The Outfit

by Russo, Gus

  The Nevada Gaming Commission would later learn that one of the “others” in on the deal was Mooney Giancana. And, as will be seen, the group Rix mentioned would indeed buy the Cal-Neva from Wingy Grober (or the likely actual owner, Joe Kennedy) and install everyone’s buddy, Skinny D’Amato, to run the casino.

  By July, with the West Virginia primary behind them, the Outfit, at Mooney’s request, escalated its electioneering efforts on behalf of Sinatra’s friend young Jack Kennedy. Curly Humphreys, already fatigued from his regular duties, undertook the onerous chore of helping the son of the distrusted Joe Kennedy win the presidency. “[Murray] hated having to go along with the Outfit’s vote to back Kennedy,” Jeanne Humphreys recalls. “It was a constant source of aggravation for him.” But, like it or not, Humphreys was a team player and thus once again settled into his role as the gang’s political mastermind.

  Luckily for history, Curly Humphreys decided to allow his wife, now the only living witness to the politicking, into the inner sanctums of the Kennedy effort. Jeanne remembers how one day in early July, Curly told her to pack her bags. “I thought perhaps Murray was lamming it again, and we’d be on our way to Key Biscayne, or God knows where.” To Jeanne’s dismay, she was informed that she had a choice: either hole up with Curly in Chicago or go alone to Key Biscayne or Vegas. When she was told that Curly would be in seclusion at the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue for at least two weeks, Jeanne chose to stay with him, writing in her journal: “Realizing he would be alone practically across the street from the 606 Club and a few blocks from all those willing strippers, I opted to stay at the hotel. What I said was, ’I’ll do my time at the hotel.’” The couple abandoned their Marine Drive apartment and found two suites waiting at the Hilton, reserved for Humphreys in the name of “Mr.

  Fishman,” a joke since Jeanne had developed an obsession for fishing in the Keys. Curly explained that what he was about to do had to be kept secret from the G-men, who were monitoring the gang’s homes and regular meeting places. “They were looking for us everywhere,” Jeanne recalls. “This was very secret.” Once settled in, Jeanne wondered where the rest - Joe Accardo, Gussie Alex, etc. - were. “Murray said they were busy keeping Roemer and the G looking for them elsewhere, while we were getting things done.” Getting what done? Jeanne wondered. As she quickly learned, her husband’s big secret was the work of fixing Jack Kennedy’s election.

  Jeanne soon found herself a virtual prisoner at the swank hotel, which the locals still knew by its previous name, The Stevens, for two weeks, bored to tears while her husband worked himself to exhaustion. From Jeanne’s journal: “I felt like the Prisoner of Zenda, Anne Boleyn in the Tower, Napoleon on Elbe, and Byron at Chillon. Murray said I was more like a bird in a gilded cage.” One of Curly’s gophers, Eddie Ryan, was the first to arrive, running errands for both his boss and Jeanne, who occasionally needed a change of clothes from home.

  In 1996, Jeanne recalled for the first time what she witnessed at the Stevens/Hilton, scenes that were corroborated by her own contemporaneous writings. “Lists were everywhere,” she wrote in her journal. “Murray was arranging lists in categories of politicians, unions, lawyers, and contacts . . . I could see that one list had at least thirty to forty names on it.” Once the lists were developed, Humphreys began making contact with the power brokers whom he could order to back Jack. “Murray’s phone rang off the hook - always politicians and Teamsters,” Jeanne says. Soon the contacts began arriving at the Stevens from around the country to receive their marching orders from Humphreys. Among the regular visitors were Murray Olf, the powerful Washington lobbyist, Teamster official John O’Brien, and East St. Louis boss of the Steamfitters Union, Buster Wrort-man. “The people coming to the hotel were Teamsters from all over the country - Kansas, St. Louis, Cleveland, Vegas,” Jeanne recently said. “They were coming in from everywhere, then fanning out again.”

  Although Jeanne knew no specifics about how the labor leaders were going to guarantee Kennedy’s election, it is not difficult to deduce what was going on. At the time of the Kennedy-Nixon contest, the millions of unionized American workers tended to follow the dictates and endorsements of their leaderships. Although most Teamsters complied with Hoffa’s endorsement of Nixon, tens of thousands of other non-Teamster unions across the nation were just waiting for the word from above. In a close election, these votes could make all the difference. Jim Strong, the Chicago Tribune’s labor reporter for twenty years, including 1960, recently spoke of the other weapons (besides the members’ votes) that organized labor brought to the table. “With its nationwide links, the Outfit could reach out across the country,” Strong says. “When the various locals endorsed a candidate, their modus operandi would be primarily to set up phone banks, get out the vote by driving voters to the polls, and write checks. That’s how they did it.” Factoring in the immense number of locals controlled by Humphreys, it becomes clear how he would be overworked at the Stevens.

  Not allowed to go out due to the FBI’s surveillance, Jeanne Humphreys tried to occupy herself by reading. Her best friend became Phil Itta, the hotel maitre d’, who kept her supplied with crossword puzzles, books, newspapers, and treats from room service. Itta, a trusted friend of Humphreys’, swept the rooms for FBI bugs, handpicked the room-service waiters, and installed new tamper-proof locks on the suites’ chests of drawers.

  While Curly was holed up in the Stevens, his upperworld alter ego, Joe Kennedy, was likewise ensconced at Marion Davies’ mansion in Los Angeles, his base of operations for maneuvering the delegates at the Democratic National Convention in the City of Angels. As one of his first moves, Kennedy brought in Chicago “backroom” pol Hy Raskin to deliver the convention delegates for Jack. Raskin was the number two man in the Democratic National Committee, legendary for his extensive Windy City contacts. By now, Joe Kennedy and other Washington insiders knew that Jack Kennedy’s Democratic rival, Senator Lyndon Johnson, had already lined up the support of New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, much as Nixon had done with Hoffa.14 When the convention convened in L.A., Joe was conspicuously absent on the night of his son’s nomination speech. His non-attendance didn’t go unnoticed by the crowd, many of whom queried, “Where’s Joe?” Randolph Churchill called it “a lovely party, but where’s the host?” The perception was that Joe did not want his personal history to mar this night with controversy. But that was only part of the rationale. As he watched the proceedings from the Los Angeles home of Marion Davies, eleven miles from downtown in Beverly Hills, Joe met with party bosses, and old friends who owed him favors. Besides Raskin, others, such as popular Southern author William Bradford Huie, were enlisted to distribute cash to various influential politicians on Jack’s behalf.15 Longtime family friend Judge Francis X. Morrissey wrote, “It was Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who made sure that the votes for the various delegations in the big key states, like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New Jersey, all went for Jack.” It may never be known what promises were made by Joe on Jack’s behalf, but it is a matter of record that Joe’s promises to the underworld were among those that would severely handicap his son’s administration.

  When Jack successfully snared the nomination, Mort Sahl, the political satirist, attempted to put a humorous spin on the underhanded politicking, wiring the patriarch: “You haven’t lost a son, you’ve gained a country.”

  With the nomination commandeered, the Humphreys repaired to their Key Biscayne home for some much needed R St R. To their dismay, however, they found that the G had been harassing Jeanne’s brother’s family, who also lived in the area. Not long after arriving, the Humphreys were attending a family get-together when Jeanne was approached by her seven-year-old niece, Diana. With tears in her eyes, the child said one of her schoolmates had asked her if her aunt and uncle were murderers. It turned out that the G, desperate to draw out Curly and Jeanne from their hiding place, had begun harassing members of Jeanne’s family and friends, displaying Curly’s 1934 mug shot. Diana’s girlfrien
d’s Cuban family was distraught over the prospect of being sent back to the island if they did not cooperate with the G. Curly had Jeanne’s brother complain to the local FBI office, which claimed to know nothing of the encounter. The Family Pact, apparently, only applied to Roemer’s jurisdiction.

  Even as they attempted to unwind in Florida, the “Harts” saw their getaway home visited regularly by reminders of Curly’s other life. In August, the Humphreys entertained Jimmy Hoffa at a time when their Key Biscayne neighborhood was enduring a fetid sewer backup. Still smarting from his treatment in Washington at the hands of Bobby Kennedy, Hoffa told Jeanne that he wondered if Bobby had fallen into Biscayne Bay, the stink was so awful. When the talk turned serious, Jeanne witnessed her husband explaining the Outfit’s work in support of Joe Kennedy’s son to the Teamster boss. “Of course I can’t officially endorse it,” Hoffa said. “But who knows? Maybe the Italians are right. If Jack feels he owes us one . . . “

  Another visitor was Mooney Giancana, with whom the Humphreys dined at one of Giancana’s favorite Ft. Lauderdale restaurants. The trio was chauffeured by Mooney’s Florida driver, Dom, the parking valet at the Outfit’s Miami Beach Kennel Club. Although Curly and Jeanne had hoped to escape the campaign, it was all that Mooney wanted to talk about. Jeanne Humphreys described the dinner conversation in her journal:

  Besides discussing what politicians had to be “turned around,” what union heads had to be convinced, and how much good it would do in the end, I was amazed to hear that Jackie K. had to be told not to wear slacks anymore when campaigning. Since I wasn’t included in the conversation I almost choked trying to suppress my laughter. There was a lot of “Frank said this” and “Frank said that” and “It’ll all pay off” repetition. Mooney was exuberant. I could read M [Murray] like a book and saw his lack of enthusiasm. When there was a lull in the conversation I told Mooney I should be put on the campaign payroll. His exact words were: “We’ll all get our payoff in the end.” How prophetic!

  As if Mooney Giancana had not injected enough drama into the year 1960, he embarked on yet another adventure while waiting for the November election. Apparently, the election fix was not a large enough marker to have over the Oval Office, especially if Joe Kennedy’s kid lost the contest. Thus, Mooney, at Johnny Rosselli’s instigation, concluded that the only sure guarantee of the Outfit’s hold over the next president was its participation in a fanciful White House-CIA scheme to murder Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

  1. Chicago historian Ovid Demaris described how Roma operated the club: ’One of Roma’s first acts as general manager of the Chicago Playboy Club was to award the garbage collection to Willie “Potatoes” Daddano’s West Suburban Scavenger Service . . . Attendant Service Corporation, a [Ross] Prio-[Joseph] DiVarco enterprise, was already parking playboy cars, checking playboy hats, and handing playboy towels in the rest room. Other playboys were drinking [Joe] Fusco beers and liquors, eating [James] Allegretti meat, and smoking [Eddie] Vogel cigarets.’

  2. An FBI telex of March 10,1960, notes Rosselli’s flight to New York from L.A. The Bureau guessed that Johnny was there on film production business.

  3. Confidential government sources reported to Johnny Rosselli’s biographers that “Mr. Smooth” also had a history of cooperation with the federal government. According to officials of the International Cooperation Agency, Rosselli assisted the CIA-backed Standard Fruit Company in the 1957 ouster of Guatemala’s president, Castillo Armas.

  4. A third corroboration for the Kennedy luncheon at Young’s is a contemporaneous handwritten record, names included. Regretfully, the material is stored in an off-limits portion of a federal archive. The author was made aware of it through an employee with access. Out of consideration for the well-being of both the employee and the record, the location cannot be disclosed. There is currently an effort to force an opening of the collection that holds the material.

  5. Senate investigator Walter Sheridan, and separately, journalist Dan Moldea, have detailed how California congressman Allan Oakley Hunter played the go-between in the Nixon-Hoffa dealing. With assurances from Nixon that he would, if elected, ease Hoffa’s legal harassment, Hoffa saw to it that the Teamsters executive board endorsed Nixon. Close Hoffa aide Ed Partin has stated that he witnessed Hoffa deliver $1 million to the Nixon war chest, half of it collected from New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, and half from New York/New Jersey mobsters. Marcello rightfully feared deportation in a Kennedy administration.

  6. Completed in 1930, the 4,023,400-square-foot Mart was the largest office space in the world until the construction of the Pentagon.

  7. According to the late talk-show host Morton Downey Jr., the son of Joe’s closest friend and business partner, Irish tenor Morton Downey Sr., Joe Kennedy and Downey (accompanied by Mort Jr.) would often meet at Frank Costello’s Waldorf-Astoria headquarters, where the foursome regularly went for haircuts.

  8. The videotape is in the author’s possession.

  9. Adamowski was a strait-laced anticorruption crusader who had broken from the Democratic ranks in protest of Daley’s ties to both the underworld and the party machine’s patronage gravy train. In 1959, Adamowski unearthed a $500,000-per-year traffic-ticket-fixing scheme in the city’s traffic court, with the kickbacks ending up lining the pockets of Daley appointees. At the beginning of 1960, Adamowski had broken the Summerdale Scandal, in which a twenty-year-old burglar admitted that, for two years, twelve Chicago policemen had assisted in his wholesale thievery by acting as lookouts, then using their patrol cars to cart off the goods to be fenced. cont’d overt cont’d When the dust settled, eight cops were imprisoned, and many more suspended. Also caught up in the fallout from the Summerdale Scandal were numerous Outfit-controlled police, who were being summarily reassigned. Concurrent FBI wiretaps disclosed that the thief, Richie Morrison, was the nephew of the mistress Curly Humphreys had taken on the lam with him to Mexico three decades earlier, Billie Jean Morrison. The Bureau also heard that after Morrison was arrested, Curly attempted to funnel money to Billie Jean to silence her talkative nephew. “This is gonna be the biggest thing that ever hit the mayor,” Humphreys predicted. “This kid has got thirty coppers, he has them all set up . . . This will spread like wildfire.” The Genius then pronounced his decree: “Well, boys, I don’t see how the Democrats can win with this scandal. This will whip the hell out of this administration... I hate to do it but we got to watch out for this administration.” As Humphreys told an associate at Celano’s tailor shop, “We can tell [the aunt] to give him five thousand dollars and tell him to claim he was hypnotized.”

  10. Years later, Kennedy’s wife, Rose, observed, “Joe had a genius for seeing something and knowing it would be worth something more later on. And with the Mart, he was absolutely right... it skyrocketed in value and became the basis for a whole new Kennedy fortune.”

  11. Incredibly, there is evidence that even mob-hating Robert Kennedy may have acknowledged the need to court the crime bosses. Award-winning investigative journalist for Newsday Mike Dorman was told by New Orleans Mafia don Carlos Marcello that RFK traveled to the Crescent City, attempting to convince Marcello to deliver the Louisiana delegation to JFK in the Democratic convention. Marcello turned him down, politely informing him that he was backing Lyndon Johnson. Marcello was convinced that this was the genesis of Bobby’s later obsessive crusade against both him and LBJ.

  12. Phil Regan would go on to spend a year in jail for bribing a California zoning commissioner, eventually pardoned by California governor Jerry Brown.

  13. Although Alo turned down acting as liaison with Giancana, some evidence suggests that Meyer did his bit to help in the election. In a letter written by a former employee of Las Vegas’ Desert Inn Hotel to its owner, Moe Dalitz, the employee, Annie Patterson, had, in 1966, fallen upon hard times and wrote the former Cleveland-based gambler for financial assistance. In her letter, Patterson firmly links Joe Kennedy to Lansky. In the context of her letter, it is clear that Patterson
had gotten to know Joe Kennedy at either the Desert Inn or the Flamingo. It is also clear that Kennedy had wronged Patterson in some way. She alludes to a letter she had written, in retribution, to J. Edgar Hoover that instigated wiretaps that somehow incriminated the Kennedys. She further states that the material was locked away because “apparently none wanted to cross with the Kennedys.” The letter continued: “Meyer Lansky was not the one who I knew. Mr. Kennedy told me about him and all the money that he parlayed from Las Vegas for the presidential campaign . . . I did not feel welcome to write to the Flamingo because Mr. Kennedy went around me and at no time was I paid one penny for my work; nor would I have ever contacted Mr. Lansky because I know (or had been told by Mr. Joseph Kennedy) that they were very close friends; in fact, it was Mr. Lansky that caused wiretapping to start there in the first place. He continued to “needle” Mr. J. Kennedy that Mr. K. was not receiving his full share of the take and why - so the Kennedy clan got together. I sincerely don’t believe that Mr. Lansky had any idea of the damage that he was causing anyone because he wanted to be socially accepted by the Kennedy clan . . . I feel sure that if I contacted the kind-hearted Lansky and requested help, I would receive it but that is against my principals. He is a friend of Mr. Kennedy -I have never met him personally but I saw him from a distance in Miami Beach. (They met me there for an appointment.)” The Lansky election allegations appear to be supported by an FBI memo from a confidential friend of Lansky’s noting that prominent Miami hoodlums “are financially supporting and actively endeavoring to secure the nomination for the Presidency as Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy.”

  14. The key source of the information was Marcello’s bagman Jack Halfen. Marcello had been paying Johnson, and many others to kill legislation that threatened slot-machine and wire-service gambling. For ten years, according to Halfen, Johnson was paid $100,000 per year. Johnson’s voting record reflects that Marcello’s money was well spent. Halfen initially gave many of the details (and proof) to award-winning journalist Mike Dorman in his book Payoff. More details were unearthed in my first book, Live by the Sword. Interestingly, when I obtained Halfen’s list of bribe recipients, near the top of the list was Supreme Court justice Tom Clark, the same Tom Clark who, as attorney general, played such a key role in the early parole of the Outfit’s Hollywood seven.