by Sam Giancana
It was to be an all-out, no-holds-barred Latin American push. Mooney settled into a lavish Mexico City apartment arranged by Castillio and went right to work, drawing on tactics he’d honed since the days of Diamond Joe Esposito, as well as on the expertise and mammoth resources of the recently formed CIA team of assassins and operatives specifically trained for Latin American clandestine operations. CIA insiders dubbed the team the “White Hand”—kiddingly, at first—an allusion to their joint venture with Mooney and the Outfit, or “Black Hand.”
With his interpreter Richard Cain at his side, Mooney whisked from country to country in a whirlwind effort to develop the necessary political alliances. According to Outfit guys Chuck talked with, at the same time Mooney and Cain were setting up gambling junkets in Latin American coastal countries, they were pursuing highly lucrative narcotics and munitions smuggling and money-laundering schemes.
As a by-product of Mooney’s “Black Hand” deals, the CIA “White Hand” gained a firmer economic foothold for its U.S. corporate sponsors. Oil empires, in particular, oozed into Latin America with ease, the wheels of commerce greased by the CIA.
The CIA profited as well, discovering through Mooney’s bribe-friendly contacts new avenues for diverting their own “dirty money,” funds garnered from illicit CIA activities.
To courier the millions of dollars that would soon pour across U.S.‒Mexican borders, Mooney called on the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1965, Cardinal Stritch left Chicago to assume the post of archbishop, most conveniently in Marcello’s city of New Orleans. Stritch’s successor in Chicago, Cardinal Cody, proved in Mooney’s estimation to be a stellar replacement. Mooney said Cody was a corrupt man who enjoyed the trappings of wealth and, therefore, welcomed a close relationship with him. With Stritch’s move to New Orleans, Mooney claimed he hadn’t lost an ally in the Church; he’d merely gained additional channels for money laundering.
Father Cash, the Chicago priest Mooney utilized as a courier, had traveled under Mooney’s orders across the nation and to Europe for close to two decades. With Mooney’s move into the southern hemisphere, Cash was told to add Latin America to his itinerary.
During Mooney’s tenure outside the United States, Chuck heard talk among Outfit men that millions of dollars flowed to Continental Illinois, a bank then heavily invested in Finibank, a Swiss bank owned in part by the Vatican and controlled by financier Michele Sindona, Mooney’s Gambino connection. Some was couriered by Mooney’s trusted lieutenants to Washington, D.C., where it was converted to bonds and then forwarded to Finibank or another Sindona-controlled European shell, generally in Rome, London, or Athens. But still more was carried out of Chicago to Mexico, under the safety of the priest’s robes, to be placed in banks scattered throughout South and Central America, but most often in Panama. Often these funds were then diverted to Milan and on to the Vatican Bank in Rome, where they were easily transferred to Finibank in Switzerland—and straight into the hands of Michele Sindona and an up-and-coming Chicago priest residing in the Vatican, Paul Marcinkus. The CIA, eager to improve its own financial position, was said to have followed suit, dealing frequently and closely with Marcinkus and Sindona.
While Mooney struck gold on countless foreign coasts in 1967, Chuck met a different fate. That year saw one disaster follow on the heels of another.
At first, it had looked as if he was really going to make it on his own in the construction business—and make it big. Since 1964, he’d diligently established himself in Rosemont as an active community sponsor, becoming personal friends with area bankers and the mayor. Out of the Outfit’s shadow, Chuck was finally prospering and living the life of a successful, upstanding citizen. He and his family began, once again, to live the American dream. But in February 1967, that dream suddenly shattered.
He learned later that the FBI had suggested to reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times that perhaps Sam Giancana, although now absent, might still be investing in Chicago real estate and construction. For starters, the agents pointed to Chuck’s thriving Rosemont shopping plaza.
A slight prodding in this direction was all it took to entice the headline-grabbing reporters, who’d found the Chicago Mob scene dull since Mooney’s departure. Within twenty-four hours, helicopters loaded with cameramen circled like vultures above the shopping plaza, and its legitimate shop owners were besieged. Chuck was soon bombarded with questions by aggressive reporters.
Faced with their damning accusations, Chuck rightfully insisted that his success was his own, that his brother had contributed not “one thin dime” to his real estate ventures. But the newspapers the following day told a different story and suggested in their headlines that Sam Giancana was indeed, up to his old tricks. After all, Chuck Giancana was Mooney’s brother; it was obvious he served merely as a front for one of Mooney’s many illegal money-laundering schemes.
Within hours of the newspapers’ scandalous allegations, Chuck received a call from the bank that held the note on his shopping plaza. They’d learned that the insurance coverage on the property had been canceled, which was news to Chuck, and were calling his two-hundred-thousand-dollar note. Chuck had to come up with the cash or surrender the property.
Soon after the disturbing call, Chuck discovered that not just reporters but also FBI agents had been visiting his tenants and questioning his bank and insurance company. Evidently, the agents hoped this crisis would bring Chuck’s brother out of the woodwork and back into the United States.
The month of February was a frantic one, filled with desperate calls to insurance companies and lending institutions; Chuck was determined not to go to Mooney for financial assistance. But at last, forced to admit that there wasn’t a bank in the United States that would “touch him with a ten-foot pole” due to the FBI agents’ relentless threats and warnings about dealing with an “undesirable character,” Chuck resigned himself to the inevitable and sent a message to Mexico: He needed Mooney’s help.
His brother’s reply was simple and direct: “No way . . . unload the joint.”
Chuck was stunned. Never in his life had he felt such rage. He’d never asked his brother for anything more than a decent job, and now, when he needed him most—when his family’s welfare, his entire fortune, depended on it—Mooney had turned his back.
Two days prior to foreclosure, Chuck sold his shopping plaza. He was overwhelmed with bitterness. He’d felt the cool thrill of the brass ring in his hand, felt it wrested from his grasp—all because of who he was. Countless times he asked himself what he had done to deserve such misfortune; his only crime was being Mooney’s brother, having the name Giancana.
Years later, he would pass the bustling shopping center and point to it with disgust. “It’s worth three million today,” he’d lament. “And I lost it all because of the FBI. I really was clean. Mooney hadn’t done a damn thing for me for years. But that didn’t matter to them. . . . They wanted Mooney and nothing would stand in their way. Ruining me financially was all in a day’s work.”
Following the loss of his real estate, Chuck’s personal life took a nosedive, as well. The publicity exacted a terrible toll on his family. Anne Marie was no longer welcome at most of her friends’ homes; Chuck’s political and banking acquaintances shunned him like a leper.
His seventeen-year-old son, Chuckie, who’d long since left the strict confines of military school, was increasingly rebellious. First, he’d entered the Catholic high school, St. Viator’s in Arlington Heights, but soon transferred to public high school. There, Chuckie continued to be haunted by the Giancana name, jeered and taunted by his classmates, made a scapegoat whenever a scuffle broke out. Unable to face the mounting pressure, he’d eventually dropped out, still a junior.
His personal and professional dreams collapsing, Chuck turned to little Mooney and saw a twelve-year-old boy hounded into solitude by the very name he’d once believed to be the ultimate honor.
A darkness enveloped Chuck’s world, and with
no future in construction, he went to work as a motion-picture operator. The blackness of the theater suited him well now. With just the endless reels of film as company, he sat alone, seething in anger at life’s injustice. And he reviewed his life along with the movies. In so doing, Chuck saw more clearly than ever before how Mooney had left his lasting, destructive mark on every aspect of his own being.
When he thought about his brother’s terrible political secrets, the word omertà rang in his ears, hammered in his brain. As always, he wondered why he loved Mooney—and hated him at the same time. He loved him, he guessed, because he’d been his childhood hero, more a father to him than Antonio. But he hated him for everything he’d done. Not just to him, but to everyone and everything he’d touched. It was because of his brother that his only dream, the only thing that had ever mattered, had been snatched from his life and discarded like some bad edit on the cutting room floor.
In its relentless effort to get at Mooney, the FBI had unfairly lashed out at Chuck. But the G-men hadn’t beaten Mooney; they’d only succeeded in defeating one of his greatest victims.
CHAPTER 22
From Mexico, Mooney wielded his power like a sword. Historians might later record his Latin American adventures as a “Mob-imposed exile,” but, in fact, according to Chicago’s Outfit guys, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Revenues generated from local rackets had declined in Mooney’s absence. It was all too apparent that the Giancana approach—one in which all the angles were figured out—was sorely missed. Had Mooney hopped on a plane to O’Hare and settled back in as boss, he would have been welcomed with open arms. But that was not to be, because Mooney had set his sights on the international scene and was largely unconcerned with what he considered “small-town” issues.
If anything can be blamed for creating resentment among Chicago’s Outfit men toward Mooney—a resentment alleged years later by investigators, biographers, and journalists alike—it was this lack of interest in the plight of his native Chicago, not his desire to seize control again.
Mooney never lost his hold over his stateside empire, and, according to the Outfit guys Chuck spoke with, he came back to town “on the q.t.” on numerous occasions over the next eight years. Any Outfit guy who’d been run out of town, as was so often alleged Mooney had been—at least any Outfit guy with any sense—would never in a million years come back. That kind of thing got a guy tailed—pronto.
Upon first leaving the country, Mooney had placed Teets Battaglia in charge as his boss in absentia, anticipating little need to travel back and forth between Mexico and Chicago. But Battaglia’s conviction and imprisonment for extortion later that year had necessitated a visit from Mooney. Chuck heard that his brother had donned his usual disguise, a toupee, and secretly flown back into O’Hare to meet with Tony Accardo and Paul Ricca in an effort to select a satisfactory replacement for Battaglia in the late fall of that year.
Although Accardo and Ricca were not involved in the day-to-day affairs of the Outfit, nor possessed the power base to actually veto a decision made by Mooney, it was politically wise to include them in the decision-making process. And Mooney did that quite often over the years.
Mooney particularly respected Paul Ricca’s opinion—although, that didn’t mean he always followed it. In this instance, however, the three men wholeheartedly agreed on Joey Aiuppa as Battaglia’s replacement. His empire secured once more, Mooney flew immediately back to Mexico. From there, he turned his attentions to overseas interests, leaving his Chicago soldiers and lieutenants with the job of guarding the spoils from old battles, won long ago.
Chuck stayed in touch with his brother’s goings-on through several Outfit guys, among them Tommy Payne, an old Capone soldier, and Chuckie Nicoletti, Mooney’s henchman. Sometimes he thought they gossiped more than most women. But in any case, the guys all kept him on the grapevine; they treated him as if he was on the inside, and he liked that. Besides, he didn’t have anyone else with whom to talk. Since the FBI had divested him of his shopping plaza, none of the men from his days as a builder would have anything to do with him. Hearing about Mooney was about the only thing that gave him much pleasure—which was strange, given his bitterness at his brother’s rejection. Strange but true.
By the summer of 1967, the FBI had learned of Mooney’s whereabouts and encouraged former Chicago reporter Sandy Smith to do an expose on his Mexican lifestyle. In response, Smith, now reporting for Life magazine, rushed to Cuernavaca, where he hired a helicopter to fly over Mooney’s comfortable new residence, snapping pictures. In Life’s September issue, Smith chronicled the infamous history of the Chicago mobster, creating, to Mooney’s extreme rage, speculation as to just what the aging mafioso could be doing in Mexico.
The FBI might have desired to maintain its surveillance of Sam Giancana as he made his way around the globe, the multilingual Dick Cain at his side, but Chicago agents were forced to content themselves with lesser members of the Outfit as their prey. Unfortunately for Cain, he was one of them. As part of a federal investigation, twenty-four Outfit members were indicted in 1967, among them Mooney’s erstwhile interpreter.
Going back to Illinois to handle business for his boss, Cain was nabbed by federal agents on charges dating back to a 1963 robbery. He was held in Chicago to await trial, and in 1968, Cain, along with Willie Potatoes Daddano, was convicted and sentenced to prison. Willie got fifteen years and Cain, rumored to have been aided by his agent friends, managed to scrape by with four.
Without his sidekick, Mooney continued his travels. He spent long hours in discussion with Meyer Lansky in Rio and Acapulco, traveled to Rome for a private audience with Pope Paul, and, occasionally, took time out from his busy schedule to vacation with Phyllis McGuire, entertain Mexican officials in his home, or play golf at a nearby country club. According to Chuck’s family and friends, such was the life of a “retired mobster in exile.”
In July of 1968, the FBI again attempted to shake Mooney from his Mexican headquarters. This time, however, their attempts took a sinister turn, involving Mooney’s daughter Bonnie and her husband Tony Tisci. The couple now lived in Tucson, a city New York boss Joe Bonanno also called home.
To carry out the plan, Tucson FBI agent David Hale hired three area hoods. Their first target was the home of Mooney’s daughter. Late one evening, shots crashed through its windows into the living room. Two weeks later, the homes of Bonanno and other gangsters were laid under a similar siege. More attacks and bombings followed. Thankfully, none resulted in injury or death. But to all the world, including Outfit members, this sudden outburst of violence signaled a gang war. Even the national Commission suspected as much and called an emergency meeting. A full year would pass before FBI agent David Hale would be named as the person behind the attacks. Upon this revelation, Hale resigned from the FBI, refusing to testify. A witness to the shooting at the Tisci home was found murdered, and with that, the case was closed. The FBI and its agent David Hale escaped prosecution.
Outfit members believed the attack on Mooney’s daughter’s home had been an attempt to lure the Chicago boss across the Mexican border. If so, they failed to wrest Mooney from his lair. Instead, he jaunted through South and Central America during 1968 and 1969, moving to a new residence in the posh Las Quintas section of Cuernavaca, a massive walled estate known as San Cristobal.
In April of 1969, Chuck crawled out of the darkness of his movie operator’s booth long enough to learn some distressing news about his brother from Outfit enforcer Chuckie Nicoletti.
He’d stopped by the Lilac Lodge, a West Side Chicago haunt. Since it was well known as an Outfit watering hole, Chuck hoped to hear some word of Mooney’s Mexican adventures. During the spring and summer months, Mooney’s men—everybody who was anybody—often played a round of golf at the nearby Fresh Meadows Golf Club and sooner or later made their way over to the Lilac Lodge for a drink. When he walked in the door, Chuck spotted Chuckie Nicoletti, apparently alone, at a corne
r table. Nicoletti waved him over and ordered another drink.
Nicoletti was not what Chuck considered a brilliant conversationalist, but what he had to say on this afternoon while they sat sequestered in the quiet recesses of the Lilac Lodge captured Chuck’s attention completely.
“Well,” Nicoletti announced after they’d exchanged handshakes and had drinks in hand, “one more Kennedy out of the way, huh?” He smiled broadly.
“Yeah,” Chuck murmured absentmindedly. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about the Kennedys and hoped Nicoletti would change the subject.
Instead, Nicoletti continued. “So Mooney did it again . . . goddamn . . . I’ll tell you . . . your brother’s a fuckin’ genius.”
“Did what again?” Chuck asked, sipping his martini.
“You know.” Nicoletti lowered his voice an octave. “Hit Bobby.”
Not wanting to appear ignorant, Chuck nodded and lit a cigar. “Oh, yeah,” he replied.
“Settin’ up that guy Sirhan to take the rap, shit, didn’t it work like a charm? Of course,” he added, winking, “the son of a bitch didn’t have much choice.”
“No, not much choice,” Chuck agreed, wondering what Nicoletti meant.
“Hey, when you work for the Outfit and owe ’em a small fortune . . . and you can’t cough it up . . . that’s what happens. Right? Shit, now that I think about it, it was a lot like the Ruby and Oswald deal.”