His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [276]
“Approval is an eighty percent certainty,” predicted George C. Swarts, former vice-chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. He pointed out that Las Vegas was losing too many gamblers to the new casinos in Atlantic City and needed Frank to bolster business. “When Sinatra’s in town, the money’s in town,” he said.
Still, Mickey Rudin was not taking any chances. He wanted pictures of Frank and the Reagans in newspapers before the hearings and called the White House to ask why no photographs had been released of Sinatra with the President and First Lady. He was told that nothing could be released without the Reagans’ approval.
“We had a lot of pictures with Frank, but Nancy had been so excited to see him that the veins on her neck stood out and she didn’t want those photos released,” said a White House photographer. “Rudin was quite upset about it.”
The lawyer need not have worried. He had the assurance of Nevada’s governor, Robert List, that things would be handled smoothly. In a secret meeting a few days before the hearings, the governor assured Frank that he would not be “kicked around or mutilated.” When asked if it was not improper to meet secretly with a licensing applicant to give him that kind of assurance, the governor said he simply had wanted to reassure Frank that the hearings would not become “a three-ring circus.”
Former Gaming Commissioner Clair Haycock criticized the governor for the secret meeting, saying that Frank did not deserve a Nevada gaming license. “From what’s publicly known [about his ties to organized crime], I absolutely do not think he should be licensed,” he said. The former district attorney, George Franklin, agreed. “The very most we have going for us in the state is the image of gambling control,” he said. “If Sinatra, with his acknowledged background, can be approved for a license in Nevada, then even the image of control is destroyed. … It would sound the death knell for the gaming industry.”
The governor took an active interest in the Sinatra case. Frank had raised more than five million dollars for athletic scholarships at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and had been awarded an honorary doctorate in 1976 for “charitable endeavors.”
When asked about Frank’s friendship with the Chicago Mafia chief, Sam Giancana, chairman Richard Bunker had said, “I think it covers only one element of Mr. Sinatra’s story. It has to be considered, along with all the things that have transpired since then.”
But Bunker was apprehensive about the forthcoming publication of Aladena “Jimmy The Weasel” Fratianno’s story, The Last Mafioso, by Ovid Demaris. He telephoned the author several times, asking to see the manuscript before publication, fearful that the Mafia informer would disclose damning material about Frank.
“If we gave Mr. Sinatra a license, would we be embarrassed when your book comes out?” he asked Demaris. “Are we going to be hurt by that book?”
Considering the licenses regularly granted unsavory characters, Demaris laughed. “How can one more hurt?” he asked.
Fratianno refused to cooperate with the board after Richard Bunker insulted the organized crime informer. So did Judith Campbell Exner, former girlfriend of President Kennedy and Sam Giancana. Having been introduced to both men by Frank Sinatra, she could have told investigators about their triangular relationship, but she refused because she felt that the hearings were a sham.
“What difference would it make?” she said later. “It was a foregone conclusion that Frank was going to get that license no matter what anybody said. They didn’t want to believe how close he was to Sam.”
The governor and Chairman Bunker had been apprised of the information turned up by five full-time investigators and three part-time assistants, who spent nine months looking into the allegations of Frank’s links to organized crime. Not a