In other words, you disagree with Hagan's remark that "Roth played this one beautifully." I believe your argument is mistaken, however.
I do agree with Hagen's statement because he meant that Roth had used his man, Questadt, to trap Michael into five counts of perjury--
not that he had engineered Frankie's survival. Roth wanted Frankie dead, but when he survived, he brilliantly went to Plan B--use Questadt to lay the perjury trap for Michael.
Another reason why Hagen said that Roth played it brilliantly was to try to take the heat off how stupidly
he played it by not knowing that Frankie had survived--and thus counseled his one and only client to perjure himself.
Firstly, anything Pentangeli says about Roth at any Senate hearing is strictly non-credible and thus de facto inadmissible as a legal basis for prosecuting Roth. They are known enemies, and they did not deal directly with one another. This is why the Senate needed witnesses from within the Corelone family to prosecute Michael.
The Senate is not a court of law or a prosecutor's office. They could not prosecute Michael for any of the crimes that the Senators or Questadt enumerated, nor did they intend to. Their intent in trapping Michael was to a) rip away his "legitimate" front and expose him for the Mafia boss he was; and b) to get him to commit perjury, so they would then turn his perjured testimony over to a US Attorney for prosecution on perjury charges. And, once he was exposed as a perjurer, prosecutors in other jurisdictions (i.e., New York) could have pursued prosecutions against Michael for the earlier crimes.
The same would apply to Roth. Had Frankie testified against Roth, his testimony alone would not have resulted in Roth being prosecuted for crimes because the Senate isn't a court of law or a prosecutor. But it very well could have resulted in Roth being hauled before the committee to answer questions that, at minimum, would have exposed his criminal activities.
The Senate had a paid Corelone hitman saying Michael was a crime boss -- Cicci. But because there were "buffiz" between him and Mike, his testimony could not get the latter into any legal trouble. The purpose of Cicci testifying was to roll out the red carpet for Frankie, not to give incriminating evidence, because what he says does not count as legal evidence. This is why when Pentangeli appears before the Committee, the Chairman says, "we finally have a witness who had no buffer between him and Michael Corleone."
The purpose of having Cicci testify--and the purpose of Geary's question about buffers--was to lull Michael into thinking that Cicci was the highest-ranking witness the Committee had against him. And since Cicci said he never got a direct order, it further lulled Michael into thinking that he could get away with perjuring himself. If that's what you meant by "rolling out the red carpet for Pentangeli," then I agree with you.
My point is that Frankie never dealt with Roth directly, and even if he did, because he was his enemy, his testimony would be viewed as non-credible.
Would Roth be worried about bad publicity? Hardly. He has been in the underworld for 50 years. Everyone knows he's a mobster, so from his point of view, let people say what they wish, as long as they don't have evidence to put me behind bars.
Roth was posing as a "legitimate" businessman by running gambling in Havana as a "consultant" to Batista. His interests in Nevada gambling were hidden (as in Johnny Ola telling Michael that "the real owners of the Tropigala are the Lakeville Road Boys and our friend in Florida"). After Batista's downfall, Roth lost his interests in Havana. He would have desperately needed to maintain the "legitimate" front to gain footholds in other legalized gambling venues. I say this because the real-life Meyer Lansky, on whom Roth was modeled so closely, got into gambling in the Bahamas, which filled the gaming vacuum created when Castro closed the casinos.
Any exposure of Roth's criminal activities before a Senate hearing televised to millions would have poisoned Roth with any government that might have considered hiring him as a gaming "consultant" or granting him or his associates gaming licenses.
