Interference (81 page)

In 1984, Cooke led the first serious effort to oust Pete Rozelle as NFL commissioner. Rozelle's ten-year contract, which gave him a $700,000-a-year salary, was to expire in 1991. Cooke's attempted purge failed.

2
.  Klein's prized horse, Winning Colors, won the 1988 Kentucky Derby. He told me, “What ran through me when my horse won the Kentucky Derby never ran through me when I owned the Chargers. It was one of the greatest thrills I've ever had.”

3
.  During the early 1970s, Spanos, then a harness-racing promoter as well as a developer, purchased the controlling interest in the California Capital Trotting Association. Almost single-handedly, he was responsible for bringing night harness racing to California, increasing the pari-mutuel handle as well as attendance. Intrigued by the success of Cal-Cap, Spanos was contacted by other harness-racing operators all over the country, including the Art Rooney family of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Asked by
Sacramento Bee
sports columnist Marco Smolich his views on sports gambling in 1971, after the state approved night racing, Spanos replied, “I've got nothing against gambling, you know. In fact, I've done a bit, only it hasn't been on horses … I'm interested in sports, all sports.”

4
.  Korshak was the target of a four-part series, written by Seymour M. Hersh of
The New York Times
from June 27 to June 30, 1976. For more on Korshak, see my book
Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob
(New York: Viking Press, 1986).

In 1983, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda caused a stir when he was seen having dinner at a Chicago restaurant with Korshak. For years, Korshak had been the baseball team's attorney on labor matters and had maintained
a long, personal relationship with team owner Walter O'Malley. Korshak owned a portion of the Dodgers' parking lot concession.

5
.  Attorney Korshak was so bitter after Hilton's repudiation of him that he angrily sent off a letter to Hilton, dated November 29, 1984. Korshak wrote, in part, “I read with interest your disparaging remarks about me to the New Jersey Gaming Commission. When did you discover that I was unworthy of being an attorney or that I was associated with characters that shocked your most decent sensibilities?

“I have in my possession a number of letters from your staff extolling my virtues as an attorney and telling me how happy the hotels were with my representation of your corporation. Those letters were also sent to your office for your personal perusal.”

Korshak then launched into a brief litany of personal favors he had done for Hilton over the years. Korshak concluded, “You have caused me irreparable harm, and as long as I live I will never forget that. When did I become a shady character? I imagine when you were having difficulty getting a license in Atlantic City.”

6
.  State of New Jersey Casino Control Commission, “Plenary Licensing Hearing of Hilton New Jersey Corporation—Volume XIV: Decision,” February 28, 1985.

CHAPTER 49

1
.  According to a government prosecutor, “On Easter Sunday 1983, Mr. Frontiere met with Raymond Cohen, who he knew was a potential witness in the IRS investigation, and corruptly endeavored to influence, impede and obstruct the investigation by counseling, advising and suggesting to Raymond Cohen that he give fictitious, fraudulent, false and manufactured information and testimony to IRS agents.”

2
.  Petievich left the Treasury Department in 1985. He is now a novelist who has written, among other works,
To Live and Die in L.A
., which was made into a major motion picture.

3
.  Jack Catain died in February 1987 in an Encino hospital.

4
.  The Bright syndicate outbid longtime Cowboys backer W. O. Bankston, who owned the largest Lincoln-Mercury dealership in the country. Bright held only 17 percent of the team—but the NFL waived its rule insisting on a 51 percent owner.

Bright is remembered for having purchased the full-page ad, “Welcome Mr. President” in
The Dallas Morning News
on the day President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. In the ad, Bright had accused the President and his attorney general of being soft on communism. Sharing Bright's expenses for the ad was Nelson Bunker Hunt, the brother of Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. Both Bright and Bunker Hunt were active in the John Birch Society.

5
.  Soon after the sale to Bright and his syndicate, there was an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Cowboys from the new owners. This time it was by Marvin Davis, who had tried to purchase other NFL teams, including the Denver Broncos and the Los Angeles Rams, as well as the Oakland Athletics
major-league baseball team. Davis bought the controlling interest in Twentieth Century-Fox in 1981 and later sold the company to Rupert Murdoch.

6
.  Braman created a political stir when he gave Republican presidential candidate Jack Kemp, a former star quarterback with the Buffalo Bills, several hundred complimentary tickets to the 1988 Super Bowl, which Congressman Kemp then used to attract $1,000 contributors to his campaign.

7
.  Harvard-trained attorney Chuck Sullivan, team owner Billy Sullivan's oldest son and the executive vice president of the team, had invested much of the family fortune in rock star Michael Jackson's Victory Tour. The total ticket for the Sullivans was $21 million with no less than a $4 million loss assured.

In May 1984, the same month that Sullivan purchased the rights to the Jackson tour, he also leased the Foxboro Raceway, the racetrack near Sullivan Stadium. However, by the end of its first year of operations under the Sullivans, the racetrack had lost nearly $2 million. Consequently, the state's racing commission denied the track any racing dates and declared it “financially insolvent.” Both investments had seriously impaired the Sullivan family's ability to keep the Patriots.

CHAPTER 50

1
.  The Patriots had learned of the gambling allegations against Fryar from
Boston Herald
staff writer Lynne Snierson, who had received information and was following leads. When the leads led to dead ends, the reporter went to the Patriots for comment. Head coach Ray Berry then reported Snierson's information to Warren Welsh and NFL Security.

Fryar, a first-round draft pick from the University of Nebraska in 1984, had scored the Patriots' only touchdown in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XX.

Aside from drug and gambling charges, Fryar was knifed and the tendon in his finger was cut, reportedly during an argument with his wife. Fryar insisted that he had accidentally done it to himself. In February 1988, he was arrested in New Jersey for the unlawful possession of a .38 caliber revolver and hollow-point bullets, as well as a loaded shotgun. After his arrest, Fryar said, “I didn't know those things were against the law.”

2
.  Also in 1985, two players, linebacker Mike Green of San Diego and nose tackle Tim Newton of Minnesota, pleaded guilty to possession of illegal drugs in separate cases. Both were slapped on the wrist. Green was sentenced to a drug program for first-time offenders; Newton paid a $50 fine.

On June 27, 1986, Don Rogers, a safety with the Cleveland Browns, died of a cocaine overdose.

3
.  Mike Bell had been arrested in November 1985 for cocaine possession and was later convicted; Barry Word was signed to a three-year contract in April 1987 after doing five months in the wake of his drug conviction.

Also in April 1987, three players for the Phoenix Suns of the NBA were indicted by a Maricopa County grand jury for cocaine trafficking. The players were James Edwards, Grant Gondrezick, and Jay Humphries. Also indicted were former players Mike Bratz and Garfield Heard. Other past and present members of the Suns were also present when the deal came down, according
to the indictments, but were not involved in the sale. Two of these bystanders had been given immunity and testified at the grand jury against those later indicted.

In the NBA, a drug conviction or a guilty plea can result in suspension for life.

The investigation began after
The Arizona Republic
reported that a member of the Suns and two other NBA players had discussed the “over the total” line with a gambler in a February 1987 game between the Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks. The newspaper quoted the Suns player saying the total points of both teams would not go over 226 points. Only 222 points were scored in the game won by the Bucks, 115-107. The gambler reportedly won over $100,000 betting under the total.

4
.  The NFL teams were not getting much encouragement from the Reagan White House to take the national drug problem very seriously. After Ronald and Nancy Reagan appeared on national television in September 1986 to declare its politically popular “Drug-Free America” program and “Just Say No” campaign, the President—in his January 1987 federal budget proposal—cut over $913 million out of a $1.7 billion antidrug package. The following month, he selected Attorney General Edwin Meese to coordinate budget priorities for the administration's war-on-drugs charade.

5
.  Another major NFL Players Association strike began on September 22, 1987, canceling the third week of games. The NFL owners then introduced the controversial concept of “replacement players” for the next three games. The replacement games—which featured mostly an array of players who had not made the cut of an NFL team—secured at least a portion of the television revenues of the owners.

On October 15, after twenty-four days, the NFLPA returned without a contract. The players' union filed an antitrust suit against the NFL owners, again challenging the restrictions on players who wish to move from team to team. A year later, there was still no contract and no resolution in the antitrust case, even though the owners implemented on February 1, 1989 a scheme known as “Plan B,” under which clubs could protect thirty-seven of their players while all the rest were unrestricted free agents, for a two-month period. Of the 619 “Plan B” players in 1989, 229 signed contracts with new teams. However, no player under the old restrictions continued under “Plan B” moved.

Although the volume of betting was down during the strike, the betting line from Las Vegas was still produced, distributed, and printed in newspapers around the country. Universally, weekend gamblers were at a loss about the talent accumulated by the owners for the replacement teams and found it difficult to determine how to bet. “It was like flipping a coin,” one gambler told me. “We were betting on players we had never seen play before. Most of us just bet on our favorite teams out of some weird form of blind loyalty. The professionals with the real inside information on those games must have really kicked ass.”

Warren Welsh told me that betting on the replacement games “caused a few problems” for NFL Security. He did not elaborate.

6
.  Duper, who had refused to appear for two drug tests, allegedly received
cocaine from John Rafael Gomez, who had been regularly seen on the Dolphins' practice field. Gomez, who was arrested in early December 1988 for his alleged role in a $3 million drug deal, admitted that he was a friend of Duper, who supplied him with free tickets to Dolphins games. In a related drug case, a police search yielded photographs of Duper and other members of the Miami team in the company of two convicted cocaine dealers, Nelson Aguilar and Timothy Taylor. Aguilar had also described Duper as a close friend.

Because of Duper's associations with drug dealers, the NFL claimed to have been “watching” the star receiver since 1986.

However,
Sports Illustrated
, which first reported the Duper story, charged that “NFL investigators had ignored evidence that … Duper had consorted with drug dealers as far back as 1986.”
SI
also received information from former Florida assistant state attorney Herbert H. Cohen that “an NFL investigator showed little interest in information offered by the lawyer regarding cocaine use in the league.”

7
.  Citing an example of the merging interest of agents and team owners, Garvey told me, “The owners sometimes want to sign players to long-term, nonguaranteed contracts. And the agents want long-term contracts because their bonuses are based on the total amount of the contract signed. It's in their interests to work together.”

8
.  Palmer was suspended by the Chiefs on November 28, 1988, after he was quoted by an assistant coach and other players as saying that by “dropping a few balls on the carpet” he could help get head coach Frank Gansz fired. The remark was made prior to the Chiefs game with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was immediately sent back to Kansas City. However, after the one-game suspension, he was reinstated after apologizing to all concerned.

9
.  Considered by law-enforcement officials as among the Mafia's new breed, Franzese was convicted in a criminal conspiracy to infiltrate numerous legitimate businesses, including Beneficial Finance, Chemical Bank, the Chevrolet division of General Motors, Mazda Motors, and Mobil Oil, as well as the Allied International Union, which organizes security guards.

Franzese is also the son of John “Sonny” Franzese, a top capo in the Colombo crime group.

10
.  Selcraig and Jill Lieber were part of a team of
SI
reporters who worked on a Craig Neff-bylined story about the Walters/Bloom case over a year before the indictments were handed up.

CHAPTER 51

1
.  Shaw was apparently not harmed by the publicity. In 1988, he became Georgia Frontiere's most trusted adviser on Rams football matters and the second most powerful executive on the management team.

2
.  Warner Communications officially acquired Lorimar in January 1989; Adelson became the vice chairman of Warner and a member of its board of directors. The merger had been jeopardized as a result of a power struggle and litigation between Warner chairman Steven Ross and former Hollywood talent agent Herbert J. Siegel, the chairman of Chris-Craft Industries. Siegel, encouraged
by attorney Arthur L. Liman, had aided Ross during a hostile takeover bid of Warner Communications by Australian publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch in 1984. In the process, Siegel bought a chunk of Warner. Soon after, a shooting war began between Ross and Siegel after Siegel filed suit to gain access to an internal Warner report about the indictments and convictions of three Warner executives, including Ross's two top assistants, Jay Emmett and Solomon Weiss.