by Gus Russo
What happened was that in May 1988, according to one high-level source within MCA, Giaquinto went into action. "He went ballistic," said the source. Giaquinto then said, "I'm calling [Attorney General Ed] Meese and getting this thing stopped right now."79 William Dwyer II, an attorney who represented three MCA executives who had been fired for cooperating with Rudnick, said, "There was [talk] about how Ed Meese wanted certain actions taken because Nancy Reagan had a friend in high places in the entertainment industry."80 In another interview, Dwyer concluded, "Something was rotten somewhere. My clients had cooperated fully with Rudnick's investigation. Since he had his stripes taken away, we haven't given the government any further cooperation—and the government hasn't asked us for any."
Dwyer may have found the government's seeming ennui surprising, but he may not have if he had been aware of what was occurring in the Supermob's radarproof world. On May 19, 1986, within three months after the grand jury investigation began, Lew Wasserman became the largest individual contributor to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, donating $517,969 for the construction of the Reagan library, according to documents obtained from the California secretary of state's office. Most suspiciously, Wasserman had been coordinating the library fund-raising effort with none other than Ed Meese.
MCA then enlisted the legal services of power attorney William Hundley, who not only was a partner in the law firm of MCA board member Robert Strauss, but also had headed the original Strike Force, set up by Bobby Kennedy, when he'd worked for the attorney general in the Kennedy administration. In short time, Hundley met with Rudnick's new L.A. Strike Force chief, John Newcomer, who in turn ordered Rudnick to end his probe into MCA's affairs. When he refused, he was fired in July 1989. Richard Stavin had resigned just two months earlier, disgusted that his department refused to indict MCA executives he had been building a case against. That same year, Bill Knoedelseder quit his Tos Angeles Times job, not long after being ordered to curtail his MCA coverage. At the time, the paper's publisher was Tom Johnson, a former LBJ aide, who had obtained his Times position thanks to Lew Wasserman's kind intercession with the Chandler family.
In a recent interview, Rudnick summarized his feelings about the termination of the probe: "One week they were going to give me an award for getting the Pisello tax evasion convictions, but as soon as I tried to turn Pisello against the people who paid him off [MCA], they just snuffed it out. They called me a loose cannon. They pushed me out of my job and my career all because they wanted to stop something. What was it? They said it was because MCA was complaining about me. But it was because Wasserman was the connection between Korshak and the higher-ups in Washington. Wasserman was known for his political connections. You have to ask yourself, 'Is someone getting paid off somewhere?' "81
Future probes into MCA were rendered all but impossible when it was discovered that many evidence volumes of both the FBI and Strike Force's MCA probes had disappeared. Among other explosive investigations that were shelved was Stavin's interest in MCA employee Robert Nichols, who traveled the world for the company, allegedly tracking down counterfeit operations. However, Nichols was also simultaneously working for the same Reagan administration operatives who were illegally selling weapons to rogue nations in order to fund the Nicaraguan contra movement. The suspicion was that Reagan's close pals at MCA were assisting in the worldwide movement of the illicit monies. "MCA could pay for Nichols to travel, visit certain countries, and act as a bagman to deliver money to foreign nations," Stavin recently conjectured.82
Rudnick and Stavin were never able to determine how and why the mob had gotten its hooks so deeply into MCA in the first place. However, Rudnick remained curious about a cryptic, unsigned letter he had received from Pisello's and Giaquinto's New York stomping grounds on September 24, 1986. It stated:
To whom it may concern:
Wasserman wanted his daughter's boyfriend murdered
Sal Pisello committed the murder
Wasserman is now indebted to Sal Pisello.
Wasserman gives orders to [Irving] Azoff to allow Sal to move
around freely
To keep Azoff quiet, Wasserman bought Azoff 's company.83
Irving Azoff, the head of MCA Music, owned three outside companies, for which Wasserman had paid $30 million in stock options—six to ten times the value of the companies.
Regarding the unsigned note, Marvin Rudnick recently spoke of an allegation he would have tracked had he been allowed to stay on: "The rumor was that Wasserman had somebody murdered by the Chicago Outfit. New York [the Gambinos] heard about it, and then Wasserman paid Pisello to keep it quiet."84
*Although some accusations were fallacious, enough had teeth to make the contention more than a possibility. A 1981 congressional probe into the Reagan campaign's theft of White House briefing books on the eve of a presidential debate disclosed that the Republicans had set up an espionage network that gathered intelligence on the Carter campaign and the president's efforts to liberate the hostages. Reagan's CIA director William Casey could never provide proof of where he was during the alleged 1980 meetings with Iranian revolutionaries in Madrid.
Claude Angeli, chief editor for he Canard enchaine, a French newspaper, and David Andelman, a former New York Times and CBS News reporter, gave damning testimony to a congressional probe of the affair. Angeli told the task force that French intelligence officials, who refused to go on the record, claimed that their organization provided "cover" for meetings between the Reagan camp and Iranian officials on October 18 and 19, 1980. Andelman, who ghostwrote the autobiography of Alexandre de Marenches, the former head of French intelligence, testified that "de Marenches acknowledged
Footnote cont'd
setting up a meeting in Paris between Casey and some Iranians in late October 1980." By the time Andelman dropped his bombshell, the House task force had already interviewed de Marenches, who denied any knowledge of such meetings. Unable to reach de Marenches for further questioning after Andelman made his claim, the task force decided to take the French clandestine services veteran at his previous word.
In 1991, while playing golf with George Bush in Palm Springs, Reagan himself let slip that he had "tried some things the other way" to free the hostages, but added that "some of these things are still classified." (See note 2 to this chapter.)
*Williams once said that every major Teamster local had "some connection with organized crime" and that Jackie Presser was as controlled by the mob "as I was."
*The joke was told to Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New Hampshire) on February 16,1980.
*Bistro owner Kurt Niklas was even more shocked soon after the election to see Smith seated at a table next to Meyer Lansky Headwaiter Casper Morcelli told Niklas, "They seemed to know each other. I mean they acknowledged each other when they sat down." (Niklas, Corner Table, 410)
*Not long after, Evans received a call from NBC's Brian Ross, who wanted his comment regarding his being named in the recent cocaine bust of car manufacturer John DeLorean. A bewildered Evans hung up and contacted an attorney, who called Tom Brokaw and his fellows at the network, demanding they kill the story, which was about to go out; it turned out that the offender was Richard Evans.
†Evans's legal difficulties were not over. He later came under suspicion when Roy Radin, an investor in Evans's Cotton Club movie, was murdered in 1983, amidst a haze of massive cocaine purchases and thefts. When the case came to trial in 1989, Evans, under the guidance of his attorney Robert Shapiro, took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify. (See Wick, Bad Company)
*When the case finally came to a first trial in 1985, it was assigned to Judge Kenneth Gale, who, incredibly, was the former attorney for Penthouse's star witness, Jimmy Fratianno. Gale made absurd rulings and pronouncements, such as declaring, "Everyone knows there's no such thing as organized crime in California." On the other hand, DRAM's star witness, San Diego sheriff John Duffy, lied in declaring that La Costa was not mobbed up, although Gale refused to
let Grutman present the proof; Grutman unearthed a previous Duffy grand jury declaration that La Costa was indeed a mob planning headquarters. When the jury nonetheless found for Penthouse, which was owned by Robert Guccione, Gale overturned the ruling. However, when a new trial was set, the chief judge of the State Superior Court of California removed Gale without explanation (Grutman, and Thomas, Lawyers and Thieves, 141-54). Fratianno later said, "I won that fuckin' case for Guccione." (Zuckerman, Vengeance Is Mine, 360)
*At the gala, Reagan said, in part, "As most of you know, Paul [Laxalt] and I were elected governors of our respective states at about the same time. They say we started even. 1 had California, with one of the biggest economies of the nation. Paul had Nevada and Howard Hughes . . . There were those who said a straight shooter like Paul could never make it in Washington. But sure enough, Paul has disposed of problems here just as [easily] as he disposed of them in Nevada. He had the best possible training for Washington—as a rancher and a herder: they have exactly the same sort of disposal problems that we have." Reagan then added the following endorsement: "Look to the son of the high mountains and peasant herders, to the son of the Sierra and the immigrant Basque family. Look to a man, to a friend, to an American who gave himself so that others might live in freedom."
*In 1985, McCulloch retired at age sixty-five—for one week. He was immediately recruited to work at the San Francisco F.xaminer until his final retirement in 1991.
*Moldea's work has also appeared in, among other publications, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the London Observer, Playboy, the Boston Globe, the AtlantaConstitution, the Montreal Star, Regardie's, Editor & Publisher, and the Nation. In addition, he has done freelance work with NBC Nightly News, National Public Radio, the Detroit Free Press, and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. His book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post Book World. Also, he is a former contributing editor for Washington Crime News Service, which includes such law enforcement publications as Crime Control Digest and Organized Crime Digest.
*Mendelsohn's daughter Carol moved to Hollywood in 1980, where she became the executive producer of Melrose Place and CSl, the most successful dramatic television series in history. The New York Times wrrote, "Her father's connections helped open some doors." (New York Times, 10-19-03)
"Presser had been set to be indicted in 1984 in a union "ghost employee" scam, but the indictment was dropped when the FBI revealed that Presser had been a key informant for years. On November 10, 1987, as a result of a ten-year Labor Department civil suit, the court ruled that it would be supervising the pension fund for the next twenty years. Eighteen former trustees of the fund, including Jackie Presser, had to pay fines for their roles in bilking the fund. Presser would eventually be indicted for embezzlement and racketeering, but died three days before his July 12, 1988, trial was to start.
*The only negatives associated with the 1984 games were the boycotts of nations allied with the Soviets, who passed up the games in retaliation for the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Along with the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Cuba, fourteen other countries boycotted the games. Though these countries boycotted, China participated in the games for the first time since 1932, joining 140 other countries. Notable among the approximately sixty-seven hundred athletes, Mary Lou Retton of the United States received perfect scores in her final two events, becoming the first American woman to win an individual gold medal in gymnastics.
*Wynn was then the owner of the downtown Golden Nugget and soon to open the $630 million Mirage on the Strip. He later opened Treasure Island and the Bellagio. In 2005, Wynn finished construction on the most expensive Strip hotel ever, the $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas on the grounds of Moe Dalitz's (and later Howard Hughes's) former Desert Inn.
CHAPTER 22
Legacies
THE SUPERMOB WAS NOW well into the inevitable era of passings and transitions, the parade of Russian Ashkenazim into eternity having already begun with the deaths of notables such as Greenberg, Arvey, Pritzker, Hart, and Factor. They were joined on October 26, 1987, by Greg Bautzer, who suffered a fatal heart attack while brushing his teeth. His service boasted such honorary pallbearers as Lew Wasserman, Frank Sinatra, Pat Brown, Tony Martin, and Ambassador John Gavin. Also attending was Sid Korshak, who threw a champagne and caviar wake and memorial lunch afterward at the Bistro Gardens.1
Korshak had recently sold his Chalon Road manse (which had long ago been folded into the Korshak Family Trust) to James Lacher, chief lieutenant for Jack Kent Cooke, the man who invented cable television in 1964 and went on to own a number of major league sports franchises;*'2 he was also friends with both Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan. The L.A. Recorder's Office records reveal that Lacher bought the home, which was assessed at $2.1 million, for Cooke's organization, which sold it in 1992 (today the home would cost north of $6 million). Sid and Bee purchased a one-story rancher for $900,000 at 808 North Hillcrest Road in Beverly Hills, just north of Sunset, and across the street from great friends the Cubby Broccolis. Korshak told friends that he preferred Beverly Hills because its flat terrain afforded him the ability to continue his constitutional strolls.^3
In Washington, outgoing president Ronald Reagan redressed the surviving Japanese World War II internees whose confiscated properties had given such a financial boost to Greenberg, Ziffren, Bazelon, and the many other Midwesterners who'd descended on Southern California in the 1940s. On August 10, 1988, Reagan signed HR 442, paying $20,000 to the sixty thousand Japanese survivors of the camps—a tiny fraction of what the commercial property alone was worth—and bestowing a $1.2 billion education fund. Reagan's letter of apology stated in part, "Internment of JapaneseAmericans was just that: a mistake . . . For here we admit a wrong."
Five years earlier, the congressionally created bipartisan Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians had reviewed the wartime measures by hearing more than 750 testimonies and studying copious archival records. The commission's definitive report, Personal JusticeDenied, found that there had been no military necessity for the unequal treatment of the ethnic Japanese, and that the causes of the incarceration were rooted in "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership." Regarding the "Magic Cables" that predicted spies among the nisei, Special Counsel Angus Macbeth noted in an addendum to the report that the cables did not justify the mass internment of Japanese Americans.
Morris Schenker, perhaps the Supermob associate to have come the closest to a conviction, died of heart disease on August 9, 1989. Six months earlier, the St. Louis attorney who'd defended Jimmy Hoffa and many of the hoods called before Kefauver and gone on to own the Dunes Hotel and Casino, had been indicted on two counts of having defrauded the IRS out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The man whom Life magazine once called "The Lawyer to the Mob" had been in bankruptcy since 1984, after he was found to have defaulted on nearly $55 million in Teamster loans. Like so many of his peers, Schenker helped raise millions for charity, especially for children's causes. Under his photo accompanying his St. LouisPost-Dispatch obituary was the legend MORRIS A. SCHENKER . . . BUSINESSMAN, PHILANTHROPIST.4
Three weeks later, on August 31, 1989, Moe Dalitz died, and his LosAngelesTimes obit typified the contradictions implicit in Supermob membership: CIVIC LEADER, PHILANTHROPIST WAS ALSO ALLEGED UNDERWORLD BOSS. Las Vegas advertising executive and longtime Dalitz friend Marydean Martin said of Dalitz, "Moe was always such a gentleman. He gave back to the community. When the Maude Frazier Building [at UNLV] was built, it had no furniture. He bought all the furniture and didn't want anybody to know about it. He was that kind of person." Regarding the scrutiny that arose at regular intervals, Martin said, "Moe almost never complained, but he was feeling down. He said, Til bet your grandpa drank whiskey,' and I said that he did. Tm the guy who made the whiskey, and I'm considered the bad guy. When does the time ever come that you're forgiven?' It was one of the very few times he ever said anything about it." Former Stardust Hotel ge
neral manager Herb Tobman, who knew Dalitz well, said, "As far as I'm concerned, he was a great man . . . Moe's charity is legendary around this town. There has never been a greater influence on this city."
Dalitz had been named Humanitarian of the Year by the American Cancer Research Center and Hospital in 1976, two years before the California Organized Crime Control Commission named him one of that state's top criminals, referring to him as "one of the architects of the skimming process." In 1982, Dalitz received the Torch of Liberty Award from the AntiDefamation League of B'nai B'rith, and in 1979 he set up the Moe Dalitz Charitable Remainder Unitrust, a million-dollar fund to be divided upon his death. When Dalitz died, fourteen nonprofit organizations split $1.3 million. Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith wrote, "His contributions to the growth of Las Vegas are priceless."5
