The Outfit (52 page)

In 1997, the author undertook new research for an ABC News film project that coincided with the release of the Seymour Hersh book
The Dark Side of Camelot.
One key task was to attempt to learn more about Joe Kennedy’s election appeal to the Outfit. What was learned added much detail to the long-rumored Sinatra contact. Although Frank Sinatra had previously refused all interview requests concerning his contacts with members of the underworld, that silence would be broken in 1997. After speaking with her father, Tina Sinatra was authorized to relay the following account:

A meeting was called [between Joe and Frank]. Dad was more than willing to go. It was a private meeting. I remember it was over lunch. I believe it was at Hyannis. Dad said he was ushered in. He hadn’t been to the house before. Over lunch Joe said, “I believe that you can help me in Virginia and Illinois with our friends. I can’t approach them, but you can.” Joe wanted Frank to approach the union leader with the most influence, which was Sam Giancana. Sam could rally his people - to make certain that neighborhoods were encouraged to get out and vote.

It gave Dad pause. I know that it did that because he said that it did that. But it still wasn’t anything he felt he shouldn’t do. So off to Sam Giancana he went. Dad calls Sam Giancana to make a golf game and told Sam of his belief and support of Jack Kennedy. And I believe that Sam felt the same way.

Apparently, Joe Kennedy decided that communicating with Mooney Giancana via Sinatra was unsatisfactory. Perhaps not trusting the crooner to make the case for Jack as strong as he could, Joe pressed to meet Mooney face-to-face. For years the talk of such a meeting has persisted in Chicago. Veteran
Chicago Tribune
Washington bureau chief Walter Trohan recently recalled what he had been hearing from ace police reporter (and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner) George Bliss: “He told me that in the course of seeking the presidency against Nixon, Joe Kennedy was dealing with Giancana. I couldn’t believe it at the time.” Former sports promoter and bookie Harry Hall, who knew Joe Kennedy, Mooney Giancana, and other luminaries, has a similar memory: “I spent a lot of time with the Kennedys in the Biltmore Hotel. Joe knew all the racketeers. I had heard he made a lot of promises to the Outfit for their support.” Recent interviews seem to, at long last, put some teeth into the reports Bliss and Hall were receiving.

One of Joe Kennedy’s oldest Chicago friends (and political allies) was the revered circuit court judge of Chicago William J. Tuohy, whom Kennedy had met in 1945. According to one well-placed source, when Joe needed to meet with Mooney Giancana, he asked Tuohy who might arrange it. Tuohy contacted the source, a close personal friend, who had served as an assistant state’s attorney in his office in previous years and was now well-known to represent members of the Outfit.

Robert J. McDonnell was described by his legal peers as “the rising star” in the state’s attorney’s office in the 1950s. One newsman went so far as to say “McDonnell could’ve been governor one day.” Born into a family (the Healys) that were the landed gentry of Chicago - McDonnell’s father worked with Joe Kennedy on the purchase of the Merchandise Mart, and his uncle was the premier public-works construction contractor in Chicago - McDonnell’s future seemed bright. However, along the way, McDonnell fell prey to the twin demons of booze and gambling. Soon he found himself working off his marker with the Outfit by defending them in court. This being the case in 1960, Tuohy knew McDonnell would know how to contact Giancana.

Although McDonnell knew many key mob players, at the time he had only a fleeting acquaintance with Mooney Giancana (in later years, he would marry the don’s daughter Antoinette). McDonnell told Tuohy that the way to reach Mooney was through his First Ward spokesman, Pat Marcy, who in turn was secretary to First Ward alderman John D’Arco. Tuohy, who indeed knew Marcy, thought the entire business was distasteful and made it clear that he was doing this only at the insistence of Joe Kennedy.

“Pat Marcy came over and talked with Judge Tuohy,” says McDonnell. “A few days later I was told that Mooney [Giancana] wanted to meet with me at the Armory Lounge.” The day he got the call, McDonnell drove to Giancana’s Forest Park headquarters. There Mooney informed him that he would attend the meeting, but only if it was kept secret. Two days later, Judge Tuohy called McDonnell. “The meeting is on for tonight at five o’clock in the judge’s chambers,” said the judge. “I want you there.”

Tuohy and Kennedy were already on-site when McDonnell arrived. Soon, Pat Marcy walked through the courthouse doors escorting Mooney Giancana. After making the introductions, Bob McDonnell left the men to talk in private. “As I was leaving, Judge Tuohy said to me, ’Wait for me, Bob. I’m just going to tell them to shut the doors when they’re finished.’” Tuohy and McDonnell exited, leaving the three men to their business. Exiting, Tuohy remarked to McDonnell, “I’m glad I’m not privy to this.” “He was very dispirited,” says McDonnell. “This was a man of the highest integrity.”

McDonnell is quick to emphasize that he has no firsthand knowledge of what the three men discussed. “But I later heard that Joe Kennedy was asking Mooney and Marcy what help they could bring to the election of his son. He was obsessed with the election of John Kennedy - absolutely obsessed with it., And I don’t know what deals were cut. I don’t know what promises were made.” Mooney’s brother Chuck later wrote, “All Mooney said was that he was too busy meeting with Joe Kennedy, working out the details of their agreement for Jack’s presidential campaign.” McDonnell adds, “This was the biggest secret in Chicago. Everyone was sworn to secrecy. Bill Tuohy was a highly religious, very moral man. I think he felt himself debased by Kennedy’s request. And I think he resented it. He did not discuss it again.”

Although McDonnell had no firsthand knowledge of what deal was struck, Mooney was telling his associates that, as a quid pro quo, he expected a hot line to the White House.

Following form, Mooney Giancana had to seek approval for such an alliance from his puppet masters, Accardo, Humphreys, and Ricca. “Even at that time,” Curly’s widow recalls, “Mooney didn’t make a move without the approval of the boys, you know.” If that approval was granted, then it would be assumed that Curly Humphreys, the gang’s political mastermind, would play a role in carrying out the directive. He did.

The episode is not only recalled by Jeanne Humphreys, but is recorded in her three-hundred-plus-page handwritten journal that details her extraordinary life with Curly. According to Jeanne, the “new business” was broached at one of the Outfit’s Thursday-night business dinners at Accardo’s Palace. She recalled her husband coming home the night the vote was taken to support the Giancana-Sinatra-Kennedy pact. “Mooney’s talking about trying to get that Joe Kennedy’s kid elected president,” Curly informed his wife. “He’s trying to impress Sinatra.” Through her husband, Jeanne picked up bits and pieces of what had transpired at the Palace. “Apparently, Joe had promised that his boys would back off the Outfit, especially in their Las Vegas business,” Jeanne said. “Mooney bragged about the assurances he got from Kennedy.”

The initial vote was two for the deal (Accardo and Giancana), and one opposed (Humphreys). Just as he had at Felix Young’s, Curly refused to fall in line. Jeanne said, “Murray was against it. He remembered Joe Kennedy from the bootlegging days - called him an untrustworthy ’four-flusher’ and a ’potato eater.’ Something to do with a booze delivery that Joe had stolen. He said Joe Kennedy could be trusted as far as he, Murray, could throw a piano.” Of course hijacking hootch during Volstead was considered fair game, and Joe Kennedy may also have been such a victim. Doc Stacher, Meyer Lansky’s boyhood friend and bootlegging partner, remembered an incident in 1927 in which a shipment of Joe’s booze from Ireland was stolen in a Boston gunfight in which nearly all of Kennedy’s men were killed by Bugsy Siegel’s violent troops. When Siegel was upbraided by Lansky, Bugsy explained, “It really wasn’t our fault. Those Irish idiots hire amateurs as guards.”

Perhaps Humphreys had other reasons to be wary of the association: His old chum Lucky Luciano had been double-crossed when he’d made a deal with a previous presidential candidate, Franklin Roosevelt. And then there was Bobby Kennedy. As Humphreys’ grandson George Brady recalled from his many trips to Chicago to visit Humphreys, “There was also trepidation about backing JFK because of Bobby. But, on the positive side, Frank [Sinatra] talked him up.”

All that was needed was the vote of board member Paul Ricca, currently in “college” in Terre Haute. “Murray had to go to see Paul in prison,” Jeanne remembers. “When he got back from seeing Paul, he said, ’They’ve all gone along with it now, that Jack Kennedy thing.’”

“Anyway, the vote was three to one in favor,” Jeanne says. “Murray was stunned that the others voted with Mooney, but he later remarked about how the ’spaghetti-benders’ all stick together.” An entry in Jeanne’s journal reads: “Murray said he thought Mooney was nuts and that he [Murray] was working on Paul’s [Ricca] immigration problems, with no time for screwball ideas. He paced and mumbled.” Regardless of his personal misgivings, Curly deferred to the majority vote. Jeanne asked her husband what this meant for his workload. “Nothing - if I can get away from it,” Curly responded. “I’ve got enough on my hands.” But in his gut, Humphreys knew there was no one else with his particular skills, and sooner or later, the election fix would become just one more piece of gang business on his plate.

The FBI, which had been attempting to follow Humphreys’ every move, could attest to the gangster’s hectic schedule. On May 23, the G followed Humphreys to Washington, where he lobbied the Outfit’s agenda. The FBI followed the gang boss to O’Hare Airport, and one agent later described Humphreys’ appearance, noting, “He was dressed in a very conservative black suit, wearing his glasses as always to conceal his blind eye. He had on a long-sleeved shirt, neatly showing an inch of linen. His shoes were bright polished, every inch of him looked like the CEO of Motorola or some other high profile Chicago company . . . he could have been anything he wanted in this world - an attorney, a congressman, a top legitimate businessman. I believe that.”

On a later trip to Washington, Humphreys met with Congressman Libonati to confer on the Ricca parole. Also on the agenda was Curly’s desire to have Libonati introduce legislation that would outlaw then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s surveillance techniques. Libonati had the temerity to tell a Chicago television reporter, “Yes, I know Giancana. [My] bill would cover him.” When Bobby Kennedy heard of the Libonati bill, he ranted, “If Libonati shows up in Congress next year, I’ll have him arrested!”

The Bureau watched as Curly left Washington’s Woodner Hotel, carrying a small package, “believed to be a thick wad of cash,” to Libonati’s 224 C Street home, and leaving without it. From there, Curly proceeded to the Hamilton Hotel, where he met with Congressman Thomas J. O’Brien. Upon returning to the Woodner, the Bureau learned, Humphreys “went to the room of a well-known Washington call girl where he apparently spent the rest of the night.”

Humphreys would return to the nation’s capital two weeks later to meet with prominent mob lawyer H. Clifford Adler.

Back in Chicago, Giancana’s soldiers coordinated the initial phase of the Joe Kennedy deal. The first order of business was to guarantee Jack Kennedy’s victory in the upcoming West Virginia primary on May 10. Although Kennedy had won the recent Wisconsin contest, the margin was far too slim to convince the national power brokers he could win the nation. Tied to the misgivings was the rampant anti-Catholicism in many parts of the country. In Wisconsin, Kennedy had failed to win even one of the four Protestant districts. Thus, the Kennedy team deemed rabidly anti-Catholic West Virginia the make-or-break primary. But the very state that campaign chronicler Theodore White called one of “the most squalid, corrupt, and despicable” states was about to meet its equal, in the form of Joseph Kennedy.

West Virginia state senator John Chernenko recently stated that just prior to the all-important West Virginia primary, he received a call from Dick Wright, the Kennedy chairman of the West Virginia primary, and one of the most powerful Democrats in the state. Wright requested that Chernenko go to Mingo Junction, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from West Virginia, to meet with Frank Sinatra. “The purpose of the meeting was for Sinatra to review the campaign in West Virginia and to see how much financial assistance was needed,” Chernenko said. No fan of Sinatra’s, Chernenko declined the offer. But soon, mob-controlled jukeboxes across the state began featuring Jack Kennedy’s campaign theme song, a reworded version of Sammy Cahn’s current hit “High Hopes,” sung by Frank. A Kennedy aide traversed the state paying tavern owners twenty dollars each to play the song repeatedly.

Nonetheless, as FBI wiretaps would later disclose, Sinatra’s and Giancana’s close friend Paul “Skinny” D’Amato, the manager of Atlantic City’s 500 Club, spent two weeks in the state dispensing over $50,000 for the Kennedy effort. D’Amato clarified to writers Hellerman and Renner that it was not the money that mattered so much - the Kennedys already had plenty of that - but it was the gang’s massaging of the poverty-stricken West Virginia pols. According to D’Amato, his boys’ contribution was in the form of “desks and chairs and supplies for politicians around the state.” The FBI taps also picked up a conversation wherein Giancana reminded Rosselli of “the donation that was made” to the Kennedy effort. What the FBI failed to learn was that, according to D’Amato, Joe Kennedy even paid him a personal visit and, in exchange for Skinny’s aid, promised that, if elected, his son Jack would allow deported New Jersey mobster Joe Adonis to return to the United States. Once again, Joe Kennedy’s zeal to see Jack elected would place his boy in a severely compromised position. (As president, Jack Kennedy refused to go along with the deal.) Corroboration for the direct Joe Kennedy D’Amato contact was obtained in 1988 by historian Dan B. Fleming, who spoke with Skinny’s next-door neighbor, Joseph DelRaso, now an attorney in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. “Skinny told me Joe Kennedy called him directly to help in the West Virginia campaign,” recalled DelRaso.