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Posted

It is usually assumed that Robert Kennedy has always supported the view that his brother was murdered by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. This is not true.

Soon after JFK was killed, John McCone, head of the CIA, arrived at the home of RFK. According to the investigative journalist, Jack Anderson: “When CIA chief John McCone learned of the assassination, he rushed to Robert Kennedy's home in McLean, Virginia, and stayed with him for three hours. No one else was admitted. Even Bobby's priest was turned away. McCone told me he gave the attorney general a routine briefing on CIA business and swore that Castro's name never came up.”

Anderson adds: “Sources would later tell me that McCone anguished with Bobby over the terrible possibility that the assassination plots sanctioned by the president's own brother may have backfired.”

We know little of what took place during this meeting. However, RFK later told his close friend Walter Sheridan: “I asked McCone if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me.”

At around 4.00 p.m. RFK phoned Ebbit Hotel in Washington. This was a building used by the CIA to house Cuban operatives. He first spoke to Enrique Ruiz-Williams, his main contact in the Cuban group involved in the plot to kill Castro. He then asked to be put through to Haynes Johnson, an American journalist working closely with the anti-Castro Cubans. According to Johnson, RFK said: “One of your guys did it.”

Over the next few years Robert Kennedy was asked several times in public if he believed that Lee Harvey Oswald killed his brother. He always replied that he agreed with the findings of the Warren Commission. However, that is not what he told his close friends. For example, on 9th December, 1963, he told Arthur Schlesinger that if Oswald had fired the shot that killed his brother he had been part of a “conspiracy involving gangsters, anti-Castro Cubans, and renegade CIA elements”.

It is now clear that within a few weeks of the assassination, RFK knew who killed his brother. However, like many of those who knew the truth about the assassination, Robert and Teddy Kennedy decided to go along with the official story that Oswald was the lone gunman.

It is now clear why Johnson, Hoover and McCone went along with the cover-up, but what about Robert Kennedy? It has already been established that within hours of the assassination RJK believed that his brother had been killed by “conspiracy involving gangsters, anti-Castro Cubans, and renegade CIA elements.” Why then did he not call for a full investigation into the assassination?

To answer that question you need to understand the situation that RJK was in after the assassination of JFK. His main objective was to preserve the good image of his brother and to protect his own political career.

One option was to announce to the public that the Kennedy brothers were sincere Cold War warriors and that they had indeed been involved in covert operations to assassinate Fidel Castro. This no doubt would have had appeal to those on the right who had supported JFK in 1960 because they believed he was going to be tough on communism.

The problem for Kennedy was that was not the full story. The brothers had also been involved in secret negotiations with Castro. Rather than being a Cold War warrior, JFK was attempting to bring an end to this conflict. He, more than anyone, had been shaken to the core about just how close the world had come to nuclear oblivion during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Robert Kennedy decided to play the long game. In the short-term he would use his knowledge of what really happened to blackmail Johnson into making certain policy decisions. This included civil rights legislation that RFK knew could not be achieved by his brother’s administration. It would be a lasting legacy to JFK’s commitment to racial equality.

With his political reputation preserved, RFK could prepare for his own bid for the presidency in 1968. This was of course would be a difficult task and it is possible that he would not have defeated Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic nomination. However, we will never know as RFK was assassinated on 4th June, 1968.

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Posted

I have just been reading C. David Heymann’s RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy (1998). It includes some interesting information about RFK’s reaction to the assassination.

Here is one passage:

Bobby's despair was in no small measure a result of survivor's guilt. JFK had been warned of a climate of hatred in Dallas. Senator William Fulbright, the target of vicious attacks by the Dallas News, had declined several invitations to visit the city and had pleaded with JFK to do likewise. Byron Skelton, the Democratic National Committeeman from Texas, had written to Bobby on November 4, 1963, "Frankly, I'm worried about President Kennedy's proposed trip to Dallas." The city wasn't safe, Skelton argued. But political commitments had been made, and RFK, preparing for his brother's reelection campaign, had favored keeping them. Moreover, it was RFK who suggested that the president ride through the streets of Dallas in a car without using the specially outfitted bulletproof bubble top. "It will give you more contact with the crowd," he had said.

Bobby's advice to visit Dallas, however, weighed less heavily on him than did his conduct over the whole of his brother's term in office, for he had been the driving force in the Kennedy administration's most aggressive operations. He had pushed the government to hound the mob, to chase down Hoffa, to destroy Castro. He had "taken care" of Marilyn Monroe. Less than a day after Jack was declared dead, Bobby told Larry O'Brien, "I'm sure that little pinko xxxxx had something to do with it, but he certainly didn't mastermind anything. He should've shot me, not Jack. I'm the one who's out to get them." News about Jack's assassin, and about the assassin's assassin, was not slow in coming. By the day of the funeral, Bobby knew that Lee Harvey Oswald had Communist ties and had demonstrated in New Orleans as a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He knew that Jack Ruby was a Dallas racketeer connected to the national Mafia. As John H. Davis observed in his book Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, RFK "could not possibly have escaped the awful suspicion that his aggressive campaigns against Castro and the mob might have backfired on his brother."

The CIA's John McCone remembered conversations with the attorney general shortly after Jack's death: "He wanted to know what we knew about it and whether it had been a Cuban or perhaps Russian hit. He even asked me if the CIA could have done it. I mentioned the mob, but RFK didn't want to know about it. I suspect he thought it was the mob. He said, 'They whoever they were should have killed me. I'm the one they wanted.' He blamed himself because of all the enemies he'd made along the way and also because he'd advised his brother to go to Dallas." At the time of Jack's death, the pursuit of the Mafia was proceeding unabated. Indeed, when the telephone rang with J. Edgar Hoover's word of Jack's shooting, RFK was awaiting another call: one supplying news of the verdict in the federal trial of New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello. (The don was acquitted that day.)

Over the next year, Bobby kept his distance from the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon panel, headed by the chief justice, created to look into the assassination.' J. Edgar Hoover, whose Bureau was a key investigative arm of the commission, sent the attorney general none of the raw materials developed by FBI agents during the probe, but neither did Bobby seek to acquire them. Earl Warren's group issued its final report to Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964. Oswald and Ruby, the document concluded, had both acted alone. Did RFK maintain his odd detachment from the inquiry into his brother's death-an inquiry for which he, as master of the FBI, had significant official responsibility because he was too heartbroken to dwell on the grisly details? Or did he fear that a truly comprehensive investigation might uncover details of Marcello and Roselli, Giancana and Campbell, Monroe and Castro? Was his brother's assassination the act of a solitary lunatic, or an expertly devised reprisal for the administration's efforts and Bobby's vendettas?f At a champagne party following Jimmy Hoffa's court convictions in early 1964, a glum RFK said, "There's nothing to celebrate." The labor leader had gloated after Jack's death, "Bobby's just another lawyer now." Hoffa was only one of the attorney general's enemies with a motive to see the president eliminated.

Jim Garrison, the flamboyant New Orleans district attorney who challenged the Warren Commission's conclusions, recalled a telephone conversation he had with RFK in 1964: "I told him some of my theories. He listened carefully, then said, `Maybe so, maybe you're right. But what good will it do to know the truth? Will it bring back my brother?' I said, `I find it hard to believe that as the top law man in the country you don't want to pursue the truth more ardently.' With this he hung up on me."

Posted

Heymann also interviewed LaVern Duffy for his book. This included the following:

RFK expressed dismay over the Commission's report, saying it was "impossible that Oswald and Ruby hadn't known one another." He also said "Those Cuban c**** are all working for the mob. They blame us for the Bay of Pigs, and they're trying to make this look like a Castro Communist hit. I don't buy it. And I don't trust those guys at the CIA. They're worse than the Mafia." Bobby simply didn't want to know who did it. But at the same time, he couldn't put it behind him. He wanted to bring his brother's murderers to justice, but he didn't have the strength to do it. He must have felt tremendous guilt over his failure to act.

Posted

If my memory is good, it is not always, Mark Lane had lunch with RFK and others not a long time before RFK got assassinated. The JFK assassination subject came up without Lane mentionning it first, I think RFK did. If, again, I recall correctly, RFK wanted to wait to become president before he investigates the assassination of his brother. Can someone confirm that?

Denis

Heymann also interviewed LaVern Duffy for his book. This included the following: 

RFK expressed dismay over the Commission's report, saying it was "impossible that Oswald and Ruby hadn't known one another." He also said "Those Cuban c**** are all working for the mob. They blame us for the Bay of Pigs, and they're trying to make this look like a Castro Communist hit. I don't buy it. And I don't trust those guys at the CIA. They're worse than the Mafia." Bobby simply didn't want to know who did it. But at the same time, he couldn't put it behind him. He wanted to bring his brother's murderers to justice, but he didn't have the strength to do it. He must have felt tremendous guilt over his failure to act.

Posted

C. David Heymann (RFK: A Candid Heymann) does not mention the meeting with Mark Lane. Nor does Arthur Schlesinger (Robert Kennedy and His Times). However, he does include details of a telephone call LBJ made to RFK shortly after the assassination. LBJ told RFK that he believed that his brother had been killed as part of a "worldwide plot".

Schlesinger also includes this interesting passage:

Robert Kennedy perceived so much hatred about, so many enemies: the Teamsters; the gangsters; the pro-Castro Cubans; the anti-Castro Cubans; the racists; the right-wing fanatics; the lonely deluded nuts mumbling to themselves in the night. I do not know whether he suspected how much vital information both the FBI and the CIA deliberately denied the Warren Commission or whether he ever read its report. But on October 30, 1966, as we talked till two-thirty in the morning in P. J. Clarke's saloon in New York City, "RFK wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business.""

The next year Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, started making sensational charges about a conspiracy. I asked Kennedy what he made of them. He thought Garrison might be onto something; NBC, he added, had sent Walter Sheridan to New Orleans to find out what Garrison had. Garrison's villain turned out to be the CIA. Kennedy said to Sheridan something like: "You know, at the time I asked McCone . . . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they hadn't."" Kennedy asked Frank Mankiewicz of his Senate staff whether he thought Garrison had anything. "And I started to tell him, and he said, `Well, I don't think I want to know.' Kennedy told me later: "Walter Sheridan is satisfied that Garrison is a fraud."

I cannot say what his essential feeling was. He came to believe the Warren Commission had done an inadequate job; but he had no conviction - though his mind was not sealed against the idea of conspitacy - that an adequate inquiry would necessarily have reached a different conclusion.

Posted
C. David Heymann (RFK: A Candid Heymann) does not mention the meeting with Mark Lane. Nor does Arthur Schlesinger (Robert Kennedy and His Times). However, he does include details of a telephone call LBJ made to RFK shortly after the assassination. LBJ told RFK that he believed that his brother had been killed as part of a "worldwide plot".

Schlesinger also includes this interesting passage:

Robert Kennedy perceived so much hatred about, so many enemies: the Teamsters; the gangsters; the pro-Castro Cubans; the anti-Castro Cubans; the racists; the right-wing fanatics; the lonely deluded nuts mumbling to themselves in the night. I do not know whether he suspected how much vital information both the FBI and the CIA deliberately denied the Warren Commission or whether he ever read its report. But on October 30, 1966, as we talked till two-thirty in the morning in P. J. Clarke's saloon in New York City, "RFK wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business.""

The next year Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, started making sensational charges about a conspiracy. I asked Kennedy what he made of them. He thought Garrison might be onto something; NBC, he added, had sent Walter Sheridan to New Orleans to find out what Garrison had. Garrison's villain turned out to be the CIA. Kennedy said to Sheridan something like: "You know, at the time I asked McCone . . . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they hadn't."" Kennedy asked Frank Mankiewicz of his Senate staff whether he thought Garrison had anything. "And I started to tell him, and he said, `Well, I don't think I want to know.' Kennedy told me later: "Walter Sheridan is satisfied that Garrison is a fraud."

I cannot say what his essential feeling was. He came to believe the Warren Commission had done an inadequate job; but he had no conviction - though his mind was not sealed against the idea of conspitacy - that an adequate inquiry would necessarily have reached a different conclusion.

Denis,

This is what I have always heard, that RFK intended to open up the investigation of his brother's murder once he was president. But obviously the powers that be could not have that, so they "invented" Sirhan Sirhan. I have always felt that this case would be, by far, the easiest to "solve" because there was a real autopsy by an honest coroner. I believe that Dr. Thomas Noguchi is even still alive. As is Sirhan. (Who does have an conspiracy-aware lawyer working on his case, against all odds).

People saw a security guard immediately behind RFK with a gun drawn, exactly at the spot where Dr. Noguchi's autopsy said the killing shot had to have come from ( vs. several feet in front of RFK, where Sirhan was). Security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar was the name of this guard and he was in fact located in I blieve 1987 and interviewed. In this interview he admitted not only to being there but to HAVING HIS GUN DRAWN,. This was for a mag called "Ragaldies". I used to have a copy of it and probably sitill do someplace.

This case can be solved!!!

Dawn

Posted
C. David Heymann (RFK: A Candid Heymann) does not mention the meeting with Mark Lane. Nor does Arthur Schlesinger (Robert Kennedy and His Times). However, he does include details of a telephone call LBJ made to RFK shortly after the assassination. LBJ told RFK that he believed that his brother had been killed as part of a "worldwide plot".

Schlesinger also includes this interesting passage:

Robert Kennedy perceived so much hatred about, so many enemies: the Teamsters; the gangsters; the pro-Castro Cubans; the anti-Castro Cubans; the racists; the right-wing fanatics; the lonely deluded nuts mumbling to themselves in the night. I do not know whether he suspected how much vital information both the FBI and the CIA deliberately denied the Warren Commission or whether he ever read its report. But on October 30, 1966, as we talked till two-thirty in the morning in P. J. Clarke's saloon in New York City, "RFK wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business.""

The next year Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, started making sensational charges about a conspiracy. I asked Kennedy what he made of them. He thought Garrison might be onto something; NBC, he added, had sent Walter Sheridan to New Orleans to find out what Garrison had. Garrison's villain turned out to be the CIA. Kennedy said to Sheridan something like: "You know, at the time I asked McCone . . . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they hadn't."" Kennedy asked Frank Mankiewicz of his Senate staff whether he thought Garrison had anything. "And I started to tell him, and he said, `Well, I don't think I want to know.' Kennedy told me later: "Walter Sheridan is satisfied that Garrison is a fraud."

I cannot say what his essential feeling was. He came to believe the Warren Commission had done an inadequate job; but he had no conviction - though his mind was not sealed against the idea of conspitacy - that an adequate inquiry would necessarily have reached a different conclusion.

Denis,

This is what I have always heard, that RFK intended to open up the investigation of his brother's murder once he was president. But obviously the powers that be could not have that, so they "invented" Sirhan Sirhan. I have always felt that this case would be, by far, the easiest to "solve" because there was a real autopsy by an honest coroner. I believe that Dr. Thomas Noguchi is even still alive. As is Sirhan. (Who does have an conspiracy-aware lawyer working on his case, against all odds).

People saw a security guard immediately behind RFK with a gun drawn, exactly at the spot where Dr. Noguchi's autopsy said the killing shot had to have come from ( vs. several feet in front of RFK, where Sirhan was). Security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar was the name of this guard and he was in fact located in I blieve 1987 and interviewed. In this interview he admitted not only to being there but to HAVING HIS GUN DRAWN,. This was for a mag called "Ragaldies". I used to have a copy of it and probably sitill do someplace.

This case can be solved!!!

Dawn

Dawn, I think that talk of RFK re-opening his brother's murder case upon assuming the presidency is a lot of bull. Even if he had wanted to, which in some measure he may have, he would still have had to face all the other disclosures mentioned above, such as that he was working with anti-Castro exiles, that he was conducting foreign policy as an Attorney General, that he and his brother had accepted big help from the Mafia to get elected in 1960, and on and on. The Kennedys were not the innocent public servants many today continue to suppose, and all hell would have broken loose. Even if RFK told someone just prior to California that he wouldn't be able to discover "who did it" until assuming the presidency, I don't believe he would have followed through on it.

Royce Bierma

Posted

I understand that Robert Kennedy was in constant contact with the CIA, Angleton I believe, after the defection of Yuri Nosenko in Feburary of 1964. Kennedy was being told that Nosenko would soon break and might provide additional material about Oswald's connections to the KGB. For a long period of time RFK would call daily to learn the updates on the Nosenko interigation.

Nosenko had been a part of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate which was responsible for counterintelligence against enemy agents inside of Russia. At the time Oswald was living inside Russia Nosenko had been in charge of the Tourism Department within the American=British section. After John F.Kennedy had been assassinated Nosinko was in charge of conducting a complete investigation of all contacts between Oswald and Soviet Intelligenc (Epstein)

It can be assumed that Bobby Kennedy at least held open the possibility that the Soviets or Nosenko could shed light on who was involved with the assassination of his brother.

Jim Root

  • 5 years later...
Guest Tom Scully
Posted

What did Bobby Kennedy know about the make up of the .Warren Commission in the first half of 1964? After all he was US Attorney General, and from all appearances, had a track record of investigating the mob, especially its activities related to the Teamsters Union and its leader, Jimmy Hoffa.

If this was true, and the 1974 posthumously published diaries of Drew Pearson states that Tom Clark knew it in 1946, and it was published by Pearson's bitter rival, in 1968, then we can assume that Bobby knew it in 1964.:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/444670...a4c039b9c_o.jpg

Bobby also had to know about these relationshis, their impact on the Democratic parrty, and on the repuration of his brother's US Ambassafor, Adlai Stevenon,L

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=sid...1&scoring=a

A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Aug 20, 1952

... in honor of J. N. Arvey, Democratic boss of Illinois and Atty. and Mrs. Sidney Korshak. The hosts were Harry Karl, a chain shoe merchant, and his wife,

I've found information supporting the idea that RFK had to know that the Warren Commission's investigation was compromised; sabotaged by the alliance of organized labor and organized crime that RFK had devoted himself, at least publicly, to exposing and bringing to justice.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=mr....n&scoring=a

Bares Lavish Parties for Union Bosses Here

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Nov 24, 1953

James R. Hoffa, Frank Darling, Bert Brennan, Dave Previant, Phil Goodman, ... Mr . and Mrs. Paul Dorfman, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Dorfman, Joseph Jacobs, ...

AFL Union Chiefs Son Balks at $101,000 Payoff Quiz

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Nov 24, 1953

M. Frank Darling is the head of local 1031 of the AFL Elec- trical Workers ... However, Mrs. Rose Dorfman, also sought on a , was ill and would not appear. ...

There are records of a 1953, congressional committee hearing on Paul and Allen Dorfman's "instant" 1949 entrancce into the life and health insurance business. Testimony is taken from Michael Frank Darling, the president and business manager of Chicago Local 1031, a 37,000 member affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Under questioning, Darling admits that he buys, from funds paid to Local 1031 by employers per union contracts negotiated by Darling, the group health and life insurance policies of more than half of Local 1031's members.

Darling discloses that he switched all of his insurance purchases, in May, 1949, on the advice of attorney Joseph Jacobs, to the Dorfman's newly formed insurance brokerage. M. Frank Darling admiys that he made this decision without knowing if the Dorfman's, who he admitted to knowing previously, were even yet licensed to sell insurance. Reviews of his testimony and other information in that 1953 hearing, surface again in hearings held in 1958 and in 1960.

In the later hearings, mention is made of Darling's 1953 testimony and the fact that he was, still president of Local 1031. Also included is infrimation that the $700 initial binder, paid by Darling to a representaitve of the Dorfmans, a Dr. Perlman, was used by Allen Dorfman to pay the initial rent for his insurance office, and for the purchase of office equipment. Kennedy participated in that session of a 1960 hearing.

Counsel for Michael Frank Darling in the 1953 hearing, declaring that he woulld never attempt to answer questions directed at his client, was Albert E, Jenner. Counsel for Paul and Allen Dorfman was Stanford Clinton.

According to information from the New Jersey Division of Gaming in the matter of an application for a gambling license by Playbpy and the Pritzkers, this was disclosed.:

http://njlegallib.rutgers.edu/legallib/njar/v10/p0465.pdf

In The Matter of The Application for Playboy-Elsinore Associates

For a Casino License

Decided: April 7, 1982

.....Page 4

B. Areas of Concern Identified By The Division

In that portion of its opening statement dealing with the Elsinor entities, the Division voiced concern over a series of financial transactions between the Teamsters Central States, Southeast, and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ("Pension Fund") and the Pritzkers, Hyatt and Elsinore, respectively. The Division's investigative report with respect to the Elsinore entities, more specifically identified eight such financial relationships extending from the 1950's through the mid-1970's. During the course of the Elsinore potion of this hearing, substantial testimony and documents were produced concerning the involvement of the Pritzker family and its business entities with the Pension Fund.

At the close of the evidentiaru phase of this hearing, the Division in its summation indicated that it would have no objection to the licensure of Eslinore if the following two conditions were imposed by the Commission:

....number one, there is no more dealing in any way, shape or form with any, Divisiopn or subdivision of the Teamsters fund.

Secondly, that the Pritzker family make efforts to insulate or extricate themselves from existing ties that they may have with Teamsters fund or funds in any way, shape, or form.....

Page 5

In summarizing the Elsinor portion of this hearing, the Division focused of ceratain aspects of the above financial transactions which it founf particularly troublesome. These areas of concern will now be addressed below.

1. The 1959 Loan

On July, 11, 1958, Jay Pritzker, on behalf of his family, entered into a joint venture agreement with several other individuals for the purchase and operation of what would later become the Hyatt House in Burlingame, California. The initial financing for the project had been obtained throught a mortgage banker but soon proved inadequate due to a series of constriction overruns. After an unsuccessful attempt to secure additional financing from the mortgage banker, Jay Pritzker approached Stanford Clinton, then counsel to the PENSION FUND (4) and an individual who had been closely associated with the Pritzker family for some 30 years, to inquires whether the PENSION FUND would be interested in providing additional financing for the venture.

Owing to the nature of the reservations expressed by the Division in its summation, it is necessary to digress at this point in order to amplify the Clinton-Pritzker relationship. After graduating from law school, Clinton accepted a position in June 1931 as an associate with the law firm of Prizker and Pritzker. Thereupon he embarked upon a legal career that spanned nearly four decades. When the Pritzker abandoned the traditional practice of law in 1936. they gave Clinton all of their active fies and permitted him to continue to use the Pritzker offices and support services.

Thereafter, Clinton maintained his own clientele, but he continued to do legal work for the Pritzker family and occasionally was invited to invest in Pritzker business ventures.

One such opportunity Clinton took advantage of was the Burlingame hotel project referred to above. Although there is some ambiguity in the record as to the exact percentages involved, it appears that Clinton had either a five percetn or a ten percent equity participation in the project.(6)

(4)Clinton was appointed counsel to the PENSION FUND during 1959 and continued in thsi capacity until his retirement in 1967.

(5)Eventually, Clintons's representation of certain individuals came to viewed by the Pritzkers as incompatible with their commercial interests and the above relationship was severed.

Page 6

Nevetheless, both Abraham Nicholas Pritzker and Clinton testified during these proceedings that the latter made a capital contribution to the venture out of his personal funds.

Since Clinton was counsel to the PENSION FUND at the time that he was approacjed by Jay Pritzker regarding the possibility of seeking additional funding for the Burlingame venture from such FUND, Clinton faced a twofold conflict of interest. His thirty-year association with the Pritzker family and his equity interest in the project necessitated that he recuse himself duing the loan application process. Before withdrawing as counsel on this loan, Clinton went to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the PENSION FUND and fully disclosed his involvement with the project. Upon the recusal of Clinton, Frank J. McGarr, presently Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was retained by the PENSION FUND to represent its interests in negotiating and ultimately closing the Burlingame mortgage loan transaction. On August 31, 1959, the oredecessor of the present Hyatt Corporation obtained a $2,000,0000 first mortgage loan from the Pension Fund at an annual interest rate of six percent, with repayment due in 1979.

In its summation, the Division conceded that it "had been unable to uncover any evidence which would demonstrate any impropriety on the part of either Mr. Clinton, the Pritzkers, the Hyatt, (or) the PENSION FUND in this matter". Notwithstanding this assertion, the Division expressed concern over how Stanford Clinton initially acquired his interest in the Burlingame project and how his interest was later reduced from a ten percent to five percent holding.....

....2. The 1963 Loan

On March 15,1960, another Hyatt financing proposal was sent to the PENSION FUND and was directed to the attention of it Executive

Page 7

Secretary, Francis J. Murtha. In this proposal, Hyatt offered to sell to the FUND subordinated debentures in the principal amount of $4,000,000 bearing interest at the rate of 6 1/4 percent per annum and maturing on March 31, 1979. This financing was to be used by Hyatt for the expansion of its hotel chaing and for the acquisition, development, and construction of real estate projects.

Stanford Clinton again withdrew as counsel for the PENSION FUND and the firm of Thompson, Raymond, Mayer, Jenner and Bloomstein was retained in order to render legal advice to the Trustees of the Fund and to execute the appropriate legal documents. ....

....After difficult negotiations, and Trustees of the PENSION FUND approved a revised proposal....The loan was executed on June 24, 1960.

The Division in its summation noted some compliamentary language used by James R. Hoffa in referring to the Pritzker family at a Board of Trustees meeting of the PENSION FUND. This reference was to the fiscal responsibility of the Pritzkers....

...3. 1966-1970 Loans

Consider that the NJ Division of Gaming excluded the word "Teamster" in all descriptions of the PENSION FUND, after the first oage of its report, which it kept hidden from the public for six uears after it was published in 1982. Consider that Pritzker attorney and 30 year friend, Stanford Clinton, was the Teamsters Pension Fund counsel, and he got the law firm of Albert Jenner and Henry Crown's son, John, to stand in for him in negotiating a $4 million loan to the Pritzkers in 1960. The Pritzkers could see that the stench of Stanford Clinton's clients had caused him to stink, too, and the distanced themselves from him.

Tom Clark, Earl Warren, and Bobby Kennedy, either welcomed the nearly as tainted, Albert Jenner Jr. into one of the most sensitive investigative spots in the Warren Commission, or suffered silently in reaction tp Jenner's role in determining an Oswald or a Ruby conspiracy....or not.

Albert Jenner did not represent Allen Dorfman until after the WC Report, but we now know Jenner represented the Union official who put the first Union insurance fund dollar in Dorfman's hand, and that Bobby Kennedy had to have known it. It is possible that Bobby and Teddy went to their graves faking their support for the finidings of the WC because they were trying to hide Kennedy family involvement in recruiting mob leaders in plots to assassinate Castro, but keeping that secret does not seem like enough of a benefit to stand by while Albert Jenner attempted to thwart the WC investigation, as if it was the invesitigation to determine where the Union money went after it was paid to Dorfman Insurance front companies, or why the business went to Dorfman in the first place.

Watching Jenner's lawfirm, in 1960, acting as fill-n counsel for Jimmy Hoffa's Mafia piggy bank, with Henry Crown;s son on board, is rich.

Bobby could not have known in 1964, that Earl Warren would be choosing Paul Ziffren;s son as his Supreme Court law clerk for the 1966 term, and there

is a chance that Bobby was not aware that Tom Clark picked Henry Crown's son to clerk for him in 1956, or even that the Crown kids next stop was Jenner's law frim, but Bobby had to know that Earl Warren and family were too close to Henry Crown partner, Conrad Hiltom.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp...dc62da33e2ff469

298 F.2d 772

Albert E. Jenner, Jr., Richard Russell Wolfe, John J. Crown, Chicago, Ill. (Thompson, Raymond, Mayer, Jenner & Bloomstein, Jarrett Ross Clark, ...

ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/298/298.F2d.772.13295-6.html

If Moe told them[/b] to make a loan," said one observer of the moment, "they made the loan." In 1960, Teamster money began pouring in to finance the next round of casino growth, ...

Bobby Kennedy was much smarter than I am, he was an expert on the subject of Jimmy Hoffa and the mob, and he knew almost everything I've presented in thsi post, yet he permitted the Chicago Syndicate to place its attorney on the WC, to determine that neither Oswald nor Ruby had discernible mob ties, and then remained publicly supportive of the WC's "findings", and seems to have persuaded his brother Teddy and his sister-in-law, Jackie to do likewise.

Albert Jenner smelled almost as bad, in 1963, as Stanford Clinton did. The Pritzkers pushed Clinton away, while Earl Warren, Tom Clark, and Dean Acheson were

sponsoring Jenner to spearhead the most sensitve investigation in recent times, and the US Attorney General and dedicated mob opponent, all but held the

door for thsi corrupt, bi-partisan, mob influenced whitewash. Jenner's role in representing the man who controlled the company awarded the TFX contract, investigation of which had just been shut down in December of 1963, does not even need to be emphasized, for the WC Report to look like a mob tainted mess.

.

Why was the Kennedy reaction, to the compromised WC, considering what Bobby had to know, no reaction?

Posted (edited)

Tom : ...''organized labor and organized crime''... - I'd say brutally controlled labour by expendable organized outlaw assets.

____________________________

''Why was the Kennedy reaction, to the compromised WC, considering what Bobby had to know, no reaction?'' - I've often pondered that one and found traces of him in very important situations throughout the world which was a buildup towards the union of himself, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King, even Charles Evers, and others, that clearly recognises that a seizure of power was absolutely fundamental to getting anything done.

edit:typos

Edited by John Dolva
Guest Tom Scully
Posted (edited)

John,

In 1919, a 5 day strike organized by the IWW and port workers, shut the city of Seattle down. Union organized soup kitchens fed the city and the only violence was fomented by government intent on restoring "order'.:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=iww...1&scoring=a

BULLETS FELL WAR VETERANS; IWW HANGED

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Nov 12, 1919

According to a story published in a Seattle labor organ Oct. 24, ... Two department of justice opera- tives left Seattle for Centralia to in- the activities ...

NORTHWEST AND WEST WILL MAKE RED SWEEP CLEAN - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver (Pay-Per-View)

LYNCH IWW FOR SLAYING OF OVERSEAS VETERANS. - Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver (Pay-Per-View)

New York Times - Los Angeles Times - All 7 related - Related web pages

RAIDS ORDERED BY PALMER; IWW Editor and Directors at Seattle Held …

New York Times - Nov 14, 1919

Federal officers raided the office of The Seattle Union Record, seized the entire plant, arid arrested several , including E. B. Ault,. editor. ...

I suspect this was the the watershed incident that convinced the right oriented US establishment to enlist thugs like M. Frank Darling, featured in my last post, and Jimmy Hoffa, and the crime syndicate to prey on labor organizations while the establishment turned a blind eye and left leaning democrats were neutralized by red baiting. The result was that organized crime corrupted both parties and almost all elected officials in a communist free, eutopia.

LABOR BOMBING LAID BY UNION LEADER TO REDS

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Oct 13, 1954

M. Frank Darling, president of local 1031 of the AFL Internationa1 Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, blamed Communists yes- ...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JlsbA...tings&hl=en

FUN DEFEATS THE COMMIES .

Pittsburgh Press - Google News Archive - Jul 8, 1949

In Chicago, Michael Frank Darling has had considerable success with that method Mr. Darling ... The entertainment is free. It's paid for out of union dues. ...

1934 saw the last gasp of the left's political ambitions in the US.:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp...dc62da33e2ff469

"Bloody Thursday" Along the Waterfront - 1934

Chronicle reporter Royce Brier's eyewitness account gives some sense of the chaos and turmoil of what became known as "Bloody Thursday." Gov. Frank Merriam

http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist/thursday2.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchel...n_b_139329.html

Greg Mitchell

Author, 'Why Obama Won'

Posted: October 30, 2008 02:34 PM

...Back in the summer of '34, in his weekly column appearing in hundreds of newspapers, Will Rogers, America's most popular (and greatest) political commentator, revealed that a famous author, a socialist no less, was running for governor of California, "a darn nice fellow, and just plum smart, and if he could deliver even some of the things he promises, should not only be governor of one state, but president of all of 'em."

Six weeks later, on August 28, 1934, Upton Sinclair swept the Democratic primary for governor of California, and all hell broke loose, across the state, then across the continent. On the day after, the Los Angeles Times, under Harry Chandler, denounced Sinclair's "maggot-like horde" of supporters, and the Hearst press was no kinder. Earl Warren, the Alameda County district attorney, warned that the state was about to be overcome by communism, and the movie studios threatened to move back east if Sinclair took office.

But Sinclair, author of The Jungle and dozens of other muckraking books, had created a crisis not just for his home state but the entire nation, by embracing FDR's New Deal, while also leading a grassroots movement called EPIC (End Poverty in California), perhaps the greatest such organization of the century. "Upton Sinclair has been swallowing quack cures for all the sorrows of mankind since the turn of the century," his friend H.L. Mencken explained, "is at it again in California, and on such a scale that the whole country is attracted by the spectacle." Sinclair was also California's first celebrity politician: before Arnold, before Ronnie.

The prospect of a socialist governing the nation's most volatile state sparked nothing less than a revolution in American politics. With an assist from Hollywood, and leading newspapers, Sinclair's opponents virtually invented the modern media campaign.

It marked a stunning advance in the art of public relations, "in which advertising men now believed they could sell or destroy political candidates as they sold one brand of soap and defamed its competitor," Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. has observed. In another twenty years, these techniques would spread east, "achieve a new refinement," Schlesinger added, "and begin to dominate the politics of the nation."...

Edited by Tom Scully
Posted

Yes, and with JEHs blessings and guidance.

Posted

Did you read, "BROTHERS" by David Talbot? Good stuff...

What did Bobby Kennedy know about the make up of the .Warren Commission in the first half of 1964? After all he was US Attorney General, and from all appearances, had a track record of investigating the mob, especially its activities related to the Teamsters Union and its leader, Jimmy Hoffa.

If this was true, and the 1974 posthumously published diaries of Drew Pearson states that Tom Clark knew it in 1946, and it was published by Pearson's bitter rival, in 1968, then we can assume that Bobby knew it in 1964.:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/444670...a4c039b9c_o.jpg

Bobby also had to know about these relationshis, their impact on the Democratic parrty, and on the repuration of his brother's US Ambassafor, Adlai Stevenon,L

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=sid...1&scoring=a

A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Aug 20, 1952

... in honor of J. N. Arvey, Democratic boss of Illinois and Atty. and Mrs. Sidney Korshak. The hosts were Harry Karl, a chain shoe merchant, and his wife,

I've found information supporting the idea that RFK had to know that the Warren Commission's investigation was compromised; sabotaged by the alliance of organized labor and organized crime that RFK had devoted himself, at least publicly, to exposing and bringing to justice.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=mr....n&scoring=a

Bares Lavish Parties for Union Bosses Here

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Nov 24, 1953

James R. Hoffa, Frank Darling, Bert Brennan, Dave Previant, Phil Goodman, ... Mr . and Mrs. Paul Dorfman, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Dorfman, Joseph Jacobs, ...

AFL Union Chiefs Son Balks at $101,000 Payoff Quiz

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Nov 24, 1953

M. Frank Darling is the head of local 1031 of the AFL Elec- trical Workers ... However, Mrs. Rose Dorfman, also sought on a , was ill and would not appear. ...

There are records of a 1953, congressional committee hearing on Paul and Allen Dorfman's "instant" 1949 entrancce into the life and health insurance business. Testimony is taken from Michael Frank Darling, the president and business manager of Chicago Local 1031, a 37,000 member affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Under questioning, Darling admits that he buys, from funds paid to Local 1031 by employers per union contracts negotiated by Darling, the group health and life insurance policies of more than half of Local 1031's members.

Darling discloses that he switched all of his insurance purchases, in May, 1949, on the advice of attorney Joseph Jacobs, to the Dorfman's newly formed insurance brokerage. M. Frank Darling admiys that he made this decision without knowing if the Dorfman's, who he admitted to knowing previously, were even yet licensed to sell insurance. Reviews of his testimony and other information in that 1953 hearing, surface again in hearings held in 1958 and in 1960.

In the later hearings, mention is made of Darling's 1953 testimony and the fact that he was, still president of Local 1031. Also included is infrimation that the $700 initial binder, paid by Darling to a representaitve of the Dorfmans, a Dr. Perlman, was used by Allen Dorfman to pay the initial rent for his insurance office, and for the purchase of office equipment. Kennedy participated in that session of a 1960 hearing.

Counsel for Michael Frank Darling in the 1953 hearing, declaring that he woulld never attempt to answer questions directed at his client, was Albert E, Jenner. Counsel for Paul and Allen Dorfman was Stanford Clinton.

According to information from the New Jersey Division of Gaming in the matter of an application for a gambling license by Playbpy and the Pritzkers, this was disclosed.:

http://njlegallib.rutgers.edu/legallib/njar/v10/p0465.pdf

In The Matter of The Application for Playboy-Elsinore Associates

For a Casino License

Decided: April 7, 1982

.....Page 4

B. Areas of Concern Identified By The Division

In that portion of its opening statement dealing with the Elsinor entities, the Division voiced concern over a series of financial transactions between the Teamsters Central States, Southeast, and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ("Pension Fund") and the Pritzkers, Hyatt and Elsinore, respectively. The Division's investigative report with respect to the Elsinore entities, more specifically identified eight such financial relationships extending from the 1950's through the mid-1970's. During the course of the Elsinore potion of this hearing, substantial testimony and documents were produced concerning the involvement of the Pritzker family and its business entities with the Pension Fund.

At the close of the evidentiaru phase of this hearing, the Division in its summation indicated that it would have no objection to the licensure of Eslinore if the following two conditions were imposed by the Commission:

....number one, there is no more dealing in any way, shape or form with any, Divisiopn or subdivision of the Teamsters fund.

Secondly, that the Pritzker family make efforts to insulate or extricate themselves from existing ties that they may have with Teamsters fund or funds in any way, shape, or form.....

Page 5

In summarizing the Elsinor portion of this hearing, the Division focused of ceratain aspects of the above financial transactions which it founf particularly troublesome. These areas of concern will now be addressed below.

1. The 1959 Loan

On July, 11, 1958, Jay Pritzker, on behalf of his family, entered into a joint venture agreement with several other individuals for the purchase and operation of what would later become the Hyatt House in Burlingame, California. The initial financing for the project had been obtained throught a mortgage banker but soon proved inadequate due to a series of constriction overruns. After an unsuccessful attempt to secure additional financing from the mortgage banker, Jay Pritzker approached Stanford Clinton, then counsel to the PENSION FUND (4) and an individual who had been closely associated with the Pritzker family for some 30 years, to inquires whether the PENSION FUND would be interested in providing additional financing for the venture.

Owing to the nature of the reservations expressed by the Division in its summation, it is necessary to digress at this point in order to amplify the Clinton-Pritzker relationship. After graduating from law school, Clinton accepted a position in June 1931 as an associate with the law firm of Prizker and Pritzker. Thereupon he embarked upon a legal career that spanned nearly four decades. When the Pritzker abandoned the traditional practice of law in 1936. they gave Clinton all of their active fies and permitted him to continue to use the Pritzker offices and support services.

Thereafter, Clinton maintained his own clientele, but he continued to do legal work for the Pritzker family and occasionally was invited to invest in Pritzker business ventures.

One such opportunity Clinton took advantage of was the Burlingame hotel project referred to above. Although there is some ambiguity in the record as to the exact percentages involved, it appears that Clinton had either a five percetn or a ten percent equity participation in the project.(6)

(4)Clinton was appointed counsel to the PENSION FUND during 1959 and continued in thsi capacity until his retirement in 1967.

(5)Eventually, Clintons's representation of certain individuals came to viewed by the Pritzkers as incompatible with their commercial interests and the above relationship was severed.

Page 6

Nevetheless, both Abraham Nicholas Pritzker and Clinton testified during these proceedings that the latter made a capital contribution to the venture out of his personal funds.

Since Clinton was counsel to the PENSION FUND at the time that he was approacjed by Jay Pritzker regarding the possibility of seeking additional funding for the Burlingame venture from such FUND, Clinton faced a twofold conflict of interest. His thirty-year association with the Pritzker family and his equity interest in the project necessitated that he recuse himself duing the loan application process. Before withdrawing as counsel on this loan, Clinton went to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the PENSION FUND and fully disclosed his involvement with the project. Upon the recusal of Clinton, Frank J. McGarr, presently Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was retained by the PENSION FUND to represent its interests in negotiating and ultimately closing the Burlingame mortgage loan transaction. On August 31, 1959, the oredecessor of the present Hyatt Corporation obtained a $2,000,0000 first mortgage loan from the Pension Fund at an annual interest rate of six percent, with repayment due in 1979.

In its summation, the Division conceded that it "had been unable to uncover any evidence which would demonstrate any impropriety on the part of either Mr. Clinton, the Pritzkers, the Hyatt, (or) the PENSION FUND in this matter". Notwithstanding this assertion, the Division expressed concern over how Stanford Clinton initially acquired his interest in the Burlingame project and how his interest was later reduced from a ten percent to five percent holding.....

....2. The 1963 Loan

On March 15,1960, another Hyatt financing proposal was sent to the PENSION FUND and was directed to the attention of it Executive

Page 7

Secretary, Francis J. Murtha. In this proposal, Hyatt offered to sell to the FUND subordinated debentures in the principal amount of $4,000,000 bearing interest at the rate of 6 1/4 percent per annum and maturing on March 31, 1979. This financing was to be used by Hyatt for the expansion of its hotel chaing and for the acquisition, development, and construction of real estate projects.

Stanford Clinton again withdrew as counsel for the PENSION FUND and the firm of Thompson, Raymond, Mayer, Jenner and Bloomstein was retained in order to render legal advice to the Trustees of the Fund and to execute the appropriate legal documents. ....

....After difficult negotiations, and Trustees of the PENSION FUND approved a revised proposal....The loan was executed on June 24, 1960.

The Division in its summation noted some compliamentary language used by James R. Hoffa in referring to the Pritzker family at a Board of Trustees meeting of the PENSION FUND. This reference was to the fiscal responsibility of the Pritzkers....

...3. 1966-1970 Loans

Consider that the NJ Division of Gaming excluded the word "Teamster" in all descriptions of the PENSION FUND, after the first oage of its report, which it kept hidden from the public for six uears after it was published in 1982. Consider that Pritzker attorney and 30 year friend, Stanford Clinton, was the Teamsters Pension Fund counsel, and he got the law firm of Albert Jenner and Henry Crown's son, John, to stand in for him in negotiating a $4 million loan to the Pritzkers in 1960. The Pritzkers could see that the stench of Stanford Clinton's clients had caused him to stink, too, and the distanced themselves from him.

Tom Clark, Earl Warren, and Bobby Kennedy, either welcomed the nearly as tainted, Albert Jenner Jr. into one of the most sensitive investigative spots in the Warren Commission, or suffered silently in reaction tp Jenner's role in determining an Oswald or a Ruby conspiracy....or not.

Albert Jenner did not represent Allen Dorfman until after the WC Report, but we now know Jenner represented the Union official who put the first Union insurance fund dollar in Dorfman's hand, and that Bobby Kennedy had to have known it. It is possible that Bobby and Teddy went to their graves faking their support for the finidings of the WC because they were trying to hide Kennedy family involvement in recruiting mob leaders in plots to assassinate Castro, but keeping that secret does not seem like enough of a benefit to stand by while Albert Jenner attempted to thwart the WC investigation, as if it was the invesitigation to determine where the Union money went after it was paid to Dorfman Insurance front companies, or why the business went to Dorfman in the first place.

Watching Jenner's lawfirm, in 1960, acting as fill-n counsel for Jimmy Hoffa's Mafia piggy bank, with Henry Crown;s son on board, is rich.

Bobby could not have known in 1964, that Earl Warren would be choosing Paul Ziffren;s son as his Supreme Court law clerk for the 1966 term, and there

is a chance that Bobby was not aware that Tom Clark picked Henry Crown's son to clerk for him in 1956, or even that the Crown kids next stop was Jenner's law frim, but Bobby had to know that Earl Warren and family were too close to Henry Crown partner, Conrad Hiltom.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp...dc62da33e2ff469

298 F.2d 772

Albert E. Jenner, Jr., Richard Russell Wolfe, John J. Crown, Chicago, Ill. (Thompson, Raymond, Mayer, Jenner & Bloomstein, Jarrett Ross Clark, ...

ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/298/298.F2d.772.13295-6.html

If Moe told them[/b] to make a loan," said one observer of the moment, "they made the loan." In 1960, Teamster money began pouring in to finance the next round of casino growth, ...

Bobby Kennedy was much smarter than I am, he was an expert on the subject of Jimmy Hoffa and the mob, and he knew almost everything I've presented in thsi post, yet he permitted the Chicago Syndicate to place its attorney on the WC, to determine that neither Oswald nor Ruby had discernible mob ties, and then remained publicly supportive of the WC's "findings", and seems to have persuaded his brother Teddy and his sister-in-law, Jackie to do likewise.

Albert Jenner smelled almost as bad, in 1963, as Stanford Clinton did. The Pritzkers pushed Clinton away, while Earl Warren, Tom Clark, and Dean Acheson were

sponsoring Jenner to spearhead the most sensitve investigation in recent times, and the US Attorney General and dedicated mob opponent, all but held the

door for thsi corrupt, bi-partisan, mob influenced whitewash. Jenner's role in representing the man who controlled the company awarded the TFX contract, investigation of which had just been shut down in December of 1963, does not even need to be emphasized, for the WC Report to look like a mob tainted mess.

.

Why was the Kennedy reaction, to the compromised WC, considering what Bobby had to know, no reaction?

Guest Tom Scully
Posted

Bobby Kennedy also must have known about Del Webb, and Lawrence Wien and their "business dealings" with the mob and with the mob financier in "very high places", Henry Crown, and that Crown's attorney was Albert Jenner, Jr. From early 1964, until his own deafh in June, 1968, Bobby Kennedy had to know that the appintment of Albert Jenner, Jr. to the WC was a corruption of the investigation into the background of his brother's assassination and the shooting of Oswald. Jenner was the attorney for the man in financial control of the corporation awarded the most expensive military contract in history, TFX. Bobby's brother had been embroiled in questions about the propriety of the award of that contract by the Pentagon, resulting in the firing of Navy Secretary Fred Korth, just days before Bobby's brother, the President's assassination.:

News Conference 64 - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum

Text of President Kennedy's press conference #64, November 14, 1963. ... QUESTION: Mr. President, the Fred Korth and Bobby Baker cases have prompted some ...

http://www.jfklibrary.org/.../Pres...64_11141963.htm

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=AlE0A...oseph&hl=en

The Milwaukee Journal - Mar 19, 1977

Led to More Deals

For Webb, the Flamingo experience led to a series of deals

with other developers including Henry Crown of Chicago and

Arnold S. Kirkeby of Los Angeles.

Crown, now 80, a Chicago financier who owned the Empire State Building

from 1954 to 1961, became a close adviser to Webb. He was a longtime ally of

a Chicago Democratic boss, the late Jacob M. (Jake) Arvey, and a business associate

of Tucson developer Sam Nanini, another Chicagoan with acknowledged mob connections....

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1XkRA...+webb&hl=en

4290078988_647c94c0ce_o.jpg

http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&q=%...nG=Search+Books

The money and the power: the making of Las Vegas and its hold on America ...‎ - Page 233-234

Sally Denton, Roger Morris - History - 2001 - 479 pages

"If Moe told them to make a loan," said one observer of the moment, "they made the loan."

In 1960, Teamster money began pouring in to finance the next round of casino

growth, even beyond what the Bank of Las Vegas was providing with its discreet "character loans."

There were the expansions at the Fremont, Desert Inn, and Stardust, including the latter's own eighteen- hole course laid out with "golf bags full of

pension funds," as a reporter described the $1.2 million financing Of the first nine pension fund loans, Dalitz interests received four, though

Hoffa soon diversified his portfolio. Major lending followed to the Dunes, Landmark, Four Queens, Aladdin, and for the first portion of what would be more

than $20 million to Sarno's Caesars Palace (there were more funds later for Sarno's cavernous Circus Circus).

The ever ready Bank of Las Vegas, now renamed and expanded as Valley

Page 233

Bank , handled most of the Teamster loans on the scene, an amount climbing over the decade past $100 million.

Typically, Parry Thomas was in close and lucrative relationships with Dalitz and Hoffa attorney Morris Shenker, a Syndicate lawyer from St. Louis with myriad political and business connections as well as his own casino interests then and later. The Teamster ties and corresponding bank loans began to take Walter Cosgriff's once modest bank into much wider, murkier terrain, though much of that world would not be exposed for decades to come. Soon the power of the Teamsters, and of the organized crime around and behind Hoffa, seemed a new arbiter in the city. "Jimmy was the juice," one Las Vegan said of Hoffa in the early sixties. With the loans — "they all had unwritten strings attached," a lawyer for the casinos recalled — came still more claimants on the skim, Hoffa allies from the Midwest and elsewhere who added to the welter of gang holdings and levies along the Strip. But the predominant authority in the city remained Lansky and his closer associates. "A lot of guys were coming in then on the split," said a longtime manager, "but these were still mostly Lansky joints." The Hoffa millions did nothing in in the end to change that reality in the backrooms, though outwardly the union presence was conspicuous.

Represented in Nevada by US senator Alan Bible's law firm in Reno, the Teamsters became one of Nevada's largest creditors and mortgage-holders, and of its kind, even in a place accustomed to absentee, colonial rule, a distant force to be reckoned with.

"Any ambitious businessman in Las Vegas would eventually run across the Teamsters, the biggest lender in the state," a Cleveland journalist wrote of the period. "They have bankrolled the better part of Las Vegas," concluded a writer for the Wall Street Journal.

Still, significant as it was, that corrupt union financing — from which Las Vegas was supposedly rescued later by more respectable millions — only tended to only tended to overshadow and distract attention from other money no less vital to the city. As Hoffa was lavishing his pensions on the Strip, construction magnate Del Webb, whose huge corporation was already publicly traded, was doing some casino investing of his own. Webb's CEO in 1961, an ex-carpenter named LC "Jake" Jacobson, had known racketeer Al Winter in Oregon, where they were both connected in the Northwest's business-union-political nexus of Dave Beck and Seattle-Portland organized crime. Using what one account called "the substantial resources and good name" of the Webb Corporation, Jacobson had helped Winter and his mob partners finance the Sahara in the fifties. A decade later, Jacobson and Webb were brandishing their corporate stock to buy the Sahara along with the Winter faction's Mint in Glitter Gulch, and soon added the Thunderbird and the downtown Lucky, as well as building a massive new Sahara-Tahoe casino resort on the south shore of the lake not far from Cal-Neva. By 1965, the deals amounted to a Webb investment in Nevada of more than $60 million, rivaling the Teamsters'. Like the mob, Webb had easily gotten around the Nevada restriction on licensing a public corporation by simply creating what Jacobson termed a "conduit"—an entity called Consolidated Casinos — with a handful of licensees that funneled profits back into the barely separate parent company. Snaking through Webb's construction firm and eventually into the purchase and expansion of the casinos were millions in loans brokered by Wall Street's venerable Lehman Brothers, discreetly shielding the actual lenders, which included trusts of Princeton University, the US Steel Pension Fund, and Morgan Guaranty. Webb and his prestigious investors were not the first of their sort along the Strip. Even before Webb bought the Sahara, a Manhattan investment consortium led by Lawrence Wien, who also headed a group that owned and operated the Empire State Building, had bought the Desert Inn and promptly begun leasing it back to Dalitz and its other original hoodlum owners — just as Webb turned the lucrative operations of his properties back over to Syndicate figures....

http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&q=W...nG=Search+Books

Gamblers' money: the new force in American life‎ - Page 196

Wallace Turner - Games - 1965 - 306 pages

...renewable first for twenty-one years, and again for twenty-two years. Who was the DI Operating Company? Why, it was the same people who owned the hotel in

the first place. They were selling it to the partnership made up of Wien and his associate Henry W. Klein, and then leasing it back. For the first three years, the DI Operating Company would pay a rental of $1100,- ooo. Wien and his law partner were only the recipients of title. The prospectus makes clear that they are selling "participating interests" in their holdings at $25000 per "interest" for a total of $3025000. Who

bought those? In part at least the same people who owned the place originally, before all of this transaction came about — Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Allard Roen, and the others. Just what was it they owned, in addition to a gambling house? The prospectus

describes it: The Desert Inn offers luxurious guest accommodations and a wide variety of recreational facilities. The Desert Inn

property includes the 1 8-hole golf course which is the site of the annual Tournament of Champions, and is the only golf course owned by a

Las Vegas hotel; a Country Club which was erected within the past few years;

a 90' by 40' swimming pool, a 3600 square foot casino; the Painted Desert Room, a dinner and supper club accommodating over 400

persons where outstanding stage shows are presented daily; various restau- ner and supper club accommodating

over 400 persons where ment attractions. There was more. The prospectus described the guest facilities as 329 rooms,

which have been expanded since by a high-rise hotel built with one of those Teamster pension fund loans. These are a phenomenon that we will examine in a later chapter.

All of this was built in the years since the Cleveland crowd had joined Wilbur Clark, the small-time gambler with the big-time dream. The prospectus

estimated that about $4000000 had been put into improvements since. It also made clear that Nevada might close down gambling, but belittled this possibility by pointing out that the state took 29 percent of its general fund revenues from gambling in-59.

Also, the following sentences made plain the fact that the Dalitz forces would continue to control the Desert Inn: Various corporations controlled by the principal owners of the seller have operated the Desert Inn since its opening in. Such corporations have at all times been duly licensed under the Nevada Gaming Control Act, and a licensee controlled by this group will conduct such operations after Associates acquires title. In other words, little or nothing was changed except the amount of money the federal government would get in taxes. The prospectus showed through the analysis by accountants that after the first three years, each "participating interest," which had cost $25000 to begin with, would get an annual income payment of $5000. By binding these to depreciation schedules, even this $5000 payment was only partially subject to

federal personal income taxes. In 1966, for example, only 53.9 percent of it would be subject to tax, the remainder being considered to be returned capital. Meantime, the initial gathering up of $3025000 from sale of 125 participating interests had provided the money for the $2875000 down payment and costs of the transaction. The first three years' rentals have retired the initial $2000000 mortgage and have been whittling away on the $5000000 mortgage that will be repaid in full in the first twenty years.

The holders of the "participating interest" blocks are now reaping $5000 a year for each block they hold. All of this is possible, of course, only because the federal government does not collect its 52 percent corporation tax bite on the income of the Desert Inn Associates, a partnership, and because the increased depreciation based on the new high value added further tax shelter. Further, the money the owners get from the sale of the property to their partnership is treated as capital gains, so that again the federal treasury takes a beating. What Wien put together for the Desert Inn gamblers was a far, far better deal for them than the most flowery proposals that Guterma could offer. They not only have eaten their cake; they still have it, and each year the frosting gets sweeter. There were certain minor disadvantages to the creation of the partnership, and one of these was that the Desert Inn had to give an accounting of its income and expenditures over five years to justify some of the statements made to the SEC in the prospectus.

These are fascinating. Insofar as the author is aware, they constitute the most recent complete public disclosures of the full operating experience of any of the Nevada gambling casinos. The gamblers are secretive by nature, naturally conspiratorial, and it sets badly with them to surrender any information about their beyond what they want to give up. They are compelled by law on occasion to give up some bits of data such as the complete disclosure for the years 1954 through 1958 printed here.

But they dislike doing it. By, the collection of former bootleggers and gambling operators at the Desert Inn had survived their entanglement with Alexander L. Guterma, they believed. Business was booming. Income was running high. Their properties at the Desert Inn had been placed in the most favorable possible tax position, and the money was pouring in. Far behind them were the days when Guterma had brought in the proposition that they might sell their stock on the American Stock Exchange....

http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&q=T...nG=Search+Books

Committee prints, Issues 63-66

By United States. Congress. House. Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures

Book overview

Snippet view - Item notes: nos. 63-66 - 1963

The Winfield Baird Foundation's note payable appears to have been paid in full on January 13, 1961. Although Mr. Lawrence A. Wien had agreed to repurchase the mortgage and collateral security, he had not availed himself of this opportunity as of December 31, 1962.

November 10, 1960, November 17, 1960, February 23, 1961 — to further strengthen the alliance, two of the Baird Foundations donated $200000 to the Lawrence A. Wien Foundation, as follows : Donor Date Amount Winfield Baird Foundation Nov. 10, 1960 $50,000 David, Josephine & Winfield baird Foundation Nov. 17, 1960 50000 David, Josephine & Winfield Baird Foundation Feb. 23, 1961 100000

MORE HARMONY— TRANSACTIONS WITH FRANCIS S. LEVIEN AND JESSE MALVIN

Harmonious relations also exist between the Lawrence A. Wien Foundation and Mr. Francis S. Levien, president of Universal American Corp. and chairman of the Franchard Corp. (formerly Glickman Corp., a real estate investment company). On November 10, 1960, Mr. Levien loaned $20000 to the Foundation. According to the Foundation, the loan was paid in full on February 27, 1961, and 5 days later, on March 3, 1961, Mr. Levien contributed $20000 to the Foundation. A similar gesture was made by Mr. Jesse Malvin. On October 3, 1958, Mr. Malvin loaned $5000 to the Lawrence A. Wien Foundation. The Foundation says the loan was paid in full on January 5, 1959, and, on October 16, 1959, Mr. Malvin donated $5000 to the Foundation.

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OTHER BUSINESS ASSOCIATES

Here, too — as with

the Baird Foundations — there is indication that sizable contributions have been received from business associates of Mr. Lawrence A. Wien, for

example, a $50000 donation from the Desert Inn, of Las Vegas, on May 7, 1962. I find it difficult to understand the reasons for this contribution in the light of the need

for funds by numerous charitable organizations in Nevada, such as community funds and cancer funds — unless, of course, it was the desire of the Desert Inn management to express its appreciation to Mr. Wien for his syndication of Desert Inn Associates (see page 398 for Prospectus).

Mr. Wein's role in the syndication of Desert Inn Associates is described by his law firm as follows :

Wien personally owns a $5000 partnership interest, or participation in Desert Inn Associates. This is a syndicate partnership

with total participations of $3075000, which acquired the Desert Inn. Desert Inn Associates does not operate the Desert Inn, but receives rent under a net lease with the operator, DI Operating Co.

The firm of Wien, Lane, Klein & Purcell (predecessor to Wien, Lane & Klein) , in which Mr. Wien is the senior partner, created the syndication, Desert Inn Associates.

Wien, Lane, Klein & Purcell received a fee of approximately $100000 in connection with the syndication and acquisition of the property,

and receives an annual retainer to supervise the operation of the partnership agreement and to defray legal and accounting costs and disbursements.

To further demonstrate the established and well-defined identity and community of interest between Messrs. Wien and Helmsley, the latter's company, Helmsley-Spear, Inc., was retained as consultant to Desert Inn Associates. The deal is described in the September 9, 1959, Prospectus of Desert Inn Associates as follows: Helmsley-Spear, Inc., one of the leading New York City management firms, has been retained on behalf of Associates to make periodic physical inspections of the property, to render reports thereon, and to act as consultant to Associates with respect to other matters arising out of the ownership of the property. As compensation for such services, they will receive the sum of $1250 per year for the first 3 years after the property is acquired, and $25000 per year thereafter.

NO IRS AUDITS AND RELUCTANCE TO SUBMIT DATA

No field audits were performed on these foundations by the IRS from date of exemption through the end of their 1962 fiscal year. Both

foundations may be classed as being reluctant to submit information to our committee. In the case of the Lawrence A. Wien Foundation, we were

forced to issue a subpoena in order to obtain the desired data and documents. The Harry B. Helmsley Foundation only furnished information after being reminded of the committee's subpoena power.

TREASURY'S SPLENDIDLY INEFFECTIVE SUPERVISION

So the Treasury's splendidly ineffective supervision is in no small way responsible for the widely held view that foundations can serve any private or selfish ends with complete impunity. Hence, the "how-to-do-it" tax publishers continue to grind out advice on the virtues of charitable foundations For tax avoidance and control of businesses.

To illustrate (from a mailing, dated July 18. 1962, of Commerce Clearing House Federal Tax Service) : Closed Corporations Perhaps the greatest advantage is afforded closed corporations. Through the use of a foundation the operator of a closed corporation may be able to keep voting control of the corporation in the family after the death of the principal stockholder.....

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,815823,00.html

Business & Finance: Boss of the Empire

Monday, Jan. 07, 1952

A year ago Chicago's Henry R. Crown, who runs the biggest U.S. building-supply firm and finds time to promote big deals on the side, got interested in buying the Empire State Building....

....He has also supplied much of the money behind Hotelman Conrad Hilton's buying ventures, is now the biggest stockholder (8.7%) after Hilton in the Hilton Hotels Corp. Singlehanded. Crown bought the 19-story Chicago Mercantile Building, which houses the Midwest's butter & egg exchange, for $2,500,000.

Last week, the new boss had plans to make the onetime white elephant an even bigger moneymaker than it now is (estimated 1951 net: $5,500,000). Among his changes: complete air-conditioning of the 102-story building, which now is air-conditioned only up to the 42nd floor.

*Of the total $51 million, Prudential Insurance Co. paid $17 million for title to the land, put up another $15,500,000 for a first mortgage on the building, and Raskob's estate took a $5,000,000 second mortgage for the balance.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,939859,00.html

Real Estate: Highest Finance

Friday, Sep. 01, 1961

The tallest building in the world was sold last week for the highest price ever paid for a single structure. For $65 million, Chicago Financier Henry Crown sold the 102-story Empire State Building, a flop when it was built in the Depression but a moneymaker now, to a syndicate headed by a personable Manhattan lawyer and real estate wheeler-dealer, Lawrence Wien, 56.

The transaction was as complex as keen-eyed tax lawyers could make it. As soon as his Empire State Building Associates takes title to the property next December 27, Wien (rhymes with keen) will sell the building to the Prudential Insurance Co. for $29 million. Prudential, which already owns the land on which the Empire State sits (worth $17 million), will turn right around and lease the building and land back to the Wien syndicate for 114 years. Advantages for Prudential: a 7% return on invested capital and a way around a New York law that limits Prudential's investment in a single piece of real estate to less than $50 million. Advantages for Wien: the $29 million from Prudential can be applied toward Colonel Crown's selling price, thereby reducing the actual cost to the syndicate to $36 million, and the annual lease payments ($3,220,000) to Prudential can be written off as a business expense.

A Thousand Partners. The Empire State deal is typical of Lawrence Wien's style of operating on high-rent turf around the country. Columbia-educated, Wien got into commercial real estate in 1949 when he gathered a small group of investors to buy a two-story building for $165,000. Broker on the deal was Harry B. Helmsley, chief of the Manhattan broker-management firm of Helmsley-Spear. Wien and Helmsley have been allies ever since, have parlayed their original venture into a $600 million real estate empire that includes New York's plush Plaza hotel and the more plebian Taft, Cleveland's Leader Building and the Palm Beach Towers....

....Heart of the Wien-Helmsley technique is large-scale syndication—a maneuver that they pioneered. Syndication gives a number of people a chance to own property none of them could afford singly, and often yields investors as much as 10% a year on their money, far better than most stocks. Above all, since a syndicate of as many as a thousand members can still legally be called a partnership, there is no corporate income tax to worry about. In the case of the Empire State, Wien even syndicated the $4,000,000 deposit required. He himself put up only $500,000—a relatively small sum compared with the $3,000,000 that lawyers and real estate brokers stand to collect as fees on the transaction....

http://www.siteselection.com/ssinsider/bbdeal/bd020325.htm

NEW YORK – The Empire State Building, the cinematic backdrop for everyone from King Kong to Cary Grant to Tom Hanks, has changed hands. Donald Trump and his Japanese partners have agreed to sell the fabled 102-story structure.

The sales price is a stunner: US$57.5 million. That represents only a tiny fraction of the $1 billion that many analysts say the building would be worth without its burdensome 114-year master lease.

Drawn up in 1961, that lease provides for payments of only $1.97 million a year on the 2.5 million-sq.-ft. (225,000-sq.-m.) building. And the lease rate actually drops to $1.72 million from 2013 to 2076, when the lease term expires.

That low-ball lease has depressed the storied skyscraper's market value. So much so, in fact, that the $57.5 million purchase price is considered high, yielding an estimated annual return of just 3.4 percent. The buyer, however, is Empire State Building Associates, an investor group led by New York real estate maven Peter Malkin. And that same group also holds that master lease, which runs through 2076.

Therein lies the buy rationale. With leaseholder and owner in the same stable for the first time since 1961, the legendary tower can now be more easily sold with significantly better financing terms.

The sale closes - perhaps - a tumultuous, byzantine chapter for the facility built in 1930-31. Since the early 1990s, Trump, Malkin and real estate heiress Leona Helmsley have slugged it out for control of the Empire State Building....

.....The building alone cost $24.7 million. Without the onset of the Great Depression, however, Empire State would've cost twice as much - only $8 million less, in fact, than 2002's purchase price.....

Posted

One of the most perplexing aspects of all this has been the curious response of the Kennedy family to JFK's assassination (and later to RFK's and JFK Jr.'s as well).

From the outset, there seemed to be the attitude, on the part of the press as well as every member of the Kennedy family, that the assassination was a subject not to be broached to his widow, children (even decades later), siblings, etc. To my knowledge, there has never been another example of this in modern history. As I've noted before, the family members of Martin Luther King fought hard to get James Earl Ray a new trial. His widow, Correta Scott King, even traveled to an out-of- state courtroom to testify for Ray when she was quite elderly. Compare this with the ridiculous reality that even now, nearly fifty years after her father's death, there isn't a single journalist in the world who would have the courage to even mention the subject of the assassination to Caroline, his lone surviving child.

Robert Kennedy's response to the assassination was especially surprising. One would have expected a fighter like him to go all out to investigate and expose those who were behind the crime. Instead, he clammed up and put the same strange force field around him as Jackie and later Teddy would. I can only surmise that Bobby realized just how powerful the forces that took his brother's life were, and was silently biding his time until he could be elected President himself.

I've asked this before, but is there any solid documentation for Bobby's supposed statement, in a speech given just before his assassination, that "the truth about my brother's death will only come with the power of the presidency?"

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