 13, 1971.)

13.
Rebozo sued the
Washington Post
for a story on the stock theft case that asserted, quoting insurance investigator George Riley, that Rebozo had cashed $91,500 of the stock even after the investigator had notified him that it was stolen. Rebozo denied the investigator had told him that, and alleged libel. He demanded ten million dollars in damages. The case ended, after ten years of litigation, with a settlement under which both Rebozo and the
Post
donated undisclosed sums to the Boys' Clubs of America. The
Post
published a statement clarifying its “intentions” in publication of the article. Rebozo won no damages. (
WP,
Oct. 25, 1973;
Miami Herald,
Nov. 6, 1983; int. Ron Kessler.)

14.
A 1973 FBI report asserted that the bureau had “no derogatory information” about Rebozo. One should take into account, however, that Rebozo had long since engaged in unctuous correspondence with Director Hoover—Rebozo signed himself “Bebe”—and was a “close personal friend” of Miami special agent in charge Kenneth Whittaker. For reporting on the attitude of Hoover's FBI to organized crime, see
Official & Confidential, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,
by this author. (“no derogatory”: SAC Miami to acting director, May 30, 1973, FBI 62-112974-4; Rebozo, Hoover: corr. Jan. 14, 20, 1959, Dec. 2, 11, 1964, July 14, 1969, FBI 9436880-1, 62-109811-4185, 62-112974-3; SAC “friend”: SAC Miami to acting director,
supra.
)

15.
In 1996 and 1997 the author wrote to Rebozo asking for an interview in connection with this book. He had already suffered a stroke and sent a message declining. In 1971, when fit, he had refused to speak with reporters preparing the
Newsday
series cited in this chapter. Bebe
Rebozo died in 1998. (Author's letters to Rebozo, May 25, 1996, Feb 20, 1997, and Rebozo office phone message to author, March 7, 1997.)

1.
As in one who takes a pratfall. Nixon probably meant that he had to take the rap.

2.
Four months before his death in 1974, Warren told Alden Whitman of the
New York Times
he thought Nixon “the most reprehensible” president in the nation's history, one who had abused not only the office but the American people. In 1974, after Warren died, it was reported that in his last illness he had been denied admission to Bethesda Naval Hospital, which has traditionally cared for the nation's most distinguished citizens. According to Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg, Nixon's “inaction” may have been responsible for this. As a retired justice Warren needed White House approval to be received at Bethesda. (Miller, ed.,
Breaking of the President,
op. cit., p. 536.)

3.
Smith told the journalists it was $16,000. The figure later used, and reviewed by accountants and lawyers hired by the Republicans, was $18,235, almost all of which had been supplied to Nixon and spent. A further $11,000 had been collected since the convention and was still on deposit. (Price Waterhouse report,
U.S. News & World Report,
Oct. 3, 1952.)

4.
In his memoirs Nixon mentions having told Edson to phone Smith, as though to indicate that, as Edson put it in his article, he had “nothing to hide.” One of Nixon's principal reasons for allowing publication of this information at this time,” Edson wrote, “is to offset rumors about his finances.” Since such rumors had been current for months, Nixon may have prepared Smith in advance to receive such a call, as a ploy to preempt stories by less friendly journalists. He was to praise Edson's story as “objective,” as against the
New York Post
's “bombastic fantasy.” Edson would be manipulated in exactly that way ten years later, when he was fed the Nixon version of an impending story on Howard Hughes's $205,000 loan to Nixon's brother Donald. Then Nixon aides characterized him as “a friend.” According to press aide Herb Klein, “Nixon decided [it was] the best way to defuse such a story.” (
MEM,
p. 93; Nixon,
Six Crises,
op. cit., p. 754;
Chicago Daily News,
Sept. 18, 1952; Mazo, op. cit., p. 106–; Klein, op. cit., p. 415; Maheu and Hack, op. cit., p. 84.)

5.
The senator was California's William Knowland.

6.
On August 21, 1951, Nixon voted for the basing point bill, which the oil companies wanted, and the following month he voted against cutting the oil depletion allowance from 27 percent to 14 percent. As in the past, he energetically championed the oil companies' efforts to get access to tidelands (offshore) oil. So far as the dairy industry is concerned, one should note that by voting the way contributor Ghormley and other dairymen wanted, Nixon did not oblige Danish-born contributor Thomas Knudsen, who had hoped the United States would lift the quota on Danish cheese imports. (Oil: Drew Pearson column text, Box G 281, DPP,
New Republic,
Sept. 29, 1952; Knudsen: Kornitzer, op. cit., p. 189–.)

7.
Nixon was to deny having telephoned Finletter, but Drew Pearson noted privately that his research confirmed that the call was made. (Thomas Harrington telegram to DP, including message from RN, Nov. 3, DP to Harry Hoyt, Nov. 4, 1952, Box G281, DPP.)

8.
The casino management, however, was to fail in its suit against Smith in the United States. He claimed that the debts were uncollectable under U.S. law and, contrary to the advice of the embassy's attorney, under Cuban law. (
NYT,
Jan. 30, 1963;
MO,
p. 941; DP memo, Sept. 26, 1952, Box G 281, DPP; Pearson column, Oct. 29, 1962.)

9.
The denial, cited in
Look
magazine, did not detail the documentation that was supposedly available. Published references to the Hawaii trip do not settle the matter, although it is clear that Nixon arrived in Honolulu on April 4. The author has been unable to establish how long he stayed. Meanwhile available information on Smith's canceled check does not pin down the date of the Havana visit. The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
indicated it was written on April 15, while the
New York Times
quoted Smith as saying he stopped it on April 4, an obvious chronological impossibility. It is not even clear that the check was written by Smith while he was in Havana; one document suggests he may have done so later, in Florida. In the absence of full documentation of Nixon's movements and given the rather strong human testimony that he was in Havana, it is reasonable to conclude that he could have been there in either March or April. (
Look: Look,
Feb. 24, 1953; Hawaii:
Honolulu Advertiser,
Apr. 5, 1952,
JA,
pp. 198, 529, n. 19, citing Jack Drown letter of Apr. 30; and
PAT,
p. 112; check:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Oct. 30;
Miami Herald,
Sept. 26, 1952, and
NYT,
Jan. 30, 1953; check written in Florida?: Thomas Gaddis to DP, Sept. 28, 1952, Box G 281, DPP.)

10.
Rothman names the member of Congress only as “Johnson.” Representative Justin Johnson, a Republican from California, served from 1943 to 1957. (Rothman named: Norman Rothman, Internal Security—Cuba, June 26, 1961, in FBI Cosa Nostra files supplied to House Select Committee on Assassinations, released 1998, JFK Collection, NA.)

11.
According to his close associate Joseph Stacher, Lansky was one of the first to propose the assassination of Castro and discussed it with CIA contacts as early as 1959. It was at this time, Stacher said, that Lansky reached out to Dana Smith and Senator Smathers, in the hopes of getting the administration to “accept his assassination plan.” In 1960, according to exile leader Antonio de Varona, Lansky discussed “destroying Castro” at a meeting in Miami. Norman Rothman, for his part, said that he too was involved in discussions about killing Castro. (First: Eisenberg, Dan, and Landau, op. cit., p. 257; Varona, Rothman: House Select Committee on Assassinations, vol. X, pp. 171, 183 and corr. Michael Ewing; int. Gerry Hemming.)

12.
In his interview for this book, Clarke did not recall the date on the document he filched. Before the 1960 election, at a time he was doing work for Democrats and Republicans alike, he provided it to Robert Kennedy. The document showed Nixon had stayed at the Nacional, expenses paid, according to Clarke. Kennedy did not use the information.

13.
Dewey had made his name as a crime-fighting special prosecutor in the thirties. This author has seen no evidence demonstrating that he was ever corrupt. He did, however, have a long-term social relationship with the liquor millionaire Lewis Rosentiel, who was involved with the Mafia and specifically with Lansky. Later Dewey was reportedly involved in efforts to help crooked Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa get out of jail. (Not corrupt: Block, op. cit., p. 189; Rosenstiel: Dewey-Rosenthiel corr., Series 5, Box 163, Dewey Papers, University of Rochester, and Summers,
Official & Confidential,
op. cit., p. 248; Hoffa: Block, op. cit., pp. 133, 310.)

14.
Before the 1952 election the
New York Post
was passed a letter purportedly written by a Union Oil vice president, referring to an alleged 1950 payment to Nixon of fifty thousand dollars. The money had supposedly been provided by the oil industry and its associates. The
Post
could not authenticate the document and printed nothing, while Drew Pearson referred to it obliquely after the election. A Senate subcommittee later concluded that the letter was forged.
Look
magazine linked the affair to an alleged campaign of “forgeries, false charges, innuendoes” in which President Truman had himself participated. (
NYT,
Feb. 10, 12, 1953;
Look,
Feb. 24, 1953; copies of documents in Box G 281, DPP; Abell, ed., op. cit., pp. 237, 238, 239.)

1.
Columnist Drew Pearson failed to get representatives of the Anti-Defamation League to back the claim that Malaxa was anti-Semitic. In the course of a long-running libel suit against Pearson, however, Malaxa admitted on oath that he had paid one of the ADL leaders, Rabbi Paul Richman, to help with his immigration problems. When the case was called for trial, Malaxa's lawyers withdrew the action against Pearson and agreed to pay his legal costs. (Pilat, op. cit., p. 17–; Pearson memo to editors, June 5, 1962, Box G 192, 2/3, DPP.)

2.
Nixon's benign attitude to Romanian exiles with unsavory war records was not limited to Malaxa. In 1955, as vice president, he invited an émigré named Viorel Trifa, who at the time styled himself a bishop in the Romanian Orthodox Church in exile, to offer the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Trifa was tied to the Nazis and involved in the murder of Jews in Romania in World War II. The Institute for the Study of Genocide described him as a “prime mover” of the 1941 massacre of Jews, the pogrom in which Malaxa had also been implicated. Trifa was eventually deported from the United States in 1984 because of his background. (Trifa prayer: Blum, op. cit., p. 116; Wiesenthal Center: Aaron Brietbart, of Wiesenthal Center to author, May 26, 1999; background: origins of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, by Richard Korn, Korn Archive, Web site, 1997; “10
^th
Anniversary of the Death of Archbishop Valerian,” ed. Rev. Vasile Hategan, Jan. 14, www.roca.org; Loftus and Aarons: op. cit., p. 224; Hazard, op. cit., p. 203, Blum, op. cit., p. 114–; deported:
NYT,
Feb. 2, Aug. 15, 1984.)

3.
Lyman Kirkpatrick, who had been chief of operations under Frank Wisner in the CIA's Directorate of Plans, would formally advise the INS that Malaxa was “considered entirely unscrupulous . . . a dangerous type of man. . . .” (
WP,
Nov. 16, 1979; John Ranelagh,
The Agency,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 191.)

4.
According to an AP dispatch on October 2, 1952, Nixon did say Truman, Acheson, and Stevenson all were three “traitors of [
sic
] the high principles in which many of the nation's Democrats believe.” He claimed that a tape recording confirmed this, although the author has been unable to locate such evidence. Truman's biographer Merle Miller made the point that in the absence of such electronic proof, what Nixon really said must remain as uncertain as Joseph McCarthy's precise words in February 1950, when he made claims about Communist penetration of the State Department. “No matter really,” wrote Miller. “
Traitors
was the operative word”—and Truman never forgave Nixon for using it. (Miller,
Plain Speaking,
op. cit., p. 178, fn.;
MEM,
p. 112.)

5.
The other man Truman said he could not stand was former Missouri Governor Lloyd Stark, who had fawned on him to get his support, then turned on him during a Senate campaign. (Miller,
Plain Speaking,
op. cit., p. 178.)