The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  In 1948, when Shanahan was forty-six, O'Dwyer appointed him—with an absolute minimum of publicity—to the City Housing Authority. Housing Authority memberships were "nonpaying," but in Shanahan's case that adjective may have applied only to salary. Within a remarkably short time after he was sworn in, the word was out around town, not only among contractors but among architects, landscape architects, engineers, insurance brokers, real estate appraisers—among, in fact, every profession whose members wanted work from the Authority: You had "to do business with Tom Shanahan"— do your banking at Shanahan's bank and kick back a portion of your profits to Shanahan, presumably for the Democratic Party—or forget about your chances. And even after you had obtained an Authority contract, the word went, your business with Shanahan was not finished; when you submitted the bill for your work, further payoffs would be required—or somehow the bill would keep getting lost in the Authority's files, and you would not get paid. The banker quickly became, in the words of one reform Democrat, "one of the most notorious boodle boys around town." Warren Moscow, who was able to do his perceiving from an excellent vantage point—he was executive director of the Housing Authority for two years—could say of the banker:

  He was a very personable guy, but I would say that ethically Tom left something to be desired all the way down the line. ... It was common knowledge—no, I won't say common knowledge, it was common gossip—that an architect who wanted to get an assignment from the Housing Authority had to turn $15,000 over to Tom Shanahan, theoretically for the Democratic Party.

  "Theoretically," Moscow said—and the meaning behind that word was echoed by others who came into contact with Tom Shanahan, for even insiders who took the relationship of money and politics as a matter of course were taken aback by Shanahan's greed; "we all knew what Shanahan was," Monroe Goldwater says, the wrinkles of his aged face forming a pattern of disgust at the recollection.

  If little publicity attended Shanahan's rise in banking, less attended his rise in politics. For years, there was scarcely a mention of his name in political stories in New York newspapers; there is no mention at all in the supposedly definitive history of Tammany Hall. But Shanahan was, for more than a decade, Tammany's money man, the individual who, more than any other, greased the wheels of the machine. He was the hub of political payoffs and influence peddling in New York, the center of all those elements in the city's government that lay hidden and festering beneath its facade.

  And for most of that time, he was Robert Moses' closest associate in that government.

  In a machine oiled by money, the influence of the money man was, of course, enormous. In a machine that danced to the jingle of coins, Shanahan had a large say in calling the tune.

  And Moses made sure that the tune was his tune.

  The insurance premiums to the broker "friend of Tom Shanahan's" were $27,978 per year. But they were a minor item in the list of Triborough fees parceled out to Shanahan. The fees to Shanahan's bank for banking services—fees as paying agent for Triborough bonds, for example, which required little work and which other banks would have liked to have but which other banks were not allowed to bid for—amounted to tens of thousands of dollars on a single issue of Triborough bonds. But these were minor items, too. For the payoffs that really mattered in the Moses-Shanahan relationship were figured not in thousands of dollars but in millions. On Moses' order, in 1948 the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority deposited in the Federation Bank and Trust Company—which at the time had deposits of only $35,000,000—$15,000,000, thereby increasing the bank's capital assets by 40 percent at a single stroke. This money was placed in accounts on which Federation paid no interest, so that the bank had its use—to lend out and earn interest—without paying a cent for it. And it was left in those accounts for the entire decade that Shanahan remained in power, so that the bank had its use for ten years. During the Fifties, on Moses' order, Triborough shipped to Federation $48,963,000 in Authority-owned investment securities—in violation of every prudent business principle because, at the time he did so, the bank did not have enough total resources sufficient to cover that amount if the securities were lost—and left them there, allowing the bank the advantages that accrued from their possession, for years.

  Moses placed at Shanahan's disposal not only his money but his power —which Shanahan used to make more money.

  During his first five years as Housing Authority vice chairman, Shanahan, with the help of the two Moses Men on the five-member Authority —Chairman Philip J. Cruise and architect William Wilson—dispensed Authority contracts as he wished. When Wagner became Mayor in 1954, however, he wanted the Authority under his control. Naming Moscow executive director, he directed him to inform Cruise, whose term was expiring, that he would be reappointed only on his solemn promise to give his loyalties henceforth to the Mayor instead of Moses—and, Moscow dryly relates, "Cruise made his divorce."

  Knowing Shanahan, the Wagner high command, while friendly to the banker, was far from confident that all the kickbacks he accepted as contributions to the Democratic Party were actually reaching the party's coffers. "That was one of the things they put me in to do—quite simply, to take control of the assigning of architects away from Shanahan," Moscow says. Before he could act, however, the banker made a request that would increase rather than decrease his power: for a personal "executive assistant."

  Suspicious that Shanahan wanted such a personal representative primarily as a "bag man," an intermediary who could collect the kickbacks and keep the banker's hands clean, Moscow objected to the appointment, and was backed by Cruise and the Authority's two non-Moses members. Shanahan, even more florid than usual, his eyes glaring coldly from behind the steel-rimmed glasses, stalked out of the board room and said he would not re-

  torn until his request was granted, but for months the Authority stood

  ~:rr.

  Authority members had long dreaded the possibility of an "expose" by some Red-hunting newspaper of the fact that some Authority social workers had once, during the idealistic Thirties, belonged, even if only briefly, to some organization later labeled as a "Communist front." Early in 1957, with Shanahan's boycott still a failure, Moses Man Wilson raised the question of the vice chairr a assistant" again.

  Recalls Moscow: "It was in a meeting of the Authority: the five members of the Authority were there, and me and the as si stant to the chairman, and [Wilson] said in so many words: ; I have a message for you from Mr. es. Yo m what he wants or well turn the Daily News loose on

  you. You have ten dsr Tom got what he wanted, and for another two

  years continued to exercise considerable control over the Authority—and to collect "campaign contributions" from its contractors.

  Naming Shanahan vice chairman of the Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee, Moses virtually delegated him absolute power over certain of its projects. Monroe Goldwater found this out when he was retained as attorney by a group of real estate men who wanted to sponsor one. Moses "put it on Shanahan," the attorney recalls. "He said, 'You know I car. erything

  myself. I have to let Tom have some of the jobs. This is Tom's job. Go to see him

  When Goldwater approached the banker, however, Shanahan reacted as the attorney had suspected he would.

  Shanahan said, 'Well, I don't know about th

  'I said, 'Don't you think it's your job to take the low bidder, to consider the rate of return they want and the rate of interest thev will have to pay, and the quality of the men involved?"

  "He said, 'Well, there can be a slight variation.' I laid, 'Look, cut out the crap with me. Tom—are vou committed to somebody?" He said. 'Yes."

  "I aid, 'Well, I'm going to make an issue of this with Moses. I'll tell you this right now. Without even knowing what rate of return the other people want, my people will give it to you at half a percent less.' I went to see But] he said. T can't do this with Tom. Tom is committed to

  these people' "—and he refused to intervene.

  Thus suppor
ted by Moses. Shanahan used his vice chairmanship as a lever to force prospective slum clearance sponsors to do business with him. "A part of my deal was that I had to do my banking at Shanahan's bani," one was to relate. Federation's assets, already on the climb, began ) climb faster: in 1948, the year in which its president was appointed to the Slum Clearance Committee, they were $35,000,000: in 1959. the year in which he resigned from the post,'they were almost $200.000,000—and Shanahan's personal holdings in Federation stock were worth $20,000,000.

  Moses put his vast reserves of monev and power at Shanahan's disposal; Shanahan put his vast reserves of influence at Moses'. The banker was interested in who got Housing Authority and urban renewal contracts;

  unconcerned with the aims and principles of government, he wasn't interested in where Housing Authority and urban renewal projects were located, why they were located there or how they were built: the factors that Moses was interested in. The banker ran the Housing Authority for Moses. The Housing Authority projects built were the projects Moses wanted built—on the sites where Moses wanted them built, to the specifications Moses desired. In 1953, when Shanahan's term expired, Moses wrote Impellitteri: "It is of the utmost importance" that "Torn" be reappointed. It was—to him.

  The influence Shanahan exercised for Moses was not limited to housing or urban renewal. Time and time again, on highway proposals by Moses on which the city's officials were divided, the banker's power helped tip the scales in Moses' favor.

  In dealing with De Sapio and Shanahan and Goldwater and Rosenman and Steingut and Roe and Preusse, Moses was, as always, going straight to the top.

  Charles F. Rodriguez, representing vacationing Bronx borough president James J. Lyons on the Board of Estimate during the controversy over Moses' proposal to construct Shea Stadium, had received no instructions on the matter and, believing that the city had more pressing uses for the $21,000,000 involved, was considering voting against it, when the telephone in his office rang. And the voice on the other end of the line wasn't that of his boss but of his boss's boss. "I think if Jim was here, he'd go along," Charles A. Buckley said gently. "You do it, and if there's any question, ask Jim to see me." Rodriguez did it—and there was never any question. As a state senator would admit privately, describing Moses' methods in Albany, "he wouldn't bother with us at all; he went right to the leaders."

  As old-time Tammany ward bosses had distributed Christmas baskets filled with turkeys and sugar plums in decades past, Robert Moses distributed Christmas baskets now. But he distributed them not to voters, and not—at least not primarily—to the men the voters had elected to office, but to the men who controlled the men the voters had elected to office—many of the most powerful men in the city and state. His "ward," his "district," was the uppermost precincts of politics. "There's only one way to hold a district," explained George Washington Plunkitt, who held his for thirty years. "You must study human nature and act accordin'." Moses studied human nature in his district, and acted accordin'. His constituents—the De Sapios and Shanahans and Steinguts—wanted the rich Christmas baskets of "honest graft." Moses handed them baskets. Using the vast wealth of his public authorities, he made himself the ward boss of the highest precincts, bank-roller of the inner circle, dancing master of the Four Hundred of politics. And he held his district for thirty years.

  Doling out sugar plums to such men gave him power over them in another way, too—as Wagner, in a very private talk in 1961 (referred to in the Introduction), tried to explain to Paul R. Screvane. The Mayor was personally fond of Screvane, a younger man he had taken under his wing years before and guided through the political thickets and, just a year earlier, into the City Council presidency. Informing him that he would be

  city liaison to Moses' World's Fair, the Mayor leaned toward him and said earnestly: "Paul, my experience with Moses has taught me one lesson, and 1*11 tell it to you. I would never let him do anything for me in any way, shape or form. I'd never ask him—or permit him—to do anything of a personal nature for me because—and I've seen it time and time again—a day will come when Bob will reach back in his file and throw this in your face, quietly if that will make you go along with him, publicly otherwise. And if he has to, he will destroy you with it." Screvane admired—"idolized" would scarcely be too strong a word—Moses. He was loath to believe Wagner's warning. '"But," he recalls, during a series of battles in the Fair Executive Committee, "I saw it happen time and time again . . . Bob Moses has these files. On at least twenty separate occasions when we were on the same side, I would say about someone, 'I don't think he'll go along,' and Bob would

  'Well, goddammit, he'd better go along! If he doesn't go along, I'll destroy the son of a bitch!' And he'd call for a file, and he would begin to quote chapter and verse. And sure enough [when the vote came], the fellow would go along."

  No one could dwell long in the inner circles of New York politics without knowing about Moses' files, the dossiers he had compiled on the men with whom he had to deal. Their existence was so open a secret that Times reporter Joseph C. Ingraham, a particular friend of Moses', assigned by an editor to investigate the financial affairs of a Tammany borough president, knew exactly where to start looking. He telephoned Moses and asked for the file on the borough president—and there inside it, documented and photostated, complete down to deeds and incorporation certificates, the reporter found the records of real estate transactions in which the borough president had engaged, transactions based on his foreknowledge, acquired through his official position, of the routes of certain Moses-built highways. Politicians who had accepted favors from Moses knew that the documentation of those favors was in his dossiers—and they knew that Moses would use that documentation to destroy them if they ever refused to go along with his wishes. They had accepted a favor from him perhaps once; he had a hold over them forever.

  A politician who had never accepted a favor from Moses knew that this did not grant him immunity from such attack. He knew that Moses' bloodhounds were sniffing, always sniffing, around City Hall and the files in the Municipal Building, and he could be sure that up at Randall's Island there was a file with his name on it—and who knew what might be in it? "Man," as Willie Stark put it in All the King's Men, "is born in sin and dies in corruption." Or, in the words of Jack Lutsky, who during his quarter of a century in City Hall earned a reputation as a fearless and honest man: "Is there anyone who, sometime in his life, hasn't done something he is ashamed of? Well, you always had the feeling that Moses knew about that something, and that he had the proof of it in those files of his. And that if he needed to, he would use it." Politicians knew what use Moses could make his dossiers. They had seen him give newspapers leaks—or issue statements—that dredged up for public view and turned into blaring headlines

  the dark secrets of men's pasts. It was not just the force of greed that Robert Moses used in bending men to his will; in some cases, it was also the force 1 of fear.

  If you stayed on his team, moreover, he would take care of you even after you were too old to play—for his own purposes, of course. He would take care of you until you died. William Wilson was, to Warren Moscow, only "Moses' stooge," but he was a well-paid stooge; Wagner kicked him off the Housing Authority in 1954, when he was seventy-three years old; Moses promptly supplemented his city retirement benefits with a $io,ooo-per-year authority consultantship. When Edwin Salmon was forced out of the $15,000 City Planning Commission chairmanship that Moses had obtained for him, Moses asked Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore to give him a job—and a $15,000 salary—on his personal staff. There was no job open, Cashmore said. Then make a new job, was Moses' reply. (A new job was made.) Paul Sere vane remembers running for the 1965 Democratic nomination for mayor after Wagner retired, and losing, and waking up on the morning after the primary wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life. "Bob had three jobs lined up for me," he says. And these were not just ordinary jobs; Moses offered Screvane his choice of the presidency of a con
sulting engineering firm whose president had just died, a full, lucrative partnership in another engineering firm, and "he had another authority in mind and I could be chairman and write my own ticket." Says Screvane: "Bob always took care of people who cooperated with him."

  If you cooperated.

  If you tried, even occasionally, not to cooperate, if you dropped off "the team," if—ever—you exercised your responsibility to the public rather than your responsibility to Robert Moses, you were out in the cold until you died. There would be no consulting jobs, no authority make-work—and, if the rumors were true, when the State Retirement Board met to certify your pension, it would somehow turn out to be less, far less, than you had believed you were entitled to. As Lazarus puts it, "He didn't want anyone who had been on the inside with him to talk about the way he operated. This way, he was buying their silence to the grave." Moses demanded allegiance only in the areas he had staked out for his own, but that allegiance had, in those areas, to be total. And, with most of his constituents, it was. He not only held his district, he controlled it absolutely. He was, in his fields, the boss of the bosses.

  He did not extend his field of force only over individuals, of course.

  One cannot dip a toe into the water of New York politics without sensing, moving somewhere deep beneath the surface, the presence of an enormous force, a power unseen but immense: the power of banks.

  Banks control the dispensing of huge amounts of insurance and they can dispense it to politicians. Their activities generate immense amounts of legal work and they can dispense the least onerous and most lucrative aspects of that work—local real estate closings, for example—to politicians.