Word: finnegan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There was a second Bill Boyle banquet in Kansas City. The President, the Vice President, four Cabinet members and most party bigwigs, including Jim Finnegan, were all there too. So was Kansas City Gangster Charlie Binaggio (who was riddled by bullets seven months later in a Kansas City Democratic clubhouse). Another expansive guest was American Lithofold's ubiquitous Robert J. Blauner. He paid for a whole table. It cost him, he told the Senate committee, "a thousand or twelve hundred dollars-I don't remember...
Blauner told of hiring James P. Finnegan, a Democratic work horse whose activities as Federal Collector of Internal Revenue in St. Louis are now being probed by a grand jury. Finnegan got $23,000 in commissions from Lithofold and $21,000 for expenses. Asked how he managed to run up $21,000 in expenses, Finnegan replied: "I'd say 'Let's have a little dinner,' and if I went over to the Shoreham, I can spend $800 faster than you think I could spend...
...Finnegan earn his money? Blauner testified that Finnegan was "a well-met fellow and I thought he could do us some good . . ." Finnegan's services included introducing Blauner to other Democratic politicians who then went on the Lithofold payroll. One of these was Cecil A. Green, onetime garbage collector, onetime saloonkeeper and a Missourian who had done some work for Democratic Chairman Bill Boyle. Green forthwith became Lithofold's Washington representative, at $10,000 a year...
Explained Finnegan: "I thought he knew the folks ... I would say to you that he did know Mr. Boyle, and he knew a lot of other folks around here because Missouri was starting to come into its own ... I will say to you that Green has been around here about eleven years and he knew a lot of folks, and so I ... recommended him. Anybody who has been in Washington for eleven years who doesn't know folks, why then, he should not be in Washington that long...
...remember who-mentioned the magic name of Bill Boyle, now chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The American Lithofold people went to Boyle's Washington office. Boyle called Harley Hise, then RFC chairman, and said, "Harley, I have some friends in the office here of Jim Finnegan's. I would like for you to arrange to see them this afternoon if possible in connection with a loan." Toole recorded in his diary that, three days after this phone call, the loan application reached a "strange, strenuous and . . . satisfactory solution": Lithofold received the first of three loans that were...