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Behind the Gemstone Files |
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The
Skeleton Key AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
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UPDATED
January 01, 2003 02:17 PM
"We seek a free flow of information...We are not
afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a
nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and
falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its
people"
Roberts statements are, of course, subjective. Nearly half of the American electorate was not happy; they had voted for Nixon. Certainly Nixon wasn't happy. Rose Kennedy would have obviously been happy, as would any mother whose son has just been elected president. The matriarch of the Kennedy clan, she was not allowed to know her husband's business, but probably had her suspicions that he was involved in things she would not have approved of - and that's why she was never told. Onassis' record shows him to have been a very non-political person in terms of supporting one candidate over another. Years earlier, during World War II, he had enraged a Greek friend in Hollywood because he wouldn't contribute to a relief fund; Onassis thought it was too political - and political involvement of that sort just brought on unwanted trouble. The Mafia had indeed pushed hard for Kennedy's election, but had also hedged its bets with Nixon. They would have won either way, but the intensity of promises Joseph Kennedy made to Sam Giancana and others led them to believe he was more in control of his sons than Nixon was of himself. Otherwise, it was business as usual. For example, take a look at just one Mafia family - that of Carlos Marcello, head of the "first family" established in New Orleans in the 1880s. [37] At the time of Kennedy's election, and even in later years, he was among the most powerful mob bosses in America. [38] The Saturday Evening Post reported in 1964 that the Mob's annual income in New Orleans alone "runs to $1,114,000,000, making it by far the state's largest industry." [39, 40] That's over $1 billion a year! Seven years after Kennedy's assassination, in 1970, Aaron Kohn, director of the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, noted that Marcello's organization "required, and had, corrupt collusion of public officials of every critical level, including police, sheriffs, justices of peace, prosecutors, mayors, governors, judges, councilmen, licensing authorities, state legislators and at least one member of Congress." [41] Certainly it didn't happen overnight; their political power went back into the 1950s, 1940s, even the 1930s and 20s. Remember - the American Mafia was first formed in New Orleans in 1880, and so it had 80 years prior to the 1960 election to establish its political power, starting with the family of Carlos Marcello. There were a lot of things that happened in 1960, though, before Kennedy was elected. While they didn't appear in Roberts' files, they do appear here, for the first time as part of the Gemstone story. Beginning in 1960, it gets harder to tell just what the truth really is. Oddly, you would think no one would want to take the blame (or praise, depending on your point of view) for the upcoming assassination of John Kennedy. And yet, it seems people would later start climbing out of the woodwork to tell of their roles in that historic event. There would be upward of a hundred "conspiracy theories" and almost all of them would be mutually exclusive. The list of Dallas gunmen would fill a page - even actor Woody Harrelson's dad claimed to have been one of the Kennedy hitmen. Roberts' claim that Aristotle Onassis was the Enstavro Blofeld behind it all (a character in the movie Diamonds Are Forever, modeled on the Roberts theory) begins to fall apart. In some instances, he seems to be a composite of other people such as Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante; in others, it seems he is a diversion perhaps to draw attention away from someone else - or perhaps his role becomes just a figment of Roberts' imagination as his alcohol and brain tumor began to get the better of him. If there was a silent "power behind it all", it would seem to be Trafficante, the one man no one dared to cross - not even Meyer Lansky. The truth is, though, that the events seem to have been controlled by forces far higher than any one individual, with strings being pulled and played like a musical instrument by thirteen family dynasties that go back for centuries or more, and whose bloodlines are said to come from Lucifer himself. Roberts leaves out important events, and is completely off base on the dates of others- errors that jeopardize his whole timeline of events and thus the motives behind them. In some accounts published since, such as those of Sam Giancana as written by his brother Chuck and his son, Sam, Jr., it seems the biographers may be trying to puff up the importance of those they write about. According to others, like Trafficante and Marcello, Giancana's role and importance was much less than Giancana claimed. Therefore, the events of the next decade cannot be "documented" and "verified" with any certainty. Too many players have muddied up the pond with their own claims of involvement (grandiosity?). There is, though, a thread of truth through all these claims that can be discerned, even casting aside the various discrepancies and competing claims of "glory." Kennedy and the Mob Reach a Deal January 1960 - Sam Giancana tells Frank Sinatra to "pull out all the stops" to win Hollywood's support for Kennedy after the many meetings and deals between Joe Kennedy and the Mafia in 1959. "I told Frank to use every single trick in the book to get Hollywood behind Jack Kennedy," Giancana reportedly told his brother, Chuck. "I don't just want the guy nominated for President, I want him to be President." (1:392)
That month, as JFK was starting out on the campaign trail, Sinatra invited him to the Sands in Las Vegas for a show featuring Sinatra and his "Rat Pack" buddies (right) and the cast of Ocean's Eleven. Kennedy, surrounded by throngs of gorgeous young starlets to feed his rapacious sexual appetite, ate it up. Unknown to Sinatra and to the starlets Kennedy was bedding down, Giancana had the movie cameras and tape recorders running, catching every moment for possible blackmail in case the Kennedys backed out of their deal. "Kennedy loves to party," Giancana said with glee, "loves the celebrity shit. Frank's [Sinatra] even going to produce a campaign song for the guy using the song 'High Hopes.' You just watch, it's all gonna go to Kennedy's head and then he'll really fuck up ... You know what I always say, 'Play in shit long enough and somethin's bound to stick.'" "He Was There to Be Serviced" - Kennedy Mistress
March 1960 - According to Campbell, her affair with Kennedy started March 7, a month after their introduction. Kennedy's "attitude was that he was there to be serviced," she said. After the election, the White House phone logs would show 70 calls between them - a record even Bill Clinton seemed unable to break. (4:348) Giancana started his own long-term affair with Judith Campbell as well, after getting Frank Sinatra to introduce her at Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel. He wined her, dined her, showered her with gifts and soon had her on his arm as he traipsed across the country from New York to Las Vegas. Kennedy even knew of the affair, but saw no harm in it. After all, he wasn't seeking a wife - just a quickie on demand. (1:395-96) "Jesus, what an ego!" Giancana said. "The guy thinks I'm just bein' a friend. He even suggested that maybe Judy could act as our go-between to set up meetings. What an idiot." In fact, that is exactly the role she came to play, carrying messages (and some say payoffs) from Giancana to Kennedy and back, even after he was elected. Giancana didn't really need a go-between, though. He had personally met with Kennedy and his father many times during the primaries, in Florida, New York, Chicago, and at the Cal-Neva in Lake Tahoe where the bugging equipment was set up. It was usually Joe Kennedy who asked for the meetings. (1:395-96) In the final days of the campaign, Jack suggested a threesome in Peter Lawford's Beverly Hilton Hotel suite. "He assured me the [other] girl was safe, that she would never talk about it to a single soul, that there was nothing wrong with a menage a trois," she said. In tears, she rejected him. Jack, she said, was a "tremendous risk taker. Jack felt he could do as he pleased - and he did as he pleased." (4:353) "No one ever knew John Kennedy, not all of him," said a long-time Kennedy friend, Charles Bartlett. "This was obviously the way Kennedy wanted it," wrote Richard Reeves. "All his relationships were bilateral. He was a compartmentalized man with much too hide, comfortable with secrets and lies. He needed them because that was part of the stimulation: things were rarely what they seemed." While Jack and the rest of the family projected a carefully-planned image of "vigor," he was in truth a sick man, and not just emotionally. Besides Addison's disease, which he successfully kept hidden from the public, he had persistent complications from a case of gonorrhea he contracted at Harvard. (4:353) Jackie's $1 Million Payoff Not to Divorce Kennedy Like Hillary Clinton many years later, Jackie knew about her husband's kinky sex demands as well as his philandering. It was why she grew to hate politics so much, though later - married to Aristotle Onassis - she loved to talk about the more esoteric aspects of politics. At one party hosted by columnist Roscoe Drummond, "She almost literally took a chair, turned it towards a corner, and sat there for the entire evening without bothering to talk to anybody," Drummond said. "Politics was sort of my enemy as far as seeing Jack was concerned," Jackie herself explained. "My theories for a successful marriage? I was afraid you'd ask that. I can't say I have any yet." (4:353-54) Igor Cassini (Jackie's fashion designer) claimed that during the campaign, Jackie threatened to divorce Jack. "She was ready to divorce Jack, and Joe offered her $1 million to stay until Jack entered the White House. Then she got a taste of being First Lady. But she knew of all these infidelities. He paid $1 million for her to stay with Jack until he was elected. ... He didn't tell me, but my brother and I learned about it." Her intentions were confirmed by another source, reporter Fred Sparks, who heard them arguing at La Caravelle. Asking for the check, Jackie stood up and said, "I'm going to walk out on you. Every Kennedy thinks only of the family! Has anybody ever thought about my happiness?" (4:353) It wasn't only Giancana's wiretaps and surveillance, using borrowed CIA equipment, that were wrapping Kennedy in an ever-tightening spider's web. J. Edgar Hoover also had his own wiretaps, made on John Roselli. Even after the election, the FBI wiretaps picked up Giancana talking with Roselli. Giancana said his "donation" had been "accepted," but he complained that Bobby, whom Jack had appointed attorney general by that time, was cracking down on organized crime. He had expected that (according to the wiretaps) "one of these days, the guy will do me a favor." But Roselli probably summed it up best when he replied, "If I ever got a speeding ticket, not one of these fuckers would know me." "You told that right, buddy," Giancana had to agree. (4:349) Buying West Virginia with Mob Money West Virginia was becoming an early and crucial test - and one Kennedy the Elder was afraid they might lose because of the coal miners' vote and the state's staunch anti-Catholicism, or more properly, staunch Protestant roots. "Hell, the whole union vote back east is a problem," Giancana pointed out. "I told Skinny [Skinny D'Amato] to tell Joe that I'll take care of West Virginia on one condition - that after Jack's President, Joe Adonis is allowed back in the country. The guys out east want Adonis back. Jack and his old man couldn't say yes fast enough ... didn't have any problem at all bringin' a deported gangster back into the country. So, we've got a deal for West Virginia." (1:396) Giancana reportedly told Kennedy, though, that after the primaries and the convention, the Teamsters would in no way publicly support him after the Kefauver and McClellan hearings ... "let alone the stunts Bobby pulled." Jimmy Hoffa, though, had agreed to skim several million dollars from the pension funds for Kennedy's campaign - on the promise Bobby would leave Hoffa and the Teamsters alone in the future. Most of the east was a cakewalk, but West Virginia was tough. "We're gonna have to buy every fuckin' vote in the state," Giancana groused as the May primary drew near. He sent D'Amato to West Virginia with suitcases full of money. Kennedy booster and House Speaker Tip O'Neill basically confirmed the story years later, telling of outsiders coming in with lots of cash to buy votes. He recalled that Eddie Ford, a successful Boston real estate man, "went out there [with] a pocket full of money. [He] would see the sheriff and he'd say to the sheriff, 'Sheriff, I'm from Chicago. I'm on my way south. I love this young Kennedy boy. He can help this nation, by God. He's got the feeling for it, you know. He'll do things for West Virginians. I'll tell you what. Here's $3,000.' Or 'Here's $5,000. You carry your village for him or your county for him and I'll give you a little reward when I'm on my way back.' And they passed money around like it was never seen." It was Kennedy the Elder, he said, who made all the arrangements. "Although Jack certainly knew that his father was spending a lot of money, he wasn't always aware of the details," O'Neill said in his memoirs. "But during the campaign, he was able to defuse the criticism about all his father's money by repeating one of his famous jokes." Jack would say, "I have just received the following telegram from my generous father: 'Dear Jack - Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll help you win this election, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.'" (4:349-50) Peter Maas remembered that as a writer for the Saturday Evening Post he interviewed a political operative in one dirt-poor town in West Virginia who told him his county was for Humphrey. "A few weeks later, I interviewed him again, and he said his county was for Jack. I asked what had changed, and he said with a smile, 'My workers each got $20 and I got $150. We're for Kennedy.'" (4:352) Laundering cash through the Boston Catholic Diocese He got the landslide, though, beating Hubert Humphrey by 29%. Joe Kennedy later bragged that he had spent very little of his own money - and he was right, it was Mob money. And part of it came from laundering money through the Catholic Church, with the help of Cardinal Cushing. One of the campaign couriers explained how it worked: If Boston area churches had collected $950,000 on a particular Sunday from the collection plates, for example, Joe would write a check for $1 million to the diocese, deduct it as a charitable contribution, and receive $950,000 in cash. The church got an extra $50,000, Joe took the entire $1 million off his taxes (illegally), and had $950,000 cash in his pockets - untraceable - to use for bribes. "The cash is untraceable," wrote Peter Maas (in a novel Father and Son, although he named Joe Kennedy by name). "Part of the money goes to the diocese. He gets a contribution from Joe Kennedy for more than what the cash is. It's brilliant. Nobody can trace the money." Lest you think I am drawing from fiction to try to make a fictitious case against Kennedy, Cardinal Cushing himself in 1966 admitted he had played a role in making payoffs to ministers. "I'll tell you who elected Jack Kennedy," he told Hubert Humphrey. "It was his father, Joe and me, right here in this room." But the plot Cushing outlined was even broader than the money laundering. He told Humphrey he and Joe decided which Protestant ministers would get "contributions" ranging from $100 to $500. Cushing smiled as he described the scam. "It's good for the church. It's good for the preacher, and it's good for the candidate." (4:352) Jun. 30, 1960 - In an interview with Time magazine, Joe Kennedy denied he had paid off anyone in West Virginia. He claimed, in the magazine's cover story that week, that he had actually had very little to do with the campaign at all and all he knew was what he "read in the newspapers." This is the same Time he had earlier paid off to the tune of $75,000 to get Jack's picture on the cover. Despite his disclaimers, Charles Spalding - a Kennedy family friend - recalled being at the Kennedy's Palm Beach estate when Rose urged Jack to stay over and spend the night. Jack said he didn't have time. Then he turned to Joe and said, "If you hadn't pushed me so hard, I wouldn't be leaving." So much for Kennedy the Elder playing no role in the campaign. (4:352) During the convention in Los Angeles, Joe stayed in the home of Marion Davies, mistress of William Randolph Hearst. He never set foot inside the convention, but masterminded everything from Davies' secluded 12-acre estate in Beverly Hills. Giancana had the house bugged before Kennedy moved in and had Sinatra in place as "social director" - bartender and matchmaker. "Joe was the mastermind of everything," said Joe Timilty. "I was carrying out the instructions of Joe. That's what I did in all the campaigns; I represented Joe." Joe's iron hand was so well-known that even Truman, who tried to block Jack's nomination before the convention in a nationally-televised speech, slipped up and referred to the candidate as Joe, not Jack. Everyone knew it was really Joe running for president; Jack was just the figurehead. Columnist Arthur Krock, an old family friend who had been well paid to prostitute his journalism abilities on Kennedy's behalf, suggested that if he lost the nomination, Jack could still be vice president. "For the Kennedys," Joe snapped, "it's the castle or the outhouse. Nothing in between." "How could a son of mine be a goddam
liberal? Jul. 13, 1960 - John F. Kennedy won the Democrat nomination for president. Again, it was Joe - who repeatedly claimed he had nothing or very little to do with his son's campaign - who made it clear he was pulling the strings. At breakfast the very next morning, in front of Jack, Rose, Frank Morrissey and Joe Timilty, he insisted Jack name Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Kennedy despised Johnson, but Joe was adamant. "You need Texas," he insisted. "Without Texas, you'll never make it. Lyndon can deliver Texas." "The ambassador [Joe] insisted that Jack take Johnson as vice president because otherwise he wouldn't make it," said Morrissey, who had Jack's power of attorney. "Of course he was right." (4:355) But it wasn't Lyndon who could deliver Texas. Lyndon (whose role was to kill anti-racketeering legislation) was owned by the Mob and paid to the tune of $50,000 a year, along with Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark and Congressman Albert Thomas, with the money coming through Marcello's bagman, Jack Halfen. (36:47-48) It was the Outfit who would deliver Texas, and who insisted on Johnson. It had been part of the pre-campaign deals, and the demand had come specifically from Carlos Marcello. (1:397-98) September 1960 - E. Howard Hunt's plan to assassinate Castro was approved by Allen W. Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA director, with Richard Bissell and Sheffield Edwards put in charge to enlist the resources of Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana and John Roselli. (36:60-61) Kennedy would inherit (and approve) the assassination plan without knowing for another year after his election who was putting together the hit team. He naively thought it was strictly a CIA-Cuban exile job. October 1960 - The Mob was going all out for Kennedy, but still hedging its bets. Giancana and Marcello each gave Nixon $1 million, but they had given Jack $2 million plus the nomination and all it cost. For Giancana, it was also a little more personal. "Because Kennedy is playing with me ... he's made some big promises. Nixon isn't in my pocket like Jack'll be. A lot of bosses own a piece of Nixon ... we share the influence. Jack will be all mine." He wasn't concerned about Bobby. "Bobby doesn't even know what Jack and I have been talkin' about. He's out of the picture. He'll be just another goddamned lawyer soon. They've promised me they'll take care of him. Jack is gonna be President ... not Bobby. Besides, if anything goes wrong, I've got a lot of shit on them." It would ultimately be Giancana's fatal weakness. By not sharing the power, his so-called victory would be very brief and very pyrrhic. His puppet would betray him in a Shakespearean drama the public would never see and Giancana, like those before him who had become too greedy for power, would be disgraced and finally assassinated by his own associates on the orders of Santos Trafficante. But that would be years in the future, and Giancana could not see the future; for the moment he was a happy and confident boss.
Most observers seemed to feel Spellman was impartial in his introductions, but some told Joe Kennedy (who wasn't there) they thought Spellman seemed a little more enthusiastic for Nixon. Personally, Spellman did prefer Nixon. The Catholic Church was trying to get federal money for its parochial schools and thought Nixon could pull it off better, since Kennedy would be under too much scrutiny and anti-Catholic pressure. Kennedy was on the phone to Spellman that night immediately after the dinner. "Lo and behold, we got home and the phone rang in the private den behind the office," recalled Ned Spellman. "It was Joe Kennedy. It was around 11:15 pm. He [the cardinal] had had a drink. I had a drink, and the phone rang. The ambassador told the cardinal in no uncertain terms that he had favored Nixon over his son, which was not true." "That is a truly evil man," the cardinal later told Monsignor Eugene Clark. Joe Kennedy immediately crossed Spellman's name off his guest lists and reneged on a pledge to donate $400,000 toward a new school. Spellman was denied an invitation to the inauguration, the first one he had missed in 20 years.(4:358-59) Nov. 8, 1960 - Frank Sinatra was posted at his LA office, where he had an open line to Giancana's political fixer and Democratic National Committeeman Jake Arvey. Right up to 11 pm, it looked good for Kennedy. But by midnight, things had changed and NBC anchor John Chancellor was predicting a Nixon win. Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and the western farm states had swung the balance over to Nixon. Illinois was faltering and Kennedy's lead there was fading fast. No election had been this close since 1916 - and wouldn't be again until 2000. In Chicago, Giancana's soldiers had trucked their voters from one ward to another, voting repeatedly. Anyone who defied their orders to vote for Kennedy paid the price - there were more than a few broken arms and legs that day. Even the dead voted from their cemetery plots. Chicago wards showed a respectable 60% margin for Kennedy; Giancana's wards had showed 80%. The same thing was happening in Texas. (1:402-03)
First family
photo Kennedy had carried Illinois by only 9,000 votes; Texas had provided only a 28,000-vote margin. Had either of them swung to Nixon, Kennedy would never have been elected. Republican vote-counters protested, claiming their count showed a Nixon win by 4,500. Daley did as he'd been told, and balked at a recount. Nixon was quietly told to let it go by his underworld backers, who promised help in the future if he listened - and threats in the present if he didn't. No longer would Joseph Kennedy have to hide in the background, pulling strings from the shadows. Now he would step to front and center and let the world know it was he who was in charge of the Kennedy family. The first step was to destroy the witnesses who could pose a threat later. A few days after the election, according to Sen. George Smathers, another playboy of the Senate and a good Kennedy friend, he was sitting at the end of the pool with Jack. At the other end, Joe sat reading the papers. "I don't know what to do with Bobby," Jack said. "He busted his tail for me." Smathers suggested assistant secretary of defense, but Jack replied his father wanted him to be attorney general. Smathers agreed to be the one to tell Joe that assistant secretary of defense would be more appropriate; Jack seemed afraid to tell him himself. "Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, Jack and I have just been talking about Bobby. He wants to do something with Bobby. I thought he could be assistant secretary of defense, and then in a year or so, he could move up." "Jack, come here!" Joe snapped with a moment's hesitation. It was time to remind the young whipper-snapper who was boss around here. "Jack walked over," Smathers said, "and Joe told him, 'I want to tell you, your brother Bobby busted his ass for you. He gave you his life blood. You know it, and I know it. By God, he deserves to be attorney general of the US, and by God, that's what he's going to be. Do you understand that?' Jack said, 'Yes, sir.' So Bobby became attorney general." (4:360-361) It was time to erase a big debt to organized crime and to erase all traces that Joe Kennedy had ever owed such a debt or had such an alliance. Murder, Inc. was about to meet Kennedy, Inc. December 1960 - The CIA hit against Castro was still on, according to information coming down from CIA Director Allen Dulles. "I've been meeting with the CIA guys since last August," Giancana told his brother one day at the Thunderbolt club. "We're gonna hit Castro, Trujillo from the Dominican Republic, and some nigger in the Congo." "The big hit is on Castro, anyway. At least, for the Outfit it will be. After Kennedy takes office and Castro gets hit ... everybody in the country will have to come through me." Reflecting on Castro, Giancana admitted the Cuban had pretty well pegged Americans. "Castro, the lousy bastard ... I gotta hand it to him ... he can't be bought. He says Americans are all crooks and pimps. He's a fuckin' double-crosser if there ever was one." "But he's pretty accurate in his view of Americans, don't you think?" "Yeah, Castro's no dummy. So the CIA finally woke up to the fact that Castro's closin' down American business. The government doesn't like that kind of shit. ... After all, the CIA's lost their cut of the take from the casinos, too. So they offered me $150,000 for the hit ... chicken feed. I told 'em I couldn't care less about the money. We'll take care of Castro. One way or another. ... I think it's my patriotic duty." (1: 407-08) One of the soldiers Giancana had loaned to the CIA was Ricardo Scalzitti aka Richard Cain. Cain was a math genius who was fluent in five languages and was a deadly accurate marksman trained by the Chicago Police Department. Dashing and handsome, Cain took to the CIA as if he'd been born to it. The CIA regarded him as "tailor-made for a top-notch agent." Officially, Cain's cover was a Miami detective agency that just happened to be CIA-controlled. Dec. 25, 1960 - Kennedy names his brother, Robert, as US Attorney General. He had been ordered to do so by his father, and had some misgivings. For one, he knew of the deals made with Giancana, Marcello, Trafficante and the others in organized crime, and he knew the appointment would be met with outrage in those circles. Second, he feared a national backlash among voters concerned that he would be using his presidency to create a family dynasty - which was Joe Kennedy's precise intention all along. President Kennedy turned the appointment into a joke, saying, "I opened the front door early Christmas morning, looked around to make sure there was no one up and down the street, and whispered, 'Bobby is Attorney General.'" The announcement hit Giancana "like a rabbit punch in the dark." His relaxed attitude was suddenly replaced with a seething anger. Hoffa, Marcello and Trafficante were immediately on the phone, asking "What the fuck is Jack Kennedy up to?" Not only were Giancana's politcal powerbroker dreams going up in smoke, now his very status with the Outfit was in jeopardy, much the same as had happened to Vito Genovese after his Apalachin blunder. The Commission looked to Giancana as the man responsible for keeping Kennedy in line - and he had obviously failed. Giancana in turn called Sinatra on the carpet. "Eatin' out of the palm of his hand, that's what Frank told me ... Jack's eatin' out of his hand. Bullshit, that's what that is," he said in one angry phone conversation from the desk in his Oak Park home. He slammed down the phone, then threw it across the room. Sinatra had let him down and could no longer be trusted. (1:409-10) Giancana was even considering having Sinatra hit at this point, but personally liked him and, in one of rare moods of compassion, decided against it. Instead, he decided to turn to John Roselli to keep an eye on things "out West". Lewis McWillie was sent to the Cal-Neva to oversee the surveillance of Kennedy's sex romps.
Without a doubt, the story of the invention of the laser is mired in intrigue, politics, controversy - with even an attempted kidnapping thrown in - and Howard Hughes' organization is right in the middle of it, as these comments on the book The Laser Odyssey point out: "The world's first laser was invented by Dr. Theodore Maiman on May 16, 1960. His breakthrough accomplishment changed the world, as we know it. For some 30 years, a patent war raged, as three inventors claimed the credit. Although Maiman built the world's first laser at Hughes Aircraft Co., he was not one of the three men who fought over its patents, which wasn't resolved until 1977. If Bruce Roberts was involved, as he claims (as inventor of the artificial ruby), no one involved claims to have ever heard of him, his name shows up nowhere in the payroll or other records, and neither Roberts nor his chief defender, Stephanie Caruana, have ever produced any evidence that Roberts even worked at Hughes Aircraft Co. The name LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. In 1917, Albert Einstein first theorized about the process which makes lasers possible called "Stimulated Emission." In 1954, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invented the maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), using ammonia gas and microwave radiation - the maser was invented before the (optical) laser, however, the technology is very close but not a visible light laser. In 1958, Townes and Arthur Schawlow theorized about a visible laser, an invention that would use infrared and/or visible spectrum light. Ted Maiman invented the ruby laser (light laser) considered to be the first successful optical laser. Many historians claim that Maiman invented the first optical laser, however, there is some controversy. Gordon Gould was the first person to use the word "laser". There is good reason to believe that Gordon Gould made the first light laser. Gould was a doctoral student at Columbia University under Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser. Gould was inspired to build his optical laser starting in 1958. He failed to file for a patent his invention until 1959. As a result, Gould's patent was refused and his technology was exploited by others. It took until 1977 for Gould to finally win his patent war and receive his first patent for the laser. NEXT: 1961 - BAY OF PIGS |
Sinatra
immediately began throwing together lavish parties and fundraisers
for Jack Kennedy. Sinatra's enthusiasm was so boundless, Sam
commented, "I think he's got it in his head he wants to be
ambassador to Italy."
Feb.
7, 1960 - Sinatra introduces his ex-girlfriend, Judith
Campbell, to Kennedy. She was "the spittin' image" of
Kennedy's wife and the candidate took to the young wanna-be starlet
like a duck to water. Giancana was thrilled. Not only would Giancana
also soon be screwing her, but Kennedy was so taken with her that
she soon became his "regular." That gave Giancana someone
he could manipulate over the long term, who had "inside"
access to Kennedy. The blackmail tapes and 8-mm film continued to
pile up in Giancana's safe deposit box.
Oct.
19, 1960 - When Francis Cardinal Spellman invited Nixon
and Kennedy to the 50th annual Alfred B. Smith Memorial Foundation
Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, Kennedy hesitated. Nixon did not.
Kennedy was afraid of being too publicly identified as a Catholic.
But the guests would include Henry Luce, Bernard Baruch, Nelson
Rockefeller, NYC Mayor Robert Wagner, Tammany Hall boss Carmine De
Sapio, and Senator Jacob Javits.
Nov.
9, 1960 - When Joe Kennedy woke up in Hyannis Port that morning,
he learned his son had been elected president by less than 1/10th of
one percent. "There are no accidents in politics," he
mused, echoing a statement made years earlier by Franklin D.
Roosevelt.