“Mr. Chairman,” said Kennedy. “We consider that this individual is a very important figure. He has a number of the dress companies that operate in Pennsylvania. He also played an important role in the labor negotiations that took place at the beginning of this year. He is a close associate of Mr. Chait and it would appear that he was the one, together with Barbara, who set up and made the appointments and arrangements for setting up the meeting at Apalachin. He is a man of considerable importance and a man of great contacts throughout the United States and the underworld.”
“Do you want to comment upon those statements?” said McClellan.
“I respectfully decline to answer the question on the grounds it may tend to incriminate me,” said Bufalino.
NINE
When Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1957, it capped a remarkable career that had begun twenty years earlier in Detroit.
Hoffa had been the Teamsters national vice president since 1952, serving under then president Dave Beck, who had been accused of stealing from the Teamsters by failing to repay a $300,000 loan. When he was questioned about the loan during his testimony before the McClellan Committee, Beck invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than one hundred times. The negative publicity that followed his testimony led Beck to decline another run for the Teamster presidency, and Hoffa stepped in and gained the votes at the Teamster convention in Miami Beach to become their new leader.
Hoffa now headed the most powerful union in the country, and given his long-rumored associations to organized crime figures in Detroit and New York, he drew greater scrutiny in his new position, especially from the McClellan Committee and its zealous chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy.
Kennedy was relentless in his pursuit to expose Teamster corruption, particularly Hoffa’s alleged relationships with organized crime. During his testimony before the committee, Hoffa in turn was pugnacious, giving purposely vague answers while going head-to-head with Kennedy during televised hearings that transfixed the nation.
The government wasted no time prosecuting Hoffa, who was eventually indicted in December 1957 for illegally bugging Teamster offices to determine if any of his people were sharing information with the McClellan Committee. The trial ended in a hung jury, with one lone holdout for conviction. A second trial was interrupted when a juror reportedly was approached with a bribe to acquit Hoffa. That juror was replaced, and when the trial ended, Jimmy Hoffa was acquitted.
The failed prosecution only served to embolden Hoffa, who by now considered himself one of the most powerful men in the country. Despite his standing, Hoffa knew he still needed friends, especially those with unique skills who could be tasked with special assignments.
* * *
FRANK SHEERAN’S INTRODUCTION to Jimmy Hoffa was on the telephone.
Sheeran was a U.S. Army veteran who served as a rifleman with the Forty-Fifth Infantry Division in Europe during World War II. Known as the “Thunderbird Division,” the Forty-Fifth had spent an incredible 511 days in combat, and Sheeran was on the front lines for more than 400 of those bloody days. Serving under General George Patton, the division was trained to kill with no remorse, which it did from the day it landed in Sicily in 1943. Soon known as the “Killer Division,” Sheeran couldn’t count the number of Germans and Italians whose lives he had ended. Despite a casualty rate that reached near 100 percent, Sheeran somehow survived his 411 days on the front lines, but the war left him emotionally detached. Killing became easy, and it was a talent that would be found useful a decade after his return to America.
It was in central New York State where Sheeran first met Russell Bufalino. Sheeran was working for a food company in Philadelphia and driving a truck through the Binghamton, New York, area when the engine sputtered. He pulled into a truck stop to take a look and was approached by an older man with a tool kit. It was Bufalino, who explained that in his younger days he had been trained as a mechanic. Sheeran had no idea who Bufalino was, or that the “chance” meeting may not have been by chance at all.
Aside from driving a truck, Sheeran had been doing odd jobs on the side to make extra money, from selling football lottery tickets to picking up payments for a local Philadelphia loan shark. Word eventually filtered to Bufalino about a hungry, six feet four U.S. Army vet who had spent more than a year on the front lines. It wasn’t long after they met at the truck stop that Sheeran and Bufalino saw each other again, at a restaurant in Philadelphia.
Bufalino was sitting with Angelo Bruno when he saw the big Irishman standing out above the patrons at the bar. Bufalino sent an underling to bring Sheeran to his table and greeted him warmly. Their reintroduction eventually led to a job, with Sheeran serving as a driver for Bufalino, chauffeuring him to business meetings throughout the northeast. But Bufalino wasn’t just interested in Sheeran’s driving ability. It was only a matter of time before Sheeran proved his true value when he accepted a job to kill a low-level gangster. Bufalino had relied on a handful of men to dispatch enemies and others whose business interests interfered with his. Chief among Bufalino’s killers was Gioacchino “Dandy Jack” Parisi, otherwise known as Jack, who had worked with Albert Anastasia in New York as a member of the infamous “Murder Incorporated” crew of mob killers before fleeing to Hazleton in the 1930s to avoid a murder indictment.
Killing was still easy for Sheeran. No feeling. No remorse. The order from Bufalino would usually come with little advance notice, maybe a day or so, and Sheeran would carry out the job using a gun, a knife, even his bare hands, and dispose of the remains. After cementing his relationship with Bufalino, Sheeran shared his wish for a bigger role with the Teamsters. Sheeran had been a member of Local 107 in Philadelphia since 1947, and Bufalino subsequently put him in touch with Hoffa, who, like Bufalino, had use for Sheeran’s talents. Within a year, Sheeran was working for Hoffa’s home Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, while Bufalino would be focusing his attention on events outside the United States.
* * *
ON JANUARY 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba ahead of the quickly advancing rebel army led by Fidel Castro. It was Batista, believing his power was absolute and unquestioned, who ordered the release of Castro from prison in 1955 following the failed attack of a Cuban army barracks in 1953. The young revolutionary, a lawyer by trade, went to Mexico with Che Guevara to plot the revolution that would ultimately lead to Castro’s overthrow of the Batista dictatorship. A short time after forcing Batista to flee, Castro nationalized the hotels and casinos and threw the mobsters off the island.
Bufalino’s flight from Cuba was on a boat with Vincent Alo, a member of the Genovese family who had for years been one of Meyer Lansky’s top lieutenants and partners in the casino business.
Lansky and Bufalino first met in the 1930s, when Lansky partnered with Lucky Luciano in various gambling endeavors in Florida and Cuba. Lansky had also supported Bugsy Siegel’s efforts to create a gambling mecca in a sandy outpost known as Las Vegas. But Lansky directed his full attention to Cuba, and it was Lansky who set the initial terms with Batista that led to the explosion of new casinos in Havana in the 1950s.
It was through Lansky that Bufalino got his good friend Kelly Mannarino of Pittsburgh a piece of the Sans Souci casino following discussions at Bufalino’s Gold Coast Lounge in Hollywood, Florida, where he often met with south Florida boss Santo Trafficante and New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello.
But as the changing political climate took hold during the late 1950s, the chief concern, aside from the McClellan Committee, was what to do about Cuba. The island was far too lucrative, and it was producing revenues from a variety of businesses, not just the casinos, that simply could not be lost. Organized crime had long supported Batista, though that support had been waning, given Batista’s constant demands for bigger slices of their casino deals.
The solution was to play both sides of the Cuban problem and quietly support Castro along with Batista. As t
he revolution grew, the Mafiosi provided each sidearms shipments after Castro agreed that if he indeed prevailed, his new supporters would keep their casinos and other businesses.
But after arriving in Havana on January 8, 1959, Castro didn’t waste any time tossing the mob bosses and their underlings off the island. Lansky and Bufalino beat him to it, fleeing the island in boats just days before. The casinos were subsequently nationalized, and Castro outlawed gambling as he quickly drifted the country away from the influence of the United States and toward its nemesis, the Soviet Union. Bufalino, along with the other Mafiosi who stood to lose millions from the events in Cuba, was irate, and regaining control of the island was a priority, even an obsession. A year later, in 1960, it appeared that the answer to everyone’s prayers was the newly elected president, an Irish Catholic senator from Massachusetts.
It was before the November 1960 election when Bufalino received a call from Jimmy Hoffa. The two men needed to talk, only not over the phone, said Hoffa. The Teamsters had left Indianapolis and built a palatial headquarters in Washington, D.C., and when Bufalino arrived, Hoffa said he had been contacted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and the agency wanted to do something about Fidel Castro.
Bufalino, along with the other mob leaders, had no use for any government organization. The FBI and Department of Immigration had hounded them in recent years, as did the various congressional committees. But the CIA was a different animal. Formed after World War II to provide the government with international intelligence through the use of covert operatives placed in countries around the world, the CIA was a civilian agency that operated with little government oversight. During the years following World War II, the CIA morphed into a rogue entity. And following Castro’s takeover of Cuba and his alliance with the Soviet Union, the CIA quickly deduced that Castro had to be eliminated. How to do it was up for debate. The idea on the table that drew lukewarm support was to enlist some of the gangsters who lost their lucrative interests in Cuba. The idea somehow made sense, given the Mafiosi were angry and motivated, and if any word of their effort was publicized it would be easy for the CIA to deny any allegations that the agency was involved. After all, who would believe that a highly respected government entity would associate with organized crime figures?
It was Hoffa who would serve as the go-between. Hoffa had friends like Bufalino who didn’t just lose casinos and other businesses in Havana—they left behind fortunes. And in Bufalino’s case, there was also the nearly $1 million in cash he buried in the ground hours before fleeing the island. The deal, said Hoffa, was simple: the CIA offered to help Bufalino retrieve the money if he in return would help in eliminating Castro and/or provide logistics in the event an invading army reached Cuba.
Hoffa told Bufalino that he had already reached out to Sam Giancana in Chicago and Johnny Roselli in Los Angeles to gain their cooperation, and all were led to believe that the plan had been approved by the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy. Cooperating with the Kennedy administration through the CIA seemed a sure bet to return control of the casinos to their rightful owners, and all agreed it was a deal they couldn’t pass up. There was also a belief, at least by Hoffa, that helping the CIA might help in getting the Justice Department off his back. Besides, word had filtered of an arrangement Kennedy had with Giancana or, rather, a deal struck by Kennedy’s wealthy father, Joseph, that had turned the election in Kennedy’s favor, so a precedent had been set for some level of cooperation.
By April 1961, Bufalino confided to a few close friends that Kennedy was planning something for Cuba. In a telex dated April 12, 1961, two FBI agents reported that Russell Bufalino had arrived in Washington, D.C., supposedly to meet with his attorneys handling his ongoing deportation case. Bufalino was still under surveillance as part of the FBI’s Top Hoodlum Program, and the telex aroused little concern. Bufalino slipped out of Washington and headed to Florida and then to the Bahamas, where he boarded a boat and waited for transport to Cuba.
TEN
The disastrous outcome of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the loss of Cuba were monumental blows to the gangsters who had profited for years from the island, and their anger toward the Kennedy administration was of such intensity that the only way to make them whole would be the unthinkable.
The conversations began immediately after the failed invasion and were further fueled when Bufalino and others finally returned home. They had, as a group, been disrespected to such a degree that under normal circumstances, the offending party would have been dispatched immediately and with extreme prejudice.
They may have been at their cores violent hoods, but many, including Bufalino and Meyer Lansky, had always been known as men of their word. It was their bond, and no one ever doubted them when they said or promised something. How to deal with the president of the United States and his troublesome brother, who was now attorney general, was a matter that would take some consideration.
As they pondered and spoke secretly of their options, the U.S. Department of Justice began placing more resources and men into its ongoing Top Hoodlum Program. Only now everyone knew they weren’t just hoodlums, but members of a secretive, violent national organization that had a firm grip on several major U.S. industries, from the shipping docks on the East and West Coasts to the garment industry and the Teamsters union, which controlled interstate trucking.
Beginning in 1961, the new efforts by the FBI, under the orders of its new attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, would be to crush organized crime wherever and whenever it could. To meet that end, Kennedy ordered the FBI to begin daily surveillance of every mob boss in the nation, and that included Russell Bufalino.
Agents began a virtual twenty-four-hour watch on Bufalino, with reports filed to the Philadelphia bureau every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The regular surveillance began in March 1961, and one of the first texts from the Philadelphia bureau to J. Edgar Hoover provided a bombshell piece of information: Russell Bufalino was sending arms to Cuba.
The information came from an informant who knew Paul Winter, an anti-Communist who in 1938 had stolen records from the Wilkes-Barre office of the Communist Party. Winter subsequently copied the documents and distributed them to local organizations and thus identified the Communist Party members to the public. The FBI was amused by Winter, chiefly for his interest in outing Communists, and remained in touch with him.
According to the FBI text, the informant reported that he was with Winter in February 1961, and Winter revealed that Bufalino was working for a secret organization that was manufacturing and shipping arms to Cuba to use against Fidel Castro. Unbeknownst to the FBI, the “secret” organization was the CIA. But the FBI decided against pursuing the matter, saying it was out of their jurisdiction and a matter for the Department of Customs.
The bureau did take an interest in other matters, particularly Bufalino’s hangouts and acquaintances. Among his favorite haunts were Club 82, in Pittston; Preno’s Restaurant and the Sahara Bar, in Scranton; and Medico Industries, formerly Medico Electric Company, now receiving an increasing share of U.S. government contracts.
During Bufalino’s visits to New York, he’d usually stay in his suite at the Forrester Hotel, which was paid for by Monet Fashions Incorporated, a company in which he had an interest. Among those often accompanying Bufalino were the closest members of his Pennsylvania crew. Anthony Guarnieri, a capo régime whose interest was in the drug trades; Casper “Cappy” Giumento, one of Bufalino’s closest confidantes and his Everyman, who served a variety of duties, from chauffeuring Bufalino to meetings to picking up envelopes filled with cash from people in business with Bufalino; Al Baldassari, an associate who ran Bufalino’s gaming operations and was identified as a Scranton hoodlum by the Kefauver Committee; and James Plumeri, another close associate, who went by the name of Jimmy Doyle and got his start working in the 1930s for Lucky Luciano before joining the Bufalino family.
The FBI also watched closely a
s Bufalino spent hours at the Vesuvio restaurant holding court with New York gangsters, who, in a surprising turn, appeared to be paying their respects to Bufalino.
Back in Pennsylvania, Bufalino had displayed a keen ability to stay out of trouble. And when he was charged with something, he had the clout to quash it. When he arrived at the Luzerne County courthouse to answer to a speeding violation in September 1961, Bufalino shook hands with members of the Forty Fort police department, which gave him the ticket. The county judge even went as far as to visit the spot of the alleged violation before dismissing the charge completely.
Aside from their routine reports of his associations and business affairs, the FBI agents noted that Bufalino liked to deal in cash and kept little in a checking account he shared with his wife, Carrie, at the First National Community Bank, usually no more than $300. The FBI also noted that Bufalino was a big sports fan, especially when it came to boxing. Bufalino had begun managing boxers and even promoted fights with Al Flora, an ex-boxer from Baltimore.
Perhaps most interesting to the FBI were Bufalino’s paramours. Though married for more than thirty years, Bufalino always maintained liaisons with several girlfriends in different cities. One of his most recent flames was Jane Collins, a wealthy divorcée who lived with a prostitute, Judy McCarthy. The FBI reported that Collins and Bufalino would use McCarthy’s apartment to rendezvous whenever McCarthy was out of town. Bufalino had been seeing Collins for more than a year after he first spotted her at a local textile company. Instead of introducing himself, he had a mutual friend phone Collins with a tip on a horse race. Hearing that it was a sure thing, Collins made a bet and won $100. The following week, she received another tip on another race and won $250. A third tip netted $1,000. Because of the large amount, the money had to be delivered by Bufalino himself.
The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino Page 12
