The Mafia's President: Nixon and the Mob by Don Fulsom

Author:Don Fulsom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, Autobiography, Biography, History, Organized Crime, Presidents & Heads of State, True Crime, United States
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 2017-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover

Like Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover was in the hip pocket of America’s godfathers. For this simple reason, the FBI director put the Mafia on a low level of his crime-fighting priorities. That is until 1961, when John and Robert Kennedy put potent muscle behind the government’s drive against organized crime—and Hoover reluctantly began paying more than just lip service to battling the Mob.

During Kennedy’s administration, his brother and attorney general, Robert Kennedy, became a menace to the Mafia—and his take-no-prisoners tactics trickled down not only to Hoover but also to top local and state cops, district attorneys, and judges. Of course, this angered the dons of La Cosa Nostra—who had played a key role in John Kennedy’s ascent to the White House. Organized crime felt betrayed by the Kennedys and their extreme change in behavior in regards to the mob.

Because he was a major bootlegger during Prohibition, Kennedy family patriarch Joseph Kennedy rubbed elbows, and shared handsome illegal profits, with some of the nation’s most notorious mobsters. Old Joe turned to some of these same men in 1960, when his son, Senator John Kennedy, faced Vice President Richard Nixon for the presidency. There was evidence of massive voter fraud by mobsters in Illinois and Texas. Those states threw the election to JFK.

Due to these favors, the Mafia was now looking for major quid pro quo, or at least leniency, from the Kennedys. But, under Bobby, by 1964 the Justice Department had increased Cosa Nostra convictions by 700 percent over 1960.1 The crusading attorney general had federal agents arrest New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello and physically deport him to Guatemala. And RFK initiated the process that landed mobbed-up Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in a prison cell. As historian Anthony Summers notes, “If top Mafia bosses felt double-crossed, their law—the law of the Mob—might demand vengeance.”2 Thus did angry Mafia chieftains and Hoffa conclude that one or both of the Kennedy brothers had to be killed. Early on, Hoffa threatened to break Bobby Kennedy’s back. But he later said President Kennedy would make a better target for death because “when you cut down the tree, the branches fall with it.”3

In 1994, Hoffa’s longtime lawyer, Frank Ragano, confessed that he had carried a 1963 message from Hoffa to New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello and Florida godfather Santos Trafficante that Hoffa “wants you to get rid of the President right away.” Significantly, Ragano added that Trafficante, on his deathbed in 1987, confessed that he and Marcello had, indeed, followed through on Hoffa’s demand.4

How had such plotting escaped the attention of FBI chief Hoover? Apparently, it hadn’t. In September 1972, America’s top cop had already learned through electronic surveillance that Marcello “had put out a contract on the life of President Kennedy … Hoover did not inform his superiors within the Justice Department or warn the Secret Service,” according to Hoover biographer Mark North.5 Hoover’s hand was firmly on the pulse of these organized crime proceedings, but he suspiciously did nothing with his knowledge.

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