Tag: SAM GIANCANA

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Nicholas Celozzi is an important part of the upcoming film because he will be a producer and he wrote a first draft of the script. Therefore its important to examine his 2011 documentary about Sam Giancana, Momo: The Sam Giancana Story. As I wrote in the first part of this essay, that film is rather prosaically produced, and it is only adequate as a sophomore’s version of Giancana’s life. Yet what makes it worse is that in its second half, it takes off into what I call the Giancana mythology.

As I have tried to show, Sam Giancana had a higher profile than either Tony Accardo or Paul Ricca. At times, its almost as if he tried to raise his profile. Doing things like getting in a shouting match with an FBI agent at O’Hare Airport, and informing the agent, Bill Roemer to tell RFK to contact Frank Sinatra about any problems with The Outfit; these were off limits to someone like Accardo. Accardo’s belief was it was much easier to work in the dark than in the light. But because of incidents like these, because of his public romance with Phyllis Maguire and also due to his role in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro, Giancana became probably the most publicly identified big city Don since Al Capone.

About halfway through Celozzi’s documentary, he begins to indulge in the mythology. Much of this owes itself to the 1992 best-selling book Double Cross. I have written about that volume more than once and exposed it as a bad novel. As we shall see, it is not to be taken seriously. Anyone who does either has an agenda or has not done their homework.

For instance, in William Brashler’s solid book on Giancana, one will not see any mention of Marilyn Monroe in the index. Which is as it should be. But in Celozzi’s film, her picture comes up right after the opening credits. And if we buy this film, Sam knew Monroe from way back. He was introduced to her by John Rosselli. Sam had invested in her career. But that is just for starters. Now Celozzi dives into National Tattler territory. Sam found out from Bob Maheu that the CIA had tapes of President Kennedy in bed with Monroe. Maheu then said that JFK dumped Monroe and Bobby Kennedy then began an affair with her.

Even that isn’t enough. Sam learned that Monroe had love letters from Bobby Kennedy at her house. Giancana now schemed to have two killers terminate Monroe with a suppository thus making it appear a suicide. But scattering the letters through the house, thus exposing RFK and driving him from office. But, according to the film, somehow the Secret Service got there and stole the letters.

Everything in those above two paragraphs is unadulterated horse crap. Brashler never mentioned Monroe, because she never had any attachment to the mobster, either financial or emotional. Monroe authority Don McGovern closely examined the rise of Monroe’s career. He concluded that The Outfit had nothing to do with it. The two men most responsible for her ascent were Joe Schenck and Johnny Hyde, particularly the latter. (Murder Orthodoxies, pp. 409-11) Much of this Monroe malarkey originates with Double Cross. McGovern took the section of that book dealing with Monroe and sliced and diced it. For instance, if we believe the novel then Chicago owned Marilyn’s contract when she was seventeen, named Norma Jeane, and married to Jimmy Dougherty in the San Fernando Valley. Which is a non-starter.

McGovern also blows up the whole suppository story—at length. To raise just one point: if that would have been employed there would have been more of the drug found in her blood stream than her liver, the opposite of what happened. (McGovern, p. 514) Further, Double Cross maintains that Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles the day Monroe passed. (Chuck Giancana, p. 314). This was conclusively disproven by Sue Bernard’s book Marilyn: Intimate Exposures.(pp. 186-87) Finally, why would the Secret Service have been at Monroe’s house for any purpose? President Kennedy was back east at the time.

But beyond that, as McGovern has explained, there is simply no credible evidence that Bobby Kennedy ever had any kind of affair with Monroe. And the two people most responsible for that false claim, David Heymann and Jeanne Carmen, have been shown to be serial fabulists. Carmen actually ended up stating, please sit down: that Rosselli murdered Giancana over Marilyn! In light of what we have established about Giancana’s death, this is pure fantasy. (See “Classic Blondes, Jeanne Carmen”, by April VeVea, 4/9/18)

II

In the Giancana documentary, Celozzi also uses the ever evolving tall tales of the late Judith Exner. Specifically that she was somehow a courier between the White House and Giancana for various nefarious functions like the plots to kill Castro. Exner’s fictions began in earnest back in 1988 for People magazine. After writing a near 300 page book in 1977 for a combined rights sale of what would be well over a million dollars today, it seems that Exner left out some rather important matters about her relations with both President Kennedy and Sam Giancana. What makes this lacuna even more strange is that her co-writer was Ovid Demaris, Demaris specialized in the Mafia, was an idolator of J. Edgar Hoover, and did what he could to prop up the Warren Commission cover up of President Kennedy’s assassination.

In spite of that, Exner evidently had temporary amnesia back in 1977. For today’s equivalent of another 130,000 dollars from People magazine, she managed to enter into recovered memories syndrome and now recalled what she could not in 1977 or in her testimony before the Church Committee. To anyone actually versed in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro, what she dumped out in 1988 is not just false. It is so bad that one wonders how it got printed.

This time out, Exner’s writing partner was allegedly none other than Kitty Kelley. (I say allegedly, because as we shall see, Kelley was not active in the writing.) In this edition of Exner’s story, unbeknownst to her, she was actually carrying messages between Washington and Chicago, for, among other things, the liquidation of Fidel Castro. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 333). But it went beyond that. Kennedy was actually meeting with both Giancana and Rosselli! And get this: At the White House! After arranging these meetings, Exner realized retroactively that it was about terminating Castro.

In the real world of course, this is pure malarkey. The idea that somehow two well-known mobsters like Rosselli and Giancana would be anywhere near the White House is science fiction. And as the 145 page CIA Inspector General Report proves, the Kennedys were never involved in the CIA/Mafia plots. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 328-29)

It was later revealed that this whole pile of Exnerian rubbish was fabricated. Why? Because Exner and Kelley, to put it mildly, did not get along. As author George Carpozi discovered, the pair spent most of their time fighting because Kelley wanted to milk Exner for material on Frank Sinatra for an upcoming book. But the problem was the magazine had too much money invested in the project—six figures. To salvage that investment, the article ended up being prepared by the editors. (ibid, p. 334)

As I have written in my recent two-part expose about Sy Hersh, Exner told so many lies that: 1.) Proposed corroborating witnesses couldn’t stomach her, and 2.) She could not keep track of her own prevarications.

Concerning the first, Hersh got a man named Martin Underwood to say he was a witness to Giancana getting the messages from Exner. (Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, pp. 304-05) Unfortunately for Hersh, Exner and ABC, Underwood refused to appear for Peter Jennings on their TV special based on Hersh’s book. When Underwood was questioned under oath by the Assassination Records Review Board, (ARRB) we found out why he was a no show. He now denied the whole episode; saying that “he had no knowledge about her alleged role as a courier”. (ARRB Final Report, pp. 112, 135-36)

Concerning point 2, Hersh wrote in his book that Bobby Kennedy was in on this messaging between the White House and Giancana. Exner told Hersh that RFK would tap her on the shoulder and ask, “Are you still comfortable doing this? We want you to let us know if you don’t want to.” (Hersh, pp. 307-08) Well, if such was the case, then how does one explain an exchange Exner had with the late Larry King on his program of February 4, 1992. King asked her about any relationship with RFK and she replied with a single world : None.

The whole contention of this “Washington-Chicago messaging” is fundamentally preposterous. For the simple matter that, as revealed in part 1, the FBI and the Justice Department had a massive surveillance program on Giancana. This began shortly after the infamous 1957 Apalachin meeting in New York, which exposed in public a national network of organized crime. After that embarrassment, J Edgar Hoover began his Top Hoodlum Program in major cities, but with special attention to Chicago. That team of top agents began a program that created wall to wall monitoring—including pervasive electronic surveillance—of the Chicago mob. And especially on Giancana, since by 1957 he was the titular leader. The idea that this “Exner messaging” would not turn up on all those reels and reels of tape is more than just ridiculous. Its risible. Its even more risible when one realizes that RFK knew all about it and pushed it even further. Thus placing himself right in Hoover’s crosshairs. Please. (Man Against the Mob, by William Roemer, pp. 74-78, 167)

III

But because Momo: The Sam Giancana Story buys into Exner’s fantasies, it has to go all the way with them. So inevitably we get the whole elections heist of 1960. Which is Exner as transformed by the novel Double Cross. What that means is this. For People Exner said that it was not just the Castro plots she was “messaging” about. It was also the West Virginia primary which was held on May 10, 1960. (Since she meet JFK on February 7 of that year, we are supposed to believe the relationship progressed to a national political level at warp speed.) And, of course, the general election in November of 1960. In Double Cross this got amplified into Joseph Kennedy asking for Giancana’s help to get his son elected, with his word that the new president would lay off the pressure on him once elected. Oh, and I almost forgot, Joe knew The Outfit since he had been a bootlegger.

Two authors blew up the last part of this mythology. Daniel Okrent wrote one of the best books on Prohibition. Towards the end of his volume he examined this charge of Joe Kennedy being part of the bootlegging industry. He cogently observes that since Kennedy had to be congressionally approved for the six appointments that presidents gave him, there were extensive investigations of his background. In over 800 pages of inquiry, there was not one piece of evidence revealing this alleged black market business. What makes this even more compelling is that the first three appointments occurred right after Prohibition had been repealed. Therefore, why was no one willing to rat out Papa Kennedy? (Last Call, p. 369)

As Okrent adds, Joe Kennedy did get into the liquor business, but it was after Prohibition had been repealed. In light of that, he was not a bootlegger. It was legal. (ibid, p. 367)

The other book that helped expose this mythology was David Nasaw’s biography, The Patriarch. That work contained the widest and most detailed accounting of Joe Kennedy’s wealth ever published. Joe Kennedy began by investing in the stock market and distressed properties. In fact he joined Hayden/Stone, the largest stock broker in New England, in 1919 when Prohibition passed. (Are we to believe he was putting up stills at those distressed properties?)

But this was only the beginning for the multimillionaire. He made so much off a booming stock market that he took those holdings and chose to get into the movie business. One reason he got so wealthy was that insider trading was legal at that time. (Nasaw, p. 78) With that stock market and real estate wealth he put together a film distribution and exhibition company, and then bought his own theaters in the northeast. (Ibid, pp. 59-67). In just three years, Kennedy resigned Hayden/Stone and opened up his own bank.

Joe Kennedy made so much money in the film business, he first moved to New York, and then bought a second home in Beverly Hills. Both estates had servants and chauffeurs. He bought a Rolls Royce. (Nasaw, pp. 87-89) Joe Kennedy distributed 51 pictures in one year! At a time when there were 20,000 theaters in America. But Joe also purchased stocks in film companies and was in demand as a chief executive. He wound up running three companies. And he demanded and got stock options, which he could trade at any time. (Nasaw, pp. 119-27). But he never got out of real estate. In 1947 he purchased the Merchandise Mart in Chicago for 12 million. In 2007 it was valued at nearly a billion.

So the idea that Joe would jeopardize this legitimate financial empire he had to get into something criminal is just not credible. Especially since his overall ambition was to get his children into politics. In other words, according to Celozzi, Joe would sacrifice both his financial fortune and his children’s careers to do something illegally that he did eventually do legally.

IV

John Binder pulled out the rug on the other part of the Double Cross fantasy. Namely the idea that Giancana helped put Kennedy over the top in Illinois. Author Binder has shown that there is not any evidence that Giancana delivered an advantage to Kennedy in the wards The Outfit controlled. In fact, they actually performed under par that year. (Public Choice, February 2007, “Organized Crime and the 1960 Presidential Election.)

The other election that the Mob devotees mention is the West Virginia primary. Again, that contention is rendered dubious under analysis. There are two good books on the subject. One by Dan Fleming—Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960—and one by Ray Chafin—Just Good Politics. The former is an after the fact academic study. The latter is written by a prominent union member who saw it all from the inside as it was happening. Neither author detected any kind of mob influence or any trace of Skinny D’Amato, the man Double Cross says Giancana sent to West Virginia to work with local sheriffs and officials. (Chuck Giancana, p. 284). For example, Fleming did 80 interviews, and visited some shady underworld venues and characters. No word of D’Amato. (Fleming, pp. 170-71) And as the author notes, no subsequent investigation by either the FBI or the state authorities ever uncovered any illegality. Not even one performed by Barry Goldwater who hired a former FBI official, Walter Holloway, to investigate. (Fleming, pp. 107-12)

The authors who prop up this whole Double Cross Illinois idea are so agenda-driven, and the people who listen to it are so thoughtless that they ignore something quite important and obvious. Kennedy would have won in 1960 even if he had lost Illinois due to the structure of the Electoral College. (For those who desire a more in depth examination of these fatuous electoral issues, please see the second half of my review of Mark Shaw’s Denial of Justice)

I won’t examine the other nutty Mob claims in this documentary, that is about Joe Kennedy and the Purple Gang (?) and Frank Costello. In light of the above factual record, they see to me to have the credibility and gravitas of a Three Stooges comedy. (in fact, as Okrent notes, Al Capone’s 93 year old piano tuner once claimed that Joe Kennedy came to Capone’s house to trade a shipment of Irish whiskey for a load of Capone’s Canadian variety.) But I will add this, Celozzi cuts out almost everything about Bobby Kennedy and his blistering public attacks on the Cosa Nostra in the fifties. Which is quite an omission since it was from his position on the McLellan Committee that RFK was launched into national prominence. Maybe Celozzi does not want to show this since it would render questionable any idea that somehow Bobby would barter away his almost messianic mission once he became Attorney General.

Let us be plain. This whole fractured framework was and is a way for a gang of criminals to carry out revenge on the Kennedy clan for exposing them, ridiculing them, demeaning them in public and placing them in jail. At one point, almost bringing them to their knees. (HSCA Vol. V, p. 455) Its their way of saying: “Well, who do those Kennedys think they were anyway? The father was no better than us.” The fact that its not true and the idea that RFK would be part of it, that does not matter. Its sensational, raw meat, tabloid stuff. And that is what, in large part, the MSM has catered to—especially with the rise of cable TV in the late eighties and early nineties. Far from being true history, what all this does is reveal the shallowness of the culture we live in today.

V

Momo: The Sam Giancana Story ends with two murders. The first is the killing of President Kennedy in Dallas. The second is the slaying of Giancana in Chicago after his return from Mexico. For the latter, the film generally follows the outline I sketched in part one i.e. about Blasi and Accardo. The one exception being that it maintains that Phyllis McGuire got Sam’s money. It does not explain how or why this occurred. For according to The Don the couple had split and Giancana had a new west coast paramour. (Brashler, pp. 296-97)

In the documentary, Celozzi says that Oswald was suggested by Carlos Marcello. Giancana arranged the hit team of Richard Cain, Chuck Nicoletti and Phil Alderisio. He then got J. D. Tippit and Roscoe White who, according to Celozzi, were on his payroll to shoot Oswald. But Oswald killed Tippit and therefore Jack Ruby was brought in to murder Oswald.

As the reader can see, Giancana brother Pepe’s story differs from brother Chuck’s Double Cross. According to Chuck’s novel, there was a group of assassins. The three above plus Charles Harrelson and Jack Lawrence and two nameless men brought in by Santo Trafficante. (Chuck Giancana, p. 334). Another contradiction: in Double Cross, TIppit and White were not on Giancana’s dole, they were CIA men. (ibid, p. 335)

There are two different versions of what Sam was doing that day. According to the documentary, one of his daughters says he was at home. In news stories, Celozzi says Pepe was driving Sam around for a couple of days. (Deadline, June 27, 2022). Also, according to Daily Mail, Celozzi’s assassination team has now changed for the feature film. John Rosselli is a part of it. (July 15, 2022.). The problem with that is simple: Johnny was first in Las Vegas, and then in Los Angeles during that assassination weekend. (Lee Server, Handsome Johnny, pp. 418-19). As Larry Hancock has written, Johnny may have been in Vegas to escape the FBI surveillance on him.

In Double Cross, Roscoe White killed Tippit when the patrolman showed signs of cold feet. (Giancana, p. 335). In the documentary, Oswald killed Tippit. But in the Daily Mail interview Celozzi now has Chuck Nicoletti, not White, in the car with Tippit.

I should add one last caveat from a most credible source. As stated in part one, FBI agent William Roemer had at least four electronic devices planted in Giancana’s meeting places by 1963. He listened to all of this coverage and he wrote that he never heard of any discussion of an attempt on JFK, or RFK for that matter. And, post facto, there was no indication of any such thing either. He found it hard to understand how it could have escaped his team. (Roemer, Man Against the Mob, p 188).

So do I.

How many brothers of Sam Giancana are going to rise and tell their version of how Momo did away with John Kennedy. Recall, Chuck was at least alive when he wrote his novel. Pepe died 27 years ago.

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Go to Part 1 of 2

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The first announcement I saw was on last June 27, 2022. It was in the Hollywood trade paper Deadline. It said that David Mamet was going to direct a film version of a Nicholas Celozzi script about Celozzi’s great uncle Sam Giancana. In describing the script, the key statement in that story was the following:

…that purports to tell how his great uncle, the notorious Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, arranged the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as revenge for trying to bring down organized crime after the mob helped put JFK in the White House.

The story also stated that Bonnie Giancana, Sam’s daughter, will be a consultant and executive producer.

David Mamet has a strong interest in the JFK case. Oliver Stone and I met with him about two years ago for lunch at a restaurant in Brentwood. He was kind enough to bring along copies of his script called Blackbird. That was an interesting entertainment about the possible alteration of the Zapruder film. As noted in the article, someone pulled the plug on that production the day before they were to start filming, even though Cate Blanchett was signed as the star.

Let us now leap forward to another story in Deadline, dated May 15, 2023. In 11 months, Celozzi put together a cast consisting of Al Pacino, John Travolta, Viggo Mortenson, Shia La Beouf, Rebecca Pidgeon and Courtney Love. In this installment, the story line is still the same: “a hit ordered by Chicago mob kingpin Sam Giancana as payback for JFK’s attempt to undermine the mob after they helped get him elected.” The story then parenthetically adds that this theme was a big part of Oliver Stone’s JFK. Which it was not. In fact, I don’t even recall it being any part of the 1991 feature film.

In the first article Celozzi states that much of his material is based on stories he recalled hearing from a guy named Pepe Giancana, real name Joseph. He was a brother of Sam who died in 1996.

The longest story I have seen about this project was in the Daily Mail last July 15^th. It turns out that in two days in November of 1963 (the original title of the script), Pepe—a lowly bookmaker—drove Sam around. He had to since Giancana had sent men to Dallas for 11/22/63. Their job was to help Lee Oswald murder JFK, but to also make sure Oswald did not talk afterwards. Celozzi told reporter Tom Leonard that the three men in Dallas were Charles Nicoletti, John Rosselli and Jack Ruby. But they did not have a clear idea of how the murder would be done. It turned out Rosselli was to take out Kennedy if Oswald missed and Nicoletti was to kill Oswald before he was apprehended.

Pepe told Celozzi that Oswald misfired from the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository. So Rosselli fired and hit JFK. This caused Oswald to flee the building. Nicoletti was in a car with patrolman J. D. Tippit and was screaming at Oswald to get in, but he did not. So they followed and TIppit caught up with him but Oswald shot the policeman. Nicoletti followed Oswald but lost him. Sam then contacted Jack Ruby. According to Celozzi, Jack knew he only had six months to live since he had cancer. So he polished off Oswald.

After reading these stories, I decided to go back and look at a documentary film made by Celozzi about ten years ago. It was called Momo: The Sam Giancana Story. Because two of the main talking heads were Sam’s daughters—Francine and Antoinette—the documentary was rather a warm and fuzzy look at the Chicago Don who, according to the FBI, was responsible for about 13 murders as he was working his way up the ladder in Chicago. The first half of that film was passable as a biography. But left some important details out. Since Giancana is the major character in the upcoming feature, let us fill in some factors that help spell out the man’s life. Including the probability that a pall bearer at his funeral, Butch Blasi, was his likely murderer.

II

Giancana was not the real name of the family. It was Giangana and they stemmed from Sicily. (William Brashler, The Don, p. 12) Leaving Italy, Sam’s father Antonio moved into a section of Chicago called The Patch, which was the equivalent of New York’s Little Italy. Sam (original name Salvatore), was born in 1908 and his mother died when he was two. (Sam the Cigar, by Fergus Mason, p. 19) Antonio remarried—actually twice—and eventually the family had 8 children. His father was not very kind to Salvatore and physically abused him. Sam was thrown out of school and escorted to St Charles Reformatory.

When he left the reformatory in 1921, Sam joined a gang of juvenile delinquents in The Patch called The 42’s. That title was based on the Ali Baba legend of the 40 thieves. (Brashler, p. 32) For Sam, this was a kind of apprenticeship for his future career in La Cosa Nostra. The 42’s pulled off burglaries and stole cars, graduating to bombings and murders. But they also learned how to manipulate the system by paying off cops and judges. This was done by collecting dues from members. (Susan McNicoll, Mafia Boss: Sam Giancana, p. 10) But still, shortly after marrying his only wife Angeline DeTolve, Sam went to Joliet prison on charges of attempted burglary.

Sam made his reputation as what was called a “wheel man” or getaway driver. (Brashler, p. 33) That ability, combined with an ill-fated amendment, is what caused Sam to come to the attention of La Cosa Nostra in Chicago. Due to the 18^th amendment and the accompanying Volstead Act, in January of 1920 America went dry. Sam became a transporter of illicit liquor between men like Joe Esposito and the Genna brothers who set up a series of stills.(McNicoll, pp. 10-12) Esposito was killed in a murder in which Giancana was the getaway driver.

The first leader of this profitable Chicago network was Big Jim Colosimo, who brought in Johnny Torrio from New York. Torrio ended up killing Colosimo over control of liquor distribution. Torrio had stills set up in Canada and he expanded the business scope by opening up speakeasies all over the city. But Torrio was then shot in 1925, returned to Italy and Al Capone, Torrio’s partner, took over. (Mason, p. 27) Sam became a driver for Capone’s gang and was inducted as a member in 1926. (ibid, p. 30) He was also arrested for murder around this time, but got off when the chief witness was killed.

Capone was convicted of income tax evasion in 1931. He was paroled in 1939 but did not return to live in Chicago. He died in Florida in 1947. When Capone was jailed, control of the Chicago mob was given to Frank Nitti and Paul Ricca. And it was around that time that Lucky Luciano set up the national commission of organized crime. (Brashler, p. 68)

Ricca liked Giancana but Sam was busted again in 1939. He got a four year term for manufacturing alcohol without a license. This ended up being a blessing in disguise. Because while in prison he met up with a man named Bill Skidmore. It was Skidmore who introduced him to Eddie Jones. Jones was the leading member of a family who ran the lottery rackets in the African American community. To say this was profitable does not begin to describe the money it brought in: the low estimates being $15,000 per day. (Brashler, p. 91; Mason p. 39) Skidmore knew about this and he knew who Jones was, since he was in the same cell block. Eddie Jones did something that most of his henchmen did not do: he talked to Caucasian members of the Chicago mob, now called The Outfit. Jones and Skidmore took Sam to school on the numbers game. Giancana did the computations and figured no other racket The Outfit was in had this kind of profit margin.

III

Jones had made a mistake. For when Sam got out of prison in late 1942 he understood what could bring him both wealth and stature in The Outfit. In May of 1946 he kidnapped Eddie and threatened him with death unless he gave up his lottery racket to Sam. In return Sam would give him a cut and a lump sum of 250,000 dollars. Jones took the offer he could not refuse and left for his villa in Mexico. (Brashler, pp. 101-05)

This greatly expanded Giancana’s wealth, since the Jones lottery was not just in Illinois but in at least three other states: Iowa, Maine and Idaho. This prize greatly curried favor with Tony Accardo, Ricca and Jake Guzik, the triumvirate over The Outfit. Giancana now became the equivalent of Accardo’s chief of staff. (Brashler, p. 112). But there was still one holdout for the African American lottery in Chicago, a man named Ted Roe. This feud between Roe and Giancana went on for years, with several casualties. Finally, Sam had Roe killed in late summer of 1952.

Sam now had so much money he could set up genuine small businesses and list himself as a salesman for his brother-in-law’s Central Envelope Company. He used his new wealth to set up gambling centers through wire services. All the while Accardo was teaching Sam the ways of The Outfit. When his student was fully tutored, Accardo decided to step down since he was under intense pressure from the IRS. Giancana assumed power in 1955, a year after his wife died. (Mason, p. 54). The understanding was that Accardo would serve as first consigliere.

But once Sam took power in Chicago, it was almost deemed that his would be a rocky reign. First, back in 1950-51 Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings throughout the country on organized crime and many of these were broadcast to a wide audience. (McNicoll, p. 41) That was the first national exposure of La Cosa Nostra. And people like Accardo, Ricca, and Frank Costello testified. The single division of the Chicago Police Department investigating organized crime gave Kefauver some materials they had on The Outfit. One of the outcomes of this attention is that it made it difficult for the FBI to now deny that La Cosa Nostra existed in America.

IV

In 1957 two events occurred which further exposed organized crime in America to a point that there was no turning back. One was caused simply by accident i.e. the discovery of the Apalachin meeting in New York. Scores of Cosa Nostra leaders were gathered there to discuss, among other things, the aftermath of the attempted murder and the actual murder of, respectively, Frank Costello and Albert Anastasia. The local authorities thought it was odd to have so many expensive cars gathering in such a rural location. When they discovered many of them were registered to known criminals, they called in state policemen, set up roadblocks and raided the home of Joseph Barbara. Giancana never wanted the meeting to be there and pushed to have it in Chicago. (Brashler, p. 172) But he did attend, and was one of the capos to escape into the woods while over sixty were apprehended. But their convictions were overturned on appeal the following year. This event provoked J. Edgar Hoover to form the FBI’s Top Hoodlum Program. (ibid, p. 135) As part of it a special team was assigned to Chicago. Men who were college graduates, some with law degrees e.g. Ralph Hill, Vincent Inserra, Jack Roberts and, as we will see, Bill Roemer.

The other event that made things troublesome for the Cosa Nostra in 1957 was the formation of the McClellan Committee, sometimes billed as the Rackets Committee. That committee was led by Senator John L. McClellan, a Democrat from Arkansas. But both Senator John Kennedy and his brother Robert served on it. The former as a committee member and the latter as Chief Counsel and investigator. This is where RFK’s legendary pursuit of Teamster leaders Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa began. Bobby soon discovered that Hoffa had set up several ‘paper locals” for members of Cosa Nostra to run, these were local unions in name only which Hoffa used to prop up vote counts. Therefore, Kennedy’s inquiry spread over into organized crime. When Apalachin occurred, he immediately went to FBI headquarters and was shocked when he found out how little information Hoover had on these big city Mafiosi. (McNicoll, p.49)

Like its predecessor, the Kefauver Committee, the McClellan hearings attracted much media attention, some of it on live television. In front of cameras, the public saw Beck take the fifth amendment 117 times. He was indicted for tax evasion in May of 1957. Later that year, the AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters from membership. In one of his most memorable confrontations, Bobby Kennedy finally got Giancana in front of the committee. This was after Sam had criticized the committee at length to reporter Sandy Smith. (Brashler, pp. 156-57) RFK did not take this mildly and he referred to Giancana as ‘Chief gunman for the group that succeeded the Capone mob.” Which was more or less accurate. (Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 172) In June of 1959 Giancana took the Fifth Amendment 33 times as Pierre Salinger set forth his past record. Then the following much quoted exchange took place:

RFK: Would you tell us if you have opposition from anybody you dispose of …by having them stuffed in a trunk? Is that what you do Mr. Giancana?
SG: I decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.
RFK: Would you tell us about any of your operations or will you just giggle every time I ask you a question?
SG: I decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.
RFK: I thought only little girls giggled Mr. Giancana. (ibid)

Around this time, the FBI was beginning to get some traction against The Outfit. Hoover allowed them to use electronic surveillance, to recruit informants, and to follow Giancana wherever he went. By following Giancana, Gus Alex, Murray Humphreys, Jake Guzik and Frank Ferraro, they began to locate their meeting places. They applied for permission to bug their conference rooms and this was approved. But once this was in place, something really bizarre upset the proverbial apple cart.

The CIA recruited Giancana to kill Fidel Castro.

V

There have been many renditions of how this recruitment happened, how it progressed and its ultimate failure. Many of which the reader should avoid. Perhaps the very worst is in Seymour Hersh’s hatchet job of a book, The Dark Side of Camelot. But one of the first things the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) did in the mid-nineties was to declassify the CIA’s Inspector General’s Report on these plots. That report was written at the request of Lyndon Johnson. The reason being that John Rosselli was talking to certain people in Washington and distorted versions of the plots were getting out into the media e.g. Drew Pearson. (Handsome Johnny, by Lee Server, pp. 460-61, also All American Mafioso, by Charles Rappleye and Ed Becker, p. 270). Unfortunately, the Church Committee chose not to include the 145 page IG Report in its four volumes. But when the ARRB did declassify it, the mythology about what had happened was dispelled.

In 1960, President Eisenhower had approved a plan to get rid of Fidel Castro. This included a possible invasion. The Director of Plans, Richard Bissell, began to think up a fallback position—namely assassination—to help with Castro’s removal. He broached the idea of contacting underworld figures with Sheffield Edwards, chief of the Office of Security. (IG Report, p. 14) Edwards thought about using Robert Maheu since he had been on retainer for CIA and also had contacts in Las Vegas, where the Cosa Nostra had some very profitable gambling casinos. John Rosselli was The Outfit’s man in Vegas and Maheu contacted him. Rosselli decided that the two men who could help the most in this effort were Giancana and Santo Trafficante of Tampa and he introduced the CIA, in the form of Edward’s go-between, Jim O’Connell, to the two men. (IG Report, pp. 16-19)

Giancana, the seasoned killer, rejected a gangland shooting since he said no one would volunteer for an assignment like that since it would be almost impossible to escape. He preferred administering certain poisons to Castro. (IG Report, p. 25). The long and the short of it was that none of the attempts worked. And therefore, when the Bay of Pigs failed spectacularly, the man who started the plots—Dick Bissell- and the men who approved them—Director Allen Dulles and Deputy. Director Charles Cabell—were fired. (IG Report, pp. 17-18). But the reasons for their firings were for misleading President Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs invasion. The IG Report makes it clear that neither JFK nor RFK knew anything about the plots to kill Castro. (IG Report, pp. 132-33)

So how did Attorney General Robert Kennedy find out about the plots? Giancana asked a favor of Maheu. Sam suspected his girlfriend, professional singer Phyllis McGuire, was cheating on him with comedian Dan Rowan in Las Vegas. (Brashler, p. 206) So he asked Maheu to bug Rowan’s hotel room. But the authorities discovered the bugging equipment. (IG Report, pp. 58, 59,68) This was then reported to the FBI. The FBI reported the episode to RFK and he requested a briefing on the incident. He could not understand why Maheu was so interested in aiding Giancana with his personal life. He got the answer to that question in May of 1962. (David Talbot, Brothers, pp. 85-86). But as the IG Report makes clear, the CIA deceived Kennedy by saying the plots had been discontinued when in fact they had not. (IG Report, p. 64) In what the Agency termed Phase Two of the plots, one gangster from the first phase, John Rosselli, had teamed up with CIA officer William Harvey in attempts to send teams into Cuba to terminate Castro. (Talbot, p. 86).

The plots went on until 1966. With first Harvey and Rosselli, and then with a Cuban national named Rolando Cubela. But we will end our discussion of them here since this ended Giancana’s role in them. If the reader has not read the CIA’s IG Report, I recommend he does to avoid being misled by writers with an agenda, like Hersh. (Click here)

VI

To say that Giancana’s decade long reign as the leader of The Outfit was rocky does not convey how contrary to the rules of La Cosa Nostra it was. Accardo was very determined to never draw any undue attention to his activities, since that allowed them to work in the dark so to speak. But for whatever reason Giancana could not or would not conduct himself in that manner. Relying on Maheu to do him a personal favor which backfired is one example. His open wooing of Phyllis McGuire is another. Mafia Dons are not supposed to let themselves be photographed in public, especially with a celebrity. Since those kinds of pictures go around the world in newspapers and magazines. But this is what happened with Giancana. Unlike Accardo, he also had a volatile temper. Once after FBI agent Bill Roemer walked into one of his meeting places as a deliberate provocation, Giancana had one of his men, Chuck English, stop the G man as he was leaving. English told Roemer that if Bobby Kennedy wanted to talk to him, he knew who to go to. Roemer took this to be Frank Sinatra, and the reply confirmed it. (Man Against the Mob by William Roemer, p. 263) When The Outfit’s foremost fixer, Murray Humphreys, heard this he shouted, “You don’t give up a legit guy! For Christ sakes that’s a cardinal rule!” (ibid)

And then of course, there was the famous shouting match at O’Hare Airport in July of 1961. The FBI had decided to really turn up the heat on Giancana, knowing that AG Bobby Kennedy had made him a prime target. In fact, in a short time, RFK would assign 70 agents to Chicago, which was a 1400 % increase in manpower. (Roemer, p. 167). The Bureau decided to intercept Giancana as he was traveling with McGuire. They met her as she was getting off a plane and escorted the singer to a private room to discuss Giancana, knowing this would enrage the Don. Did it ever. Roemer and Giancana got into a screaming match with literally hundreds of people walking to and fro. Roemer and Ralph Hill asked Giancana if he knew anything about the listening device in Dan Rowan’s room in Vegas, knowing this would provoke him. Sam responded with some rather harsh language sprinkled with profanity, even threatening Roemer at least twice, but then backing off. Finally Roemer let loose with the following:

All you folks. Come over here! I want you to see something. Take a look at this piece of slime! This is Sam Giancana. He is the boss of the underworld here in Chicago. Take a good look at this garbage! The big boss, Giancana. You people are lucky, you’re just passing through Chicago. We have to live with this jerk! (Roemer, p. 150)

It was these kinds of open confrontations that the outside leaders of The Outfit, like Accardo and Paul Ricca, looked at with disdain.

Bobby Kennedy’s focus on Giancana eventually led to the Lock Step tactic in 1963. This was a degree of surveillance that came pretty much close to being total and 24/7. Nine FBI agents were on each 12 hour shift.

1. When Sam arrived at the airport they trailed him off the plane and drove home behind him.
2. At night there were three cars around his house.
3. He was followed while taking walks in the park.
4. When Sam went to dinner they took the next table.
5. If Sam got up from the table to go to the men’s room, Roemer went to the men’s room and was in the next urinal.
6. When Sam went golfing, they were behind him in the next foursome.

I could go on, but this does not even include the electronic surveillance they had blanketed Giancana with. (We will get to that later.). Giancana couldn’t take it and he filed a lawsuit. In Celozzi’s documentary he says that Giancana won the suit. This is not really true. Bobby Kennedy decided not to mount a defense on constitutional grounds. He did not think a lower court could intervene in a DOJ inquiry. So even though Giancana prevailed at trial, this was overruled on appeal.(Brashler p. 243) And there was no let up in the interim between the two court rulings, since Roemer got the sheriff’s office to make up the parameters which the local court had limited the FBI to. (Roemer, p. 270)

This was really the beginning of the end for Giancana. For now, with all of this surveillance on the man, the local US attorney’s office, led by David Schippers, decided to place him in a legal vise. They would subpoena Giancana and grant him immunity. This way, if he refused to reply to questions, he could be prosecuted for contempt. That is what happened and Giancana was convicted of contempt. All of his appeals failed.(Brashler, p. 272) When Giancana was released after a year—the life left on the grand jury,—he knew that he could not regain power since Ricca and Accardo would veto it. He also knew the DOJ could use the same tactic to place him in prison again. So in 1966 he made a smart decision and fled to Cuernavaca in Mexico with Richard Cain.

Cain was a complex character about which one could write a separate essay. He started as a Chicago cop who was fired for supporting Mayor Richard Daley’s GOP opponent. He went to Miami and trained Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs. He then went to work for Richard Oglivie, the Chicago sheriff. But it was found out he was—with the help of the Cosa Nostra—making phony drug raids in order to build his own reputation; so he was fired again. He was also convicted for perjury, obstruction and conspiracy, but that was overturned on appeal. (Brashler, pp. 288-89)

Cain set up Sam in Cuernavaca and furnished him with a lawyer named Jorge Castillo. There he served as a roving ambassador for The Outfit. He set up gambling casinos on cruise ships in the Caribbean and even one as far away as Tehran. It is likely that Sam would have stayed there for the rest of his days. But Castillo made a rather large mistake: he failed to gain Giancana permanent resident status. So in July of 1974 his new home in San Cristobal was raided and he was sent back to Chicago where Roemer was waiting for his plane. But the man who got off was not the same Giancana. In fact, he told the burly G man he wanted no trouble and did not want to get personal like it had been. (Roemer, p. 352)

Upon his return Giancana made four grand jury appearances and was reputed to have said he was not going to rot in jail. He also told Accardo he was reluctant to share his new enterprises in the Caribbean and Tehran with The Outfit. (McNicoll, pp.96, 98) Along with his notoriety—he was slated to appear before the Church Committee—these may have been the reasons for his murder.

The circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that Blasi was the hit man. He had been at the home that July night, left, and was seen coming back later, around 10 :30 PM by Francine Giancana. (ibid, p. 98; see also Brashler, p. 321) Giancana knew his killer since he let him into his house and then turned his back on him as he was cooking peppers and sausages. The weapon was a .22 Duromatic target pistol with a silencer. The first bullet came in at the back of the head landing in the front left portion of his brain. Giancana fell to the floor and the killer shot him through his mouth. Finally the silencer was placed under the victim’s chin, aimed upward, and five more bullets shattered his jaw. Giancana had lived by the gun and now he had died by the gum.

The above is a summary of Giancana’s life. And the Celozzi documentary deals with most of the matters in an adequate way. It is not at all distinguished as film making. But the offensive part of the film is in certain matters that, to this viewer, should not be in a serious documentary. Since it is part of what has come to be known as the Giancana myth.

We will deal with these in Part 2.

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