Double Cross

by Sam Giancana

  Studying the documents Mooney received from the President proved to be an eye-opener. Mooney was startled to learn that the G-men’s surveillance was highly detailed and incredibly extensive. He’d viewed the G-men as Boy Scouts, a nuisance, but basically nothing more. However, it appeared from the documents Jack was sending that the FBI was a bigger threat than he’d previously realized—there was at least one informant among his own ranks and extreme pressure to solicit more.

  Mooney interpreted his receipt of the FBI memos, which were routinely conveyed from the White House, as evidence that his relationship with the President was solid, after all. He concluded—wrongly, as it turned out—that Hoover and his agents were merely present in Chicago now to “make it look good.” He had Jack’s word he would be kept informed of the FBI’s operations and therefore would always be one step ahead of the game. Relieved, but still guarded and confused as to Bobby’s role in the scenario, Mooney dropped the notion that Jack Kennedy had turned his back on his preelection promises.

  Later, it would be discovered that Jack was sending Mooney only a carefully selected sample of the FBI memorandums issued daily to J. Edgar Hoover. Those Jack did send said nothing, for example, of the wiretaps that had by now been placed at Mooney’s favorite hangouts, the Armory Lounge and Celano’s tailor shop.

  Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy, now ensconced as the attorney general, was orchestrating what would become the largest attack on organized crime in the nation’s history. The young Kennedy compiled a target list of the country’s thirty leading Mob bosses, and heading that list, just as Mooney had predicted, was the name Sam Giancana.

  The attorney general demanded that J. Edgar Hoover intensify the bureau’s efforts, going after the mobsters with the same zeal the FBI had used against the Communist party. To further his cause, Bobby brought the IRS on board to prosecute tax evasion by underworld figures.

  As Bobby Kennedy prepared for battle, Mooney, despite being comforted by the FBI reports, didn’t abandon his own surveillance of the Kennedys—nor did he ignore the traitor he’d learned of through the memorandums, a man he believed was William “Action” Jackson. He immediately put a contract out on Jackson and decided to increase his surveillance of the Kennedy brothers.

  Previously, in 1959, Mooney had given his man at the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa, the green light to bug locations frequented by the McClellan committee chief counsel, Bobby Kennedy. Hoffa had gone to Hollywood private detective Fred Otash for assistance in the project and had selected sometime CIA operative and master wireman Bernard Spindel for his technical expertise. Spindel frequently assisted the Outfit and CIA simultaneously.

  Now, in 1961, Mooney said he called on Otash and Spindel again—to coordinate the wiring of every square inch of the Kennedy haunts. Considered by both government officials and the underworld as the “King of Wiremen,” Spindel was known for his sophisticated technology and cunning applications. At Mooney’s behest, Spindel put a team of Outfit-CIA professionals to work, placing the Kennedys under a near-blanket of visual and electronic surveillance.

  For the task of tailing the attorney general and the President, Mooney selected his CIA coconspirator Bob Maheu, telling him to put together a team of detectives that would eventually include Fred Otash and John Danoff. “I told Mahue I wanna know where the Kennedys are twenty-four hours a day, I wanna know when they go to the water fountain, I wanna know when they take a shit . . . and Bob’s guys and the CIA can get it done,” Mooney confided to Chuck. “I said a long time ago I’d never trust a Kennedy.”

  On April 4, 1961, when he learned of Carlos Marcello’s deportation to Guatemala at the direction of the attorney general, Mooney’s worst fears were confirmed: The Kennedys were pulling a double cross.

  As Mooney had been since Castro’s victory in January 1959, Marcello was a coconspirator with the CIA in gunrunning operations and a fervent supporter of the anti-Castro exiles. It was an arrangement, Mooney said more than once, aimed at returning Cuba to its pre-Castro glory—meaning its lucrative casinos and vice rackets.

  It was rumored in the Outfit that Bobby Kennedy was out to get Marcello because the New Orleans boss had refused to throw his support behind Kennedy on the floor of the Democratic National Convention; Marcello had always favored Lyndon Johnson. But whether or not this was the case, the fact remained that Marcello had been aiding other branches of the U.S. government. Unfortunately for Marcello, neither his acts of patriotism nor his monumental donations to Jack Kennedy’s campaign had impressed Bobby Kennedy sufficiently to grant him protection. It was a strong signal to Mooney, one he couldn’t ignore.

  He said his friends in the CIA were equally livid and were planning to secretly fly Marcello back into the United States, but nevertheless were currently too involved in overthrowing Castro’s regime to divert much attention from the immediate task at hand.

  That task was to assassinate the Cuban leader, now an avowed Marxist. Mooney himself had become deeply involved in the CIA’s Cuban operations, so much so, in fact, that he offered one of his own “rising stars,” Richard Cain, to the government agency.

  An extremely handsome, dashing young man with a genius for mathematics, Cain—whose real name was Ricardo Scalzitti—was both fluent in five languages and a superior marksman who had been trained by the Chicago Police Department. He took to the CIA like “a duck to water,” as Mooney put it, and the CIA likewise found him “tailor-made for a top-notch agent.”

  While in Miami training Cuban exiles in military operations, Cain did become a full-fledged CIA operative, according to Mooney. Like other intelligence personnel involved in the Cuban operation, he was “for the record” formally employed by a Miami detective agency that was, again according to Mooney, a CIA front.

  Following the Bay of Pigs invasion, Cain would return to Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Mooney would receive the CIA’s assistance in placing Cain in a highly sensitive position: chief investigator of the Cook County Sheriffs Office. It was a secret victory for Mooney. Cain would be second in command to Mooney’s archenemy in Chicago, Sheriff Richard Ogilvie, a man who’d made his reputation as a Mob-buster. Unknown to Ogilvie, Mooney would have a spy, a real one, in his midst.

  Mooney confided to Chuck that spring that a CIA-instigated invasion of Cuba was in the offing, waiting only for the underworld’s elimination of Castro.

  To accomplish the latter task, Mooney said the CIA and Outfit shared the talents of a University of Illinois chemist and researcher, a man whose lethal chemical concoctions had been utilized many times over the years by both organizations.

  The list of chemical weapons to be aimed at Castro was extensive and, according to Mooney, included poisonlaced cigars; a lethal bacterial powder intended to be absorbed through the skin; toiletries spiked with a drug that, when splashed on the face or body, would induce a massive heart attack; a highly potent poison—“one drop and a guy’s dead”—to be slipped into his food or drink; a cancer-producing injectable agent; and a slow-acting but lethal virus. There was even talk, Mooney confided, of utilizing radiation in the form of high-intensity X rays to induce cancer in their victim. But in the end, all attempts to assassinate Castro—Chuck heard of three—however sophisticated and devious they might have been, failed.

  When they first undertook the plot to eliminate Castro, Mooney and his CIA friends didn’t realize how difficult a target they’d selected; unbeknown to them, all food and drink were sampled in the prime minister’s presence by political prisoners. Thus, their first attempt on Castro’s life—slipping poison into a drink—had served only to alert him to a conspiracy and, in response to that threat, security was redoubled.

  Chuck suspected that perhaps most central to the assassination plot’s failure was the fact that most of the Cubans remaining on the island were—contrary to what the U.S. media would have had the public believe—happy with their new government. Additionally, Castro, a man surrounded by both loyalists and tight security, could not be easily murdered by a pr
ofessional hit man; paid killers continued to be paid because they survived to kill again. Outfit guys weren’t zealots who were eager to give their lives to silly political ideals. And even if a killer willing to sacrifice himself could be found, neither the CIA nor the Outfit could afford the exposure a tortured assassin’s confession might bring.

  This left only the Cuban locals as possible confederates. Mooney complained that there were few weak links to be located within Castro’s regime; they’d tried pressuring several men close to the dictator and only one, a man named Cubela, had succumbed. After several meetings with the CIA, Cubela was arrested by Cuban counterintelligence and served thirteen years in prison.

  Finally, the CIA decided to go forward with the invasion anyway. They planned to bombard the island’s coastline with an army of Cuban-exile soldiers, mercenaries, and undercover agents, anticipating that the “disgruntled, oppressed population” would rise up and complete the overthrow. President Kennedy would approve military air support for the invasion and, within a matter of hours, Cuba would return to its previous state of glitter and greed.

  What occurred instead was a horrifying fiasco. On April 14, six bombers left Nicaragua, less than half the number the CIA deemed necessary for the plan to succeed. Failing to demolish the Cuban air force, preparations began for a second strike, but the word came down that the President had ordered the strike canceled and the bombers never left the ground.

  Meanwhile, a brigade of fourteen hundred courageous Cuban exiles on their mission to secure a beachhead at the Bay of Pigs was left pathetically vulnerable. Against Castro’s two-hundred-thousand-man army, they didn’t stand a chance. Kennedy received an urgent plea for air support on the morning of April 16 and was told that without his intervention, the invasion would fail. In an act that would dog his political career thereafter, the President denied the request. It was to be a suicide mission. Over one hundred men were killed and over one thousand captured by Castro’s army.

  On April 24, Kennedy released a statement taking full responsibility for the failed invasion. But behind the scenes, he blamed not only himself but also CIA director Allen Dulles, the director of covert operations, Richard Bissell, and the CIA deputy director, General Charles Cabell. Enraged, he vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces,” and shortly thereafter, the men he believed had caused him to suffer public humiliation and defeat were fired. Cabell angrily denounced Jack Kennedy as a “traitor.”

  Mooney was hugely disappointed by the defeat. Like the young President, he’d viewed the Cuban operation as a test of his greatness—a test he’d clearly failed.

  Seeking vindication, Mooney and the CIA turned more urgently to their poison cigars, covert arms smuggling, and Cuban exile activities, while Jack tacitly approved military training camps, counterespionage, and exile raids.

  Within the CIA, the dismay at having been betrayed by both the President and attorney general, as well as the President’s open promise to dismantle the intelligence agency’s power, soon turned to hatred, creating a ripple effect that would blacken the moods of the men Mooney dealt with in his covert operations. These men expressed their outrage at the Bay of Pigs operation along with their fear that Kennedy now posed a very real threat to the CIA’s continued autonomy, perhaps its very existence. Their highly vocal dissension served to confirm Mooney’s own feelings about the Kennedys and made him even more doubtful of Jack’s true intentions. It was in this turbulent climate that two of America’s most powerful forces became allies. The Outfit and the CIA now shared a common enemy: the President of the United States.

  There were other threats to Mooney’s rule, as well. The Chicago FBI was attempting to exert pressure on the Outfit, and Mooney thought a lot of his problems could be laid at the feet of stool pigeon William “Action” Jackson. Mooney ordered his lieutenant Fifi Buccieri to make an example of the man—and the more gruesome, the better. Further, he wanted photographs taken so that everyone could see what would happen if they ever dared talk with FBI agents.

  The murder of Jackson was the cruelest in the Outfit’s bloody history. The three-hundred-pound loan shark was forcibly taken to a Chicago meat-rendering plant and hoisted onto a six-inch steel meat hook. There he remained, screaming in inconceivable agony, while Buccieri and his soldiers proceeded to ply their trade. They utilized an arsenal of tools that would have made the Marquis de Sade envious: ice picks, wrenches, bats, knives, razors, and a blowtorch. For added measure, they shot Jackson in the knee, rammed an electric cattle prod up his rectum, and on a whim, poured water on it.

  Taking photographs of such horror only added to Buccieri’s enthusiasm for the job; he and his cohorts tortured Jackson for two full days—around the clock—until at last the man mercifully died.

  It was incongruous to Chuck that a man who could so easily call for another man’s brutal execution could just as readily dote and fawn over a woman, all rough edges falling away while acting the “perfect gentleman.” However, when it came to Phyllis McGuire, Mooney’s latest girlfriend, his brother did just that.

  Phyllis McGuire was a fresh-scrubbed all-American girl with a sweet voice that thrilled the public from coast to coast as a part of the singing trio of the McGuire Sisters. The trio had gotten its first break on television’s “Arthur Godfrey Show” and had quickly graduated to star status with hit recordings like “Sugartime” and stints in nightclubs around the country.

  Once Mooney saw Phyllis McGuire in 1958, he had to have her. And with that in mind, he implemented his tried-and-true methods of seduction—showering the pretty brunette with flowers, diamonds, and furs, picking up the tab for her gambling debts, and using his influence to maneuver the McGuire Sisters into lucrative nightclub engagements around the world. Soon the singing trio was at the top of the charts, cutting one hit song after another. And Mooney reveled in the attention that was created by having Phyllis at his side. A woman who was portrayed as a naïve country girl from Middletown, Ohio, Phyllis always seemed to enjoy partying with Mooney, living the high life with the likes of Sinatra and his Clan.

  Mooney made Phyllis a permanent fixture between his romps with chorus girls, buxom starlets, and “business contacts” such as Judy Campbell. Their relationship never replaced his many other female escapades but, he said, merely added a “new dimension.”

  Anne Marie and Chuck met Phyllis in 1959 and thereafter entertained her and Mooney occasionally in their suburban home. They treated her like family, allowing her the opportunity to relax with her paramour. Away from the glare of press agents and photographers, Phyllis played pool in the basement with little Mooney, lounged on the patio, and walked in the nearby fields, feeding sugar cubes to the horses and their foals. Mooney thought the privacy Chuck’s home afforded was refreshing, and therefore he visited often.

  Chuck and Anne Marie found Phyllis to be a sweet girl, but childlike and frivolous. Her talent was quite obviously singing, not thinking. But for Phyllis to have been anything more than another pretty face would have come as a surprise to Chuck. Mooney never had surrounded himself with females who were intellectual giants. He liked to be in control, insisted on calling all the shots, and he didn’t like women who were smart enough to ask intelligent questions. With Phyllis, he’d found a woman who would look up to him, admire his finesse, fall for his charm. Like all the rest, she didn’t have to know the questions—because he’d always have all the answers.

  As their relationship proceeded, Mooney began footing the bill for everything: a ranch in Vegas, Manhattan apartments, Beverly Hills condos. Phyllis McGuire might be a star bringing down well over a hundred thousand dollars a year, but, he complained to Chuck, she was always broke. “Celebrities throw their money away,” he’d say disdainfully. “And Phyllis is about the worst . . . spends all her money on clothes . . . doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.”

  As Mooney became convinced of her loyalty, he told Chuck he was purchasing more property out west, buying heavily in oil wells, and making extens
ive stock and bond investments—and putting some of them in her name.

  In all his life, Mooney had never held so much as a car in his own name. He utilized countless soldiers, lieutenants, and family members as fronts for his own enterprises and holdings, but there was never any question as to who the real owner was.

  Years later, Chuck would suspect that the lion’s share of Phyllis McGuire’s “wise investments” in antiques, fabulous jewels, oil—and on Wall Street—were actually made by Mooney and placed in her name. The jewelry, millions of dollars’ worth, perhaps came largely from Mooney’s old Costello “discount” connections; the millions of dollars in oil, from his friendships with right-wing Texas oilmen; the fortuitous Wall Street investments, thanks to information he received from insiders. If so, Mooney’s legacy, not hit records, would ultimately make Phyllis McGuire a very wealthy woman.

  While Phyllis enjoyed the material rewards of a relationship with Mooney, Chuck knew his brother was exploiting the affair, as well—using Phyllis’s name, her credit cards, telephones, and apartments to further subvert the FBI. Aside from that, he simply found immense pleasure in being seen in the company of a beautiful star—and he took every opportunity to do just that.

  Chuck was standing in the yard, admiring the budding trees in late spring of 1961, when the phone rang. His brother wanted to talk to him right away and they arranged to meet at the Thunderbolt Motel at noon. It was urgent. “It’s about Phyllis,” Mooney said, a note of concern in his voice.

  At the hotel, Mooney explained that Phyllis needed a safe haven through what would be perhaps six months of a “difficult time.” It would have to be a place where she could be assured total privacy: very hush-hush, no press, no nosy neighbors, and certainly no FBI. Could Phyllis live with Chuck and Anne Marie? Chuck gathered from the request that Phyllis might be pregnant and immediately agreed, relishing the opportunity to help his brother in any way possible.