Double Cross

by Sam Giancana

  It was decided Chuck would wait for his brother’s call and then proceed to make all the necessary arrangements. But the call never came. And Chuck never asked what had happened—the word omertà ran through his mind whenever he considered inquiring. “Forget about it” was Mooney’s only terse comment on the entire incident. It was never mentioned again.

  During their affair, Mooney and Phyllis traveled constantly around the globe—to Acapulco, Puerto Rico, Europe, Latin America, and Hawaii. Under the guise of vacationing with the singing star or just following the McGuire Sisters’ act, Mooney met with his international associates, exuberantly cutting one deal after another.

  Sitting in Chuck’s living room that spring, they laughed and talked of how they’d outfoxed the FBI agents time after time, Phyllis donning men’s clothes and Mooney a disguise. It was a challenge to them to see whether they could walk right past an agent, “right under his nose,” and never be noticed. They found it all immensely humorous, a game.

  But on July 12, 1961, their game of cat and mouse with the FBI ceased to be entertaining. Mooney and Phyllis were returning from one of their many jaunts, this time from Phoenix, Arizona. En route to New York, their Pan Am flight had a brief layover in Chicago. As they stepped off the plane, Phyllis well ahead of Mooney, the FBI waited to greet them. To Mooney’s dismay, he watched as two agents hustled Phyllis down the concourse. Before he could follow, two more agents stopped him, identifying themselves as Bill Roemer and Ralph Hill. They proceeded to question him in a manner Mooney would later describe as snarling and aggressive. He informed them he had nothing to say and “suggested,” as he continued to walk in the direction he’d last seen Phyllis, they leave him alone. Roemer and Hill had no intention of doing that and dogged his path, hurling an assortment of insults.

  Mooney was more familiar with the duo than they realized. He’d put Bob Maheu to work digging up information on the agents in Chicago, and with one in particular, Ralph Hill, he said he’d hit pay dirt.

  In recalling the incident at the airport, Mooney explained to Chuck that he decided “to drop a little bombshell on the illustrious Mr. Hill” and give him something to think about in the future. “So I said, ‘You’re the guy that’s been fuckin’ around with some of my girlfriends . . . well, I’ve got some affidavits . . . and I’m just waitin’ for the right time to use ’em.’”

  The look on Hill’s face was nothing short of stunned, Mooney said, laughing with pleasure at the memory. “I had that motherfucker by the balls and he knew it. I shut him up real fast. I bet he can’t sleep at night now that he knows that I’ve got concrete evidence of what kinda guy he really is.”

  Agent Roemer, however, was not to be deterred and a shouting match ensued. “He wanted me to throw a punch . . . that’s what he wanted, the lousy cocksucker.”

  Roemer demanded to know whether Mooney was threatening a federal agent, and with that, Mooney said he returned to the plane, emerging moments later with Phyllis’s hat and purse. When he did, Roemer seized upon the opportunity to goad him once more. “That bastard started whistlin’ and sayin’ I was queer. . . . I wanted to kill him. People gathered around; we were screamin’ back and forth. Man oh man, it was fuckin’ ridiculous.

  “I got really pissed off and said, ‘Fuck your boss and your bosses’ boss and his fuckin’ boss, too.’ Then Roemer asked me who that was and I said, ‘Jack Kennedy, that’s who.’ He thought he’d be a smartass, so he got real cocky and grinned and said he didn’t think the President would be interested in Sam Giancana. . . . What a dumb motherfucker. I told him, ’Hey, asshole, I have the lowdown on all the fuckin’ Kennedys and someday I’ll tell everything. . . . Then the whole world will know what hypocritical bastards they are.’ I wanted to tell that son of a bitch a few more things . . . that I know everything about the lousy FBI, every move they make . . . and that I get it all thanks to the President himself. I’d like to have heard what he would’ve said to that news.”

  In the aftermath of the airport confrontation, FBI surveillance increased. Chuck grimly shook his head as he noted agents following him to work at the motel, shadowing his errand running, sipping Cokes in his Thunderbolt lounge. They’d gotten pushier, too—walking up to him at lunch, asking to meet “for a cup of coffee.” He refused to socialize, shaking his head politely and rejecting their efforts to corner him.

  Agents were following Anne Marie, as well. Whether it was taking little Mooney to school, making trips to the salon, or shopping at Marshall Field’s and Bonwit Teller, there was always a government sedan nearby, watching her every move. Their neighbors had begun to act even more aloof, she said, and Chuck imagined the FBI had paid them visits, questioning them on “the Giancanas’ habits, their comings and goings.”

  Under the microscope of government agents, the pressure started to take its toll. For his brother, it was still a game; if anything, he seemed to enjoy the challenge of dodging the tails and outwitting the “Boy Scouts.”

  “Can’t you get Kennedy to lay off?” Chuck complained to Mooney, bitterness in his voice.

  Always undaunted, Mooney reassured him. “Hey, they call this Camelot, remember? So relax . . . don’t you know who’s sittin’ at the Round Table? We are.”

  Chuck could find no evidence that Mooney’s assessment was grounded in fact. Mooney’s having saved Joe Kennedy’s life, his massive monetary contributions to Kennedy’s election, the vote stealing that had clinched the presidency, the promises he’d extracted—none had any effect.

  To the contrary, it appeared—despite Jack Kennedy’s faithfully delivered FBI reports—that the Kennedys were out to erase any hint of obligation to their powerful benefactor. If this was Camelot, Chuck mused, it looked like Mooney was being made the court jester.

  CHAPTER 20

  Mooney wasn’t laughing. Sitting by the motel pool in the moonlight, Chuck studied his brother’s tired, unshaven face. For six months, Mooney had struggled to hold on to the lingering belief that the presidency he’d bought and paid for would protect him. But by June, his personal dreams for Camelot were crumbling.

  Since the first of the year, the last vestiges of Mooney’s control over the Kennedys had all but fallen away. Quite ominously, Murray Humphreys was suddenly unwelcome in the Oval Office. Additionally, his manipulation of the Kennedy/Sinatra friendship was eroded when the Kennedys refused the singer’s invitation to vacation at his recently remodeled Palm Springs estate.

  To bolster the logic of the insult to Sinatra, Bobby Kennedy pointed to a nineteen-page report prepared by the FBI highlighting Sinatra’s connections to underworld characters. Faced with this damning document, Jack Kennedy called on Peter Lawford, a Kennedy brother-in-law and Clan member, to break the news to Sinatra that he was persona non grata—henceforth the entertainer would not be welcome at the White House or at presidential social functions.

  Mooney was dumbfounded and enraged. An anger which, he confessed to Chuck, made him so mad he’d considered having various ‘helpers’ hit but later changed his mind. “I guess I like the guys. Shit, it’s not their fault that the Kennedys are assholes. But if I didn’t like them, you can be goddamned sure they’d be dead men.”

  To a guy in the Outfit, it made all the sense in the world to hit a man who let you down, whether it was his fault or not. To let him get away with a botched job could mean losing the respect of your other men—or worse, it might someday lead the cops right to your door.

  The way Mooney saw it, his men were expected to come through on a request or a promise he’d extracted from them. This operation of Mooney’s had backfired, and Chuck imagined that thanks to this screwup, a lot of people would grovel at Mooney’s feet for the rest of his life. But, Chuck also had to admit, groveling was a hell of a lot better than dying.

  Aside from the difficulties Murray Humphreys was having with the Kennedys, there was other evidence of a double cross; word came down from Joe Kennedy to Cal-Neva’s Skinny D’Amato that Bobby would not allow mobster Joe Adon
is back in the country as had been promised prior to the West Virginia primary.

  Then there was the plight of Mooney’s associate Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. Only after a horrendous trek through the jungles of Guatemala, which Marcello enjoyed recounting as demonstrative of the Kennedys’ brutality, had he managed to sneak back into the United States. Now, he was in hiding, as Mooney put it, “in his own damned country.”

  Further evidence of the deteriorating relationship came when Judy Campbell’s calls to the White House were refused; the affair with Jack Kennedy had cooled considerably since March and, because of that, Mooney was no longer receiving Jack’s FBI reports.

  Overnight, Mooney’s contact had been severed with Jack Kennedy, while Bobby Kennedy diligently worked to destroy him. It was all too clear to Mooney that the Kennedys had no intention of honoring their promises; more likely, they intended to annihilate him and thereby remove any trace of their previous relationship. The seduction had achieved its end; Mooney was a lover scorned. “If I was gonna get fucked, at least it shoulda felt good,” he fumed.

  The events of the past months were proof positive to Mooney of the ultimate double cross. Left unchallenged, his stature with the Commission and his men across the country would suffer irreparable damage. Quite simply, America’s number-one Mob boss had never been made a fool of in his entire life—or if he had, the perpetrator of such an offense hadn’t lived to tell of his accomplishment. Chuck didn’t believe Mooney could ever, would ever, allow the Kennedys to be the first.

  Leaning back in the lounge chair at the pool’s edge, his brother sighed and lit a cigar. In the light of the flame, Chuck saw an older man, worn by determination. He silently recalled the time Mooney had been sentenced to prison at Joliet; it seemed like a century ago. Mooney had been so young then, just a cocky street punk. But he’d been Chuck’s hero all the same. A sadness filled him, made him ache for Mooney’s loneliness, mourn their loss of innocence. He’d never known anyone more totally alone than his brother. Once within his grasp, Mooney’s dream had slipped through his fingers, and although he hadn’t expressed his disappointment, Chuck knew the defeat was devastating.

  Remembering the old days on Taylor Street, a wistful smile played across Chuck’s lips. He longed for the simplicity of the street, its unspoken rules, its black and white reasoning. In the face of adversity, he was certain his brother would return there as well, to the ways he knew best.

  Mooney broke the silence, clearing his throat as he gazed up at the night sky. “They think they’ve really got me, Chuck . . . that’s what they think.” He shook his head and sighed again.

  “Well you’ve never been beaten before. Nobody’s ever stopped you. Nobody.”

  “You’re right about that.” Mooney smiled wanly. “They’ve underestimated me . . . and to tell you the goddamned truth, that’s good. Never let the enemy know your true strength.”

  Chuck nodded.

  Mooney turned to look him square in the eye. “That mick cocksucker, Bobby, we got him on the wire calling me a guinea greaseball . . . can you believe that? My millions were good enough for ’em, weren’t they? The votes I muscled for ’em were good enough to get Jack elected. So now I’m a fuckin’ greaseball, am I?” He smiled, his eyes narrowing into small cobralike slits, and stood up. “Well, I’m gonna send them a message they’ll never forget.”

  It was a formal declaration of war.

  As he watched Mooney disappear into the shadows, Chuck wondered what his brother intended to do—and was afraid to guess. Whatever he was planning, it would be merciless, of that Chuck was certain.

  Unlike the White House and Justice Department, the CIA had continued their head-over-heels affair with Sam Giancana. For months, activity had been fierce; Mooney had collaborated with the intelligence agency in covert operations ranging from the Castro assassination plot and Cuban-exile training to Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian operations. He’d also played a critical role in the CIA’s international smuggling and money-laundering ventures. Along with his New York friend Carlo Gambino, Mooney had introduced the agents early on to the range of services that might be performed by Sicilian Mob financial wizard and Vatican consultant Michele Sindona.

  Mooney confided that through their Vatican connections and shady banking deals, he and Gambino had assisted the CIA in pouring millions of illegally earned dollars into Sindona’s illicit “slush funds.” In exchange, the CIA contributed heavily to Catholic charities—some legitimate, others not.

  For his service to the CIA, Mooney had been well rewarded in May of that year. As a favor—and, perhaps even more important, to conceal just how closely they’d been collaborating—Mooney’s CIA associates had managed to get a Las Vegas wiretap case against Bob Mahue and Mooney dropped. “They risked their jobs for me to get it handled. . . . Now that’s what I call loyalty,” Mooney exclaimed.

  Indeed, jeopardizing their own careers, Mooney said the CIA’s top officials had confessed to Attorney General Robert Kennedy their agency’s own involvement in the bugging of comedian Dan Rowan’s apartment. Rowan was half of the popular Las Vegas comedy team of Rowan and Martin, which would later achieve fame hosting the hit television show “Laugh-In,” and had been suspected by Mooney of romancing Phyllis McGuire in his absence. To allay Mooney’s concerns, the agency had bugged Rowan’s home.

  Afraid of the possible political fallout, Bobby Kennedy was forced to back off and the case was closed. But the attorney general didn’t retreat from battle, demanding the FBI rid the country of the man Outfit guys said he referred to as “that dago scum Sam Giancana.”

  For months since the primaries, using technical assistance that could be traced back at least partially to the CIA, Mooney had gathered damning evidence of the Kennedys’ sexual exploits. And, in the weeks following his poolside proclamation of war to Chuck, he made it clear he fully intended to use this evidence, exposing the Kennedys’ tawdry hypocrisies to the entire world. The time was right, he said. He now had the muscle and the necessary connections to the media to destroy the Kennedy dynasty once and for all.

  But that would not be the case. There was one lingering problem with blackmail, a method Mooney longed to use. The fact was that, in exposing the sins of the Kennedys, the exact nature of the relationship between the CIA and Outfit might be exposed—just as had been feared in the case of the Dan Rowan wiretapping. Grudgingly, Mooney agreed early that summer with the opinion of his CIA cronies: Blackmail was out of the question; any information gleaned from their surveillance of the Kennedys would be used in more oblique ways.

  For several weeks, Mooney lamented this decision. Knowing he had enough smut to ruin the Kennedys forever and yet couldn’t use it, embittered him even further. But eventually, and Chuck thought somewhat portentously, Mooney brightened, saying they would just have to come up with another, more lasting solution to the Kennedy problem: a solution embodied in Marilyn Monroe.

  Marilyn Monroe had long been connected to the Outfit. Her first real break had come from a man Mooney and his lieutenant Johnny Roselli knew well—Joe Schenck, the Hollywood producer convicted and imprisoned back in the forties during the Browne-Bioff scandal. An aging seventy-year-old man by the time Mooney said he bedded Marilyn Monroe, Schenck nevertheless was still powerful in Hollywood.

  Always on the lookout for potential stars through his relationships with producers such as Schenck, Roselli had been impressed by Monroe—and told Mooney so. From behind the scenes, Chicago quietly promoted her career and Schenck introduced the buxom beauty to another man Mooney said he often conducted business with, producer Harry Cohn. According to Mooney, both Schenck and Cohn enjoyed Marilyn’s sexual favors in exchange for two-bit parts in films.

  But by 1953, her two-bit days were over. After achieving household name recognition with her sensationalized nude calendar and the movie All About Eve, Marilyn catapulted to true stardom with the hit movie Niagara.

  Although Mooney said she’d been a good investmen
t, he also admitted she was a sadly driven woman. More comfortable with her clothes off than on, Marilyn readily traded her body and soul for what she imagined was success and fame.

  Hers was a fantasy filled with conquered men and white knights. And neither would be the case; for instead, she became the conquered, discovering to her endless sorrow that the men she envisioned as her saviors became, at last, her persecutors. Deceived countless times by countless men, Marilyn Monroe was the quintessential victim.

  From what Chuck could learn from his brother, in the late fifties and early sixties, Marilyn’s desire to achieve stardom, coupled with her childlike desire to please, was exploited by the Outfit and the CIA, as well: Her sexual charms were employed by the CIA to frame world leaders—among them, President Sukarno of Indonesia. Mooney insisted that using Monroe as bait, the CIA had successfully compromised leaders from Asia to the Middle East. And Marilyn, perhaps more because she enjoyed the attentions of the world’s most powerful men than for reasons of patriotism, had been a willing participant in the intrigue.

  Throughout 1962, part-time Outfit-CIA operative Bernie Spindel’s wiretaps had recorded the lovemaking of Jack Kennedy. According to Mooney, he had all of Kennedy’s playthings—among them Judy Campbell and socialite Mary Meyer, as well as actresses Angie Dickinson and Marilyn Monroe—under surveillance. Sometime that spring, Mooney said he’d learned from Guy Banister that J. Edgar Hoover had confronted the President with FBI reports of the affair with Campbell and that, thanks to that, Judy’s effectiveness had waned. However, he also knew that Marilyn and the President had been connected romantically since the Democratic National Convention—and that in March of 1962, Bobby Kennedy had become involved with her, as well. Marilyn, the orphan child of a dozen foster homes, now passed from one Kennedy to the other. And, she told friends over her tapped phones, she believed she was falling in love with the attorney general.