by Russo, Gus
Unaccompanied by a lawyer, Russell braced for the first pertinent question. It came from chief counsel Halley, who wanted to know why Russell had not responded to the committee’s subpoena when it was in Florida. “I refuse to answer that question on the ground that the answer may incriminate me,” came Russell’s historic response.
“That is no excuse,” shot back an off-guard (and misinformed) Halley. “I advise you that you have no privilege that protects you from answering a question that might tend to incriminate you except under federal law.”
When it became clear that Russell believed otherwise, the committee recessed, allowing the legal minds to reconnoiter. Kefauver recommended Russell bring a lawyer with him when he resumed his testimony in three days. When the testimony resumed on the twenty-second, Russell again arrived without an attorney, but with a firm resolve to cling to his rights. When Russell again claimed his rights, Kefauver intoned, “The chair rules that you have no right to decline to answer that question.” Russell answered that he believed the good senator was mistaken, prompting Kefauver to ask, “Who informed you of that?” The bookmaker claimed that he had studied the Constitution himself, although few believed him. Over and over, the committee ordered Russell to respond, at one point calling him selfish.
“What is selfish about wanting to protect your own rights?” Russell queried. At that point, Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin fulminated, “You can lose your citizenship.” And before ending the proceeding, Kefauver threatened to charge Russell with contempt of Congress, but the witness still refused to fold. If the probers believed they had had their worst day, they were mistaken. The testimony by Russell was but a dismal preview of things to come.
Protecting Sidney
Before Kefauver visited Chicago in October 1950, he made it known that one of his prime targets would be Sidney Korshak. In July, shortly after announcing his committee’s September trip to the Second City, Kefauver obtained Korshak’s tax records for 1947-49 from the secretary of the treasury. Committee investigators already on site in Chicago subpoenaed Korshak’s financial records for 1945-48. Korshak promptly complied with the request. The full-court press continued as former Chicago detective William Drury, who had dogged the Outfit in the 1946 James Ragen killing at the cost of his own job, was enlisted by a Miami newsman to monitor Korshak’s movements, the reports of which were shared with Kefauver’s investigators. The Drury surveillance operation ended abruptly on September 25, 1950, when Drury was shot to death in his garage. He had not only been focusing on Korshak, but had been scheduled to deliver explosive new evidence in the Ragen murder, a case that he had continued to investigate. When the Kefauver Committee touched down in Chicago, the prospects for a Korshak inquisition intensified.
Although Kefauver had steadfastly repeated that he was not going to investigate political corruption, the Outfit saw troubling warning signs that prompted them into damage-control mode. Most distressing was the committee’s interest in Korshak, and its staff’s exposure of Chicago police captain and chief investigator for the state’s attorney, Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert. The corrupt cop had amassed an astounding $300,000 nest egg, much of it by betting with Outfit-controlled bookies, and unbeknownst to the committee, running his own handbook on the side. When his executive- session testimony was leaked to the press, the local papers dubbed Gilbert “The World’s Richest Cop.” (In fact, Gilbert had made his real profit by investing his winnings in the stock market with brother-in-law Dan Rice, an investment banker.) Under intense questioning, Gilbert, who was running for Cook County sheriff at the time, admitted that he had in fact earned big winnings by gambling on baseball, football, prizefights, and even elections. He also admitted that he had placed his bets with the Outfit-connected bookie John McDonald.
The committee’s flabbergasted chief counsel asked Gilbert if his activity was legal. Gilbert answered haltingly, “Well, no, it is not legal, no.” After hearing from Gilbert, the committee interrogated his superior, Police Commissioner John C. Prendergast, the same man who had objected to Sergeant Drury’s “persecution” of Outfit members after the Ragen shooting. When Counsel Halley asked Prendergast rhetorically if any of Al Capone’s heirs still operated in Chicago, the commissioner answered with a straight face, “I have no personal knowledge. I have nothing in my reports to indicate they are.” Prendergast’s false display of naivete did nothing to repair Gilbert’s tarnished reputation. In the November election, Gilbert was defeated in his bid for sheriff by more than 370,000 votes, beaten by a last-minute Republican entry. In another mini-victory for the committee, police captain Thomas Harrison was exposed for accepting $32,000 in graft from gambling racketeer John J. Lynch. By the end of the month, Harrison was permanently relieved of duty. (Sharing the local newsprint this headline-filled month was news on October 20 of the death of the man who was arguably Chicago’s most corrupt mayor, Edward J. Kelly, who had run the city for fourteen years after the assassination of Anton Cermak in 1933. Kelly had openly allowed the Outfit to flourish after the capture of Capone. After Kelly’s passing, it was learned that he owned homes in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Palm Springs, California, with a combined value of over $686,799. It was believed to represent just a fraction of his fortune, which was never located.)
Like the rest of Chicago, Joe Accardo read the Gilbert disclosures, but viewed them with a different subtext, one appreciated only by the underworld: For years, Gilbert had worked as chief investigator for the Outfit-corrupted state’s attorney, Tom Courtney. During their reign, thousands of felony charges lodged against Outfit bosses and crews were reduced to misdemeanors.1 But more important, Gilbert was in charge of the police labor detail, a position of critical importance to the efficient running of the city. The bottom line was that the city’s business community depended on Courtney and Gilbert working closely with the Outfit as Curly Humphreys took over one union after another. Frank Loesch, when president of the Chicago Crime Commission, said, “Few labor crimes have been solved in Chicago because of the close association between labor gangsters and law enforcing agencies.” The entire scheme was facilitated by Courtney-Gilbert’s alliance with none other than the gang’s young labor lawyer, Sidney Roy Korshak. An associate of Gilbert’s recently said, “Gilbert worked both sides - labor and business - and he took to Sidney. Sidney learned at his knee.” With Korshak representing the Humphreys-controlled unions, Gilbert became a powerful voice in Chicago’s power structure. One Gilbert acquaintance recently recalled, “Dan Gilbert was the only guy in town who could stop a strike with a phone call.” A call to Sidney Korshak, to be exact.
Given Korshak’s key position at the junction of so many Outfit and Commission national endeavors, Joe Accardo decided to protect Korshak from a public grilling when the Kefauver Committee arrived in the Windy City to conduct formal hearings. Just like other Washington insiders, the Outfit was aware of Estes Kefauver’s vulnerabilities. When the Tennes-sean arrived in Chicago, the gang was poised to exploit these weaknesses for self-preservation.
Kefauver’s Little Problem
Prior to his marriage to the former Nancy Pigott in 1935, Estes Kefauver had a reputation as a stereotypical Southern ladies’ man, a landed-gentry Lochinvar. After his marriage, Kefauver cleaned up his act - at least in Tennessee. Charles Fontenay, who covered Kefauver for the Nashville Tennessean, wrote, “A lot of people knew of his propensity for women, but he was clean as a whistle in Tennessee.” However, in Washington, and wherever else his travels took him, Kefauver was known as a legendary drinker and womanizer. William “Fishbait” Miller, the longtime House “doorkeeper,” who supervised some 357 House employees, called him the “worst womanizer in the Senate.” On Kefauver’s premature death of a heart attack, Miller wrote, “He must have worn himself out chasing pretty legs.” The senator himself provided the fuel for the talk. When on tour in Europe, Kefauver caused a scandal after escorting a famous call girl to a society ball. On another occasion, he trysted with a woman in Paris who was not told of hi
s wife in Tennessee. Afterward, Kefauver recommended his courtesan to a friend who was about to tour France.
On future campaign junkets, Kefauver would become infamous for dispatching his aides to procure women for him. New York Times columnist Russell Baker recalled one night with the candidate on the tour bus when Kefauver was feeling particularly randy. On arrival in a small town “in the middle of the night,” Baker overheard Kefauver telling one of his minions, “I gotta fuck!” Capitol Hill lobbyist Bobby Baker, who would become the first American to have a scandal named after him, wrote that Kefauver regularly put himself “up for sale.” According to Baker, “[Kefauver] didn’t particularly care whether he was paid in coin or in women.” The Outfit, well aware of Kefauver’s proclivities, utilized this knowledge to protect Sidney Korshak, and the secrets he held about the Outfit’s vast empire.
Showdown in Chicago
Finally, in October 1950, months after his investigative team had arrived, Kefauver and his senior staff descended on Chicago. Kefauver took a room in the Palmer House, while the rest of the staff and investigators stayed at the hotel that was also home to Curly Humphreys (as well as the Outfit’s former meeting place), the Morrison. Perhaps not coincidentally, the committee’s chief counsel, Rudolph Halley, complained that the staff’s phones were tapped. But the staff never learned of the Outfit’s planned setup of the chairman. In 1976, reporters Sy Hersh and Jeff Gerth began to unravel the inside story of Kefauver and Korshak in a four-part profile of the well-connected lawyer in the New York Times. A close friend and business associate of Korshak’s told the writers how Korshak and the Outfit had blackmailed the ever-randy Kefauver. The informant told the reporters that he had seen compromising photos of the senator taken in a suite at the luxurious Drake Hotel. Recent interviews have shed more light on the incident.
According to the new telling, Kefauver was enticed to the Drake (on whose board sat Outfit-connected Anthony Ponterelli), where two young women from the Outfit’s Chez Paree nightclub entertained him. “The Outfit had a guy at the Drake, a vice cop who moonlighted as the hotel’s head of security,” a friend of the Korshak family recently divulged.2 “Korshak got the girls; the security guard set up an infrared camera and delivered the prints to Korshak.” The source added that a private meeting was arranged between Kefauver and Korshak. In the brief encounter, Korshak, who had been pre-interviewed on October 26 by Committee investigator George Robinson,3 flung the incriminating photos on Kefauver’s desk. “Now, how far do you want to go with this?” Korshak asked. Kefauver never called Korshak to testify before the committee, despite his being the first of eight hundred witnesses subpoenaed.
On the committee’s October junket to Chicago, the only Outfit boss questioned under oath was Johnny Rosselli, who turned on the charm, admitting he was a small-time bootlegger in the twenties, but insisting that he had cleaned up his life. He spoke of his strikebreaking work for the Hollywood moguls, and how he was now a legitimate film producer. As Ricca had done one month earlier, Rosselli admitted to meeting many gangsters, including Capone, but said he had no business with them. A frustrated Kefauver told Rosselli, “You look like a man who would like to be helpful, but I don’t think you are telling us as much about it as you could tell us.” To which Rosselli replied, “I wish I could.”
Before the Christmas break, the committee heard testimony from the Outfit’s racetrack chieftain, Johnny Patton. Like Russell, Patton had been dodging the committee’s subpoena in Florida, only to finally be tracked down in Chicago. Counsel Halley inquired as to why Patton had refused to come to the door when his wife had been informed that the Senate investigator Downey Rice was waiting to serve him. “I told my wife to pay no attention to him,” Patton answered. “I thought it was Jack Rice, our publicity man, always calling me up for a touch. That is why I ducked that.”
“Mr. Patton, that is the best one I have heard yet,” said Halley.
“Well, it is a good one,” agreed Patton.
After an hour of denials of any criminal associations, Kefauver called an end to the circus, saying, “All right, Mr. Patton. We will see you again sometime.” To which Patton responded, “I hope not.”
Returning to Washington, the committee called no other Outfit notables until Al Capone’s brothers, John and Ralph, were brought to Washington on December 20, for another round of perfunctory testimony.
Curly’s Marionettes Take the Fifth
During the Christmas holidays, the committee’s subpoena finally caught up with Joe Accardo. In January 1951, the man who, unbeknownst to the senators, was the secret boss of the Chicago Outfit testified in Washington. Accompanied by his lawyer, George F. Callaghan, the middle-aged Accardo quietly gave the same response to almost all the questions posed to him: “I refuse to answer.” He let Callaghan explain that the Fifth Amendment’s shield against self-incrimination was the basis for Accardo’s lack of cooperation. In all, Accardo took the Fifth 140 times, only answering a handful of benign inquiries. Callaghan had to explain to dismayed senators that his client had every right to refuse to answer. Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, a righteous member whom Kefauver called “the committee’s lightning rod,” and whom legendary New York UPI reporter Harold Conrad called “about as well-equipped to be investigating gangsters as Shirley Temple,” was particularly frayed by the encounter and interrupted the interrogation to address Kefauver: “I [have] sat here with feelings of rising disgust, and listened to a man come before this committee, and through his answers or refusal to answer, insult this committee and its counsel; and I think it is a new low in the conduct of witnesses before this committee, and we have had some tough ones . . . And so, with a feeling of disgust in my heart toward the witness” attitude and that of his counsel, I move you, sir, that he be cited for contempt.’
Tobey, who regularly toted a Bible into the hearings, inveighed so forcefully at times that he often launched into God-fearing diatribes against the witnesses and, on one occasion, brought himself to tears. Railing against one corrupt police official, Tobey intoned, “Why don’t you resign and get out and put somebody in there that can handle it somebody who has some guts . . . It is revealing and disgusting that a man like you can continue in office! I simply cannot sit here and listen to this type of what I call political vermin!”
Before dismissing Accardo, Tobey led the senators in a unanimous vote for a contempt citation. As will be seen, the charge would wind its way through the courts before its precedent-setting resolution. The Outfit’s bold legal maneuver would trigger a landslide of similar encounters, not only in this investigation, but in many congressional tribunals that would follow. Two weeks after Accardo’s presentation, Joey Aiuppa, the fast-rising Outfit slot-machine manufacturer from Cicero, reprised the performance, refusing to answer all questions. Aiuppa quickly tired of giving the same response; eventually, he sat mute.
“Let the record show that the witness just sits there mute, chewing gum, saying nothing,” a frustrated Halley said before excusing the gangster. Like his boss, Aiuppa was also cited for contempt.
Later that month, the committee arrived in New Orleans, where television station WNOE acquired permission to televise the hearings, preempting its entire commercial schedule. The gambit was such a success that subsequent hearings were televised in New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Also attempting to cash in on the drama was a company called Movietone News, which produced hour-long edits of the New York testimony and leased them to theaters across the nation. Kefauver, who initially coveted the attention afforded by the telecasts, eventually found the cameras’ presence to be a drawback, as the committee members began to play to the audience, careful not to become too bogged down in detail that might bore the viewer. Chairman Kefauver tried to cancel the arrangement, but it was too late, commitments having been made to broadcasters. The viewing public was captivated by the event, with some 20-30 million viewers (twice the audience for the 1950 World Series) tuning in regularly. “It is the best t
hing we have had since television came in,” said one New York viewer. Kefauver biographer Charles L. Fontenay described the reaction of the home audience: “Housework was neglected and movie theaters and stores were nearly deserted as the number of home television sets turned on rose from the normal less than 2 percent to more than 25 percent in the morning and from the normal less than 12 percent to more than 30 percent in the afternoon.”
As expected, the broadcasts made Kefauver a household name overnight, distinguishing him as the first politician to create a national image using the new medium. During those initial New Orleans broadcasts, the committee attempted to probe the gambling empire of local boss Carlos Marcello, a syndicate chief known to be in regular contact with the Outfit. Once again the committee was hit with a tidal wave of responses that began with “I refuse to answer.” In all, Marcello demurred 152 times. When the committee returned to Washington, they heard from one malaprop-prone gang member who lightened the proceedings when he garbled his Fifth Amendment plea by saying his answers might “discriminate against me.”
“Murray went nuts when he heard how the ’spaghetti benders’ almost screwed up what he had worked so hard on,” recalls Humphreys’ then mistress, later wife, Jeanne Stacy. “He had to type it out on index cards so they got it right. Then he worried if they could even read.” Humphreys had little time to chafe over the performance of his inferiors, as the committee finally succeeded in serving a subpoena on him in the spring of 1951. It seemed fitting that his testimony would come near the end of the hearings, a worthy climax that did not disappoint those in attendance in the Capitol in Washington.
Curly and the Stooges