The Strength of the Wolf (32 page)

Tensions increased when Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic. In response, the CIA, with the consent of Iraq's King Faisal, armed the Kurds in Northern Iraq and encouraged them to attack Syria, which the US considered a Soviet pawn. Within weeks, however, Iraqi forces loyal to Colonel Abdul Karim el-Kassem overthrew King Faisal and restored relations with the USSR. This coup incited Arab nationalists in Lebanon and, in May, armed revolt erupted in Beirut. The US Information Agency building was burned and sacked, and the ARAMCO pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Tripoli was severed – at which point Joe Salm was reassigned by the CIA as a consultant to Tapline, the company that provided security for ARAMCO.

Fearing that the Syrians would attack Lebanon, and that Muslim rebels would assist them, President Chamoun asked for US help in sealing Lebanon's borders. To protect the region's oil reserves, Eisenhower agreed:
the Sixth Fleet put Marines ashore at Tripoli, and US jets flew over Beirut in a show of force. But Chamoun's government collapsed in October when the Marines left, and General Faroud Chehab, promising neutrality, was elected president. At America's urging, Muslim leaders were granted seats in his new government.

Events in Lebanon in 1958 left America more deeply entrenched in the region than ever before. To placate King Hussein, America began selling arms to Jordan and mounting covert operations against Iraq, including a MKULTRA operation in which Dr. Gottlieb sent, from New Delhi, India, a handkerchief laced with a deadly poison to Colonel Kassem.
¹⁵
(Gottlieb's assassination attempt failed, but Kassem was overthrown in 1963 by the CIA-supported Ba'ath Party, which included Saddam Hussein.
¹⁶
) Gottlieb's assassination attempt evidently involved Anslinger through Ulius Amoss, the nutty private investigator fired from his OSS post in Cairo for using official funds to hire, with George White's assistance, an ex-con for assassinations. In a 1958 letter to Anslinger, Amoss expressed concern about “our men” in Iraq being able “to evacuate in time.”
¹⁷

Were Paul Knight and Joe Salm “our” men? They certainly were in the midst of the fireworks. One illuminating episode began when Knight received a tip about a warehouse full of hashish. After arranging to rent space at the warehouse, Knight visited friends in the Royal Navy on Cyprus, from whom he acquired an incendiary bomb and a timer, which he sealed inside a bail of hash then stored in the warehouse – which exploded and burned the warehouse to the ground.

By 1958, FBN agents were setting off bombs and making loud noises in numerous places of strategic interest to the CIA.

The political dynamics of domestic drug law enforcement varied from city to city, but were governed by similar forces in each instance. In New York, for example, the Mafia had a monolithic organization presiding over an immense importation and distribution system that straddled the nation. In battling this behemoth, FBN agents worked closely with NYPD narcotic detectives – not just because they could kick in doors on suspicion, but also because they had a handful of fixers who maintained the balance of power between the underworld and the Establishment.

But Los Angeles, like Miami, was an open city. The Mafia had a controlling interest in several rackets, and supplied a portion of the narcotics that reached LA, but Blacks and Hispanics were independently involved in the action too. There had been only one Mafia turf war, in the late 1940s, when Tom Dragna and Johnny Roselli, with the help of LA police chief William “Whiskey Bill” Parker, forcefully settled their differences with Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen.
¹
After Siegel was killed and Cohen went to prison, Roselli shifted his attention to more profitable Mafia ventures in Las Vegas. According to Howard Chappell, Dragna's successor in 1957, Frank DeSimone, was a weak boss, and the Mafia actually had a stronger presence in San Diego.

There were demographic differences as well. While pure China white heroin arrived in the San Francisco Bay area from the Far East, Los Angeles was infused with marijuana and opium from Mexico. As the FBN agent
in charge in LA, Howard Chappell's jurisdiction covered the California and Arizona borders, and extended into Mexico's northwestern states. But unlike the NYPD, the LAPD narcotic squad refused to help the FBN in its international effort, and was content to focus its efforts on the city's disenfranchised Hispanic and Black communities.

Chief Parker's refusal to share informants or work with the FBN led to a bitter feud. “He turned the cops loose,” Chappell says, noting that Parker allowed his narcotic detectives to stretch search and seizure laws to the limit. “They'd find five or six joints and tear the place apart. But worse than that, they were intentionally screwing up our federal cases.”

The District Attorney ignored the problem, and as a result the California courts dismissed several important cases. Out of frustration, a few disgruntled LAPD narcotic detectives brought their cases to Chappell, and Chappell, working with the Sheriff's department, took the cases to federal court. Tensions intensified and at a press conference, Chief Parker charged that Chappell's agents were illegally using prostitute addicts as informants. Chappell, through reporter George Putnam, in turn leaked information about several LAPD narcotic detectives who were taking money from drug dealers. He had photos of the detectives in $500 suits, placing extravagant bets at the racetrack, and he secretly taped incriminating conversations the detectives had with the District Attorney.

Soon thereafter several FBN informants were murdered with a type of revolver used by the LAPD – at which point Chappell grabbed a Tommy gun and made a personal call on Whiskey Bill. Fearing for his life, Parker complained to the governor and demanded that the Treasury Department replace Chappell. Never one to avoid trouble or publicity, District Supervisor George White called a press conference in San Francisco and declared that Whiskey Bill was covering up for the bad cops on his narcotic squad and interfering in federal cases in Mexico.

After several failed attempts at mediation by state and federal officials, the impasse ended when Harry Anslinger refused to transfer Chappell, and LA Mayor William Paulson forced Chief Parker to accept a shaky truce. It was a victory for Chappell, but there was a downside too, for by demonstrating his bureaucratic courage and leadership abilities, Chappell had frightened Anslinger's heir apparent, Henry Giordano, at FBN headquarters. In addition, Los Angeles had begun to rival New York as the nation's premier city – all of which meant that Chappell had become a contender in the race to succeed Anslinger and thus a threat to Giordano and his new ally, George Gaffney, who in January 1958 became New York's district supervisor, the most important job in the Bureau.

Propelled by his successes as an investigator and his membership in the Jim Ryan clique in New York, Gaffney in 1956 was named district supervisor in Atlanta, with jurisdiction over Miami and the Caribbean. Although he was the youngest district supervisor in the FBN, Gaffney did well in Atlanta, and won the admiration of Mal Harney. A native of Minnesota, Harney, who had no children of his own, took a fatherly interest in Michigan-born Gaffney, with whom he felt a certain affinity. They shared the same conservative Republican politics, and Harney admired Gaffney's toughness; he once remarked to him that “you must have some iron ore in your veins.” So when Jim Ryan retired from the FBN in 1957, due to serious injuries suffered in a car accident, Harney recommended Gaffney as Ryan's replacement as district supervisor in New York. Also fond of Gaffney – he referred to him as “Gaffioni” in private correspondences – Anslinger agreed, and in doing so, ushered in the FBN's most successful and controversial era.

Howard Chappell describes high-strung, diminutive George Gaffney as “energetic, opportunistic, and not overly modest,” all of which is true. But giving the devil his due, Gaffney had reason to be proud. He was street-smart, a strong manager, and able to make complex conspiracy cases. As to being energetic, that's a vast understatement: driven is a much better word. During his four and a half years as district supervisor in New York, Gaffney set the highest standard of performance for his agents, and under his leadership the FBN would make landmark cases on four of the Mafia's five fallen families, as well as two spectacular French connection cases.

One factor in Gaffney's success was his policy of maintaining good relations with the NYPD's narcotic squad, whose detectives (unlike FBN agents) could legally install wiretaps without court approval and kick in doors on mere suspicion of wrongdoing. He also credits the Daniel Act as contributing to his success. “Until mandatory sentencing came along,” he explains, “it was impossible to get an informant inside the upper echelons of the Mafia. But once the judges started handing out forty-year prison sentences, we got the leverage we needed. No one wanted to do that much time.”

Three other timely developments helped Gaffney and the New York office wage the FBN's most successful campaign ever. The first was Albert Anastasia's suicidal attempt to muscle in on the Cuban rackets. As boss of the old Mangano family, Anastasia controlled various labor union, gambling, and narcotics rackets in Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Las Vegas. He was powerful, yes, but he was a vicious megalomaniac too, and he not only took on Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante in Cuba, he mistakenly
challenged the Commission itself, which was dominated by Vito Genovese and the closely allied Bonanno, Profaci, and Magaddino families.

Anastasia's downfall began in April 1957, when Italian drug smuggler and part-time FBN informant Giovanni Mauceri told Charlie Siragusa that a heroin shipment was being delivered to Frank Scalici in New York aboard a merchant ship from Marseilles. Something of a mystery – his fingerprints and criminal records have been removed from the files of all US government agencies – Scalici managed a Mafia narcotics syndicate based in the Bronx that dealt directly with French and Corsican wholesalers in Europe and Montreal.
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Unfortunately for Scalici, Siragusa was able to seize his heroin, as well as the Mafia money he'd fronted to Mauceri, which left Scalici holding a big empty bag. Anastasia, having kicked in some of the money for the purchase, concluded that Scalici had betrayed him, and on 17 June 1957, at Anastasia's behest, Vincent Squillante shot and killed Scalici in front of a grocery store in the Bronx, as portrayed in the movie
The Godfather
.

Anastasia, however, was not the only person who had invested in Scalici. Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, and Meyer Lansky had fronted money too, and murdering Scalici without their consent was a serious mistake – as was Anastasia's unauthorized sale of Mafia memberships, which he was doing to increase the size of his private army. But his fatal mistake was trying to muscle in on Lansky and Trafficante's lucrative Cuban connection. Lansky and Trafficante brought their problem to Vito Genovese, their closest associate in New York, and Genovese in turn persuaded Anastasia's
caporegime
, Carlo Gambino, to betray his boss. A few days later, on 25 October 1957, Trafficante arrived in New York with Genovese's
consigliere
, Mike Miranda, and they made Anastasia an offer he should not have refused. An hour later, Anastasia was shot and killed, while getting a shave, by Profaci family gunmen Larry and Joey Gallo.

Anastasia's assassination sent shockwaves through the underworld and prompted the Mafia Commission to schedule a Palermo-style summit that November in Apalachin, New York, at the estate of Joseph Barbara, a wealthy member of the Stefano Magaddino family in Buffalo. Insiders say this college of blood-soaked cardinals was being convened to anoint Vito Genovese as the Mafia's new boss of bosses and Carlo Gambino as the new boss of the Mangano family. Two other items reportedly on the agenda were 1) how much support to give to Fidel Castro in Cuba, and 2) whether or not to target certain FBN agents for death. But all that is speculation and the summit, as we shall see, never occurred.

The second timely development in Gaffney's ascent was Robert Kennedy's appointment as chief counsel for the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations. While serving in that position, Bobby and his staff assistant, retired FBI financial investigator Carmine Bellino, launched an investigation of Teamster boss Dave Beck. In 1957 the investigation was transferred to Senator John McClellan's Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, and Bobby's nascent war on crime gathered steam. He became the McClellan Committee's chief counsel and, with Bellino's help, acquired the evidence that enabled a court to convict Beck of embezzling $320,000 in Teamster funds. Tenacious Bobby Kennedy then took aim at Beck's swaggering successor, James R. Hoffa.
³

In his quest to learn as much as possible about Hoffa and the Teamster's link to organized crime, Bobby Kennedy came to rely on the FBN – and in particular, George Gaffney. Through the Irish Catholic network, Bobby was persuaded to ask Anslinger for copies of the Mafia Book and FBN case files, and after reading them and talking to Gaffney, Bobby came to realize that the FBN knew more about the Mafia than the FBI. The FBN had solid evidence that Hoffa was beholden to the mob, and that certain Teamster “paper locals” (with no membership), like the one run by Johnny Dioguardia in New York, were providing logistical support to the Mafia's national drug-distribution syndicate.
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With Bobby Kennedy as his new rabbi, Gaffney would acquire powerful new contacts at the highest levels of government and, in 1962, would be promoted, as a direct result, to the number three enforcement assistant position at FBN headquarters.