“Kennedy Babylon Vol. 1,” a new book by Herald columnist and WRKO talk show host Howie Carr, explores the dark side of the Kennedy legacy, warts and all ... and then some. In today’s installment, we find old Joe Kennedy, the clan’s patriarch, worrying about two of the men who played key roles in his son John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election victory.
Joe Kennedy didn’t believe in making enemies needlessly — especially if they were cops or gangsters. There was just no upside to it, or at least not enough to justify the risks.
There were two ruthless, powerful men who likewise assumed that they did have something coming to them from the Kennedys. They expected to be taken care of, or at least treated with kid gloves, by the new administration.
One was a cop, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The other was a gangster from Chicago, Sam “Momo” Giancana. Even if his sons didn’t, Joe Kennedy understood what the Kennedys owed Hoover and Giancana.
Hoover had two sets of audiotapes of JFK engaging in scandalous extramarital sex — one from 1941, with suspected Nazi spy Inga Arvad in Room 132 of the Fort Sumter Hotel in Charleston, S.C., and the other with his 23-year-old Jackie-lookalike Senate aide, Pamela Turnure, in 1958.
Hoover had a reprieve (when JFK reappointed him), but he understood his continuing vulnerability. The problem for Hoover wasn’t so much Jack as his brother, Bobby, who as attorney general would now be the Director’s boss, at least nominally.
“You have to get along with the old man,” JFK told Bobby. The larger problem between Hoover and RFK may have been the Director’s homosexuality. RFK had a lifelong aversion to gay men.
Mobsters would be picked up on bugs or wiretaps discussing Hoover. In Philadelphia, one gangster accurately told boss Angelo Bruno why RFK was trying to get rid of the Director:
“He wants Edgar Hoover out of the FBI because he is a (expletive). I heard this before ... ”
Whatever his reasons, Hoover had next to no interest in going after organized crime until the Apalachin Mafia conference in 1957. That was a gathering of dozens of Mafia leaders from around the country in upstate New York.
(But) Bobby had always detested the Mafia. In the 1950s, when he had told Joe about his plans as a Senate investigator to take on both corrupt unions and the Mob, his father was apoplectic. He knew JFK would need union support when he ran for president in 1960. Joe also understood that any investigations of corrupt union leaders would inevitably lead back to the Mob.
Bobby didn’t care. First, he subpoenaed gangsters to testify in Washington, then he humiliated them at the hearings. RFK was particularly disdainful of the boss of the Chicago Outfit, Sam “Momo” Giancana.
RFK: Would you tell us anything about your operations or will you just giggle every time I ask you a question?
Giancana: I decline to answer.
RFK: I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.
Still, in 1960, at the behest of his good friend Frank Sinatra, Giancana made his peace with the Kennedys. He delivered Chicago to the Democrats, and JFK carried Illinois.
Judith Campbell, the girlfriend of Giancana, Sinatra and JFK, later claimed the Mafia leader told her, “Listen, honey, if it wasn’t for me, your boyfriend wouldn’t even be in the White House.”
In return, Giancana expected a good leaving alone from the Kennedys. When JFK became president in 1961, both Hoover and Giancana were determined to get along with him.
Despite the Mob’s assistance ... as well as in the anti-Castro plots the Kennedys had inherited from the Eisenhower administration, RFK was still determined to bring the underworld to heel. He directed Hoover to turn the FBI loose on the Mafia.
By mid-1961, (Tampa Mafia boss Santo) Trafficante was complaining to whoever would listen about the “honesty” of the Kennedys.
But the angriest mobster of all may have been Giancana. He had done more for the Kennedys than anyone else in the underworld and now he was under close FBI surveillance wherever he went.
On July 12, 1961, he flew back to Chicago from Phoenix with his girlfriend, the singer Phyllis McGuire. Local FBI agents grabbed them at O’Hare Airport.
William J. Roemer Jr., a high-ranking Chicago G-man, separated them and then got Giancana in a room by himself. What happened next has been recounted many times.
According to Roemer in his first book, “Roemer: Man Against the Mob,” Giancana began screaming about Hoover and RFK and then said to the agent, “Bleep your super, super boss!”
Roemer, bemused, asked Giancana who his “super, super boss” was.
JFK, the enraged mobster replied. Roemer said he doubted the president cared about Momo Giancana.
“(Expletive) John Kennedy!” Giancana shouted. “Listen, Roemer, I know all about the Kennedys, and Phyllis knows more about the Kennedys and one of these days we’re going to tell all.”
According to Roemer, Giancana then said something else the FBI agents didn’t understand at the time.
“The (expletive) United States government is not as smart as it thinks it is, is it? You made a deal with Castro to overthrow Batista if he would kick us out of Cuba and now that deal has backfired on you, hasn’t it?”
Bobby and his aides repeated all the old jokes about Hoover and (FBI associate director and his alleged lover Clyde) Tolson. They called the Director “J. Edna,” and later, “Gay Edgar Hoover.”
One day it was brought up at a Justice meeting that Tolson was having minor surgery.
“For what,” Bobby asked, “a hysterectomy?”
On Dec. 11, 1961, Hoover sent Bobby a transcript of another bugged conversation between Giancana and (fellow Chicago mobster John) Roselli.
They were discussing what they had expected when Sinatra had brought them the offer of a hands-off administration if they came through for JFK in the 1960 campaign.
Roselli: Sinatra’s got it in his head that they (the Kennedys) are going to be faithful to him. (By which he meant organized crime.)
Giancana: In other words, the donation that was made ...
Roselli: That’s what I was talking about.
Giancana: In other words, if I ever get a speeding ticket, none of these (expletives) would know me?
Roselli: You told that right, buddy.
But the Kennedys had reneged on their pledge. Hoover must have been ecstatic when he read the transcript. The smoking-gun word was “donation.” The Mafia had “donated” to JFK’s campaign.
With the transcript, Hoover included for Bobby his own taunting description of what he now had Giancana saying on tape:
“He made a donation to the campaign of President Kennedy but was not getting his money’s worth.”
It will never be known what the Kennedy brothers did next, but a week later, on Dec. 18, their father suffered a massive stroke while playing golf in Palm Beach.
Joe survived, but he was totally incapacitated. He would never speak again.
Within three months, Sinatra himself would be totally cast out of Camelot, after Hoover told JFK what he knew about his girlfriend Judith Campbell and her ties to Sinatra and Giancana.
Giancana’s associates were as livid about the Kennedys’ double-cross as their boss. Johnny Formosa was one of the Outfit’s front men in Las Vegas. He knew what should be done to Sinatra.
“Let’s hit him!” he told Giancana.
Then, Formosa continued, he would personally exterminate the Rat Pack.
“Let’s show ’em. Let’s show those (expletive) Hollywood (expletives) they can’t get away with it as if nothing happened ... I could whack out a couple of those guys, (actor and Kennedy brother-in-law Peter) Lawford, that (Dean) Martin (expletive), and I could take (Sammy Davis Jr.) and put his other eye out.”
The overlords of organized crime were coming to a consensus. Yes, Bobby was a problem, but ultimately the source of his power was the president of the United States.
Within a month, the rumblings of retaliation by the underworld against both brothers were becoming even more ominous.
In September 1962, (New Orleans mob boss) Carlos Marcello was drinking with two of his underworld associates.
One of the hoodlums commiserated with the Mafia boss about the problems Bobby was giving him.
“Don’t worry about that little Bobby (expletive). He’s going to be taken care of.”
None of his men would be directly involved, Marcello continued. The job would be done by “a nut.” But, he added, it wasn’t Bobby who was going to be hit. It would be his brother, the president of the United States.
Coming tomorrow, Marilyn Monroe and her not-so clandestine romantic relationships with JFK and RFK.
Order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at his website, howiecarrshow.com.
