Interference (54 page)
Authors: Dan E. Moldea
The new service was called
The Billy Kilmer All-Pro Football Super Service
, which promised to pick almost nothing but winners and make all subscribers wealthy. His promotional literature read, “I'm Billy Kilmer and ⦠I Have Started a Football Handicapping Service to Destroy the Las Vegas Spread!” Also like Unitas, Kilmer promised to deliver inside information. “As a former pro, I'm well known ⦠Heck, when your name is Billy Kilmer you can't avoid finding out the important football information.”
Washington Post
columnist Ken Denlinger quoted Kilmer as saying, “I don't have any qualms about it. I've never been hypocritical in my life. The NFL was made strong by people betting all over the country ⦠I don't care what Pete Rozelle says.”
Kilmer might not have cared what Rozelle said, but his wife did. When I tried to interview Kilmer, it was his wife who called me back and responded on his behalf. “Billy was a consultant,” Sandy Kilmer told me. “This service was not something that Billy started or that he ran. The man from Baltimore [handicapper Mike Warren] did. Mike called Billy and said that Johnny Unitas wasn't going to do it anymore, and how would he [Kilmer] like to do it. And Billy said, âI'll try it for a while.' And that was the service. It was Mike Warren Sports. Billy had one sheet that they sent out, and they used Billy's name, of course. But it was a nine hundred number that you called to get his picks. Billy had nothing to do with any mailing lists or anything. There was a TV part of it too. They would tape him for cable, and they would have his picks, like Jimmy the Greek.
“Billy [later] got out of it, because it wasn't being run like he thought it ought to be. People would call him, and say that they were calling his number and not getting any response. So Billy called Mike and said, âThis is not what you said it would be.' And he got out of it.”
Warren did not respond to my request for an interview.
Mrs. Kilmer insisted that her husband never made a bet on a game while he was an active player. Interestingly, just the previous year, several publications in the Washington area reported that Kilmer and another former Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen had become partners in two Tony Roma's restaurant franchises in Washington suburbs and received a 12.5 percent interest at no cost to them. The majority owner of the franchise was Clint Murchison, who had had other business dealings with Kilmer.
Mrs. Kilmer also disputed these reports. “Billy and Sonny didn't have a percentage in Tony Roma's. When Tony Roma's opened up there, the business used their names. But they didn't get a piece of the action. Clint was sick at the time. So Clint's son ran it. They [the ex-players] never really did anything with it. They had very poor management in there. Billy and Sonny would go there, hang around there, and we'd all go to dinner there a lot. But they never had anything to do with the management of it. They never got anything out of it. There was some talk of them having a part of it after it got going. There was a discussion that they would have an option. But nothing ever came of it. They never owned any of it.
“Billy and Clint were not in business together at all. Clint and Billy were friends. Clint was one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet in your life. He was a fantastic person who loved Billy to death. Billy worked for Clint in the Nevada National Bank [which Murchison bought in 1982]. They didn't have any business dealings.”
With Allen Glick's cooperation, the FBI's Strawman/ Argent operation climaxed. Federal investigators amassed a wealth of information, with the help of Glick and court-authorized wiretaps, about the Stardust and the sports-gambling scene in Las Vegas. On September 30, 1983âafter a five-year investigationâthe most sweeping indictment against organized-crime figures was handed up for their roles in a $1.6 million casino-skimming operation.
9
Glick was neither indicted nor named as an unindicted coconspirator. Former Cleveland Mafia boss Angelo Lonardo and former Teamsters general president Roy Williams, who had both been convicted in unrelated cases, testified as government witnesses, as did Glick.
Sheryle L. Jeans, one of the prosecutors in the case, said, “In
short, the defendants are charged with conspiring to have a hidden interest in and receive skim money from particular Las Vegas casinos: the Stardust, the Fremont, the Hacienda, and the Marina.”
“Just about everybody who was anybody in the underworld was involved,” a top FBI agent involved in the case told me. “It's a devastating blow to them. Since 1974, these people had used their influence on Teamsters officials to receive multimillion-dollar loans for their front men, and then they skimmed the profits from these investments.”
Glick told me, “None of the people indicted in [the Stardust case] were my associates. I testified as to what I believed to be the truth. I wanted the record set straight after years of untruths and unproven rumors, bad reporting and even bad work on the government's partâuntil they had clear and convincing outside evidence that I had done nothing wrong.”
Unfortunately, little evidence from the Stardust case has been made public about the organized-crime syndicate's influence on professional sports, particularly on NFL football. “Those matters are peripheral to the focus of the case: hidden ownership and skimming at the Stardust,” a Strike Force attorney told me. “Don't expect to ever see that other stuff [about the NFL] come out.”
Interviewed by
The New York Times
, former NFL Security chief William Hundley's protégé, David Margolis, the head of the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, said, “We're aware of the sizable amounts of money involved in illegal bookmaking. And we know that much of it comes through professional football. But at the moment, we don't see any organized-crime activity that threatens the integrity of the National Football League.”
45 Gambling or Drugs?
IN THE WAKE OF THE NFL ticket-scalping scandal, the
Frontline
presentation, widespread drug use, the Schlichter gambling probe, and Leonard Tose's bad luck at the blackjack tables in Atlantic City, most professional sports beefed up their security procedures. Like the NFL, Bowie Kuhn hired security agents in June 1983 in each of the cities that play major-league baseball, to “monitor gambling, scalping, and other matters.”
1
While the NFL was in the midst of its gambling and drugs scandals, Kuhn, who had been the commissioner of major-league baseball for fourteen years, was forced to resign by the team owners in August 1983. In a tribute to Kuhn, columnist Thomas Boswell of
The Washington Post
wrote, “At the simplest level, Kuhn really does love baseball and truly does believe that maintaining its public image of integrity is his central job as commissioner ⦠What baseball needs is a person of ingrained moral sense who understands that gambling and drug-use among players, and racketeers in the boardroom, constitute the most fundamental concern of any pro sport.”
The National Basketball Association, which has had its own internal security force since 1972, began a joint program with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to educate players about the impact of narcotics on professional sports and the gambling and bribery that goes along with it. Also, the National Hockey League, which has had its own security unit since 1971, increased its forces.
Of course, Howard Cosell knew just what questions needed
to be asked. On that sports reporter's popular
SportsBeat
program, during a discussion about the Schlichter affair, Cosell asked commissioner Rozelle, “Do you think players other than Schlichter are gambling?”
“I don't think so,” Rozelle replied. “I think it's a very isolated case ⦠The players know that it strikes at the integrity of the game, and I don't think there's gambling in the National Football League ⦠Gambling goes right to the heart of our sport's integrity ⦔
“But what about drug users? Carl Eller of Minnesota went bankrupt because of drugs. When a man gets into fiscal trouble because of the use of drugs, doesn't that, too, go right to the integrity of the game?”
“It could, it could. And it's a serious problem. I'm not attempting to play down the problem of drugs. I'm merely saying what gambling does directly, rather than indirectly, to the integrity of the game. And that's why it's such a problem for us, and a lot of players know that we will not tolerate it.”
2
Both men were right, because the problems of gambling and drugs were already dovetailing.
In June 1983, Tony Vaccarino, the FBI's national coordinator for gambling and sports-bribery investigations, stated during a seminar at the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convention that cocaine had become an epidemic in college and professional sports and could cause players to participate in fixed games. “I think there is a strong likelihood it does exist. It can be easily doneâespecially in the over-under where a bettor bets on the total points scored ⦠We know many big-time athletes are involved in a very large scale of using cocaine.” Vaccarino, who was involved in the Art Schlichter and 1979 referee-fixing investigations, added that despite the high salaries of the players, “the price of cocaine is very, very expensive.”
Just a few months before the seminar, on March 4, 1983, former all-pro lineman John Niland of the Dallas Cowboys had been indicted for cocaine possession. Within the next few weeks, he was arrested again for driving while intoxicated. Also, Jim Clack, a former center for the New York Giants, was indicted for conspiracy to deliver cocaine. Both players were placed on probation.
That same month, Washington Redskins veteran running back Clarence Harmon was arrested for possession of cocaine in
Texarkana, Texas. Harmon, who pleaded guilty and was placed on probation, did not play the 1983 season in the NFL.
In July, the month after the seminar, Rozelle suspended, for all of the 1983 preseason play as well as the first four regular season games, four players for their drug abuse: Ross Browner and Pete Johnson of the Cincinnati Bengals, Greg Stemrick of the New Orleans Saints, and E. J. Junior of the St. Louis Cardinals. Both Junior and Stemrick had been arrested and pleaded no contest to possession charges in separate cases. Browner and Johnson, who had both admitted their cocaine use, had been given immunity as part of their plea-bargaining defense.
Soon after, Tony Peters, a star defensive back for the Washington Redskins, was arrested by DEA agents at the Redskins' training camp in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for engaging in a coke deal with an undercover agent. He pleaded guilty and was also suspended from the NFL.
Rozelle's actions against the five players marked the first NFL front-office-imposed suspensions for illegal drug use. In announcing the suspensions, Rozelle said, “Involvement with illegal drugs poses numerous risks to the integrity of professional football and the public's confidence in it ⦠Such involvement may also give rise to pressures on players to alter their performance on field in the interests of illegal gamblers.”
The basic drug policy enforced by Rozelle and the NFL was a three-step process, which had been negotiated in the 1982 NFL Players Association contract:
Step 1:
After a player tests positive in a drug test, he must voluntarily begin an approved drug-rehabilitation program.
Step 2:
If the player tests positive a second time, he is immediately suspended for thirty days, placed on his team's non-playing reserve list, and must again enter a drug-rehabilitation program.
Step 3:
If the player tests positive for a third time, he is automatically banned from the NFL; but he can appeal the suspension after one year.
Drug tests were permitted once in the preseason and once during the regular seasonâif “probable cause” could be demonstrated.
Also as part of the agreement, the league and the NFLPA jointly selected the Hazelden Foundationâa drug-rehabilitation
program in Center City, Minnesota, which had been in operation since 1949âas the NFL's official treatment center.
The NFLPA responded to Rozelle's announced suspensions on August 4, 1983, in
The New York Times
, blaming Rozelle for not adopting a consistent antidrug policy. “Since Mr. Rozelle has not articulated a policy, playersânot knowing what to expectânow will think twice before admitting a dependency,” wrote Ed Garvey, who the previous month had been replaced by Gene Upshaw as the executive director of the NFLPA. “Is a player who admits a dependency subject to suspension? If a player is not dependent but is convicted, will he be suspended? If he is not convicted of a crime but aids in the prosecution of others and in the process admits having purchased drugs, is this enough to warrant suspension? ⦠It is time to stop treating this as a public relations problem and to start treating it as one of the most serious problems in our society.”
Soon after the five suspensions, five members of the Dallas CowboysâLarry Bethea, Tony Dorsett, Tony Hill, Harvey Martin, and Ron Springsâwere linked to federal cocaine investigations. The names of Bethea, Dorsett, Martin, and Springs had been picked up on federal wiretaps and all had been identified as cocaine users. Although these four players had denied it, they reportedly engaged in plea-bargaining sessions with federal prosecutors. Also Hill and Martin had been subpoenaed to testify as defense witnesses in the cocaine-smuggling case of Lauriberto Ignacio, a former professional soccer player who had tried out to be the Cowboys' placekicker but was cut. Although Ignacio was convicted, no member of the Cowboys was accused of any wrongdoing.
3
On October 31, 1983, in the midst of all the turmoil within the NFL, league charter member George Halas died at age eighty-eight and was succeeded by his forty-two-year-old grandson Michael McCaskeyâan ex-Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. McCaskey also received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his doctorate in business from Case Western Reserve. The owner of a management consulting firm in Massachusetts, McCaskey also was a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School.