Authors: Gus Russo
With Curly now thoroughly compromised by Plumb, the FBI refocused on Mooney Giancana, whom it rightfully believed could be pushed over the edge, thereby exacerbating internal gang strife. On June 8, 1963, the FBI watched as Mooney and Phyllis joined Sinatra at his parents’ home in Hoboken, New Jersey. When he returned to Chicago, Mooney was met with a civil-liberties assault unparalleled in U.S. criminal history. In their effort to drive Giancana to self-destruction, the Chicago G-men, without the approval of their SAC (special agent in charge), Marlin Johnson, decided to complement their covert surveillance with blatant, round-the-clock, blanket coverage. The ploy had been used to a lesser degree thirty-three years earlier with Al Capone, when two uniformed cops tried unsuccessfully to unnerve Capone by following him everywhere after he left his voluntary incarceration in Philadelphia. Now, in 1963, the G called the technique lockstep, and the agents were certain that the attendant publicity would further ostracize the don from his associates.
For the next few weeks, the agents waited for Mooney to emerge from his Wenonah Park home in the morning, then followed him on all his sundry errands until he returned at night. When Mooney got out of his car, a team of agents likewise alighted from theirs, encircled the gangster at a radius of a few feet, and went everywhere he went: to the movies, restaurants, stores, golf courses, a walk, and even to church. Once again, the suburb was treated to the sight of the master wheelman coursing through its streets, his harassers in hot pursuit. When Giancana raced through his regular commercial car-wash tunnel, the employees cheered, “Go, Mo, go!” as he sped out the other end, spraying soap in all directions. On the golf course, the mediocre player Giancana and his playing partners were rushed by the FBI foursome behind them, with the agents often encircling the green and taunting Mooney as he putted. This was no small nuisance since Giancana took his game so seriously that he had had a putting surface landscaped into his backyard. Roemer described another aspect of the lockstep: “If he went to dinner, we went with him . . . [If] he got up from the table to go to the men’s room, I’d get up and be at the next urinal. I found that really bugged him. He had shy kidneys. He couldn’t do it when I was right there.”
The tactic soon began achieving its desired effect, as Mooney started snarling at his unwanted companions, “Get away from me, you cock-suckers!” In his first serious effort to terminate the coverage, Giancana set a trap for the G-men by luring them to his lair, the Armory Lounge. Agents Roemer and Rutland followed Mooney into his headquarters and quickly realized that all of Mooney’s most notorious musclemen were present. While some of the most dangerous men in America gave the G-men the Look, the agents wondered if perhaps they had gone too far and were now about to be ambushed. Surprisingly, the agents were allowed to leave the lounge unmolested. Minutes later, while the agents waited in their car for the Giancana party to exit, one of the gangster’s aides, Chuckie English, came out of the restaurant and ran menacingly up to Roemer’s car.
“Sam says to tell you that if Kennedy wants to sit down with him,” English said, “he knows who to go through.” He was of course referring to the same man Papa Joe Kennedy had gone through to get to Mooney for the election fix.
“Sinatra?” Roemer asked
“You said it,” said English.
Mooney’s flare-up with the G was immediately brought to the attention of Humphreys and Accardo. In a few days, the overweening agents listened to a conversation in Humphreys’ apartment that proved their strategy was bearing fruit. The Bureau’s transcript quoted one of Mooney’s underbosses, Frank Ferraro, venting to Curly:
Frank: “So help me God, I’m about to jump out your fucking widow.”
Curly: “What’s wrong?”
Frank: “That fucking Giancana, wait until you hear what he’s done now. He’s not making good decisions.”
Curly: “What happened?”
Frank: “Saturday night, Roemer and Rutland, they’re on Giancana. He takes them to the Armory. They get in a fucking shouting match. Whole bunch of our guys and Roemer and Rutland. When it’s all over, Giancana sends Charley McCarthy [English] out to see Roemer. What do you think he told Roemer?”
Curly: “What?”
Frank: “Charley McCarthy told Roemer that Mo told him to tell Kennedy to talk to him through Sinatra.”
Curly: “For Christ sakes, that’s a cardinal rule! You don’t give up a legit guy! He tells Roemer that Sinatra is our guy to Kennedy?”
Frank: “More or less. I’m so fucking mad, I could jump out your window. We got to do something about this. The G is driving this man goofy. He’s not right. He’s making mistakes. He don’t belong in that spot he can’t take the pressure.”
Curly: “I think this has to be brought to the attention of Joe [Accardo] and Paul [Ricca]. They’ve got to know the condition of this man’s mind.”
Within a few weeks, the Outfit conceded one battle to the G. On June 23, the gang abandoned Celano’s forever. As a parting shot, Curly Humphreys, in full stage voice, announced for the last time, “Welcome to the eleven A.M. meeting of the Chicago crime syndicate. We hope everybody is tuned in.”
That same month, Mooney Giancana virtually guaranteed the Outfit’s presence on the front pages when he did the unthinkable: He decided to sue the FBI over their lockstep harassment. Outfit bosses were said to actually be secretly rooting for the FBI, since a government victory might result in a college stay for their starstruck boss, who had been in gross neglect of his responsibilities. But Mooney placed an ace up his sleeve when he enlisted famed civil-rights attorney George N. Leighton of Harvard Law School to come to his aid. Giancana turned on the charm, having Leighton over to his home, where the lawyer saw nothing but a loving extended family coming and going. Interviewed recently, Leighton said, “I found Giancana to be one of the finest persons I have ever known.” Once aboard, Leighton devised a brilliant strategy, hiring a local production crew to film the G in action. Under the direction of private eye Don Ricker, the film crew accompanied Mooney on trips to the cemetery, church, golf course, and even the Armory Lounge. The FBI fully cooperated, not at all intimidated by the filmmakers. Occasionally, Mooney treated Ricker to the game of chase he played with the G, racing through the suburban streets, seemingly without disturbing the brake pedal. “I got my start this way,” Mooney boasted to his white-knuckled passengers.
Much to his bosses’ horror, Giancana’s suit became a front-page staple and a lead television news story. When his suit was heard in court, a parade of Mooney’s friends and relatives attested to the harassment. At one point, the courtroom lights were dimmed as Don Ricker projected the incriminating film. Comic relief was supplied on occasion, such as when attorney Leighton implored the judge regarding the filmed lockstepping on the golf course.
“Maybe you’ll appreciate the position of a golfer,” Leighton said, “who is about to take his eighteenth putt and looks up to see six FBI agents watching him.”
“The most I ever had was four putts,” Judge Richard B. Austin responded.
What happened next surely caused Humphreys, Ricca, and Accardo to turn pale: Giancana took the stand in his own defense, leaving himself open to cross-examination, and a possible rehash of the entire history of Chicago crime and all the Outfit leaders who controlled it. It was a rare opportunity for the prosecuting U.S. attorney’s office, which made it all the more shocking, and infuriating, to the G-men when their lead attorney said to Judge Austin, “We have no questions, Your Honor.”
It was later revealed that Robert Kennedy had personally instructed U.S. Attorney John Lalinsky to refrain from cross-examining the mob boss, ostensibly because the Justice Department did not wish to legitimize the judicial branch’s authority over the executive. However, many have postulated that perhaps Robert Kennedy did not wish to risk giving Giancana a forum from which to hang out the Kennedy family’s own dirty laundry: the Castro murder plots, the affairs with Campbell and Monroe, and the election fix. This possibility was buttressed many years later when Will Wilson, the assistant attorney general, Criminal Division, in the Nixon administration testified before Congress about a statement made to him by J. Edgar Hoover. Wilson told the committee that in 1971 Hoover recounted for Wilson how, during the Kennedy administration, the Bureau was about to arrest Giancana for racketeering when Bobby Kennedy burst into Hoover’s office and prevented Hoover from going forward, saying, “He knows too much.”
The degree to which the Bureau had been placed on the defensive was made abundantly clear when SAC Marlin Johnson took the witness stand, under subpoena from Leighton. While his subordinates languished in the audience, Johnson stole a page from Curly Humphreys’ bible.
“Does William Roemer work for you?” Leighton asked.
“I respectfully decline to answer the question on instructions from the U.S. attorney general, order number 260-62,” Johnson answered.
For a brief moment, it was as though the court had entered a parallel universe, where Bobby Kennedy’s men were forced to plead their version of the Fifth Amendment for Giancana’s probers. Johnson repeated the plea thirteen times, and the Bureau offered no defense, insistent that the court lacked jurisdiction. Judge Austin quickly ruled in favor of Mooney, who broke out a huge cigar in Austin’s chambers, blowing smoke in Johnson’s face as they signed the required paperwork. Per the ruling, the G was instructed to keep a reasonable distance when following their prey - and Marlin Johnson was fined $500 for contempt.
Although Mooney gloated over what was one of his few victories inside a court, his grin was quickly erased by a cold dose of reality. In a mere few weeks, the appellate court reversed the decision (and the contempt fine), and Cook County sheriff (and future governor of Illinois) Richard Ogilvie added his men to the FBI’s lockstep carnival. Now, Mooney’s home became a local attraction, as hundreds of curious mob-watchers showed up daily to watch Mooney curse at his tormentors. The circuslike goings-on did not go over well with the Humphreys-Accardo-Ricca triumvirate.
Giancana’s biographer William Brashler neatly summarized the reaction in the Outfit’s inner sanctum, writing, “Through it all the Outfit seethed . . . Accardo and Ricca were severely critical. . . Meetings were held without him [Giancana] in which strong underbosses railed about Giancana’s lack of cool. Names like Sam Battaglia, Jack Cerone, even Giancana’s own enforcer Willie Daddano were brought up as possible replacements.”
The Clubhouse Closes
After spending all of six weeks in Chicago, Giancana headed West once again to continue his rolling party with Sinatra and McGuire, wasting no time in making front-page news in Nevada. According to his FBI file, Mooney, with Phyllis in tow, guested at Sinatra’s Palm Beach home, then went on to Las Vegas, where the mob boss cavorted with Eddie Fisher and Dean Martin, both of whom “made a big fuss over Giancana.” From there, Mooney traveled to the Cal-Neva, where Phyllis and her sisters were scheduled to sing the week of July 27. According to McGuire’s manager, Victor LaCroix Collins, the trio became involved in a drunken celebration at McGuire’s Chalet 50. Collins got into a disagreement with McGuire, whom he attempted to force back to her chair. When she missed the chair and hit the floor, Mooney raced across the room and punched Collins above the eyebrow, cutting him with one of his ostentatious diamond rings. The argument then escalated to an all-out brawl.
Hearing the ruckus, Frank Sinatra burst in and, in one telling, held Collins while Mooney punched him or, according to another, separated the two. Collins has said that Sinatra then warned Collins that the hoods would put a contract out on Collins for the affront to their boss.
“The only way they’ll get me is from long distance with a high-powered rifle,” Collins answered, “because none of them has the guts to hit me face-to-face. I’m not afraid of nothing, wop.”
With that, the singer bellowed that because of the fight, he would now lose the Cal-Neva and his money.
“What do you mean, your money?” Collins shot back. “You don’t have a dime in the place. It’s all Mafia money and you know it.”
As Sinatra predicted, the coverage of Mooney’s presence at the Lodge, a violation of his Black Book listing, would indeed cause Sinatra to forfeit the Lodge, his 9 percent interest in the Sands, and his Nevada gambling license. The Gaming Board’s decision was guaranteed after Sinatra launched into a tirade against a board investigator who called to hear Sinatra’s version.
“Fuck you,” Sinatra yelled. “I don’t have to take this shit. Do you know who I am? I’m Frank Sinatra.
Frank Sinatra!”
When the board immediately ordered Sinatra to divest himself of his Nevada interests, Mooney realized he would now never recoup his Cal-Neva investment. D.C. detective and Giancana confidant Joe Shimon remembered running into Mooney soon after the board’s decision. “He told me that Frank cost him over $465,000 on Cal-Neva,” Shimon told Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley. “He said, ’That bastard and his big mouth. All he had to do was keep quiet, let the attorneys handle it. . . but no, Frank has to get him on the phone with that damn big mouth of his and now we’re going to lose the whole damn place.’”
Then governor of Nevada Grant Sawyer recalled how President Kennedy was making a stop in Las Vegas to speak at the Convention Center during the Cal-Neva flare-up. In the limousine from McCarran Airport, Kennedy asked Sawyer, “What are you doing to my friend Frank Sinatra?”
“Well, Mr. President,” Sawyer answered, “I’ll take care of things here in Nevada and I wish you luck on the national level.”