Word: giancana
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Giancana understood such methods; he had employed them himself in the days when, known to his friends as "Mooney" or "Momo," he ran the Chicago underworld. His rise in the crime organization built by Al Capone began in his teens on Chicago's West Side, where he was born in 1908, the son of an immigrant grocer. A grade-school dropout, he joined the Chicago Mob as a wheelman, or getaway driver, then graduated to triggerman. Convicted of moonshining in 1939, he managed to turn his four-year sentence to his advantage by cultivating the friendship of Edward Jones...
Long Romance. During World War II, Giancana stayed out of the service by being honest. What do you do for a living? his draft board asked. "I steal," Giancana replied. The board promptly rejected him for Army duty, describing him as "a constitutional psychopath [with] an inadequate personality and strong anti-social trends...
...Giancana became boss of the Chicago Mafia family in 1955, and ruled a three-state empire of some 1,500 Mafiosi who ran gambling, narcotics, prostitution, loan sharking and other underworld ventures. At the height of his power, Giancana lived relatively modestly in Oak Park with his three daughters-his wife died in 1954-but vacationed on a lavish scale: Miami Beach and Europe in the winter, Paradise Valley near Las Vegas in the summer. While visiting Las Vegas' Desert Inn in 1960, the don noticed Singer Phyllis McGuire standing at a blackjack table, seemingly bewildered by the game...
...Giancana's decline began in 1959, when FBI agents planted a microphone somewhere amid the cans of tomato paste and olive oil in the back room of Giancana's Mob headquarters, the Armory Lounge in suburban Forest Park. For six years, agents listened to his most intimate business conversations, learning valuable information about the Mafia's organization and operations. In 1965 Giancana was jailed for refusing to answer the questions of a grand jury about Chicago's rackets. Released a year later, he fled to Mexico to escape further questioning and holed up in a walled...
Through Chicago Mafia Chieftain Sam Giancana, who was murdered last week in his suburban Chicago home, and his lieutenant, John Roselli, the CIA recruited a gangster reputed to be in Castro's entourage of bullyboys. In late September Bissell and Edwards informed Director Allen Dulles of the results of their tentative explorations. Bissell maintains that his discussion with Dulles was in the most general terms; he was merely encouraged to test the ground further...