His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [273]
The appointment drew worldwide coverage, setting off rumors that Reagan might appoint Sinatra U.S. ambassador to Italy—which drew scathing comment from Italian newspapers. Typical was that in La Stampa, the respected Turin daily: “Sinatra is welcome at any time for a singing engagement or to make a movie. But not in any other capacity. … If the American government thinks of Italy as the land of mandolins and La Cosa Nostra, then Sinatra would be the appropriate choice.”
While Frank concentrated on the gala, Barbara Sinatra worked secretly with Jilly Rizzo to plan a party for her husband’s sixty-fifth birthday on December 12, 1980.
“Please keep this under your Stetson, but I’m tossing a surprise birthday party for my blue-eyed cowboy,” said the invitations she sent to more than one hundred people.
High on her list was William French Smith, named by Reagan to be attorney general. Months before, the Los Angeles lawyer had privately contacted the Nevada Gaming Control Board to assure them of Ronald Reagan’s high opinion of Frank, adding that he knew Frank only socially, not in a business relationship, so he did not feel he could be a character reference. “However,” said Smith, “Governor Reagan finds him to be an honorable person who is extremely charitable and loyal.”
The Smiths were delighted to receive their invitation from Mrs. Sinatra, and flew to Palm Springs for the party at which another guest was Sidney Korshak, the Los Angeles labor lawyer linked to organized crime.
So the man scheduled to become the nation’s highest law enforcement officer shared a social evening with the Mafia’s lawyer at a party honoring a man with underworld connections. Puzzled, a reporter from The Washington Post called Smith’s office, where a spokesman said that the attorney general-designate “had never met Korshak and wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him on the street. … If he talked to him [at the party], it was purely accidental.”
William Safire of The New York Times was so revolted by Smith’s “rehabilitation of the reputation of a man obviously proud to be close to notorious hoodlums” that he risked Sinatra’s wrath again in a column he wrote a few days later saying the attorney general-designate had made “the first deliberate affront to propriety of the Reagan administration.” Safire mentioned records in the Department of Justice that contain “file after file on Sinatra’s liaison with mobsters, along with a vivid account of the first time the singer tried to curry favor with a president-elect.”
Years before, Safire had charged that Sinatra’s introduction of Judith Campbell to Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana made “possible the first penetration of the White House by organized crime.” Now he wrote that Sinatra would be able to use William French Smith’s presence at his party to show that he is respected by the law. “Let birthday-party goer Smith review the FBI’s Sinatra file. Then let him tell the Senate to what extent he thinks it proper for a friend of mobsters to profit from being a chum of the chief executive and of the man who runs the Department of Justice.”
Smith called the column “scurrilous” and “a cheap shot,” saying through a spokesman that he was “totally unaware of any allegations about Frank Sinatra’s background.”
The Milwaukee Journal Found that reaction troubling. “Surely, a lawyer chosen to be attorney general should understand why his presence at the party was disturbing,” said the newspaper’s editorial.
During his confirmation hearings, the attorney general-designate surprised Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis.) by saying he was unaware of the FBI files mentioned in Satire’s column that detailed Frank Sinatra’s gangland associations. This made Smith sound either dumb or duplicitous.
“While I am aware of recent press reports setting forth such allegations,” Smith told Proxmire, “I have never had access to any FBI files concerning any citizen. I