Sean Penn is not the first celebrity to “get close to” a gangster.
Singer Frank Sinatra set the standard as far back as the 1940s when he was often seen in the company of notorious Mafiosi such as Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Willie Moretti.
(It was Moretti who is rumored to have freed Sinatra from his financially-limiting contract with bandleader Tommy Dorsey in the early 1940s.
His alleged method of persuasion: Jamming a pistol down Dorsey’s throat and threatening to kill him. Dorsey eventually sold the contract to Sinatra for one dollar.
But the mobster whom Sinatra was most-often linked with–by gossip and FBI reports–was Sam “Mooney” Giancana.
Giancana started out as a “wheelman” and enforcer for the teenage “42 Gang,” then joined the Chicago mob in the late 1930s. By 1957 he had been appointed its boss.
Sam Giancana
Sinatra often partied with Giancana, both in nightclubs and at his own residence in Palm Springs, California.
In December, 1959, financier Joseph P. Kennedy summoned Sinatra to the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. His son, Senator John F. Kennedy, was planning to run for President in 1960. And the elder Kennedy wanted Sinatra’s help.
Sinatra and the Senator were by now well-acquainted. They shared a taste for gossip, nightclubs and beautiful women.
According to Sinatra’s daughter, Tina, the Kennedy patriarch said: “I think that you can help [the campaign] in [the] West Virginia [primary] and Illinois [in the general election] with our friends.
“You understand, Frank, I can’t go. They’re my friends, too, but I can’t approach them. But you can.”
Frank Sinatra
By “our friends,” Kennedy meant the Mafia. Joseph P. Kennedy had done business with the mob as a bootlegger during Prohibition.
Now he wanted the Mafia to pressure local union members into voting for JFK–and making contributions to the Kennedy Presidential campaign.
Sinatra went to his friend, Sam Giancana, and asked for the mob’s support. And Giancana promised to deliver it.
In return, Giancana–and other mobsters–expected to win an ally in the White House. He was later overheard on an FBI wiretap saying he had been promised by Sinatra that “if I even got a traffic ticket, none of those fuckers [the FBI] would know me.”
Since 1959, Giancana and other “Top Hoodlum” mobsters had been under increasingly heavy FBI surveillance. Giancana wanted it stopped.
And Sinatra had assured him that, under a Kennedy Presidency, it would stop.
On Election Night, 1960, John F. Kennedy carried Illinois–and won the White House by a mere 120,000 votes nationwide.
Then, to the horror of the Mafia, JFK installed his brother, Robert Francis Kennedy, as Attorney General. From 1957 to 1959, RFK had pursued gangsters as chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee.
Now he declared all-out war on organized crime. Convictions against organized crime figures rose 800% during his four years in office.
Robert F. Kennedy
Sinatra tried to deliver for Giancana. He sent Peter Lawford–his Rat Pack pal and brother-in-law to the President–to talk with Robert Kennedy about laying off on the Mafia don.
Kennedy told Lawford to mind his own business.
Giancana came under even greater pressure. FBI agents put a 24-hour “lockstep” surveillance on him, following him even into church and restrooms.
“I was on the road with this broad,” Giancana raged to his murderous associate, Johnny Formosa. “There must have been 20 guys [FBI agents]. They were next door, upstairs, downstairs, surrounded all the way around!
“Get in a car, somebody picks you up I lose that tail–boom!–I get picked up someplace else! Four or five cars, back and forth, back and forth.”
In another exchange with Formosa, Giancana’s anger at Sinatra boiled over:
“The last time I talked to [Sinatra] was at the hotel in Florida. And he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. If I can’t talk to the old man [Joseph P. Kennedy] I’m going to talk to the man [President Kennedy].’
“One minute he says he’s talked to Robert, and the next minute he says he hasn’t talked to him. So he never did talk to him.”
Formosa suggested a remedy: “Let’s show ’em. Let’s show those fuckin’ Hollywood fruitcakes that they can’t get away with it as if nothin’s happened.
“Let’s hit Sinatra. Or I could whack out a couple of those other guys, Lawford and that [Dean] Martin. And I could take the nigger [Sammy Davis, Jr.] and put his other eye out.”
Giancana refused to issue the contract. But he seriously considered doing so, as he confessed to a Chicago associate named Tommy DiBella:
“One night I’m fucking Phyllis [McGuire, a member of the famous McGuire sisters trio], playing Sinatra songs in the background, and the whole time I’m thinking to myself, ‘Christ, how can I silence that voice?’
“It’s the most beautiful voice in the world. Frank’s lucky he’s got it. It saved his life.”
Sinatra’s Rat Pack “pally,” Dean Martin, summed it up: “Only Frank could get away with the shit he’s got away with. Only Frank. Anybody else would’ve been dead.”
Sinatra survived the murderous anger of a mob boss. It remains to be seen if Sean Penn can do the same.








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HOW THE NEXT 9/11 WILL HAPPEN: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Social commentary on January 25, 2016 at 12:07 amFourteen years after 9/11, America is now selling its Islamic enemies access to the very weapons–jet-fueled airplanes–they need to wage jihad against its citizens.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
This is happening thanks to the greed of American airline corporations and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Essentially, it comes down to this: Wealthy, self-entitled Americans hate waiting in long airport security lines.
But wealthy Americans–unlike poor and middle-class ones–have plenty of money to spend.
So they’re willing to shell out a good portion of it to the airlines and TSA so they won’t have to stand in line with the unworthy peasants.
And the airlines and TSA are happy to scoop up all that money in return for giving these self-important Richie-Riches preferential treatment.
Even if this comes at the risk of the nation they claim to love.
Consider the following:
TSA. offers Pre-Check, a program from the Department of Homeland Security. It’s available to frequent fliers on many airlines.
According to the TSA’s website, here’s how it works:
Click here: TSA Pre?™ Application Program | Transportation Security Administration
The website further notes: “TSA is accepting applications at more than 300 locations nationwide, including 26 airports.”
And what does a Pre-Check passenger get in return for his $85 registration fee?
Here’s the difference between a scan by a magnetometer and one using advanced imaging technology:
If you’re trying to carry a metallic firearm aboard a plane, the magnetometer will likely pick it up. But if you’ve filled your computer with plastic explosive, the magnetometer won’t pick it up.
Advanced imaging technology
Or maybe you want to be a more successful shoe-bomber than Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001.
Being allowed to skip the requirement to remove your shoes will certainly take you a long way toward reaching your goal.
Of course, TSA isn’t alone in wanting to make money from deep-pockets airline passengers. The airlines have also been quick to get in on the act.
Most airlines make it possible for frequent-flier passengers to acquire elite status–for a price.
Passengers having any one of the following status memberships are eligible for this benefit:
Delta: Gold Medallion, Platinum Medallion and Diamond Medallion members
United: Premier Silver, Premier Gold, Premier Platinum, Premier 1K members
American: AAdvantage Gold, AAdvantage Platinum, and AAdvantage Executive Platinum members
USAirways: Silver Preferred, Gold Preferred, Platinum Preferred, and Chairman’s Preferred members
Southwest: A-List and A-List Preferred members
Alaska: MVP, MVP Gold, and MVP Gold 75 members
Jetblue: TrueBlue Mosaic members and those seated in Even More Space seats
Virgin America: Elevate Silver and Elevate Gold members
Click here: Travel Tuesday Top 10: Ways To Get Through Airport Security Faster in the US | The Points Guy
Yes, the greed of corporations and government agencies is partly responsible for this disgraceful–and highly dangerous–situation.
And so is the belief among the wealthy that they are the elect, and thus deserve special consideration.
But there is another factor at work here: The Calvinistic belief–shared by most Americans–that wealth is a sign of God’s favor, and thus proof that its holder is worthy of deference, if not awe.
In combination, they are steadily moving this nation closer to the day of the next 9/11 disaster.
How this will happen will be explained in Part Two of this series.
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