In this episode, retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins talks with Eric Dezenhall, an author and former Reagan’s White House aide, about his new book, Wiseguys and the White House. Eric shares his unique perspective on the fascinating and often overlooked intersection of organized crime and American politics. His curiosity on the subject began with a seemingly casual remark from a colleague about mafia influence in his hometown of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. As a young aide in the Reagan administration, that moment set him on a path to explore how deeply organized crime has intertwined itself with the fabric of American society and government.

Throughout the conversation, Eric discusses how perceptions of mobsters have shifted over the decades. In the early 20th century, gangsters were often seen as vital community figures. They provided services like gambling and liquor during Prohibition—illegal but in high demand—and were viewed as filling a societal need. By the 1970s, however, that image began to unravel. Organized crime became a symbol of decay, corruption, and violence, far removed from the Robin Hood-like aura it once carried.

Eric brings to life the stories of legendary mob figures like Meyer Lansky, detailing Lansky’s surprising role during World War II. Lansky, alongside other organized crime figures, worked with the U.S. Navy to prevent Nazi sabotage along the East Coast. Eric explains how this alliance complicates the narrative of mobsters as purely criminal; during wartime, they were sometimes perceived as patriotic contributors to the national effort. Their involvement underscores the ambiguity surrounding these figures, who operated in both legitimate and illegal spheres.

As the conversation moves into modern times, Eric discusses how organized crime continues to influence political and business landscapes. He points to figures like Donald Trump, who openly acknowledged the realities of navigating a business world shaped by organized crime in cities like New York. Eric also examines how presidents such as Reagan, Nixon, JFK, and Joe Biden managed relationships with organized crime—relationships that, while morally complex, often played a role in advancing their careers and shaping American politics in lasting ways.

This episode offers a compelling look at the intersection of crime, politics, and history through Eric Dezenhall’s sharp insights and years of research. By sharing stories of infamous mobsters and pivotal historical moments, Eric reveals a side of organized crime that is often forgotten: its influence on the nation’s leadership and its occasional alignment with patriotic causes. It’s a conversation that challenges our assumptions, blending history, politics, and crime into a nuanced and captivating narrative.

Ger Eric’s books. See other books by clicking here.

  Transcript

[0:00] Well, hey, welcome, all you wiretappers. Glad to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective, a later sergeant, and I have in the studio today a prolific mob author and a guy that’s written with, I know you guys know, Gus Russo and the outfit book in Chicago. Well, this is a contemporary of Gus Russo, Eric Dezenhall. Eric, I really appreciate you coming in and sharing your stories about the wise guys in the White House with my wiretappers here. Thanks very much for having me. And I won’t say too many things about Gus, given that I talk to him every day. And I don’t want to have to face him. So I’ll be kind. Yeah, he’s a good guy. I interviewed him once. I got to get him back on. You know, there’s a lot of new books coming out all the time. But I need to get him back on because he’s so knowledgeable. So we’re not here to talk about Gus Russo. We’re here to talk about wise guys in the White House, which is probably kind of topical right now. The White House has been more topical in the last, what, eight years or so than

[1:03] it’s ever been in my entire 79 years. It’s just crazy. But first of all, Eric, tell the guys a little bit about your past writing. You have a whole bunch of books. And so tell the guys a little bit about your story through the last 10, 15 years.

[1:18] Well, I’ve written 12 books. This is my 12th.

[1:22] My fiction tends to deal with organized crime. My nonfiction deals also with organized crime. My last book actually was with Gus Russo called Best of Enemies, and it was the true story of two spies, a CIA guy and a KGB guy, who were assigned to flip each other, but they ended up becoming best friends and bringing down the worst traitor in American history, the FBI’s Robert Hansen. I had done a historical novel. I’ve known some of Meyer Lansky’s family much of my life and had access to a lot of his records. And I did a historical novel called The Devil Himself about his role with Luciano during World War II. and I fictionalized it, even though it is a factual story. I used the basis of fact to tell the story of Lansky because of so much of what I learned about what he emotionally wanted out of the World War II project, as well as the Navy commander. I mean, I’m not really a creature of the mob, even though I grew up around it. I’m more of a creature of Washington, where I’ve lived for 40 years. And what was interesting to me about the World War II story was not just the mob, but the naval officer who took the risk of working with the mob. And it’s one of those things where classic Washington story, you take a risk, you’re told to win, and when you win.

[2:49] Then everybody goes, oh my God, this guy worked with mobsters, which they knew, and then what happened to his career, which was devastating.

[2:57] So I’ve been very interested in the myths and realities of World War II. And the new book, Wise Guys in the White House, this has been cooking for about 40 years. I was a young aide in Reagan’s White House. Yeah.

[3:11] I tell the story at the beginning of the book where on one of my first days i told my boss she said where do you live where you’re from and i said i’m from cherry hill new jersey there was a big mob war at the time uh when angelo bruno had been killed in march of 1980 and my boss said uh oh cherry hill that’s that’s big mafia and i said well yeah the gambinos lived there they were my neighbors and uh but muhammad ali lived there too and she and one of the people said well you know the mob killed JFK. And I said, what are you talking about? Oh, they run the country. I said, we’re 20 feet from the Oval Office. Where are you? Do you know these guys? Where are you getting this? And it’s stuck with me for 40 years. And finally, enough files came out, enough people were willing to talk that I thought I had a book in the history of the presidency in organized crime, what really did happen, what didn’t happen, what people think happened that didn’t happen. And the bottom line is there have been extensive dealings going back to the FDR administration with organized crime. But it’s not like the president at three in the morning is inviting mobsters

[4:25] into the Oval Office and then they’re tiptoeing out. It’s much more attenuated, but it’s very, very real.

[4:33] Yeah, it’s it’s much more sophisticated or or like so many different cutouts. The president never talks to, you know, Carlo Gambino or John Gotti or any of these guys. But these guys talk to their local politician who then has a connection to the larger party, maybe on a state level. And then on a state level, then they end up maybe up with the with the attorney general or something. I think the Chicago, uh, the, the, uh, Chicago film, uh, scandal where the, the Chicago outfit guys, Paul Reek and some of them got out of prison early out of Leavenworth early with Harry Truman’s help. Right. With, with his, his, uh, uh, uh, attorney general, Tom Clark’s help. And Truman had to know that that was going on, but Truman was owed his career to Pendergast. So it, in, in a, you know, indirect way. So it’s, you know, that’s, that’s just how it works.

[5:31] That’s right. And we, you know, with Harry Truman, I mean, a lot of people, everybody knows that he came from a political machine, but they don’t know that it was a mafia controlled machine, not just a political machine, the Lazio family. And you hear you had a person who was selected by a mafia machine who ended up becoming president of the United States. And of course, dropped the bomb on Japan. Did the mob have anything to do with that? No. But it’s amazing to think that history turned on a president that was, in fact, selected with the help of organized crime. And Truman, interestingly, is not unlike Trump in the sense that he admitted that to a large degree, his dealings with the mob. And I think one of the things we’ll talk about is the extent to which some people, everything was about the appearance of respectability. Nobody cared if they did business with the mob. They cared about it coming out. And Truman was oddly candid over his career about it. He wasn’t completely candid. And I think one of the things we’ll get to is what’s been interesting about Donald Trump, as only Trump can do, he will come out and openly admit on national TV repeatedly to having dealt with organized crime. And then somebody will say, well, did you deal with organized crime? And he’ll say, no, I would never do that. But that’s Trump.

[6:57] And that’s kind of built into his stock price. Yeah, that’s for sure. Yeah, that I think another thing, Eric, I’d like to get your comment on this. It seems like the 30s, 40s, and 50s on up to the 60s, it finally started changing in the 70s.

[7:16] Politicians, local politicians, and even society as a whole did not look upon the mafia as this evil thing. They looked at them more as part of the culture, part of society. You know, the fact that, you know, they provided gambling, you know, liquor during prohibition and gambling when all the states, all the country people want to to deny people a chance to gamble. The city people wanted to gamble and a lot of country people did, too. But they always were part of it. And as opposed something happened, I don’t know exactly when in the 70s, about the time I came along and went in the intelligence unit. It’s like all of a sudden they’re this evil thing that we have to totally eradicate. Before, it was not like that. You see it like that?

[8:06] Well, I think that there’s a lot of truth to it. I mean, look, gangsters have always been gangsters and the idea that they were members of the community. I mean, if I hear one more time that they kept their neighborhood safe. Well, yeah, they kept their immediate neighborhoods. They kept their immediate neighborhood safe, but they also pumped drugs into the community. I mean, I remember one of the stories I heard as people in my family got older, one of my grandfather’s business partners in the liquor business was someone who I didn’t know until I was in my 20s, had been the Don of the Philadelphia, South Jersey area. And he had been one of the people, I don’t use his real name in the book, but he had been one of the people arrested at Appalachian. And one of the things my dad told me long after everybody was gone is how mortified they were at being arrested and being identified as gangsters. Because a lot of these guys didn’t see themselves that way. This man who we called Uncle Vince was actually in the car with Vito Genovese at Appalachian. And, you know, you think in the movies, it’s, yeah, you can arrest me, but I’ll be out by dinner.

[9:17] The stories that I heard was there was such shame and embarrassment because Uncle Vince saw himself as a member of the community. He was a gambler, but they were not into drugs. And a lot of it that I get to in the book, a lot of these guys very much saw themselves as Americans. What was interesting to me about Meyer Lansky is his biggest motive for getting involved with the World War II program was personally the thing that meant the most to him was being a real American. I had his certificate of naturalization, and Meyer worked very hard to become

[9:56] naturalized and try to convince Luciano to do it. But Luciano thought it was stupid. But with Lansky, I mean, he went to volunteer to serve in the army. Given what was happening to Jews in World War II, he was turned down because of his age, because of his height. He was 5’4″, soaking wet. But a lot of these guys, it was very much about being an American. Even Albert Anastasia served in the army. What began to happen…

[10:26] Later, I think that part of the problem is the newer generations, you had narcotics, and you didn’t have that ethic of we at least have to appear respectable. We have to appear to be members of the community. And look, this is assimilation. I came across as saying what the son seeks to forget, the grandson seeks to remember. And there are people in my family saying, why do you have to rehash this stuff that happened before you were born?

[11:03] You know, it’s so long ago. You were so far removed from it. And the fact is, is I am very far removed from it. But I became fascinated by what the people before me did. And it never occurred to me that anybody would ever accuse me of it. But all the people I know in my family and our neighbors wanted is they wanted their kids to go to Ivy League schools. I mean, the idea that one of my uncles or grandparents would sit me down and say, you know, Eric, I really want you to get a good education so you can become a really good extortionist.

[11:37] And, you know, one of the things people say about Meyer is, oh, do you think that they made him an honorary member? It never would have occurred to him. What he was looking for was to become Walter Annenberg. well, Mo Annenberg, Lou Wasserman. He wanted to become a very big, legitimate businessman. The idea, at least with the Jews, that he would become the boss of all bosses, he viewed gangland activity as a means to an end. And one of the themes of wise guys in the White House is the obsession that all of the players had with respectability. And the more you could fake respectability…

[12:16] The more power you got. And interestingly, the people who ended up with the success and the power in this country were the people who used the mobsters, not the mobsters themselves. And in the end, one of the things I concluded is the politicians and the businessmen got the better end of the deal than the mob. Because the mob guys at the end of the day, I mean, Meyer’s partner, Jimmy Alo, used to say, we were still burying tin cans in the backyard. Everybody said we were controlling legitimate businesses. We wanted to, but we couldn’t pull it off. Yeah. Interesting. You know what? TJ English, I just interviewed him and he said, he’s wonderful. He is. He said, these guys just wanted the American dream. That’s all they wanted

[12:58] was to live the American dream as they assimilated into American society. And so that’s what you’re saying here, that they wanted legitimacy and they put on the appearance of legitimacy and getting involved with politics will give you some appearance of legitimacy and also give you a certain power to you can help out your fellow man you could get jobs for people uh you know on the police department and the fire department you know.

[13:23] Different city jobs or account state jobs and so that’s that’s what they wanted so let’s let’s talk about tell us one of your your early stories here out of the book, Well, one of the things I start with is Americans have always done business. American politicians have always done business with thugs going back to the political machines. But one of the first stories I tell isn’t a mafia story. It’s how when Andrew Jackson was dealing with the War of 1812 and he ran into trouble with the British in New Orleans, he tapped the pirate Jean Lafitte to go and harass the British. And what Lafitte wanted of the deal is he wanted leniency from prosecution.

[14:11] Even he wanted to be respectable. So I talk about that’s a pattern. But really the first story that I deal with is World War II. And there’s a lot of mythology around what happened. I mean there are two extreme schools of thought. Both of them are wrong. One of them is that you hear the story that the mafia helped save the country in World War II. You left Lucky Luciano stormed the shores of Sicily, waving a banner, and the mafia came. That never happened. But the other school of thought is that it was all a scam, that the mob did nothing.

[14:45] It’s really somewhere in the middle. The fact is, is what you had is there was sabotage. The Nazis were sinking tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, of tons, rather, of materiel in the Atlantic, including in the Hudson River. Roosevelt hadn’t declared war. He couldn’t declare war. Nobody wanted the war. And things were disappearing. The theory was a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, this ship blew up at the port of New York, the Normandy, a French ship that was being converted into an American troop ship. and it blew up. It sank. And the theory at the time was that it was Nazi sabotage. It probably wasn’t, almost certainly wasn’t. But it was, you know, a month after Pearl Harbor. Who knew? The Navy goes to the docks. They say, we need your help. And they told them to go to hell. You know, the kinds of guys who you’re dealing with tough Italians and Irishmen, you go in with a uniform and say, we work for the government. They’re not going to cooperate with you. And one theory was, were they loyal to Mussolini? They really weren’t. But the fact is, is they didn’t want to cooperate with the government.

[15:56] They ended up approaching a Genovese, what is now a Genovese family, a Luciano member, a guy named Joseph Lanza. And he said, well, you know, we could help you on the docks, but you need Luciano to help you. And if you want to get to Luciano, you got to go to, you got to talk to Meyer Lansky because Meyer Lansky was famously patriotic as a Jewish man. He was very concerned about what was happening in World War II, even in Eastern Europe. And Lansky was approached by a commander, Hoffenden, of the Navy with the help, by the way, irony of ironies, of prosecutors in New York. were the ones who made the connection.

[16:43] Prosecutors that came from the Tammany Hall machine, which was dominated by Luciano and Frank Costello. So it was the prosecutors who brought in the mob. And Lansky listened and he said, look, I’ve tried to, I mean, the Navy knew that Lansky had been naturalized. They knew that he was tutored privately in American history. I mean, Meyer Lansky in the evenings, he wasn’t going out gambling with the guys or having an affairs. he was hiring Tudor. I mean, I have the notes and I see the notes that he made. I mean, there’s one of his notes in his, you know, you need to better understand Benjamin Graham, who was Warren Buffett’s hero. You must look up Thucydides.

[17:26] A lot of interest in history. And he was turned down to be in the army. And he went up to Luciano, who he hadn’t seen in seven years. Luciano was in prison up at the Canadian border, upstate New York, where he had been away on a 30 to 50 year vacation for pandering, Luciano said, look, I’m happy to help.

[17:51] I don’t like the, I don’t love the idea of working with the government. And frankly, if they deport me, how will it look that I helped in the war effort against Italy where I’d end up being deported? And Meyer said, I’ve got a plan. You know, we want something in return. This is not out of the goodness of our hearts. I mean, some of it is patriotism, but some of it is, the idea was to spring Luciano and get leniency in sentencing. So what ended up happening is word was put out by Luciano that he wants the people on the waterfront to cooperate. It’s not seen as ratting. And a lot of what Lansky and his people did, it was really two things. Number one, they reported on suspicious behavior on the waterfront.

[18:42] Unbelievably, one of the people who Franklin Roosevelt designated as his New York area sabotage czar was his best friend, a man named Vincent Astor of the Astor family fortune. So here you had an Astor who was his best friend and who helped him when he had polio recuperate was the guy in charge of working with the Navy and making sure that the New York area ports were safe. Do we know that Vincent Astor personally met with mobsters and then went back and told Roosevelt? We don’t know. But then again, those type of files wouldn’t be kept. It is almost certain that Roosevelt was aware of this. Also, Walter Winchell, the most powerful columnist in America, was Roosevelt’s top guy on propaganda.

[19:36] Who was Walter Winchell’s neighbor in the Majestic House in New York City? His neighbor down the hall, Meyer Lansky. And he used to tell Meyer Lansky where the Nazi rallies. I mean, it’s hard to believe in this day and age, but there was a major pro-German, pro-Nazi presence of all places, New York City. And Winchell would say, these people are meeting at this particular location. And Lansky would send his crew and beat the living crap out of them. And so you had both this process of reporting on activities around the docks, but also boats going around with both gangsters and Navy people around the New York area, spotting submarines and reporting it. One of the things that happened was that eight Nazi saboteurs came ashore on Long Island and in Jacksonville, Florida.

[20:33] And J. Edgar Hoover ended up with all the credit for catching them. And he deserved most of the credit because one of the guys turned himself in. But what also happened was the unions, the waiters’ unions in hotels, were listening to…

[20:50] And reporting to Lansky and Joseph Lanza if there were suspicious people, which ended up leading to the capture of some of the New York Nazis who ended up coming ashore. Other ones really did just turn themselves in. But you have this ongoing historical tug of war where you have Lansky saying, I got them and turned them in. And you have J. Edgar Hoover saying, no, it was crack investigations that did it. Who are you going to believe? I think that there’s truth to both of it. I read a book about that when I was a kid. And I saw nothing about the mafia and these guys. It was all the intrepid agents of the FBI. I was in trance with that kind of stuff, of course, as a 12, 13-year-old boy. I was, too. I was, too. And by the way, I mean, there is reason to believe that Lansky exaggerated some of his role. But so did J. Edgar Hoover. Yeah. But we’re never going to know because all of the records weren’t kept. But the bottom line is the mob did play a big role. And then later, when Patton was planning the invasion of Sicily, they needed contacts in Sicily. And Lansky brought them into the headquarters for, by the way, what was called the Ferret Squad or Operation Underworld, was none other than the Hotel Astor, controlled by the Astor family and who was Roosevelt’s best friend, Astor.

[22:17] So Lansky brought in all these Sicilians who would say, no, the beaches are soft here. Don’t go here. Go here. And when you get to this particular place, see Vincenzo.

[22:27] The Italian naval intelligence officers, American intelligence officers, were the liaisons when they got to Sicily and were very, very helpful in the

[22:39] taking of the island when the invasion happened. So that’s really the World War II story. From what I could see from what you said, Eric, how the cutouts, you know, the president didn’t get a call from Mayor Lansky, the cutout that his friend.

[22:53] Jacob Asser or the Astor family, somebody he designated then was a liaison and somebody else was a liaison. And then they got this Navy commander to do really the down and dirty work right on the streets. So the government works about like the mob sometimes, don’t they? Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, we’ll get to the story of Lyndon Johnson. When Lyndon Johnson had passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the three civil rights workers disappeared right after that, and also another civil rights leader, a man named Vernon Dahmer, was killed by the Klan. And what ended up happening in the movie, in the movie Mississippi Burning.

[23:40] An FBI agent tortured a Klansman, held a razor to his privates and said, you know, give up the location of the bodies. What really happened is they sent, as LBJ said to Hoover, and this is on tape, I don’t care what you have to do. Do what you got to do. And Hoover’s going, well, I don’t really care about civil rights, but I have the president breathing down my neck. And they had just turned a man named Greg Scarpa as an informant of the Colombo family, an absolute psychopathic killer. And they sent Scarpa down, and Scarpa played a role, some role in finding the three civil rights workers, but he really played a larger role in finding the killers of the civil rights worker Vernon Dahmer a couple years later. So the point here is not that Lyndon Johnson sat down with Carlo Gambino or Joe Colombo. Of course he did. What he did is he said to J. Edgar Hoover, do what you got to do. And Hoover said, I have to produce because I have a lousy – I mean, Hoover didn’t care about civil rights, but he had to do something. And what did he do? He went to the mob. So that really tells you the kind of attenuated, staggering layers with which it works. But the bottom line was the mob was very active in World War II,

[24:59] and they were very active in other programs as well with presidents. Got something about Ronald Reagan and Lou Washerman. I’d not heard this story before. Tell us about that.

[25:10] Well, you know, my friends, I was a kid. I was 22 years old in Reagan’s White House and not all my friends. I tell you that because I don’t want to make it sound like I was some important person. I was there. And so my old bosses are not thrilled that I did a Reagan chapter, but how could I not? Reagan, his career mentor was Lew Wasserman, who was the powerhouse behind MCA. We know it more as Universal today. And Reagan’s career was going nowhere. And Lew Wasserman saved him. He saved him by getting him the contract to host GE Theater, which was a big TV show at the time. And it saved Reagan’s career. It gave him experience going around the country and talking about issues. And it took Reagan from kind of a no-account movie star into America’s living rooms where he was talking to them every week and introducing movies and other things.

[26:10] Lou Wasserman’s career, I mean, the MCA was built on the back of Mob Muscle because it was founded by his then boss, Jules Stein, in Chicago. And they had deals to book bands. And so what it was is, yeah, we’ll help you book bans in our locations, but you got to give us a cut. So this goes back to the beginning of MCA. Lou Wasserman’s best friend was Sidney Korshak, a name I know you know, the attorney for the Chicago outfit and the primary link between the mob and labor and legitimate business and government. And so Lou Wasserman, the way he got things done and assured there would be labor peace was he built Sidney Korshak into the cost of doing business. And one of the questions that always comes up is, was the Chicago outfit shaking Wasserman down? Well, that’s not how Wasserman saw it. Wasserman saw it as he was paying for a service. You know, if you’re trying to shoot TV shows and movies and some, it’s worth a lot of money to make sure a strike doesn’t happen. That’s what Korshack brought to it. And so the Chicago outfit was compensated in that way. What does that have to do with Reagan?

[27:27] Well, Reagan was, and Lou Wasserman were very close. Reagan wasn’t close to Sidney Korshack, but they knew each other. And one of the things that Reagan, that Lou Wasserman got out of the deal is there was a time when you couldn’t both be in the movie business and the TV production business. And Reagan gave Wasserman, when he was head of the Screen Actors Guild, a waiver to allow him to compete in multiple worlds. Yeah.

[28:00] This is something that while there’s no proof that the mob per se ordered this, here you have a future president of the United States, very close to someone for whom everyday dealings with organized crime was a very big part of it. Later, during Reagan’s presidency, interestingly, it turned out that there were Gambino family members working inside of MCA, but the prosecutorial attention toward them wasn’t as intense as Reagan’s prosecution of other mobsters. It would be incorrect to say, oh, Reagan didn’t prosecute the mob. He prosecuted the mob in a very big way. That’s when the commission trial was. But Korshack’s people out in L.A. And to some extent in Chicago, the teeth were not sunk as hard into them. And so, you know, if you talk to some of the prosecutors, as I did, they will tell you that word came on down high from the Reagan administration. You don’t want Korshack. You don’t want that crowd.

[29:13] And it was really quite interesting. I mean, my friend Dan Moldea has written very effectively about this. And one of the things that I heard from some of the people who were willing to talk to me years later is, you know, Reagan was protective of his friends. Nobody ever had to give an official order or threaten somebody. But I think that it was understood at high levels of the Justice Department that we really don’t want to make trouble for Reagan’s friends.

[29:42] And while I wouldn’t say Reagan made no trouble to the Chicago Corshack world, they definitely got off way light. And the former prosecutors feel very betrayed by it and were horrified by that. And it all comes back to the Wasserman-Reagan connection. I mean, Wasserman saved Reagan. Going back to Chicago, there’s all these stories about the outfit and JFK, and we don’t want to go into the murder,

[30:16] the assassination of JFK, I think. But the whole thing about his Joe Kennedy and Sam Giancana getting the votes for Joe Kennedy, and then Joe Kennedy is supposed to be some quid pro quo. So I know you touched on that. Yeah, let’s talk about that. But, oh, I talk about it a lot because I think that one of the things you always hear is the Kennedys and the mob.

[30:41] Like the Kennedys are one unit. They were not one unit. Joe, Jack, and Bobby were three very different units. Yeah. So when you hear the mob and the Kennedys, a lot of the reporting on this is really kind of histrionic and overly Oliver Stone for my taste. But here’s what I do believe happened. What I do believe happened is that Joe Kennedy knew that his son would need labor support. Joe Kennedy, most likely through an intermediary, went to Jimmy Blue Eyes, Vincent Alo, Meyer Lansky’s partner. And I’ve known Jimmy’s family for many, many years.

[31:22] And Jimmy said to Joe Kennedy, and by the way, I’m grossly oversimplifying this for the sake of storytelling. telling. But Jimmy said, look, I don’t want to get involved with elections.

[31:35] We’ve gotten burned with that before. Contrary to popular opinion, Meyer and Jimmy Alo were very, very skeptical of doing business with national politicians. And so was the Chicago outfit, by the way. Giancana’s decision to help Kennedy out was not universally loved. And so Alo said, talk to Sinatra. So Joe Kennedy talks to Sinatra. Sinatra makes some kind of introduction to Giancana. And the deal was very simple. We’ll help your son. We’ll help him get some votes. But we hope.

[32:13] And he’s been a pain in the ass to us in these prosecutions. I mean, JFK was, you know, a part of the committee that was prosecuting, looking into the mob in the Senate. Bobby, we certainly know about. And even though there is no evidence that anybody ever said that Giancana said, we will only do this if you do that, it doesn’t need to be said. Joe Kennedy knew what was implied. And here’s where I think history gets a little confusing. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Kennedy did receive the help from Labor, Illinois, West Virginia, and other places. But the idea that this necessarily turned the election, I think there’s a lot of doubt there. I mean, JFK probably would have gotten Illinois anyway. And so the point is not whether or not the mob won the 60 election for JFK. It’s that they were asked for help and they received the help. Now, there was a big fight between Joe Kennedy around that time and his son Bobby, who he said, you can’t keep going after these guys, Hammer and Tom. And Bobby Kennedy, he was a purist.

[33:34] He wanted to go after them. And there’s a quote that I used in the book where one of the Kennedy family’s top aides said Jack’s hair would have turned white if he had any idea what his father, the extent of what his father was up to. So here you have a situation where Joe Kennedy unquestionably looked for the labor support, but there’s no evidence that Bobby and Jack did anything other than benefit from it. And one of the things I talk about in the book is one of the great things about being a rich kid is you don’t have to know. And did they know? They knew. But did they know?

[34:14] No, not in a provable way. And that distance actually matters. I mean, you could say, well, you know, that doesn’t make them any more pure. Well, maybe not. But it does protect you to some degree to have that level of insulation. And then we get to the challenge of Fidel Castro, where one of the things you hear people talking about is, you know, LBJ famously said, my God, the Kennedys were running a murder incorporated in the Caribbean. Well, let’s look at the facts. The fact is, is the campaign to kill Castro did not start with the Kennedys. It started under Eisenhower. And there is a big question mark as to how much Eisenhower knew. One of the point people who did know was none other than Richard Nixon. He didn’t know everything, but he knew that the effort was afoot.

[35:12] So the mafia, Johnny Roselli, Giancana, Santo Traficante, they were activated under the Eisenhower administration, not the Kennedy administration. When the Kennedys took over, Bobby, for someone who’s gone down in history is so peace-loving, was absolutely adamant that Castro was killed. But he preferred that Cuban exiles would do it. And somebody ended up telling him, J. Edgar Hoover being one of them, that the mafia was being used. Bobby was not happy.

[35:51] And the idea that Bobby was enthusiastic about using the mob,

[35:55] not true. But basically, the CIA said, all right, so this is how it is, Bobby. You want Castro dead, but you want us to use the nicest people to do it.

[36:07] Is this where we are? And so, you know, among the quotes I use in the book were people around Kennedy who said he knew, but he wasn’t thrilled about it. And so, again, we have the scenario of they were aware of mob involvement. They benefited from it. But did they know the details? Probably not. Yeah, I think people don’t really understand sometimes the power of a wink and a nod and say, okay. Well, you know, it’s funny because, I mean, I won’t get into current politics, but I mean, in any big way. But my investigative reporter friends were obsessed with the idea of Russian collusion with Trump. And I said to them, look, I’m not going to take a position pro-Trump or anti-Trump, But I will take the position that you are assuming that collusion means Putin snuck into Trump Tower and passed over a briefcase. No, in all likelihood, it was Putin said, boy, I hate Hillary.

[37:09] This Trump guy wants to do business in my country. Let’s throw a little his way, and maybe he’ll throw something back our way.

[37:17] That doesn’t require breaking the law. Now, was a law broken? Not that Mueller could find. But it gets to the point I think you’re making, which is critical, which is it doesn’t require there to be intense conspiracies. And this is what made Watergate so interesting, because you had the president who was actively involved in the cover-up. And that’s not what you do. I know. He didn’t understand the power of a wink and a nod to his underlies. You just look at him and say, you know what? You just got to do what you got to do. See you later. Take care of this for me. Well, that’s right. And here you have, and I talk about in the book, Nixon on tape going, we need you to break into the Brookings Institute. We need to do it on a thievery basis. It’s on tape.

[38:09] Which uh speaking of nixon what about that did he take a million dollars to let jimmy hoff out, well you know probably i i think that the bigger issue than nixon the nixon campaign taking the money and by the way you know it’s not clear whether it would have been nixon taking it or the Nixon campaign taking it. But the thing that they really wanted was there’s this process that began during the Kennedy era of turning labor from Democrats to Republicans because the argument has always been, why would labor go to Republicans, you know, given that Republicans are pro-business? Well, one thing that happened is Bobby Kennedy went after Jimmy Hoffa.

[38:57] And that was an opportunity. And one of the things that a friend of mine who was very senior to me in the White House said is we knew, Reagan knew, They couldn’t win over labor on economics, but they could win over labor on culture.

[39:13] And that the Reagan people began to notice that, first of all, they couldn’t stand Carter. The labor people couldn’t relate to him at all. But showing up to Reagan rallies, you’d have guys, labor people in cowboy hats and sidearms. And culturally, they liked the Republicans more. And a lot of what Nixon was looking for was labor support. And I think that the deal was Fitzsimmons had taken over when Hoffa went to jail. The mob was very happy with Fitzsimmons, especially when Hoffa started making noises. This is my union. I’m going to come back. I’m going to blow the whistle on all you guys. Not good.

[39:54] And the deal Nixon taught was not a pardon, but for Hoffa’s sentence to be commuted, provided that he didn’t run for office for a certain amount of time. And he ended up with Fitzsimmons in power. Fitzsimmons threw Teamsters’ support behind Nixon. Nixon got what he wanted. The problem, of course, is this set in motion, Hoffa’s desire to return to power, which is not something that the mob wanted. And if he had been willing to retire, he would have lived to a ripe old age. He wasn’t willing to retire. But in terms of the wise guys and the White House theme, no question, Nixon did a lot of work with the unions. They were controlled by the mob, and he benefited from it. He also benefited from deals in South Florida with some mobbed-up characters, some land deals. I mean, Nixon, you know, it’s funny.

[40:55] Nixon, you always hear that he was paranoid. Yeah, he was paranoid, but these people really were out to get him. And he didn’t help himself by always having his hand out for money and getting involved in some deals that he shouldn’t have, including with some banks that were heavily mob-connected. Yeah, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not out to get you, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. And the mistake Nixon made was not being paranoid. It’s that the actions that he took, um, he could have said, look, these people are out to get me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Let me just go and win the election, which of course he did in a landslide, which is why it’s so tragic. He didn’t have to do any of that stuff.

[41:40] Great. Eric, this has been wonderful. This is a, I tell you guys, you got to get this book. You want to crack beyond some of the myths that you see on Facebook and from your friends sometimes you want to become the definitive expert on some of these things, get this book, Wise Guys in the White House, Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made. Let me tell you, let me read you one little thing here. Ronald Kessler, who is a New York Times bestselling author, said, Wise Guys in the White House is an eye-opening, authoritative, remarkably detailed expose of the interplay between organized crime and our presidents. Shockingly revealing how close we have come to mob rule. So there’s a lot in this book, guys. You got to get it. And Eric, I really appreciate you coming on the show. And you’ve enlightened me. I’ll get around to reading this book now for sure after talking to you. I just hadn’t had time. Well, Gary, my final point, just something to cause people to lose their minds is, no, the mob didn’t kill JFK. So that’s my concluding remark. Okay. All right. and guys we didn’t even get into the Biden and the Trump White Houses so you got that to look forward to when you get that book as a little teaser for you right.

[42:52] Exactly there’s a lot on trump and the thing to know about trump is he was oddly honest all the way across about having done business with the mob that’s what’s so hilarious well you can’t do construction in manhattan without doing business with the concrete club right the window well that’s that is why trump built trump tower with concrete not steel there you go guys uh i really appreciate y’all listening and uh i hope you get this book and don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there in your cars and if you have a problem with ptsd and you’ve been in this service go to the va website and get that hotline number and if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol which is hand in hand with ptsd why uh anthony ruggiano a former gambino prospect a possible member is a drug and alcohol counselor down in florida and i’ll go figure that but he is i had him on the show once he’s a really nice guy and he has a hotline on his website and uh 1-800 bets off i think for gambling problems and and that’s enough uh social uh promotion today i guess it’s not promotion but uh uh dealing with those kinds of issues which you know we all have to a greater or lesser extent i think at least i have in my past don’t forget to look at my find my books they’re on amazon just go to amazon and search Gary Jenkins and Mafia, and you’ll find more than you ever wanted to know about me. So thanks a lot, guys.

[44:19] Thank you, Eric. Thank you.