On September 3 the New York Times reported that Blackwater had "created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of
dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq." The documents obtained
by The Nation reveal previously unreported details of several such companies and open a rare window into the sensitive intelligence and security operations
Blackwater performs for a range of powerful corporations and government agencies. The new evidence also sheds light on the key roles of several former top CIA officials who went on to work for Blackwater.
https://www.thenation.com/article/blackwaters-black-ops/
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https://www.wired.com/2012/06/cia/
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HONG KONG — A Hong Kong–based security and logistics company founded by Erik Prince is working in the south of Iraq, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is best known for founding Blackwater, a private mercenary company that was banned from Iraq after contractors opened fire on and killed unarmed civilians in Baghdad. Backed by Chinese money, Prince started the Hong Kong–listed Frontier Services Group (FSG) as a logistics company in 2014. Since then it’s expanded from operating Africa-based projects to offering logistics and security services for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, a global infrastructure strategy adopted by the Chinese government. FSG has additional offices in mainland China; Southeast Asia; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/blackwater-erik-prince-frontier-services-group-iraq
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https://www.businessinsider.com/frank-sinatra-the
kennedys-and-the-chicago-mob-2013-11
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10-24-2017 Jerry Lewis’ former assistant, Judy Campbell--Sinatra and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana were having affairs with her around the same time. And that was just a subplot in the Giancana storyline. JFK’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was trying to arrest Giancana for racketeering. He didn't know Eisenhower’s CIA had given Giancana a contract to kill Fidel Castro and he probably didn't know Sinatra had asked Giancana to swing the presidential election for JFK. He also probably didn't know his own father had asked Sinatra to approach Giancana.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2017/10/24/preside
ts-playground-kennedy/729301001/
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Joseph Kennedy was the catalyst in setting up the alliance with the Mafia, by Hersh’s account. The elder Kennedy allegedly got a Chicago judge and old friend, William J. Touhy,
to arrange a meeting with Giancana. Joseph Kennedy purportedly sought to tap into the mob’s influence with local labor unions, part of what Hersh calls “a huge manpower base
that could be mobilized on demand.”
Hersh reports that, according to Tina Sinatra, the elder Kennedy also persuaded Frank Sinatra to act as a go-between in the campaign’s contacts with Giancana. “I believe in this man [John Kennedy], and I think he’s going to make us a good president,” Sinatra told Giancana, whom he met on a golf course to escape FBI surveillance, Tina Sinatra said.
The decision by the Mafia to commit resources to the Kennedy campaign was made at a summit of the crime bosses in Chicago, according to Jeanne Humphreys, widow of mob figure Murray Humphreys, who cast the only negative vote at the meeting. Robert Blakey, a former Justice Department special prosecutor, told Hersh that FBI wiretaps confirmed that the Mafia had been active in Kennedy’s Illinois campaign, providing financial backing
and stuffing ballot boxes. “Can you say that mob money made a difference?” Blakey asks rhetorically. “My judgment is yes.” Kennedy carried Illinois--a crucial win in the electoral
vote contests--by fewer than 9,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million cast. At the time many Republicans charged that the Chicago Democratic machine, led by then-Mayor
Richard J. Daley, had rigged Kennedy’s victory.
Hersh writes that Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), the GOP Senate leader, called Cartha DeLoach, then-deputy director of the FBI, claiming he had evidence of fraud and demanding
an investigation. DeLoach told Hersh that when he informed Dirksen he would turn the matter over to the Justice Department--then headed by Robert Kennedy--the senator
snapped: “Thanks a hell of a lot” and slammed down the phone.
The reason Mafia leaders were willing to aid Kennedy’s candidacy was their belief, according to Blakey, that “the Kennedys would do something for them,” specifically, Hersh
writes, “reduce FBI pressure on their activities.” If that was the case, the mob made a bad bargain because once in charge of the Justice Department, Robert Kennedy made fighting organized crime a priority. Victor Navasky wrote in his
book, “Kennedy Justice,” that “ever since Prohibition
. . . attorneys-general have been ‘declaring war’ on
organized crime, but Robert Kennedy was the first to
fight one.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm
1997-nov-09-mn-51973-story.html
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11-22-2011
Now Shelton was on a similarly quixotic task. He believed a small-time criminal locked up in an Illinois prison
may have committed the greatest crime of their time. His name was James Files (born Sutton in 1-1942), and he had
once been a driver for the Outfit’s most feared hit man. Files told Shelton (retired FBI guy) both he and the hit man
were in Dallas when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Files even claimed that he had fired the fatal shot from
behind a fence on the infamous grassy knoll....The evidence, Shelton believes, shows that organized crime
orchestrated Kennedy’s murder. An increasing number of historians agree but still don’t know who the shooter
—or shooters—may have been. There is also virtually no understanding of the Outfit’s role in the conspiracy.
If Special Agent Shelton learned any lesson during his eight years in Chicago, it was never to underestimate the
Outfit or Tony Accardo, the man at its helm for five decades. Unlike the Mafia dons on the East Coast, Accardo had
little interest in the public spotlight or absolute power. After he took control of the Outfit, in the mid-1940s, he built
what is now acknowledged to be the biggest empire in the history of American organized crime, with rackets
extending from Chicago to California.
Accardo was willing to divide the spoils by geography rather than by family. Inside Chicago that meant five groups,
each with its own boss. Although most of these mob bosses were Italian, they were not necessarily related to those
who worked for them. Their associates and underlings could be Greek, Jewish or German. Depending on where an
illegal act took place, unaffiliated criminals—even weekend poker players—had to pay a street tax to the local
Outfit boss. Failure to pay could result in a beating or death. Shelton’s fellow agent Jim Wagner transferred to
Chicago from New York and immediately recognized how crime in Chicago was organized. “The Outfit had a
superior business model because it used geography instead of family,” he explains. “You didn’t have the blood
feuds like in New York, where different families fought over the same territory.”
Nothing fueled the Outfit’s expansion as much as its influence on unions—the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters in particular. The union’s pension fund, which was run out of Chicago, financed construction of the
Outfit’s first casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. As he did in his hometown, Accardo was willing to let other mobsters
play—but on his terms.
A key component of the Outfit’s success was its infiltration of the Democratic Party in Chicago’s First Ward. Mob
operatives influenced the election of judges, who then found reasons to throw out charges against the Outfit. The
mob’s political connections also helped it buy voting cards from residents of Chicago’s public housing projects that
it could then punch for its favored candidates. When a slender margin in Illinois ensured Kennedy’s electoral victory
over Richard Nixon in 1960, Shelton says, “the mob really did believe it gave Kennedy the election.”
If that was true, the Kennedy administration showed little gratitude. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy made
organized crime his signature issue, lighting a fire under J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, which had previously gone
easy on the Mafia. In the last year of the Eisenhower administration the Justice Department convicted only 35 low
level mobsters. By the end of 1963 RFK had pushed that number to 288, including high-ranking bosses. More
alarming for the Outfit, while it was using the Teamsters pension fund to build casinos, RFK targeted Teamsters
president Jimmy Hoffa with a team of investigators known as the Get Hoffa squad. The squad’s first indictments
against the union leader were for accepting payoffs from trucking companies and for subsequent jury tampering in
those trials. In the summer of 1963 it brought new charges involving pension funds.
Five months later, JFK was assassinated. G. Robert Blakey, then a member of RFK’s Justice Department, was well
aware of what organized crime had at stake in snuffing out the Kennedy administration’s onslaught. “It seemed
obvious that if there was a conspiracy, it would be from the mob,” says Blakey. In Brothers, a recent book on RFK,
author David Talbot quotes Bobby telling a confidant after JFK’s assassination: “If anyone was involved, it was
organized crime.” According to Blakey, neither Hoover nor JFK’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, wanted to
open that can of worms. “The risks of where that investigation would lead were too high,” says Blakey. “It was
much more convenient for Oswald to be the lone assassin.”
In the late 1970s Blakey served as chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, which
took a second look at the Warren Commission’s findings. On the basis of acoustical evidence, Blakey’s investigators
determined there was a “high probability” that more than one gunman fired at the president and that “individual
members” of “organized crime” may have been involved. The committee also found that Hoover had kept the FBI’s
organized crime task force out of the investigation and didn’t pursue leads tying Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby, to
the Mafia....In Chicago, for example, agents never fully understood the executive nature of the Outfit’s hierarchy.
They thought Sam “Momo” Giancana ruled the Outfit. Giancana was the Chicago mob’s most flamboyant boss
after Al Capone, but he remained in power only until 1965. It’s now clear Giancana always answered to Accardo.
According to Blakey, no bug or wiretap ever caught Accardo talking to Giancana. Because of Accardo’s
understated ways, the media, law enforcement and even some local criminals never completely knew the extent of
his control....The agents learned enough to impanel a grand jury. The first time he saw Accardo, Shelton understood
why people underestimated his brutality. At 73, Accardo dressed in conservatively tailored suits and looked more
like a retired corporate executive than a crime lord. Accardo covered his tracks with ruthless efficiency. Carusiello
was killed before he could testify . Accardo’s longtime Italian houseman, who testified to a grand jury in broken
English, may have said too much, because he soon disappeared. Shelton got a warrant to search Accardo’s homefor
signs of the witness’s whereabouts but could find nothing other than a pair of prescription glasses at the bottom of
an incinerator.
Accardo covered his tracks with ruthless efficiency. Carusiello was killed before he could testify. Accardo’s
longtime Italian houseman, who testified to a grand jury in broken English, may have said too much, because he
soon disappeared. Shelton got a warrant to search Accardo’s home for signs of the witness’s whereabouts but
could find nothing other than a pair of prescription glasses at the bottom of an incinerator....
The crew was led by James Files, who was the sort of white man with no overt ethnicity that mobsters called a
hillbilly . In fact, Files was born into a broken home in Alabama but raised by a single mother in the tough Italian
neighborhood of a Chicago suburb. Shelton had no idea how Files fit into the crazy-quilt pattern of the Outfit. “All
I knew was that he had to have the blessings of the mob to be operating on that scale.”...
Over the next decade Shelton and the other agents in the organized crime unit turned the tide against Accardo. By
Operation Strawman, Shelton’s team caught the Outfit selling casinos to the Kansas City mob. The investigation
won the 1986 conviction of 78-year-old Aiuppa, who spent the next 10 years in prison. During the same period
Shelton’s squad also tapped the lines of the Teamsters pension fund offices to bring charges against union leaders. “I
loved being in Chicago,” says Shelton. “Every day was different and exciting, and we did a hell of a lot of
good.”...Shelton didn’t think about Files again until 1992, after he had been transferred to the FBI office in
Beaumont, Texas. He read in a local newspaper about Joe Hugh West, a private investigator and former Baptist
preacher from Houston who claimed to have revelations regarding JFK’s murder. As Shelton skimmed the article,
two Outfit names jumped off the page: Charles Nicoletti, a notorious hit man, and Johnny Roselli, the Outfit’s first
enforcer in Las Vegas. West claimed he had a source who could place both men in Dallas on November 22, 1963....
Shelton returned to Beaumont and was warned by his supervisor never again to mention JFK. Shelton expectedthe
matter to be closed in early 1993 when he read that West had died following heart surgery. Soon after, West’s
lawyer, Don Irvin, called to announce that “the crusade lives on.” Irvin told Shelton that West had succeeded in
tracking Files to a state prison in Illinois, where he was doing the equivalent of a life sentence for the attempted
murder of a cop. Files had initially rebuffed West, but the former preacher persevered through phone calls, a visit
and extensive correspondence. The prisoner was devastated to learn of West’s sudden death. As a tribute to West,
Files agreed to talk extensively to Irvin, who then relayed what he heard to Shelton. He had much more to say than
anyone anticipated.
Files told of being remanded for a court-martial from the Army after he was charged with shooting other soldiers
in Laos in 1960, but he then claimed to have been plucked out of a veterans’ hospital during a psychiatric evaluation
and recruited to train anti-Castro Cubans in Florida. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, Files said, he returned home
with a chip on his shoulder against his nation and the President. Nicoletti saw him racing stock cars and tapped him
to be his driver.
more:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120610064929/http://www.
playboy.com/playground/newsroom/politics/how-the-outfit
killed-jfk?page=3
excerpt from http://www.playboy.com/playground/newsroom/politics/how-the-outfit-killed-jfk?page=5
After a long career in the FBI, Wacks thought he had seen it all, but this sting opened his eyes even wider. “Mob
guys like Accardo and Marcello felt like they ran a separate government,” he says. “Marcello knew right off the top
of his head who was amenable to kickbacks, whether it was a politician or a union figure, across his whole region.
Not just in Texas and Louisiana, but Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma.” Wacks was ready to rope in the Outfit
when a leak to the press brought the sting to an abrupt end. During his year undercover, Wacks became close with
Marcello. “He was pushing 70, but I only wished I worked so hard. He could have hundreds of deals going at the
same time and bounce around until 3:30 a.m. with a girlfriend half his age. Then at seven the next morning he’d call
to see why you weren’t at work already.”
Even decades later, Wacks says, Marcello could not hide his hatred for the Kennedys. “Historians don’t understand
the loyalty mob bosses felt politicians owed them. They thought they were on the same level. If they put someone
into power and he didn’t do their bidding, their solution was to take him out.”
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