What We Can Learn from the Most Powerful American Jew of the 20th Century

Let's consider what Martin Scorsese called "the dark side of the American Dream" and the secrets it can reveal about who we are as a people.

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Jun 21, 2024

Welcome to Ghosts of the Desert Books, the imprint of God of the Desert Books where we offer novels in the mystery, horror, supernatural thriller, espionage, detective, and crime genres.

This is our debut post, which David had originally planned for our primary

God of the Desert Books

Substack, but he realized it would actually fit in better here given its dark, mysterious, crime-ridden themes. Then Sally discovered she had much to contribute to this story, too. So it became a joint effort debuting here! We hope you enjoy it, and also our upcoming books we’re working on now for this imprint.

OK, now let’s begin into our deep descent into American darkness. And at the outset we’ll just say — unlike previous satirical pieces about J.K. Rowling being a witch, David’s alleged membership as a high wizard in the Illuminati, and Donald John Trump together with Stormy Daniels being the reincarnations of the ancient Middle Eastern nature deities Moloch and Astarte — we’re not making anything up here.

At times, we may speculate a bit based on the incomplete historical record — and feel free to disagree — but we try to employ common sense. Perhaps other people have fabricated some of this stuff. It certainly looks like there’s some degree of KGB disinformation floating around in these shadowy narratives and questionable historical claims — one reliable historian with immense expertise on the history of Soviet spycraft, Christopher Andrew, certainly says so.

And this isn’t a court of law. Nobody is being put in jail based on our judgments. “Proven beyond a reasonable doubt” is not the standard we have to live by when determining what we believe about history.

So we hope you have fun with this little exercise in assembling some very weird pieces of history!

And we assure you - future pieces here at Ghosts of the Desert Books will not reach such epic lengths. Once we started going down these rabbit holes, it became hard to know when to stop …

Part I: The Brilliant Badass Delivering Beatdowns on the Boardwalk

We recently finished binge-watching all five seasons of HBO’s 2010-2014, Prohibition-era gangster drama “Boardwalk Empire,” and oh, did we enjoy it. In fact, when it was over, we decided to stay in the 1920s headspace a little longer. We began to dig into some of the story’s supporting characters - the real-life gangsters, bootleggers, and racketeers who surrounded Steve Buscemi’s Atlantic City crime boss Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, a character based on corrupt real-life politician Enoch Johnson (1883-1968).

The one who grabbed us the most, who seemed to steal every scene he was in, was Meyer Lansky, who was born Maier Suchowljansky on July 4, 1902 (the official date assigned by U.S. authorities) and lived until January 15, 1983, dying of lung cancer in Miami Beach, Florida after a decade of quiet retirement. The first thing we noticed when we began reading about Lansky? He lived a remarkably long life for a classic “Public Enemy"-era mafioso!

After all, those guys have a nasty habit of turning up shot to death while still in their prime. But Lansky avoided that, dying of natural causes - and not until he was in his 80s! We began to wonder just why - and how - that might have been.

Portrayed so brilliantly by Anatol Yusef, Meyer Lansky is clearly the smartest and most levelheaded character on the show. And that makes sense, because he looks to be the single smartest organized crime figure in history, and thus, as we’ll argue, the most powerful American Jew of the 20th century.

But before telling Lansky’s story and the totally bizarre places it leads us into the present day — as well as what it all tells us about America — a clarification of terms is necessary.

Part II: “The Barrel of a Gun”

Whose definition of “power” are we using here? We're going with the one made notorious by the most powerful Asian of the 20th century, mass murderer Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) — the man responsible for the most deaths in the 20th century — who infamously stated:

“Every Communist must grasp the truth; ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’"

True “power” has remained unchanged in its definition since proto-humans first pulled themselves up on two legs and ran out of the jungle.

“Power” is the ability to murder another human being and suffer no consequences as a result - indeed, to know in advance that there will be no consequences. It is the ability to do great evil and get away with it. It is the ability to transcend the bounds of all written laws, of all human decency and compassion, and to do whatever the hell you want to whomever you want.

It is to return to the Law of the Jungle, to the ethics of the lion, the great white shark, the frog snapping a fly with its tongue. As Lorne Malvo, a cool killer played by Billy-Bob Thornton in the first season of the “Fargo” TV show declared in the first season, “there are no saints in the animal kingdom. Only breakfast and dinner.”

The powerful man can violate all ten of the commandments as much as he wants while no one steps in to stop him.

This also makes “the most powerful” likewise “the most evil.” It informs the adage that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That's why Dave has regularly named Russia’s gangster boss Vladimir Putin the most evil man on the planet. But we’ll go back to him shortly.

For now, it’s time to get to the story of Meyer Lansky.

Part III: The Illegal Life of Meyer Lansky

As much as Italians have largely defined organized crime in the popular imagination for the last 100 years, the suggestion that a Jewish gangster could potentially become the most successful and indispensable of mob bosses might be surprising. But in fact, Jewish and Irish gangs operated highly efficient and effective organized-crime families, too, and they worked parallel to or integrated with the Italian-American Mafia as we know it today. One look at Lansky’s history shows us that it makes perfect sense that this seeming outsider could make himself the definitive inside man, completely untouchable both to fellow criminals and the federal government.

Meyer Lansky was known as “the mob’s accountant.” He was a mathematical genius, even a prodigy: he notably did not write down the financial records of his myriad criminal endeavors, but simply kept it all in his head. And not just for big jobs, either: any time one of his casinos ordered something as mundane as drinking glasses, Lansky kept only a mental record.

This turned out to be a great ability to have: Al Capone ended up imprisoned at Alcatraz because of his financial records, which FBI agents acquire at the end of “Boardwalk Empire.”

That never happened to Lansky. By 1970, he was believed to be worth $300 million - but no one could ever verify that, because Lansky had learned to hide his money, particularly through laundering and Swiss bank accounts. In fact, Lansky was so committed to this strategy that he didn’t just use Swiss banks: he actually bought one!

And by 1972, when the feds finally did work up a good case against Lansky - planning to ding him, as with Capone, on tax evasion charges - he was convicted, then summarily cleared of all charges on July 25, 1973. This was said to be on account of his ill health, though he would go on to live for another decade.

Israeli interviewer in 1971: “Mr. Lansky, what does the name ‘Jewish mafia’ mean to you?”
Lansky: “You know, I never heard that until I read it in the Israeli newspapers. Why, it's most ridiculous.”
Interviewer: “Why is it said that you are head of organized crime in the United States?”
Lansky: “Well, that's the same principle it started, the other gossip. That's most ridiculous. It's the news media again. It's the follow up of the first thought. It was never said about me before years. All this came about just in the last few years. I didn't know as I was growing older, it was going to get worse. [Big grin!]
Interviewer: Is there an organized crime?
Lansky: Is there? I have no knowledge of it.
Interviewer: Are you a religious Jew?
Lansky: No, I’m not a religious Jew. But I’m a Jew in my heart.

Thus, as Luciano remade the Mafia into one collective, Lansky built the financial infrastructure of the modern mafia, developing his twin dark arts of making money and hiding that ill-gotten wealth from the government. And because of these formidable financial skills and his ability to employ them in a string of wildly profitable businesses both legal and illegal, none of his partners wanted to kill him, because he always made them money.

Born in the Russian Empire, in Hrodna (what is now Belarus), Lansky arrived at age 9 in America with his family in 1911, living in the multi-ethnic slum that was New York City’s Lower East Side before embarking upon his criminal career as a kid. There he made at least two lifelong connections: the famous gangster Benjamin “Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) was a good friend from childhood with whom he'd partner in many criminal enterprises - at least, until he finally gave the go-ahead for Siegel's murder in 1947. Why doesn't anything beautiful ever last?

The other good friend Lansky made in the Lower East Side of his youth was eventual Mafia godfather Charles “Lucky” Luciano (1896-1962)

An oft-cited story is that Lansky met Luciano when the latter, five years older and already an active member of the infamous Five Points Gang, tried to shake him down. The Five Points did not focus on street theft, as most other gangs did, but on selling protection: most frequently to Jewish children against harassment from the Italian and Irish gangs nearby. Young Meyer Lansky resisted Luciano's extortion attempts for so many days in a row that Luciano found he respected him and befriended the younger boy. So began a friendship that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the men - and end the lives of dozens, even hundreds of others.

Siegel and Lansky engaged in organized gambling, burglary, and targeted murders, falling under the influence of Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928) — the Jewish gangster infamously known to have fixed the 1919 world series and played masterfully by Michael Stuhlbarg — and crime boss Giuseppe (Joe “The Boss") Masseria (1887-1931).

(We’ll have more about Rothstein in a future installment in this series into American crime both above and below.)

In Lansky’s partnership with Luciano, the two elevated themselves to become the most important figures in creating organized crime as it is known today, founding the National Crime Syndicate in 1929. Lansky, Luciano, and Siegel were further responsible for Masseria’s death.

Following the end of of prohibition, Lansky shifted his primary focus to building and managing casinos across the country.

In A History of the American People by Paul Johnson (1928-2023), on page 682, the conservative British historian writes that Lansky and Siegel “adapted bootlegging patterns to organize huge nation-wide gambling empires. Prohibition generated enormous funds which were then reinvested not only in gambling but in other forms of large-scale crime such as prostitution and drug-smuggling.”

Lansky, with his decades of expertise in criminal finance, helped lay the foundation in creating Las Vegas’s gambling industry - and also in Cuba before the rise of Fidel Castro (1926-2016). His friend Siegel would be heavily involved in the Las Vegas gambling business - until he got overconfident and too hard to keep in line. Out of respect, the mob let Lansky give his approval before they murdered him.

Following Cuba’s Communist conquest, Lansky shifted to the Bahamas, London, elsewhere in the Caribbean, and other countries beyond American reach. He also supervised heroin smuggling, more prostitution (more accurately called human trafficking and sexual slavery), corruption with organized labor and extortion rackets. He had his fingers in legitimate businesses like hotels, golf courses, and even a meatpacking plant.

In Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by veteran mafia journalist Nicholas Pileggi, on page 238 he recounts a discussion circa 1977-1978 between Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal (1929-2008) — the basis for Robert De Niro’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein, the brilliant and brutal casino manager in Scorsese’s “Casino.”

Rosenthal sat in a bar having drinks with Joey Cusumano, an associate of Anthony Spilotro, the Chicago mafia bosses’ representation in Las Vegas.

“I’m the biggest Jew in America,” Rosenthal said, referring to the top Jew in the mafia.

Cusumano shot back, “Oh yeah, Frank, I didn’t know Lansky was dead!”

In the 1930s and during World War II, Lansky took anti-Nazi actions in leading violent assaults against American Nazis and then working with the government in “Operation Underworld” to disrupt Nazi infiltration efforts at New York’s gangster-controlled shipping ports. The latter - which historians tend to believe didn’t really do anything significant in the war effort - came from a deal Lansky made to free his friend Luciano from prison.

“I am a Jew, and I feel for the Jews in Europe who are suffering. They are my brothers,” Lansky reportedly said of his anti-Nazi criminal efforts.

In his 1998 tome Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups, my favorite author Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) wrote on page 290 in the entry on the Mafia, that the legendary organized crime brotherhood “has had an unofficial relationship with the U.S. intelligence community since World War II, when convicted pimp Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano arranged to have the Sicilian Mafia aid the American invasion in return for a shortened prison sentence. Ever since then, the Mob and the Spooks have worked together on various projects, and it seems that each side sincerely believes it is using the other to its own advantage.”

Thus we can understand that in the 1940s, the federal government simply allowed Lansky to be a fuckin’ criminal and murderer when he should have spent the rest of his life imprisoned. And it would not be the last time the law would not only look the other way at Lansky, but even go so far as to collaborate with his associates.

In The Secret World: A History of Intelligence by Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew — one of the most respected authorities on espionage, particularly during the Cold War period — wrote on page 62 that in the 1960s as the CIA sought to assassinate Castro, the American spy agency reached out to Mafia bosses Johnny Rosselli (1905-1976) and Salvatore “Sam” Giancana (1908-1975) to arrange for someone to do the job. However, “neither was attracted to [Director of Plans Richard] Bissell’s Hollywood-inspired vision of gangland killing in which Castro would be mown down in a hail of bullets.”

Giancana instead suggested poison pills. The CIA prepared them and the mafia dispatched its killers but the poison never reached Castro and so Bissell moved on to other schemes to try and kill the Communist dictator.

Following the end of World War II, how was Lansky able to operate with seeming impunity for the rest of his life? How did he escape successful prosecution, only spending a brief few months in jail and having his sole court conviction overturned in 1973?

The same question could be asked more broadly about organized crime as a whole. Why did the FBI for so long refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the mafia?

Part IV: The Illegal Homosexuality of J. Edgar Hoover

The question more precisely stated: what might have influenced FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the man who built and ran the organization for 48 years, to ignore organized crime in order to instead focus on gay people, civil rights activists and black Marxists (incidentally still three of the primary targets of “Law and Order” types today)?

Why might Hoover himself have been so notoriously obsessed with acquiring sexual blackmail material on as many people as he could, including - most infamously - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who he then sought to provoke to commit suicide?

There is significant circumstantial evidence, and secondary evidence, that Lansky and the organizations he commanded blackmailed Hoover, obtaining photographs from as early as the 1930s allegedly showing the FBI director for 48 years performing fellatio on his #2 in command and lifelong lover, Clyde Tolson (1900-1975).

“It was an embarrassing situation that happened. Again they used Sam Giancana [who] filmed, J. Edgar Hoover and his lover. They’re buried together. Nobody knew J. Edgar Hoover was gay. They threw a party, a gay party in Chicago to set him up. They had all these pictures. So they had so much stuff.”

— Gianni Russo, who played Carlo Rizzi in “The Godfather”and had worked as a young associate of mob boss Frank Costello (1891-1973). Hyman Roth, portrayed by Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) in “The Godfather Part II,” is inspired by Lansky, as was Max Bercovicz, portrayed by James Woods, in “Once Upon a Time in America,” Sergio Leone’s epic final film.

Is there any significance to the fact that Lansky inspired central characters in two of the greatest films of all time? Or that he became such a key figure in Scorsese’s epic HBO show?

“He used to frequent some places in Manhattan that were mob-controlled. One of them was the Stork Club. And I was told upon good information that he was there with his boyfriend at the time and the Stork Club at the time was bugged and wired because the owner of the Stork Club, a lot of celebrities would come in. There he would wire and bug these people and actually extort them. ‘I have information on them to keep them coming to the club’ or whatever else he was doing. So he happened to catch Hoover and his boyfriend on tape in the bathroom doing some stuff that they shouldn't have and they held it over Hoover's head and that was one incident that caused Hoover to never admit that there was a mafia.”

— Michael Franzese, former mob boss in the Colombo crime family who was played by Joseph Bono in Scorsese’s Goodfellas

J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson shared a remarkable relationship - and here is a great place for us to emphatically state, as cliché as it is, there’s nothing at all wrong with being gay. (Go shead, make your “Seinfeld” joke if you must.) By all accounts, the men shared a great love.

But gay sex was still illegal at this time. Evidence of Hoover acting on his homosexuality would not merely tarnish his and the FBI’s reputations - it could land him in jail and would likely shut down the agency/

Together for decades, Hoover and Tolson spent weekends in New York and kept up a regular holiday schedule spending time in California and Florida. It’s in California that some of the more eye-popping evidence for the existence of blackmail originates. For, try as Hoover did to keep his private life private, plenty of people have come out of the woodwork to share the time when they learned of Hoover’s sexuality firsthand

Hoover and Tolson were known to enjoy horse-racing season at the Del Mar track in La Jolla, California. They watched the races from boxes known to be owned and used only by gay men. And they always stayed at the Del Charro Hotel (Bungalow A), where the couple apparently felt quite at home: novelist William Styron told Hoover biographer Anthony Summers that he once watched the FBI director painting Tolson's toenails there. And in his book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover” on page 244, Summers quotes a source named Charles Krebs who explained that, "on three occasions that I knew about, maybe four, boys were driven down to La Jolla at Hoover's request."

Indeed, it was Summers who breathed new life into these long-whispered rumors. The idea of his homosexuality particularly manifested with the publication of his book on Hoover in 1993. A review in The Los Angeles Times notes:

The new book quotes two former Office of Strategic Services officials who said they saw pictures of Hoover engaged in a sexual act with Tolson. One, John Weitz, said he could not recognize anyone in the photo he was shown at a dinner party in the 1950s but was told by his host, whom he would not identify, that it depicted Hoover and Tolson.

So from as early as the 1930s, the top law enforcement figure in the land was effectively owned by the very figures he was supposed to be putting behind bars.

And further, there are a number of accounts suggesting that Hoover’s homosexual activity went beyond his longtime adult lover. He also paid for the services of underage male prostitutes (again, let’s use the accurate language - sexual slaves).

Another source for Summers was Susan Rosenstiel (1919-2009), the fourth wife of mobster Lewis Solon Rosenstiel (1891-1976), however some historians — including Andrew — contest her credibility. She told the journalist that she witnessed Hoover dressed in drag and “involved in homosexual play at sex parties at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.”

She told Summers that “after about a half an hour, some boys came, like before. This time they’re dressed in leather. And Hoover has a Bible. He wanted one of the boys to read from the Bible, and he read, I forget which passage.”

She claimed that the boys then “engaged in sexual activity with Hoover.”

Another who attests to Hoover’s homosexuality who Summers cited in a December 21 2011 The Guardian article includes model Luisa Stuart who, in the 1930s, reported seeing Hoover and Tolson at the Stork Club and later holding hands in a limousine.

Official and Confidential also quotes Seymour Pollock (1919-2007), a “Lansky associate,” as saying “I used to meet [Hoover] at the racetrack every once in a while with lover boy Clyde, in the late forties and fifties. I was in the next box once. And when you see two guys holding hands, well come on! ... They were surreptitious, but there was no question about it.” Pollock was never convicted of any crimes.

Even Richard Nixon (1913-1994) appeared to know, declaring privately at the time of Hoover’s death, “Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!" while publicly calling him “a national symbol of courage, patriotism and granite-like honesty and integrity." Guess it takes one to know one!

Summers wrote that he concluded “after five years’ research” considering the evidence and consulting with specialists in psychology and psychiatry, that “Hoover's sexual torment was very pertinent to his use and abuse of power as America's top law-enforcement officer.”

However, to give the other side of the argument its due: on pages 235-236 of 1999’s The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Andrew and co-author Vasili Mitrokhin (1922-2004) do identify this claim of Hoover’s homosexuality as a subject that the KGB employed as a so-called “active measure” to attack Hoover. They largely just dismiss the various evidence, without really doing any substantive debunking.

We should also note that some skepticism of Summers himself is in order. This is not the only KGB disinformation-related book which the journalist has produced. His Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination, originally published as Conspiracy in 1980 and regarded as a leading JFK conspiracy theory book in the field, suggests mob and CIA involvement in the president’s killing, as well as multiple shooters.

But Andrew and Mitrokhin do have a legitimate point, as all those skeptical of these claims of homosexual blackmailing do: there is no conclusive proof. At least not yet, of course…

Part V: The Prosecution Rests

Think about this. The top criminal in the country, perhaps in the world, had photographic evidence of the top law enforcement officer in the world committing deeply humiliating, shocking crimes which could put him away in a prison wherein he would be a top target of criminals wanting to torture and rape him. He would never live to serve out his sentence, were he convicted. Perhaps, that would have been justice, for his own endless string of crimes committed supposedly in defense of this country.

What a stunning level of power that would be. It would be a license to murder, to steal, to traffic women as sex slaves, to manage the money of the most legendary criminal syndicate of all time.

And that’s what Lansky achieved. What other American Jew had more power, to operate totally above the law for his whole life, protected by Hoover and likely the CIA too?

And we won’t even begin—yet—to dig into the wormhole of the degree to which Hoover utilized sexual blackmail over both sex addict presidents JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973).

Hoover knew that one of JFK’s regular paramours was Giancana’s mistress Judith Exner (1934-1999). New York Times journalist Tim Weiner’s Pulitzer-prize-winning Enemies: A History of the FBI — a popular “establishment” history of the bureau — argues that circumstantial evidence suggests that the FBI director informed the president that he knew.

Meditate on this for a moment: if Lansky held sexual blackmail material over Hoover, and Hoover held blackmail material over JFK and LBJ, then did not Lansky thus hold such power over the president too?

We leave that to others to decide for now.

Try to think of another American Jew of comparable levels of power and the only answer you’re likely to come up with is Henry Kissinger (1923-2023).

However, just think about it as any male from 13 to 103 would:

Whose life would you rather have: Lansky’s or Kissinger’s?

The prosecution rests: most powerful American Jew of the 20th century.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Here’s another can of worms for you to pop open and start chewing.

Part VI: Who Else Had the Photos?

If Meyer Lansky had photographic evidence of Hoover engaged in criminal sexual acts, empowering him and his criminal buddies to live above the law for their whole godless lives, then who else had this golden ticket to own the American chocolate factory?

Various historical clues and circumstantial evidence point to some of the 20th century’s other major figures who lived above the law.

First, the CIA apparently had the incriminating photos of Hoover.

In the 1940s after World War II, Summers speculates that CIA founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan (1883-1956) and Hoover investigated each other, as both sought to gain control over America’s growing espionage-secret police apparatus. Donovan ultimately came out on top here, partially because of his almost certain acquisition of this ultimate blackmail material on Hoover.

On page 206 of Weiner’s Enemies: A History of the FBI, Hoover tells Tolson that there existed “a movement to remove me as Director.”

Weiner identifies Donovan as the rival trying to take down Hoover, explaining that the two had “hated one another heartily since 1924.” Hoover regarded Donovan as a liar and accused him of Communist sympathies. Meanwhile Donovan regarded Hoover as a “failure at foreign intelligence, and he spread rumors that Hoover was a secret homosexual.” Weiner dismisses the claims of Hoover’s homosexuality as “third-hand hearsay from highly unreliable sources” and provides counter-arguments that are not particularly convincing at all. As a journalist with a massive history of the FBI to write, he knew well that this was a rabbit hole that he did not want to stumble down into as it would likely become a book in and of itself.

From Donovan, this evidence would pass to the CIA’s mysterious counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton (1917-1987), who, according to Summers, showed photos to electronics expert Gordon Michael Duane Novel (1938-2012) of Hoover and Tolsen. Novel said, “What I saw was a picture of [Hoover] giving Clyde Tolson a blowjob. There was more than one shot, but the startling one was a close shot of Hoover's head. He was totally recognizable. You could not see the face of the man he was with, but Angleton said it was Tolson. I asked him if they were fakes, but he said they were real, that they'd been taken with a fish-eye lens. They looked authentic to me.”

According to Novel, Angleton showed him the pictures in 1967 and they were allegedly taken in 1946, at a time when the spymaster feuded with America’s top “lawman.”

However, it’s worth keeping in mind that Novel is not a reliable source at all, being both tied up in a range of conspiracy theory claims—including about the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)—and his own myriad criminal charges. Much more evidence of Angleton’s alleged possession of this blackmail material is necessary than just the claims of this one strange guy.

Thus, the CIA kept Hoover on a leash like a dog until the man’s death in 1972. Angleton would remain in his role with the CIA (which he had held since 1954) until being forced out in 1974. And while we have not yet found any evidence of this, ask yourself and use some common sense: if the CIA had evidence of Hoover sticking his penis where it legally could not go, might the KGB have possessed comparable “kompromat”? Surely they would not have needed to make up anything.

Second, another criminal genius also tied up with the mob — but nowhere near as brilliant and important as Lansky — kept such nuclear-level blackmail. Supposedly, in a 1964 episode as recounted by Bonanno crime family consigliere Salvatore Vincent "Bill" Bonanno (1932-2008) in his 1999 memoir Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story, Roy Cohn (1927-1986) revealed he had his own photos of Hoover.

Cohn allegedly claimed that Lewis Rosenstiel had taken most of the seven or eight photos from 1948-1949 during a party on a houseboat in the Florida Keys with one or two from as early as the 1930s. “Hoover knows about these, believe me, he’s always been aware of what would happen if they ever got out,” Cohn supposedly said to Bonanno.

However, Bonanno’s claims also warrant some skepticism, particularly since like Summers, in his book he too advances mob-centric JFK assassination conspiracies similar to ones identified as KGB disinformation.

Are you starting to see where we’re going with this yet?

Part VII: Passing on the American Gangster Tradition to the Next Generation of Evil Bastards

Cohn - who also most likely had sex with underage males or boys - knew these dark arts of finding and keeping blackmail material in order to control powerful people and essentially live above the law. He proceeded to climb the heights in the Republican party, becoming an adviser to both Nixon and even Ronald Reagan (1911-2004).

And who did Cohn then train in what he knew? Three men who are now all convicted felons, who aren’t as smart as him or Lansky: Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and current Presidential frontrunner and hot mess, Donald John Trump.

Now where does this story sound familiar? Can anyone think of any other mysterious, international criminals seemingly untouched by law enforcement for his whole life who was buddy-buddy with the new Teflon Don, possessing multiple phone numbers of him in his secret black book?

Who might the most powerful American Jew of the 21st century have been, so far?

I say “have been” because he was ultimately assassinated by one intelligence agency or another, or perhaps another organized crime boss—it can be hard to distinguish between the two much of the time - as should now be more than clear.

Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) — an international criminal of extreme wealth, sexual deviance, prostitution (again, really sexual slavery), and clearly this same sort of sexual blackmailing of the wealthy and powerful. And just as close with the GOP as Cohn became, Epstein very much was also with the Democrats - as was Trump for most of his life.

Last year David interviewed the late Edward Jay Epstein (1936-2024), who was no relation to the deceased. Edward Jay was arguably the greatest investigative journalist of the 20th century. We spoke about his fantastic memoir — his final book — Assume Nothing: Encounters with Assassins, Spies, Presidents, and Would-Be Masters of the Universe. He knew Jeffrey, and he told David about the international criminal’s activities, noting that the sex offender made his fortune through hiding money for wealthy people. Sounds a bit like how Lansky developed so much power, doesn’t it?

Here is Edward Jay Epstein’s full answer, for your enjoyment and illumination.

David asked, “You had a chapter on Jeffrey Epstein and you noted that he had some photos of himself with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. What do you think that's about? Do you think Epstein was significantly or meaningfully involved with those countries and the regions’ geopolitics in general? Or do you have any idea?”

Yes, I had many conversations with Jeffrey Epstein about it. And he at one point, I would say 2013, could have been a year or a year later on, for a while, was planning to move to Saudi Arabia.
He said he did -- that's where the money is. Jeffrey wasn't - he might have had his side interest in women or perversion – but his main interest was basically money. And he said he had planned to buy a house in Riyadh. And I don’t think he ever did it.
And he was interested in Morocco, because Morocco was one of a few countries in the world without an extradition treaty with the United States. And he was planning to buy a house there so he couldn’t be extradited. In fact, he was in the midst of that when he was arrested.
But getting back to when I went to his house, the walls were covered with pictures of MBS, and more important, MBZ. The picture of MBAs were arms around Jeffrey’s shoulders. Maybe these were photoshopped, they didn’t look photoshopped to me. And as a lot of people from the Middle East came over to Jeffrey’s house, I don't think he would have put fake pictures up because they would have noticed it. They also knew MBS.
Jeffrey thought, when I say thought, I say what he told me, Jeffrey told me that the important person was not MBS, but MBZ. He said MBZ had created MBS and ran his career through his own intelligence service, that he was the real power in the Gulf, Gulf Arabs. And Jeffrey said he was friends with him.
He was also friends with the head of the free port in the country of Djibouti… which he said the Arabs put their paintings and as well as homes and that's where huge transactions were conducted, because they can move some paintings worth $100 million. Some Andy Warhols from one locker to another locker and there was no evidence that such a transaction happened.
And Jeffrey thought that he was going to do a huge business in helping the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates hide their money so if there were any revolutions or changes, regime changes, coups, or revolutions, they would have money hidden abroad, and that was his specialty.
When I first met Jeffrey, way, way back in 1987, he talked about Khashoggi. Adnan Khashoggi - not the person who was assassinated - who was a huge arms dealer and a huge factor was the Saudi royal family. And I didn't think that was true by the way, but he's told me he was basically hiding money for him. I doubted that was true.
Because Jeffrey definitely also could lie as easy as tell the truth and often probably did lie. But yes, he saw when people came to his house, like Bill Gates and Microsoft, Leon Black of Apollo, Tom Hyatt, Bill Clinton, I mean, these where the people who were there, you ran into them waiting for Jeffrey. I mean, I ran into Leon Black there. There were always pictures, both MBZ and MBS, you know, covering the walls as well as pictures of Bill Clinton. That's all I can recall offhand, in terms of the pictures, but there weren’t one, two or three, there were more like 15 of MBS snorkeling. Yeah, snorkeling with spear guns or spear fishing. And they were in bathing suits. Remember, MBS was a relatively young man. And so this was 2013 or ‘14, I don’t know what year. It was 10 or 11 years ago. And so he was, you know, in his late 20s, or something like that. And so Jeffrey, you know, he understood, I think, Jeffrey, because Jeffrey had a big, palatial home.
When Jeffrey met the Sultan of Brunei, this was earlier, and this is a story told to me, not necessarily I witnessed. He met him with about 12 American financiers, he was not the principle person, he is one of the group that had gone over to try to get him to invest in various things, and everyone else was very respectful to the Sultan of Brunei and Jeffrey said, ‘how big is this palace? How big is your palace?’ And the sultan said ‘I don’t know.’ Then Jeffrey said, ‘I have the largest house in New York’ and gave the square footage of his house. The other people at the conference were shocked.
So Jeffrey saw himself as trying to bond with these people. Now, as far as geopolitics went, I think Jeffrey had a pretty clear idea that the oil money that was flowing into these countries, made them, I’m talking about the Gulf, made them incredibly powerful in the world of finance as sovereign funds of a billion dollars that can invest in anything and not even notice... And so he thought more in terms of, and he also thought in terms of being stable.
He believed that they were modernizing their country. And at least he thought that MBS was modernizing Saudi Arabia. And thus, it was safe for him to live there. In fact, if he had moved to Saudi Arabia, he probably would never have been arrested. They probably never would have extradited him.

And why did Epstein receive such a “sweetheart” plea deal sentence in 2007? Alexander Acosta, the prosecutor who made the deal, gave the game away when he said, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

So, like Meyer Lansky, Jeffrey Epstein was able to fly above the law for almost his entire life, collude with the federal government, stash away money through surreptitious means, have criminal sex with God-knows-how-many underage women, run a global sex slavery ring, fly around the world with celebrities and royalty in his “Lolita Express” jet, and use sexual blackmail to empower himself. When Epstein died he left behind an estimated $577 million.

But Lansky still wins. His alleged $300 million in 1970 is the equivalent of $2.44 billion today.

I wonder how much the new Teflon Don will end up being worth once he gobbles his last Big Mac. If E. Jean Carroll keeps it up, it may be very little. But as with Lansky, it will almost certainly end up being impossible to verify.

Part VIII: The Real American Dream

Now that we've laid out this tapestry of criminality, sexual darkness, and spycraft, does all this business with hush money payments to “adult actress” Stormy Daniels, Carroll’s lawsuits for sexual assault, the Trump family’s well-known mafia connections which go back generations, and his financial crimes of HIDING HIS TRUE WEALTH from both banks and the IRS — Cohn vowed to die owing the IRS millions, and Lansky, of course, must have paid in taxes less than 1% of the money he ever made — look at all different?

And now we await Donald John Trump’s sentencing scheduled for July 11. He’ll likely get a slap on the wrist: maybe some probation, but no real punishment for his myriad crimes, just as Luciano, Lansky, Hoover, Cohn, Stone, and Manafort largely got away with their crimes. Just as the FBI has perpetually gotten away with its crimes; just as police across America every day escape punishment for their crimes.

The FBI, the CIA, the police — these are just the federal government’s criminal gangs.

Now, seriously: if so many people could get so much damning material on Hoover, enough to essentially control him for nearly his entire life, then how many people could have similar damning, criminal material on Donald John Trump? How many videos does Putin possess of Trump having sex with minors? Would that really be such a wild speculation?

But unlike the days of Lansky and Hoover, in 2024, if such images did exist, and they emerged, would anyone really care?

Donald John Trump could perform partial-birth abortions with his bare hands on the White House lawn, live-streamed every day of his presidency, and the Evangelicals would still defend him on the grounds that he murdered fewer babies than Democrat policy.

Kompromat, blackmail, compromising the target, evidence of crimes — these are the prime weapons used by intelligence agencies, the police, and criminal gangs in order to enslave people to do their will, as they make war against one another.

We have to face it: this is America. This is our culture: one that celebrates “badass criminals,” living vicariously through them in “Boardwalk Empire” and seemingly endless movies and TV shows celebrating the Most Powerful Men of History. This is what our country is. This is who we are as a people. These are the kinds of stories and books that this imprint will be publishing.

And this is why Donald John Trump will be president again — which is really the equivalent of making Putin president for a second time.

This is what Americans want.

This is the Real American Dream.

It looks like - as much as we’re trying; as much as we’d like to believe otherwise - some Americans really are above the law.