“Richard Nixon’s first sit down came before he ran for Congress in 1946. Tricky Dick was later said to deal with the mob primarily through intermediaries like his bagman Bebe Rebozo or the attorney Murray Chotiner. But at this early stage, the military veteran and aspiring politician felt safe meeting face to face with Mickey Cohen, the notorious Jewish gangster based in Los Angeles. Despite Nixon's notorious anti-Semitism, Cohen was an important figure in California politics. Cohen, for his part, later said he got approval for the meeting, a lunch at Goodfellow's Fisherman's Grotto, from Cosa Nostra bosses in New York and Don Santos Trafficante in Florida…
Nixon was quite a big fan of the Cuban dictator Batista. He spent a lot of time down in Cuba when gambling was legal and run by the Mafia. They gave him a special room at the Hotel Nacional, which was owned by [gangster] Meyer Lansky. Nixon met with Lansky. The room was comped and Nixon ran up some big debts at Lansky’s gambling casino…
The comparison between Nixon and Trump is a common one these days, but mostly because both are facing special counsel investigations and have committed impeachable offenses. Do you think Trump's reported mob ties are fair game like Nixon's, though?
Yes, I definitely do, because anyone who’s been in the businesses that Trump’s been in must have had contact with the Mafia. I hope that one of these two congressional probes that’s taking place will look into possible Mafia ties.
The fact that it’s possible for murderers and purveyors of prostitution, illegal activities, drugs, and so on to get their hooks into a political figure—who’s not only a governor and senator, but someone who’s the actual president of the United States—that’s a horrible thing to happen. I hope people recognize that this was a major problem and took our country down a very dangerous path during those years when Nixon was in office—including his congressional senatorial, vice presidential, and presidential years. [It's amazing that] someone so high in the government could be a tool of organized crime.
What can we do in the future to uncover and prevent these type of abuses by our elected officials?
Being alert to all kinds of possible corruption. Congressional oversight is very important. I don’t think they had the proper oversight when Nixon was clearly running around with the Mafia and the Mafia was funding his campaigns over the years. Even the Senate Watergate Committee was not able to reveal all of Nixon’s ties with the Mafia, but at least it made a good start in preventing him from continuing crooked activities in a lot of other areas for which he was ultimately expelled from office.
Learn More about Don Fulsom's book, out this month from St. Martin's press, here.
Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.
MORE AT:
VICE
How the Mafia Fueled Richard Nixon's Political Career
04.28.16
By Seth Ferranti
“For years, García Luna was the U.S. government’s most trusted ally in the war on drugs. As public security secretary, he wielded incredible power, overseeing Mexico’s Federal Police, the prison network, and a vast intelligence-gathering infrastructure, while working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security in the fight against Mexican cartels…
“García Luna, who once stood at the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live the rest of his days having been revealed as a traitor to his country and to the honest members of law enforcement who risked their lives to dismantle drug cartels,” said Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The probing into García Luna’s alleged financial dealings does not end with Tuesday’s verdict, as the Mexican government is plowing ahead with civil charges that he stole money from Mexico.
García Luna left public office in 2012 following a change in presidency and moved to Miami where he started a security consulting company and lived a lavish lifestyle. Judge Brian Cogan barred any information about García Luna’s life post-2012 from being presented during the trial. (García Luna’s wife testified that their homes and assets in Mexico prior to the Miami move were purchased legitimately.)
In 2021, the Mexican government filed a civil lawsuit in Florida against García Luna, alleging he took over $700 million from government contracts; that case, experts hope, may reveal physical evidence of bribes that did not appear in the New York trial.”
MORE AT:
The Intercept
Trial of Mexico’s Former Top Cop Neglected U.S. Role in War on Drugs
Genaro García Luna was convicted on Tuesday of accepting millions in cartel bribes. But the information U.S. officials had went mostly unexplored.
February 21 2023, 8:50 p.m.
In 1976 Chester County DA Bill Lamb’s “sweep of 32 drug dealers” fell apart when 2 State Police detectives were convicted of drug sales & President Carter had a special investigation of the FBI in the Delaware Valley area.
Reading Eagle June 23, 1977
Mystery Still Prevails-Informant's Death Probed
Daniel Joseph was a witness in the prosecution of Lawrence Palmer and Gordon Roberts two Reading based agents with the PA Bureau of DrugControl. More importantly Daniel Joseph was a witness in the prosecution of many of the drug suspects arrested in the Drug raid of April 1976.
Richard Legree was one of the people arrested in April of1976.
“Daily Local News
Pusher called "danger to community',
Friday, September 10, 1976
By BRUCE MOWDAY (Of the Local News Staff)
Richard "Stretch" Legree of Coatesville, named as the number one drug pusher in Chester County by District AttorneyWilliam H. Lamb, was convicted last night of selling 145 bags of heroin to an undercover agent in January.”
Richard Legree had a new trial and was released from prison after serving a year and a few months. Later in life he became the Chairman ofArea 14 of the Chester County Republican Committee.
SEE:
Friday, October 14, 2011
How Richard Legree went from " Biggest drug pusher in Chester County"to CCRC Area 14 Chair
SEE:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010
"Fifty years after then-President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” the United States is still mired in the implications of this wrongheaded, racist policy decision.
Today, police make more than 1.5 million drug arrests each year, and about 550,000 of those are for cannabis offenses alone. Almost 500,000 people are incarcerated for nothing more than a drug law violation, and Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by drug enforcement and sentencing practices. Rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, but Black and Latinx people are far more likely than white people to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced, and saddled with a lifelong criminal record…
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Their plan set the country on the misguided, punitive, and counterproductive path it pursues today, as administrations since have carried it forward. Incarceration rates skyrocketed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, surging from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997, and Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump made their own damaging contributions to escalating the drug war.
But there are some wins worth mentioning. A growing number of states are decriminalizing cannabis—and, so far, 17 have legalized it—while earlier this year, New York passed the most progressive cannabis legalization legislation in the country. Notably, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs—a measure passed last November and effective since February. Known as Measure 110, it ends the enforcement of drug laws and shifts resources to drug treatment, housing, and harm reduction services, without raising taxes. And this week, Democratic lawmakers introduced the Drug Policy Reform Act, which would decriminalize all drugs, expunge existing records and allow for resentencing, and invest in health-centered measures to take on drug addiction.
The United States has been embroiled in a drug war that has yielded much misery, especially for Black and brown people who have been disproportionately targeted, and trillions in wasted tax dollars. It hasn’t made us safer, but it has devastated communities. We are finally beginning to acknowledge that drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal problem. To address it, we must invest in support services—such as peer support and recovery programs—for those who need or want them, and end this decades-long war."
MORE AT:
Vera
Fifty Years Ago Today, President Nixon Declared the War on Drugs
Jamila Hodge Former Project Director // Nazish Dholakia Senior Writer
Jun 17, 2021
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