Word: mafia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Most politely applauded Colby when he finished. They listened patiently when he explained the necessity for gathering information about other countries. They did not offer dissent when he said that he tried to reform the CIA in 1973, before the sensational revelations about assassinations of foreign leaders, deals with Mafia hit-men, domestic spying...
Hughes plainly saw Maheu as his alter-ego. Maheu was the magic telephone booth into which Hughes could limp and then spring forth as the long-vanished SuperHughes. He could stride out into the world in the form of Maheu, deal with Presidents, governors, bankers, and Mafia chieftains, whisk himself where he wished in an executive jet, throw big parties without a thought of all the germs the guests harbored...
They were Hughes' so-called Mormon Mafia, the six gentlemen in waiting who were recruited by Summa Corp. Vizier Bill Gay, himself a Mormon, and attended the anchoritic Croesus day and night, in eight-hour shifts. They were assisted by four physicians on 24-hour call and five lesser functionaries, including Gordon Margulis and Mell Stewart. For their services the six senior aides were (and apparently still are) paid as much as $110,000 a year each. They equipped his various hideaways, decided which messages would reach him, censored his reading matter. In short, they controlled Howard Hughes...
JOHN HOLMES, 60, the primus inter pares of the Mormon Mafia, though the only non-Mormon among them (he is a Roman Catholic). Holmes worked in Southern California as a salesman for a tobacco company before he signed on as Hughes' personal driver in the early 1950s. He joined the inner circle in 1957, and is now one of Summa Corp.'s five directors. Tense, quiet and politically conservative, Holmes is said to have been a very heavy coffee drinker and a chain-smoker-but never in Hughes' presence...
LEVAR ("BEEBE") MYLER, 53, the only other member of the Mormon Mafia on Summa Corp.'s board of directors. A former Air Force mechanic and picture-frame maker, Myler signed on in 1950 as a chauffeur for Actress Jean Peters, Hughes' second wife. Overweight, short-tempered and ailing (gout, heart trouble), he was standoffish and kept mostly to himself...