Interference (23 page)

With Hundley, Cahn wanted to discuss “reports that certain points in at least nineteen [professional football] games … were rigged.” Pete Rozelle had stated in November 1966 that Hundley “was conducting a general investigation of continuing rumors in the American Football League.” Cahn said that he had discovered that Beckley had “picked nineteen out of twenty winners” and had actually picked the point spreads of each winner.

Cahn explained to Hundley that he had been told “bookies took four AFL games ‘off the boards' last season, indicating gamblers were suspicious of the games.” He had also uncovered evidence that an unnamed, well-known college coach had been working in cooperation with the gamblers and had won $20,000 betting on a single game. “As a result,” Cahn told reporters after the indictments, “certain layoff bets were completely switched by all the bookmakers with orders to go heavily on the team
backed by this coach.” The line had jumped from fourteen to eighteen points after the coach had made his bet.
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In the end, Beckley and his coconspirators were permitted to plead guilty to reduced charges—because the courts had begun to question the manner in which intelligence on the case was collected; the wiretaps could not be used as evidence in court.

However, Beckley's indictment and guilty plea had little impact on Beckley or on the NFL's relationship with the bookmaker. Hundley assured Cahn that he had the Beckley situation under control.

Salerno says, “Beckley had gone to Hundley and said, ‘I know who you are, and you know who I am. While you were with the Department of Justice, you were on one side of the fence, and I was on the other. And I would never dream of approaching you about anything. But you no longer work for the Justice Department. You now work for the National Football League. And that puts you and me on the same side of the fence. You and me are on the same team.' And Hundley said, ‘What the hell are you talking about? I'm not on your team!' And Beckley said, ‘Yes, you are—because you want what I want: honest National Football League games.'

“Hundley's interest was to protect the integrity of the game; Beckley wanted to protect the integrity of the bets he booked and the volume of his business. Beckley told Hundley, ‘I will be your chief informant, because what I do all week long is exchange bets, take bets, and layoff bets with bookmakers in every NFL city. These guys are sharp, and they know what's going on. And the deal we will have is that instead of just laying bets with me, these smart cookies will tell me everything they hear—a whisper, a rumor, and everything else. And I will convey that to you.'

“That's why, when he was convicted, Beckley went to Hundley and said, ‘Look, I've been helpful. I called you and told you what was going on. All I want you to do is tell the judge that I, Gil Beckley, did more to keep the National Football League honest than any human being alive.' And they had that deal.”

Marty Kane, who was indicted with Beckley in Miami on the federal bookmaking charges, told me that he was aware of Beckley's relationship with Hundley and the NFL. “Gil was living in New York at the time,” Kane says. “Gil would call me on either
Sunday night or Monday morning and asked me what the NFL line was. And I would give it to him. He wanted to know at what price these games opened, at what price they closed, and if there were any unusual moves, and what the reasons for them were. He knew that I would know whether a player was out—which would cause the line to go from three to six.

“Gil told me that he was doing this for Bill Hundley. The reason Gil did this was that he thought Hundley might be able to help us in our case.”

In an extraordinary letter on NFL stationery and dated April 20, 1967—sent on Beckley's behalf prior to his sentencing in Miami—Hundley wrote to a federal probation official: “Shortly after I left the Justice Department to join the National Football League, I was contacted by Gil Beckley, who said he knew me by reputation in Justice … He offered, on a confidential basis, to furnish any information that came into his possession concerning the possibility of endeavors to corrupt professional football players, [or to] seek unauthorized information about players' conditions, and [to] supply any other information that might reflect adversely on the integrity of professional football.

“During the season, he was most helpful in apprising us of any unusual fluctuations in the betting odds and assisting us in ensuring the integrity of professional football from the influence of undesirable elements.”

Hundley added that Beckley had not asked the NFL for any assistance “in connection with his present difficulties with the government.”

On April 17, 1967, just three days before Hundley wrote his letter on Beckley's behalf, the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, which Hundley had just left,
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wrote an internal report that stated that “Beckley was deeply entrenched with La Cosa Nostra [LCN] elements” and had become “involved with Michael Coppola, a/k/a ‘Trigger Mike'—identified by [federal witness] Joseph Valachi … as a ‘capo regime' of the Vito Genovese family of LCN … Trigger Mike was receiving approximately 50% of the profit on Beckley's wagering operation. Trigger Mike died just last year and with his demise Anthony Salerno, a/k/a ‘Fat Tony,' took his place as the Mafia's representative. “
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Hundley was aware of the Justice Department's view of the bookmaker. But, despite Hundley's surprising confidence in
Beckley, which was shared by NFL commissioner Rozelle, the bookmaker received the maximum sentence for his federal bookmaking conviction in Miami. C. L. Williams, Beckley's probation officer, to whom Hundley had sent his letter on April 20, told U.S. District Judge Theodore Cabot of Miami that Beckley should be sentenced to the maximum eight years in prison. In spite of Hundley's letter, Williams wrote that Beckley was “the number one figure in nationwide gambling … involved with the Cosa Nostra, and [paid] tribute to that organization … The sentencing of Gilbert Lee Beckley would deal a severe blow to organized illegal gambling in the United States.”
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Beckley appealed and moved his operations from Miami to New York City and then to Atlanta while the federal government pressured him to talk.

Hundley defends the NFL's relationship with Beckley. “Beckley was one of the many contacts in the bookmaking field who used to give us information about point-spread fluctuations, suspicions, and rumors,” Hundley told me. “We took his information. We knew who we were dealing with and judged what he told us accordingly.” Hundley added that Beckley was never paid by the NFL for anything he did.

Sources inside and outside the NFL say that Beckley was consulted in several NFL Security investigations:

• Just after Hundley became NFL Security chief, an FBI agent in Detroit received information from a Detroit mobster that the second 1966 game between the Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers in Chicago had been fixed for the 49ers. Knowing that the Bears and the 49ers had played to a 30-30 tie in their first game earlier in the season, FBI agents monitored the second game that was played in San Francisco. This time, the 49ers demolished the Bears, 41-14. The 49ers, who were 6-6-2 that year, had also defeated the Detroit Lions in Detroit by the same score later that season.

The FBI reported the matter to the NFL, which approached Beckley. Beckley claimed to know nothing about the game. Without additional evidence, the investigation was dropped.

• Beckley had worked with the NFL on an investigation of “the relationship between a star American Football League quarterback and two bookies, Carmello Coco and Philip Cali of Boston. The inquiries were stepped up after the player's teammates
were overheard in the locker room angrily accusing him of ‘throwing' the game they had just lost.”
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• Another investigation involving Beckley's information was of Boston Patriots quarterback, Vito “Babe” Parilli, a former all-American from the University of Kentucky. Parilli and several of his teammates were known to be patronizing Arthur's Farm, a Revere, Massachusetts, bar owned and operated by a convicted gambler. Law-enforcement officials claimed that the bar was a hangout for underworld figures and had linked the Patriots quarterback to Boston mobster Henry Tameleo, a top capo under New England's Mafia head, Raymond Patriarca.
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Parilli was polygraphed by the NFL, but the results were not made public.

• Beckley was also consulted after several games of two teams—the Kansas City Chiefs and the Washington Redskins—were taken off the board by oddsmakers in Las Vegas and New York in 1967 and 1968.

Washington attorney Edward Bennett Williams had been among those responsible for the selection of Bill Hundley, a close friend of Williams, as NFL Security chief. After Hamilton's death in 1966, Williams, the president and a minority owner of the Redskins, suggested to Rozelle that Hundley be Hamilton's replacement.

Williams had bought 5 percent of the Redskins in 1962 and was credited with finally desegregating the team later that year after obtaining running back Bobby Mitchell in a trade with the Cleveland Browns. Williams was named club president by team owner George Marshall, a longtime client, in 1966.
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The senior partner in the powerful Washington, D.C., Williams & Connolly law firm and a major player in the Democratic National Committee, Williams was counsel to the Teamsters Union and had personally represented Jimmy Hoffa in 1957 during the government's unsuccessful attempt to prosecute him on bribery charges. He had also handled important legal cases for Frank Costello, Lou Chesler, Senator Joseph McCarthy, sports oddsmaker Bobby Martin, political fixer Bobby Baker, and former Teamsters president Dave Beck.
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Born in Connecticut in 1920 and educated at Holy Cross, Williams served in the Army Air Force in World War II and was the sole survivor of a B-17 crash. Known for his loyalty to his
friends, Williams was called by Robert Maheu, who later became the liaison between the CIA and the Mafia in the Castro-assassination plots, when Maheu needed a hotel reservation while he was in Las Vegas to serve a subpoena in 1958. Williams and Maheu had gone to college together, and they served on Holy Cross's debating team.

To accommodate Maheu in Las Vegas, Williams promptly introduced him to Chicago mobster Johnny Rosselli, whom Maheu later enlisted for the CIA to serve as its conduit to the Mafia in the Castro plots. As a favor to Williams, Rosselli booked Maheu into the El Rancho Vegas, which was owned by Beldon Katleman—the man Maheu had come to subpoena and to whom Carroll Rosenbloom had once lost a reported $25,000 in a gin game.

“I had a quick decision to make,” Maheu told me during a 1978 interview. “Was I going to be a son of a bitch and serve the subpoena? Or was I going to go back home and explain what happened? To me, it wasn't a big decision. There was no way in the world that I was going to compromise my friendship with Ed Williams, and the man I had just met, Johnny Rosselli, under those circumstances.”

Williams gave loyalty to those he trusted—and expected it in return.

In September 1967, after two games played by the Washington Redskins were taken off the boards in New York, the Internal Revenue Service launched “National 125 Baltimore,” the reference number for an investigation into gambling—mainly football gambling—in the Washington, D.C., area. The targets of the investigation were several of Beckley's D.C.-based associates, including D.C. crime boss Joseph “the Possum” Nesline, his top D.C. lieutenant, Eugene Corsi, and local bookmakers Richard McCaleb and David McGowan. All were “engaged in conducting a football pool wagering activity and accepting sports wagers over the telephone,” according to an IRS memorandum. Nesline had been acquitted of federal gambling violations just the previous year.

A confidential D.C. police report described Nesline as “an internationally known organized crime figure who is affiliated with several infamous syndicate members, including Charles ‘The Blade' Tourine and Meyer Lansky … Nesline can be characterized as a major force behind illicit gambling activity in the Washington Metropolitan Area with ties to virtually all of the
city's major gambling figures.” Nesline had also been active in Cuba during its pre-Castro days and worked at the mob-controlled Tropicana, along with Santos Trafficante.

About the same time, an IRS undercover agent reported that Vince Promuto, a veteran Washington Redskins guard and the team's captain, was a friend of McCaleb and was suspected of gambling on sporting events. Promuto was also a close friend and former teammate of Rick Casares of the Chicago Bears, who had been investigated and cleared of gambling charges by the NFL in 1962. Casares played for the Redskins in 1965.

The U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, convened a federal grand jury on May 7, 1968, after the houses and offices of several of its targets had been raided. Thirty-nine witnesses were called to testify. In addition to several local bar and restaurant owners and a television sports reporter, they included former Washington Redskins quarterback Ralph Guglielmi and tackle Fran O'Brien (then a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers). Informants had characterized O'Brien as “a large gambler,” which was more of a reference to the size of his bets than the broadness of his shoulders.

A second set of subpoenas was to be served on Promuto and no fewer than five other NFL players, including Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen and defensive tackle Andy Stynchula. However, none of the subpoenas was executed. According to a classified Senate subcommittee report, an IRS investigator involved in the probe reported that “the subpoenas were never served because his superiors were concerned about the involvement of professional football players and the publicity [they] might trigger.”

One of the IRS agents familiar with the probe told my associate, William Scott Malone, “The procedure in federal grand juries is that the praecipes are issued—which is the order for the clerk to draw up the subpoenas to have these people before the grand jury. Between the time we had the praecipes issued and when we walked into the clerk's office for the subpoenas, we were told to turn in the praecipes. The subpoenas would not be issued. We were not told why.”