The Sinatra Files (52 page)
Authors: Tom Kuntz
RECOMMENDATION:
None. For information.
Alexander P. Butterfield, the bit player in Watergate who revealed the existence of the Nixon tapes, requested information on Sinatra in early 1972, a few months before the Republican party invited Sinatra and his daughter Tina to Washington for a series of VIP meetings, including a visit to the White House. The FBI gave him the standard rundown, as well as some more up-to-date information, as excerpted below
.
February 18, 1972
Honorable Alexander P. Butterfield
Deputy Assistant to the President
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Butterfield:
Reference is made to your name check request concerning James Ross MacDonald, Malcolm Charles Moos, and Frank Sinatra.
Attached are separate memoranda concerning these individuals.
This letter of transmittal may be declassified when the enclosures bearing a classification are removed.
February 18, 1972
FRANK SINATRA
By communication dated April 25, 1969, the White House was advised of captioned individual’s association for a number of years with many leaders of organized crime. Since April, 1969, information coming to our attention indicates that Mr. Sinatra continues to be in contact with and is visited by individuals who are associated with the organized crime element.
In June, 1969, a confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past advised that a group of individuals, including several members of the organized crime element in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, took a junket trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, sponsored by Caesars Palace Hotel. According to this source, Joe “Turk” Harris personally contacted Frank Sinatra, who was appearing at Caesars Palace, and had Mr. Sinatra and his daughter, Nancy, meet with these individuals.
chester Zechowski, who is also known as Chester Gray, advised that Gray was in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace during the prior weekend and allegedly had some type of business contact with actor Frank Sinatra. Gray and three other individuals were arrested on
May 29, 1969, at which time a large quantity of stolen securities was recovered by FBI Agents of our New York Office. On November 1, 1971, Gray was sentenced in U.S. District Court, New York City, to serve a term of three years in prison.
A confidential source who was in a position to know advised in March, 1970, that Sam Giancana, nationally known organized crime figure, had a falling out with Frank Sinatra and was reportedly watching Sinatra’s activities for possible retaliation. According to this source, Giancana felt that Mr. Sinatra’s main ambition at that time was to be the number one man in the Italian hierarchy in the United States.
a confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past advised that Joseph Anthony Colombo, head of the Italian-American Civil Rights League (IACRL), and a leader of the organized crime element in the New York City area, had discussed the planned Italian-American rally to be held on June 29, 1970, at Columbus Circle, New York. According to this source, Frank Sinatra was to be one of three individuals from the show business world who would be at this rally.
In December, 1970, a confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past advised that Frank Sinatra was the godfather to one of David Robert Iacovetti’s children. Iacovetti was described as a member of the organized crime element in the Miami, Florida, area.
Sinatra is one a number of individuals who are currently subjects in an Interstate Transportation in Aid of Racketeering—Extortion investigation initiated by the FBI in February, 1971. That investigation was based on information received from a confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past that an
attempt was made to extort $100,000 from one Ronald Alpert by the use of physical force and by threatening Alpert’s life. According to this source, Alpert was seeking buyers for Computer Field Expressway stock and allegedly came up with an investor who bought $100,000 worth of this stock, reportedly put up by three individuals, who were described as active in organized crime circles, and Frank Sinatra. Subsequently, the value of this stock dropped and the $100,000 investment was lost.
A copy of an FBI Identification Record, Number 3 794 610, was sent the White House by communication dated August 21, 1967. The files of the Identification Division reveal no additional arrest record.
SECRET/NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION
Unaware that the FBI had just informed the White House that her father associated with mobsters and himself was the subject of a racketeering investigation, Tina Sinatra requested a tour of FBI headquarters, but not a meeting with Hoover, who died a week later, at age seventy-seven. (Nothing ever came of the racketeering investigation, and several months later, Sinatra endorsed Nixon’s reelection, at one point singing at a Young Voters for Nixon rally in Chicago.)
| TO: Mr. Bishop | DATE: 4/25/72 |
| FROM: G. E. Malmfeldt |
SUBJECT: MISS TINA SINATRA
(DAUGHTER OF FRANK SINATRA)
SPECIAL TOUR OF THE BUREAU
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1972, 2:30 P.M.
We received a telephone call from the Vice President’s office this morning. We were advised that Mrs. Agnew has a luncheon appointment with Frank Sinatra’s daughter, Miss Tina Sinatra, tomorrow and that the young lady had expressed an interest in touring the FBI some time later that afternoon. We were informed
that Tina Sinatra would be accompanied by her agent whose name is Jim Mahoney and by a young lady from the Vice President’s office, Miss Connie Lykkee.
The Vice President’s office was advised that we would be pleased to make special tour arrangements for Miss Sinatra and her companions and an appointment has been set up for them at the above indicated time. It was suggested that they present themselves in the Director’s Reception Room where their arrival would be expected. There was no request to meet the Director.
RECOMMENDATION:
If you approve, we will have an Agent Supervisor from the Crime Records Division conduct Miss Sinatra and her party on a very special tour of the Bureau.
After Nixon returned from a summit in Moscow, Sinatra scrawled him a brief note, telling him “Bravo” for a job “well done.” The president responded with seemingly heartfelt appreciation—though it’s interesting to note that Nixon’s letter to Sinatra was identical to one he sent to the Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns, in response to his letter about the Moscow trip. (Both documents are in the National Archives.)
June 8, 1972
Dear Frank:
After any long journey, the best part is always coming home, and your warm words of greeting made this occasion especially happy.
In a very real sense, every American played a vital role in the success of the Moscow visit, for what was accomplished there reflected our people’s abiding desire for enduring peace. With the agreements we have an unparalleled opportunity to build such a structure of lasting peace, and from your letter I know I can count on your support in this great undertaking. Needless to say, I am deeply grateful for your expression of confidence and encouragement.
With my best wishes,
Sincerely,
Richard Nixon
A month later, Sinatra was hauled before the House Select Committee on Crime as it investigated mob influence in professional sports. The Democrat-controlled panel had wanted to serve him with a subpoena while attending a gala with Agnew, but he ended up appearing voluntarily, according to Nancy Sinatra’s biography of her father. He was questioned about his 1962 investment in a racetrack reportedly owned in part by alleged mob bosses Raymond Patriarca and Tommy Lucchese. Sinatra denied knowing Patriarca and said he’d met Lucchese a few times. Asked if he knew the man was a racketeer, he said, “That’s his problem, not mine.”
In April 1973, Nixon asked Sinatra to come out of retirement briefly to sing at a state dinner for President Giulio Andreotti of Italy. Several documents from the National Archives shed light on the White House’s evolving view of the star. The Sinatra backgrounder prepared by Nixon’s staff was considerably less juicy than those prepared by the FBI. (The former president later told Nancy Sinatra he’d dismissed as “nonsense” criticism that he shouldn’t invite someone of Sinatra’s “background” to the White House. Andreotti himself, it should be noted, subsequently faced allegations of consorting with the mobsters. Prosecutors in Italy charged him with protecting the Sicilian Mafia while in office; he was acquitted in October 1999.)
FACT SHEET: ENTERTAINMENT FOR ANDREOTTI DINNER
1. It might be good to mention how President Thomas Jefferson (who had earlier visited Italy) ordered that Italian musicians be recruited to be members of the Marine Corps Band in 1803. The band went on to become known as the Band of the President and 8 of its 19 directors have been of Italian birth or descent.
2. Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1917 (some sources say 1915) in Hoboken, New Jersey. He first became interested in music when an uncle gave him a ukulele. He joined the school band and helped organize the glee club, worked as a
copy boy for a newspaper, and won first prize on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour which launched his career. He toured with Harry James, then Tommy Dorsey, and later the Lucky Strike Hit Parade. (He claims to have learned his distinctive phrasing and breathing technique from the way Dorsey played his trombone.) His motion picture career received major impetus when he won an Oscar for best supporting actor of 1953 in “From Here to Eternity.” (His career had slumped and he was paid $8,000 for doing the role of Angelo Maggio.) He is often called “the Voice,” or “the Chairman of the Board.”
3. Both of Sinatra’s parents were born in Italy. His mother, Dolly, came from Genoa, Italy at age two months. She was a politician of sorts, the “boss” of Hoboken’s third ward. Told there was no opening for her husband, Martin, in the Fire Department, she responded by saying, “Make an opening,” and they did.
4. Sinatra has been called “a one man Anti-Defamation League” for Italians in America. He donated his services to a 1945 movie, “The House I Live In,” which won a special Academy Award for expressing the importance of tolerance in a democracy. He has been an active philanthropist—witness his world tour for children’s charities a little over a decade ago. One major beneficiary was Boys’ Town of Italy. He won the Gene Hersholt humanitarian award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1971. Among other awards, he received the State of Israel’s Medallion of Valor last November and was co-recipient with Vice President Agnew of the Thomas A. Dooley Foundation’s Splendid American Award three weeks ago.
5. Serious musicologists such as Henry Pleasants rate Sinatra as one of the major singers of the century. Opera singers often collect his records. Technically he uses body placed tones (rather than head placed tones) in the upper register (which is supposed to be wrong). His range is two octaves—much greater than most pop singers. He is also said to be among the first to have understood
the potential for intimacy which the microphone gives the singer. And he is said to have “virtually invented” the proper pronunciation for English singing. “In brief,” wrote Gene Lees in the
Saturday Review
, “Sinatra raised the singing of the tiny popular song to the level of an art form. Indeed, he, more than any other singer, discovered what a treasure of true art American popular music really is and showed it to the world.”
Yet Sinatra says he has never taken a real music lesson and doesn’t read a note of music. He learns the music by having someone play it a couple of times and learns the lyrics by writing them out in longhand.
6. Some Sinatra titles might have made good campaign theme songs last year. One could mention “All or Nothing At All,” “High Hopes,” or “I Did It My Way.” There were some we did not want to hear, of course: “Put Your Dreams Away,” or “Learnin’ the Blues,” or worst of all, “Softly As I Leave You.” But in the end one Sinatra hit summed things up perfectly: “It Was A Very Good Year.”
