Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [41]
At about the same time, Robert Peloquin hopped to a new job. His supervisor had a contact at the Department of Justice, and Peloquin went to work at its internal security unit. From there, he jumped, again, to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering section. This was the early 1960s, and John F. Kennedy had been elected president, naming his brother Robert as the attorney general of the United States. Bobby Kennedy was fascinated by the organized crime section, and Peloquin became Bobby Kennedy’s boy. Peloquin would spend most of the next decade tracking down high-level Mafia figures and putting them behind bars.
At one point, while Peloquin was in New Orleans on an investigation, Kennedy called to see how it was going. The phone rang, and a voice with a New England accent asked, “Is this Bob Peloquin? This is Bobby Kennedy and I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
Not believing that the attorney general would call such a low-level investigator, Peloquin suspected that one of the other investigators was having fun with him.
“Sprizzo, cut that shit out,” he said.
“No, this really is Bobby Kennedy,” came the reply. Peloquin leaned back in his chair and saw that the man he suspected of playing the joke, John Sprizzo, was in the next room—and he wasn’t on the telephone. Peloquin was horrified. But Kennedy didn’t mind. The Kennedys invited the young criminal division investigators, FBI agents, and others involved in the fight against the Mafia to Hickory Hill, the family estate in suburban Virginia. On one evening, a nervous Peloquin sternly warned his wife not to bring up certain topics in front of the boss. “Don’t embarrass me,” he told her. As he and Peggy settled their buffet dinners on their knees, though, Peloquin himself mishandled a piece of roast beef, sending it skittering onto the floor. That attracted the Kennedys’ enormous dog—a Newfoundland called Brumus—who came lumbering across the room, scattering tables and chairs. All eyes turned to the hapless Peloquin. Peggy leaned over and whispered, “Don’t embarrass me.” Her husband has never forgotten the lesson.
At the Justice Department, Peloquin learned another lesson he’d never forget: how to combine forces. While he was there, the department came up with an innovative structure for going after the mob. Using strike forces, the government pooled senior-level people from every agency that had a hand in the fight: the IRS, the bureau of narcotics, the FBI, the border patrol, and more. Each strike force would take a particular organized crime family and devote all its disparate resources toward taking that family down.
Peloquin headed up the first organized crime task force, and set his team on the Magaddino crime family in Buffalo, New York. Working with the Canadian Mounted Police, they broke up this long-reigning Mafia family, sending nine of its members to prison. Soon, the Department of Justice deployed similar organized crime strike forces across the country.
At the time, the Mafia was making inroads into all types of businesses. With a foothold in Las Vegas gambling, mob bosses were now poised to go big-time: into the National Football League (NFL). For owners of professional teams, the prospect of the Mafia influencing players to throw games or referees to make bad calls was a nightmare. Millions of dollars in future profits depended on the fans’ belief that the game was honest. The football commissioner, Pete Rozelle, knew that the league had to develop some defense. He brought in Peloquin’s boss, and Peloquin tagged along, jumping to a cushy job as associate counsel at the NFL.
The new team put together an innovative solution to the problem. Fixing football games was illegal, and so was gambling on them. But in order to weed out illegal attempts to fix the games, Peloquin’s security team cultivated sources in the illegal gambling world.
“The last guy in the world who wants to see a fixed football game is a bookie, because