Interference (77 page)

For details on the murder of Hoffa, the events leading up to it, and its aftermath—including my interview with Briguglio and his alleged accomplices—see my book
The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob
(New York: Paddington Press, 1978).

8
.  The principal targets of the federal investigations were the Teamsters, the Laborers International Union, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers International Union, and the International Longshoremen's Association. All had documented ties with organized crime. However, federal prosecutors determined that only three hundred union locals of seventy-five thousand nationwide were corrupt—one half of 1 percent.

9
.  In June 1976, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of the Teamsters' pension fund, which had loaned over $230 million to Las Vegas casinos. Soon after, control of the $2 billion fund was given to outside fiduciary management, Equitable Life Assurance and the Victor Palmieri Corporation, a consulting firm.

Three years later, the FBI taped a conversation in which Chicago Mafia capo Joseph Lombardo told Kansas City mob boss Nick Civella, “The old man [Chicago Mafia chief Joseph Aiuppa] wanted me to come and see you. We have to get things running smooth again like they used to be.” Lombardo went on to say that they had to rid themselves of the independent pension fund managers and bring back their own people.

CHAPTER 32

1
.  The decision in
Mackey
v.
NFL
was announced in December 1975. The judge ruled that the Rozelle Rule “is so clearly contrary to public policy it is illegal under the Sherman [Antitrust] Act. It is also an unreasonable restraint of trade at common law.” However, the appeals court watered down the decision considerably, saying that the Rozelle Rule should be the subject of collective bargaining. The compromise struck was a new free agency system, in which the team losing the veteran player would gain one or more college draft picks from the team signing him. The number of picks would be based upon the free agent's negotiated salary. However, there was little reform with this system—since NFL team owners became reluctant to sign free agents for fear of losing their college prospects.

However, on February 16, 1977, as a direct result of the
Mackey
decision, the NFL owners agreed to recognize the NFLPA as a closed shop. All NFL players' dues to the union were checked off, whether they considered themselves members of the NFLPA or not.

2
.  David Harris,
The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL
(Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986), p. 219.

3
. 
Ibid
., pp. 233-34.

Later, as an extension of Rosenbloom's war against Rozelle, he accused the commissioner of being anti-Semitic for scheduling a Rams-Miami Dolphins game on October 3, 1976, the beginning of the sacred Yom Kippur holiday. Rosenbloom, who was not at all religious, charged, “[Rozelle] goes out of his way to play a Jewish owner in Miami, which is heavily Jewish, on a holy day. It is a punishment and a warning to other team owners that if they criticize Pete Rozelle, they also will be punished.”

4
.  Including interest, Culverhouse's price for the team was $17.2 million. To help him acquire the Tampa Bay franchise, Culverhouse allowed his friend since childhood, banking tycoon Marvin Warner, to purchase 48 percent of the franchise. Later, Warner sold his interest in the team to Culverhouse and invested his money in the Birmingham franchise of the short-lived United States Football League.

Warner made his fortune as a housing developer in Cincinnati. He was also a minority owner of the New York Yankees and the owner of two large horse-breeding farms in Kentucky and Ohio. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the ambassador to Switzerland, he also later became the owner of the Great American Bank, which was indicted in 1982 for laundering $96 million in drug money. Warner was not personally charged with any wrongdoing. However, in 1987, he was convicted for securities violations, stemming from the collapse of his savings and loan empire in Ohio.

Another part owner of the Tampa Bay team was Hulsey S. Lokey, the chairman of the board of Host International. Lokey's commanding officer in World War II had been Culverhouse, whom Lokey appointed to Host's board of directors. Lokey was appointed vice chairman of the team. He died on September 29, 1980.

Culverhouse was also selected to the board of directors of American Financial Corporation, which had bought out Gene Klein's National General in 1974.

5
.  Seventy-two-year-old Trafficante died in March 1987 in Houston—soon after a federal judge dismissed racketeering and conspiracy charges against him developed during a 1980 FBI sting operation. Also at the time of his death, he was suspected as being the principal receiver of illegal drugs from Central America during the Iran/Contra scandal. There is considerable evidence showing that top officials of the Reagan administration were also involved in the drug-smuggling operation.

6
.  Smathers, known as “the Senator from Cuba” because of his unconditional support for Fulgencio Batista, also had ties to numerous organized-crime associates, including Meyer Lansky, Jimmy Hoffa, and Tatum Wofford. An October 11, 1971,
Newsday
report noted that Smathers, whose family owned the Flagship Banks in Florida, “owned no Major [Realty] stock when named as a director, but as of May 1971, a report filed by Major with the Securities and
Exchange Commission reflects that he owned 94,000 shares valued at more than $940,000. The circumstances of his stock acquisitions are not indicated by public records.”

CHAPTER 33

1
.  DeBartolo was baptized Anthony Paonessa. His father, Anthony Paonessa, an Italian immigrant, died just before his birth. His mother remarried when he was one. His stepfather was Michael DeBartolo, who adopted him. DeBartolo also took the first name of his uncle, Edward. However, DeBartolo didn't get around to changing his name legally until he was thirty-four.

2
.  Interestingly, at the same time baseball players Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were having troubles with baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn because of their casino connections in Atlantic City, former Cleveland Browns superstar Jimmy Brown was busy working on his two-hour, semiweekly radio show, “The Stardust Line,” live from the Stardust hotel/casino in Las Vegas.

An FBI report, dated April 17, 1965, alleged that Brown, one of the greatest runners in the history of football, had been associating with a top Cleveland underworld figure and gambling with him. According to the report, James “Jack White” Licavoli, a major sports gambler who later became the boss of the Cleveland Mafia, had boasted of his golf matches with the Browns star. The report indicated “that there is heavy betting on these golf matches with Brown, and that on a certain day he [lost] as much as $700. On another day Brown lost $600, then on another day Brown won $800.” According to the report, Licavoli conceded that “Brown never plays these fellows even and must give them strokes because he shoots a game in the low 70s.”

There was no known investigation of the matter by the NFL. Brown, who began his career with the Cleveland team in 1957, retired from professional football at the conclusion of the 1965 season and has never been accused of any wrongdoing in this matter.

3
.  The founder of the 49ers, Anthony J. Morabito, had a heart attack while seated in his owner's box at Kezar Stadium—just before halftime in the 49ers game against the Chicago Bears in October 1957. His brother, Victor Morabito, took control of the team until 1964 when he, too, died of a heart attack. The team was then inherited by the widows of the two brothers, Josephine and Jane Morabito. They authorized Lou Spadia to run the team for them. Jane Morabito retained 5 percent of the stock of the 49ers after the DeBartolo purchase.

4
.  Mieuli was also the owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. Like Morabito, he kept 5 percent of the stock in the 49ers.

Mieuli had attempted to purchase the 49ers in December 1976, along with Spadia, former San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto, and Libero P. Balderelli. However, on December 9, Denny Walsh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with
The Sacramento Bee
, broke a story, saying that Balderelli, the owner of a tax consulting firm and the foreman of the Nevada County Grand Jury, had been accused by the IRS of failing “to report income, file a return and pay taxes for various periods in the last 12 years.” He had also established lines of credit
at a dozen casinos in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. Balderelli was to have owned 11 percent of the 49ers.

The day after Walsh's story appeared, the syndicate's negotiations for the purchase of the team were terminated.

5
.  Deposition of Allen Davis, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission v. National Football League, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Civil Action No. 78-3523-HP.

6
.  Davis had other motives for greasing the sale of the 49ers for the DeBartolos, namely, his ex-partner in the Raiders, Wayne Valley, had indicated an interest in buying the team. Davis did not relish the thought of a hostile owner operating across the San Francisco Bay.

Hired as the DeBartolos' general manager was Joe Thomas, who had been a top executive with the Miami Dolphins from 1965 to 1972 and then also helped engineer the 1972 swap of the Baltimore Colts for the Los Angeles Rams. In the wake of that deal, he became the general manager of the Colts under Robert Irsay.

7
.  Carabbia was later convicted of murdering Cleveland's Irish mob leader Danny Greene in 1977 on behalf of the top brass of the Cleveland Mafia. Carabbia had planted and detonated a bomb in Greene's car. The murder was handled so sloppily that Carabbia's accomplice, who was not a made-Mafia figure and thus not subject to
omertà
, turned state's evidence when apprehended. In the end, the entire hierarchy of the Cleveland Mafia was indicted in the conspiracy and convicted for its role in the Greene murder.

8
.  The president of Yonkers Raceway was Art Rooney's son Timothy J. Rooney, whose daughter Kathleen married Tim Mara's grandson and Wellington Mara's son, Timothy Christopher Mara, thus linking the heirs of two of the NFL teams: the Maras of the New York Giants and the Rooneys of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

9
.  William Henry Paul,
The Gray-Flannel Pigskin: Movers and Shakers of Pro Football
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1974), p. 267.

10
.  Patriarca was the target of illegal federal wiretaps from 1962 to 1965, which showed his hidden interests in a number of racetracks, including Green Mountain, as well as his association with other top members of the national crime syndicate.

CHAPTER 34

1
.  McLaney was convicted of securities fraud in 1970. At the time, he was still the owner of the Royal Haitian and the International Casino in Haiti.

2
.  When Tito Carinci of Newport, Kentucky, fame, who pleaded guilty to placing interstate bets for Beckley, was placed on probation in 1968, he became a car salesman for Fincher.

Also, one of Fincher's businesses, an auto parts company, became the target of federal wiretaps in 1970. However, whatever case had been made by government investigators was immediately dismissed when Fincher wiretaps were among those deemed illegal in 1975 because of the signature problems within Attorney General John Mitchell's office at the Justice Department. Others who
had charges dropped in these cases included Lefty Rosenthal, Elliot Paul Price, and Jerome Zarowitz.

3
.  Brown, a Democrat who became Kentucky governor in 1979 and had been a gambling associate of McLaney, is married to the 1971 Miss America, Phyllis George, who did a television duet with Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder prior to NFL games on CBS. A federal grand jury later investigated Brown's banking and gambling activities, but no charges were ever filed. In one transaction, Brown had reportedly withdrawn $1.3 million in cash from a Florida bank to pay off, for the most part, a gambling debt.

4
.  Hornung was described in the report by law-enforcement agents as “an associate of Luther Albert James who is reputed to be a non-member associate of organized crime. Hornung and James at one time flew gambling junkets to Las Vegas (Riviera Hotel).”

5
.  DeBartolo, who bought Metropolitan in 1975, owned 227,000 shares of stock in the bank. His position was so strong at the Metropolitan Bank that he, unilaterally, forced the bank's president to resign in 1981. Other board members had no say in the matter. Metropolitan collapsed in 1982. It was the largest bank failure in Florida history. Federal bank examiners discovered as much as $50 million of questionable loans due. DeBartolo was not accused of any wrongdoing. Hugh Culverhouse's business partner, Marvin Warner, and Warner's Great American Bank immediately bought Metropolitan, paying its eight thousand depositors/investors $18.3 million.

CHAPTER 35

1
.  Just the previous year, defensive back Steve Tannen of the New York Jets, who had been out for the season with a dislocated shoulder, was linked to Florida bookmaker Ira Vernon, who had been arrested on December 7, 1975, with five others for his role in a major interstate sports-gambling and layoff operation. Tannen was a limited partner in a Gainesville boutique near the University of Florida campus. Although Tannen was not implicated in the gambling probe—which included a wiretap on the boutique's telephone—the NFL launched an investigation. “Trusting people has always been a bad trait of mine,” Tannen told
New York Times
reporter Gerald Eskenazi. “I'd like to sell out my interest in it, but now I wonder whether I can.”

A similar situation arose with Jim Bertlesen, a running back for the Los Angeles Rams. His partner in a restaurant had been booking bets for customers. Bertlesen was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Both Tannen and Bertlesen sold their interests in their respective businesses and were then cleared by the NFL. The case against Vernon and his associates was dismissed when the evidence acquired through the wiretaps was ruled as inadmissible.