North Miami Beach mayoral candidate Anthony DeFillipo is suing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union for a mailer that suggests the Italian-American commissioner is a Soprano-like mob boss who plays fast and loose with the law. The two-sided attack ad, riddled with spelling mistakes, describes other candidates in the City Commission race as “Tony ‘Soprano’ Defilippo’s crime family,” assigning vaguely offensive nicknames to each in turn.
“This is a hate crime. This is an ethnic slur. This is no different than if any other ethnicity was attacked,” said DeFillipo’s lawyer, Michael Pizzi. Pizzi filed the defamation suit in Miami-Dade court early Tuesday, seeking more than $2 million dollars in damages to his client’s reputation.
The union claims it had nothing to do with the mailer that went out to city residents last week. It says Hector Roos, a local political consultant, illegally used the union’s name on the ad and has moved forward with legal actions against the consultant. “We denounce these defamatory and offensive attacks against these candidates,” Jacqui Carmona, a union representative, told the Miami Herald last week.
DeFillipo’s father also held office in North Miami Beach in the past and both have been active in the local Italian-American community. DeFillipo believes the attack was aimed at both generations. Contrary to the numerous innuendos presented on the flyer, according to Pizzi, neither DeFillipo nor his father is a member of the Mafia nor has DeFillipo ever sold his vote or been involved in corruption.
“We are going to leave no stone unturned for the people responsible for this. They’ve attacked a culture. They’ve attacked an ethnicity. And they’ve attacked a family,” Pizzi said. Libel is a high bar when it comes to public officials, and Pizzi will have to prove the creators of the ad both printed something totally false and did it with malicious intent to do harm. Hyperbole is generally considered opinion, not libel.
Carmona said the union did not create or pay for the ad, which nonetheless listed the union’s PAC in its upper left corner as the financial backer. It is illegal to misrepresent the interests behind a campaign ad. Last week, prior to DeFillipo’s lawsuit, the union sent cease and desist letters to Roos, his company Thor Media, and G Print, the printer. The union also filed a police report, and a request for a legal injunction against what it said was the unauthorized and illegal use of its name on the flier. There is no mention of the union’s denial in DeFillipo’s lawsuit.
Pizzi said his client will continue to hold the union accountable until the courts determine it should be otherwise. “My view is their name is on it. I know they’ve endorsed his opponent in the election,” Pizzi said. “They’ve never apologized to him. They’ve never offered any well wishes to his family as a result of this horrible attack on his family.” (The union has denounced the contents of the ad in interviews with the Miami Herald and other media organizations.)
G Print’s owner, Gilbert Gutierrez, denied responsibility for the ad saying he only prints what is given to him. Roos called the union’s allegations “nuts.” Gutierrez told the Miami Herald Roos was the client behind the order, though he later denied it, telling the Herald that he had read Roos’ name on the news.
Thanks to Sarah Blaskey.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Close Ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin Charged with Interfering in U.S. Political System #Conspiracy
A criminal complaint was unsealed in Alexandria, Virginia, charging a Russian national for her alleged role in a Russian conspiracy to interfere in the U.S. political system, including the 2018 midterm election. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia, and FBI Director Christopher Wray made the announcement after the charges were unsealed.
“Today’s charges allege that Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova conspired with others who were part of a Russian influence campaign to interfere with U.S. democracy,” said Assistant Attorney General Demers. “Our nation is built upon a hard-fought and unwavering commitment to democracy. Americans disagree in good faith on all manner of issues, and we will protect their right to do so. Unlawful foreign interference with these debates debases their democratic integrity, and we will make every effort to disrupt it and hold those involved accountable.”
“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said U.S. Attorney Terwilliger. “This case demonstrates that federal law enforcement authorities will work aggressively to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of unlawful foreign influence activities, and that we will not stand by idly while foreign actors obstruct the lawful functions of our government. I want to thank the agents and prosecutors for their determined work on this case.”
“This case serves as a stark reminder to all Americans: Our foreign adversaries continue their efforts to interfere in our democracy by creating social and political division, spreading distrust in our political system, and advocating for the support or defeat of particular political candidates,” said Director Wray. “We take all threats to our democracy very seriously, and we’re committed to working with our partners to identify and stop these unlawful influence operations. Together, we must remain diligent and determined to protect our democratic institutions and maintain trust in our electoral process.”
According to allegations in the criminal complaint, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, served as the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering. Project Lakhta includes multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in the United States, members of the European Union, and Ukraine, among others.
Khusyaynova allegedly managed the financing of Project Lakhta operations, including foreign influence activities directed at the United States. The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and “promoting news postings on social networks.” Between January 2016 and June 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget totaled more than $35 million, although only a portion of these funds were directed at the United States. Between January and June 2018 alone, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget totaled more than $10 million.
The alleged conspiracy, in which Khusyaynova is alleged to have played a central financial management role, sought to conduct what it called internally “information warfare against the United States.” This effort was not only designed to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system in general, but also to defraud the United States by impeding the lawful functions of government agencies in administering relevant federal requirements.
The conspirators allegedly took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists. This included the use of virtual private networks and other means to disguise their activities and to obfuscate their Russian origin. They used social media platforms to create thousands of social media and email accounts that appeared to be operated by U.S. persons, and used them to create and amplify divisive social and political content targeting U.S. audiences. These accounts also were used to advocate for the election or electoral defeat of particular candidates in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections. Some social media accounts posted tens of thousands of messages, and had tens of thousands of followers.
The conspiracy allegedly used social media and other internet platforms to address a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate. Members of the conspiracy took advantage of specific events in the United States to anchor their themes, including the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas; the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and associated violence; police shootings of African-American men; as well as the personnel and policy decisions of the current U.S. presidential administration.
The conspirators’ alleged activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological view; they wrote on topics from varied and sometimes opposing perspectives. Members of the conspiracy were directed, among other things, to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups” and to “aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population.” The actors also developed playbooks and strategic messaging documents that offered guidance on how to target particular social groups, including the timing of messages, the types of news outlets to use, and how to frame divisive messages.
The criminal complaint does not include any allegation that Khusyaynova or the broader conspiracy had any effect on the outcome of an election. The complaint also does not allege that any American knowingly participated in the Project Lakhta operation.
The investigative team received exceptional cooperation from private sector companies, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Iftimie are prosecuting the case, with assistance of Trial Attorneys Matthew Y. Chang and Patrick T. Murphy of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
“Today’s charges allege that Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova conspired with others who were part of a Russian influence campaign to interfere with U.S. democracy,” said Assistant Attorney General Demers. “Our nation is built upon a hard-fought and unwavering commitment to democracy. Americans disagree in good faith on all manner of issues, and we will protect their right to do so. Unlawful foreign interference with these debates debases their democratic integrity, and we will make every effort to disrupt it and hold those involved accountable.”
“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said U.S. Attorney Terwilliger. “This case demonstrates that federal law enforcement authorities will work aggressively to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of unlawful foreign influence activities, and that we will not stand by idly while foreign actors obstruct the lawful functions of our government. I want to thank the agents and prosecutors for their determined work on this case.”
“This case serves as a stark reminder to all Americans: Our foreign adversaries continue their efforts to interfere in our democracy by creating social and political division, spreading distrust in our political system, and advocating for the support or defeat of particular political candidates,” said Director Wray. “We take all threats to our democracy very seriously, and we’re committed to working with our partners to identify and stop these unlawful influence operations. Together, we must remain diligent and determined to protect our democratic institutions and maintain trust in our electoral process.”
According to allegations in the criminal complaint, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, served as the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering. Project Lakhta includes multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in the United States, members of the European Union, and Ukraine, among others.
Khusyaynova allegedly managed the financing of Project Lakhta operations, including foreign influence activities directed at the United States. The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and “promoting news postings on social networks.” Between January 2016 and June 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget totaled more than $35 million, although only a portion of these funds were directed at the United States. Between January and June 2018 alone, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget totaled more than $10 million.
The alleged conspiracy, in which Khusyaynova is alleged to have played a central financial management role, sought to conduct what it called internally “information warfare against the United States.” This effort was not only designed to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system in general, but also to defraud the United States by impeding the lawful functions of government agencies in administering relevant federal requirements.
The conspirators allegedly took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists. This included the use of virtual private networks and other means to disguise their activities and to obfuscate their Russian origin. They used social media platforms to create thousands of social media and email accounts that appeared to be operated by U.S. persons, and used them to create and amplify divisive social and political content targeting U.S. audiences. These accounts also were used to advocate for the election or electoral defeat of particular candidates in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections. Some social media accounts posted tens of thousands of messages, and had tens of thousands of followers.
The conspiracy allegedly used social media and other internet platforms to address a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate. Members of the conspiracy took advantage of specific events in the United States to anchor their themes, including the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas; the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and associated violence; police shootings of African-American men; as well as the personnel and policy decisions of the current U.S. presidential administration.
The conspirators’ alleged activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological view; they wrote on topics from varied and sometimes opposing perspectives. Members of the conspiracy were directed, among other things, to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups” and to “aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population.” The actors also developed playbooks and strategic messaging documents that offered guidance on how to target particular social groups, including the timing of messages, the types of news outlets to use, and how to frame divisive messages.
The criminal complaint does not include any allegation that Khusyaynova or the broader conspiracy had any effect on the outcome of an election. The complaint also does not allege that any American knowingly participated in the Project Lakhta operation.
The investigative team received exceptional cooperation from private sector companies, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Iftimie are prosecuting the case, with assistance of Trial Attorneys Matthew Y. Chang and Patrick T. Murphy of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
Monday, October 15, 2018
Life + 99 Years - The Searing Story of Twisted and Amoral Minds
Nathan Leopold Jr
. was half of the famed duo Leopold and Loeb, murderers of 14-year old Bobby Franks in 1924 on the south side of Chicago.
Life plus 99 Years, is an autobiographical work which commences with the day after Leopold's sentencing, and which was designed to ingratiate the author with the parole board. As such it is a fascinating multi-layered work - the reader has to work at keeping in mind that the writer was the perpetrator of a heinous crime made all the more horrendous by the fact that its only motivation was the thrill of the idea. A must read for anyone interested in the workings and effects of our criminal justice system.
. was half of the famed duo Leopold and Loeb, murderers of 14-year old Bobby Franks in 1924 on the south side of Chicago.Life plus 99 Years, is an autobiographical work which commences with the day after Leopold's sentencing, and which was designed to ingratiate the author with the parole board. As such it is a fascinating multi-layered work - the reader has to work at keeping in mind that the writer was the perpetrator of a heinous crime made all the more horrendous by the fact that its only motivation was the thrill of the idea. A must read for anyone interested in the workings and effects of our criminal justice system.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Remembering Warner Saunders
Warner Saunders took an unconventional route to the top anchor chair at one of Chicago’s major network affiliate stations, spending his early career as a schoolteacher and then as the executive director of a nonprofit group aimed at improving opportunities for African-American children on the West Side.
He got into broadcasting full time as head of the community affairs department at WBBM-Ch. 2, where he hosted the station’s “Common Ground” public affairs show. He moved to WMAQ-Ch. 5 in 1980, already in his mid-40s, and worked his way up from weekend news anchor to become a sports anchor and then to co-anchor the 10 p.m. weekday news.
“Warner was a gentle giant,” said Channel 5 meteorologist Brant Miller. “He always carried himself with poise and he was the person you could turn to in the newsroom who always sat back, pondered the situation and had a sense of wisdom.”
Saunders
, 83, died Tuesday night after he collapsed and was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital, according to a statement issued by NBC 5. He had been a Lincoln Park resident.
Saunders grew up in the South Side Bronzeville neighborhood and graduated in 1953 from Corpus Christi High School in Chicago, where he was the teen club president, ran on the track team and worked on the school’s yearbook. He earned a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education in 1957 from Xavier University in New Orleans, where he played football and basketball.
Saunders became a youth worker and a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools before being appointed executive director of the Better Boys Foundation in the West Side Lawndale neighborhood in 1963. The group had been organized in 1961 to encourage members of juvenile gangs to meet peacefully for recreational activities and counseling.
The job gave Saunders elevated visibility in Chicago, and he made a name for himself by fighting for jobs and better housing in the Lawndale community. In 1968, he was tapped to co-host “For Blacks Only,” a weekly series on WBKB-Ch. 7, which now is WLS-Ch. 7, alongside radio star Holmes “Daddy-O” Daylie. The show aired for about two years, and Saunders also began hosting monthly specials on Channel 5 as well.
In 1970, Saunders began anchoring a late-night, 30-minute newscast on fledgling WSNS-Ch. 44, where he was also the part-time urban affairs editor, while continuing his work for the Better Boys Foundation. He also found time to earn a master’s degree in 1972 from Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies.
In 1974, Saunders joined Channel 2 and drew raves — and local Emmy awards — for his work hosting the station’s “Common Ground” program, where guests included civil rights luminaries including Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, as well as Dick Gregory and Eartha Kitt.
“He had street cred,” said former Channel 2 news anchor Bill Kurtis, who worked alongside Saunders in the 1970s. “He had been there — he came up during the civil rights movement, had played some basketball and moved into broadcasting and fit like a glove. He had good integrity, and good talent, and (viewers) trusted him when he told stories about Chicago, especially. I had a great deal of respect for him.”
“(People) come to us for intellectual stimulation, and that’s what they get,” Saunders told the Tribune in 1977.
Saunders hosted a local Emmy-winning, one-hour documentary in 1979, “The End of the Line.” With producer Scott Craig and writer Clarence Page, now a Tribune columnist, Saunders concluded that problems like broken families and terrible schools had worsened in the previous decade, painting an even bleaker picture for youth in Chicago.
In 1980, Saunders jumped to Channel 5, where he began anchoring the news on weekends. He reprised his work on gangs with a special that he co-reported with Carol Marin, titled “Gangs: The New Chicago Mob?” which aired in 1981.
In November 1982, Saunders gave up his news anchor seat to shift to becoming Channel 5’s weekday early news sports anchor. In 1989, Saunders shifted back to anchoring the news, this time as the weekday early evening news co-anchor. In 1997, upon the departure of Ron Magers and Carol Marin from NBC 5, Saunders assumed the role of the 10 p.m. news co-anchor, alongside Allison Rosati.
“Warner was a giant in our newsroom,” the station's vice president of news, Frank Whittaker, said in a statement. “So many of us relied on his advice and counsel as we covered stories each day. Viewers trusted him. He was genuine Chicago. We’ve lost a big part of our history today.”
Saunders was off the air for a time in 2002 during a bout with cancer. He also had other health issues that kept him off the air for long stretches in the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Veteran Chicago broadcaster Bob Sirott filled in for him during those stretches and briefly succeeded Saunders as Channel 5’s 10 p.m. anchor after Saunders retired.
“He was very wise about the business, and the reason that people felt close to him was not only would he give you great advice about work, but he was really a student of life and someone who was very good about advising people on the things that mattered most in life, and most of the time that was not work,” Sirott said. “He was a spiritual guy, and you could get on a level with him that was very sort of raw, and he was a good shrink for people. And with him, there was never any static — he was always supportive, always friendly and always helpful. He never got into a lot of the office craziness or gossip.”
Before retiring in 2009, Saunders had conducted diversity seminars part time. In retirement, he did more of that work.
“I am very anxious to pursue my passion — diversity education,” Saunders told the Tribune in 2008.
Survivors include Saunders’ wife, Sadako; and a son, Warner Jr.
Service information was not available.
Thanks to Bob Goldborough.
He got into broadcasting full time as head of the community affairs department at WBBM-Ch. 2, where he hosted the station’s “Common Ground” public affairs show. He moved to WMAQ-Ch. 5 in 1980, already in his mid-40s, and worked his way up from weekend news anchor to become a sports anchor and then to co-anchor the 10 p.m. weekday news.
“Warner was a gentle giant,” said Channel 5 meteorologist Brant Miller. “He always carried himself with poise and he was the person you could turn to in the newsroom who always sat back, pondered the situation and had a sense of wisdom.”
Saunders
, 83, died Tuesday night after he collapsed and was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital, according to a statement issued by NBC 5. He had been a Lincoln Park resident.Saunders grew up in the South Side Bronzeville neighborhood and graduated in 1953 from Corpus Christi High School in Chicago, where he was the teen club president, ran on the track team and worked on the school’s yearbook. He earned a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education in 1957 from Xavier University in New Orleans, where he played football and basketball.
Saunders became a youth worker and a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools before being appointed executive director of the Better Boys Foundation in the West Side Lawndale neighborhood in 1963. The group had been organized in 1961 to encourage members of juvenile gangs to meet peacefully for recreational activities and counseling.
The job gave Saunders elevated visibility in Chicago, and he made a name for himself by fighting for jobs and better housing in the Lawndale community. In 1968, he was tapped to co-host “For Blacks Only,” a weekly series on WBKB-Ch. 7, which now is WLS-Ch. 7, alongside radio star Holmes “Daddy-O” Daylie. The show aired for about two years, and Saunders also began hosting monthly specials on Channel 5 as well.
In 1970, Saunders began anchoring a late-night, 30-minute newscast on fledgling WSNS-Ch. 44, where he was also the part-time urban affairs editor, while continuing his work for the Better Boys Foundation. He also found time to earn a master’s degree in 1972 from Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies.
In 1974, Saunders joined Channel 2 and drew raves — and local Emmy awards — for his work hosting the station’s “Common Ground” program, where guests included civil rights luminaries including Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, as well as Dick Gregory and Eartha Kitt.
“He had street cred,” said former Channel 2 news anchor Bill Kurtis, who worked alongside Saunders in the 1970s. “He had been there — he came up during the civil rights movement, had played some basketball and moved into broadcasting and fit like a glove. He had good integrity, and good talent, and (viewers) trusted him when he told stories about Chicago, especially. I had a great deal of respect for him.”
“(People) come to us for intellectual stimulation, and that’s what they get,” Saunders told the Tribune in 1977.
Saunders hosted a local Emmy-winning, one-hour documentary in 1979, “The End of the Line.” With producer Scott Craig and writer Clarence Page, now a Tribune columnist, Saunders concluded that problems like broken families and terrible schools had worsened in the previous decade, painting an even bleaker picture for youth in Chicago.
In 1980, Saunders jumped to Channel 5, where he began anchoring the news on weekends. He reprised his work on gangs with a special that he co-reported with Carol Marin, titled “Gangs: The New Chicago Mob?” which aired in 1981.
In November 1982, Saunders gave up his news anchor seat to shift to becoming Channel 5’s weekday early news sports anchor. In 1989, Saunders shifted back to anchoring the news, this time as the weekday early evening news co-anchor. In 1997, upon the departure of Ron Magers and Carol Marin from NBC 5, Saunders assumed the role of the 10 p.m. news co-anchor, alongside Allison Rosati.
“Warner was a giant in our newsroom,” the station's vice president of news, Frank Whittaker, said in a statement. “So many of us relied on his advice and counsel as we covered stories each day. Viewers trusted him. He was genuine Chicago. We’ve lost a big part of our history today.”
Saunders was off the air for a time in 2002 during a bout with cancer. He also had other health issues that kept him off the air for long stretches in the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Veteran Chicago broadcaster Bob Sirott filled in for him during those stretches and briefly succeeded Saunders as Channel 5’s 10 p.m. anchor after Saunders retired.
“He was very wise about the business, and the reason that people felt close to him was not only would he give you great advice about work, but he was really a student of life and someone who was very good about advising people on the things that mattered most in life, and most of the time that was not work,” Sirott said. “He was a spiritual guy, and you could get on a level with him that was very sort of raw, and he was a good shrink for people. And with him, there was never any static — he was always supportive, always friendly and always helpful. He never got into a lot of the office craziness or gossip.”
Before retiring in 2009, Saunders had conducted diversity seminars part time. In retirement, he did more of that work.
“I am very anxious to pursue my passion — diversity education,” Saunders told the Tribune in 2008.
Survivors include Saunders’ wife, Sadako; and a son, Warner Jr.
Service information was not available.
Thanks to Bob Goldborough.
Monday, October 08, 2018
Frank Sinatra and the Mob
"Sinatra and the Mob"
Frank Sinatra always denied his ties to the Mafia
, and neither government investigators nor the press could make the rumors stick- until now. In an excerpt from their book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan uncover the full extent of the immortal crooner's connections with Lucky Luciano and other infamous Mob figures.
Sinatra: The Life, by Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan
Debut March 18, 1939.
In a studio on West 46th Street in New York City, a band was playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." It was a simple place, a room with couches and lamps, hung with drapes to muffle the echo from the walls. This was a big day for the musicians, who were recording for the first time.
A skinny young man listened as they played. The previous night, at the Sicilian Club near his home in New Jersey, he had asked if he could tag along. Now, as the band finished playing, he stepped forward and spoke to the bandleader. "May I sing?" he asked.
The bandleader glanced at the studio clock to see if they had time left, then told the young man to go ahead. He chose "Our Love," a stock arrangement based on a melody from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. Standing at the rudimentary microphone, he launched into a saccharine lyric:
Our love, I feel it everywhere Our love is like an evening prayer ... I see your face in stars above, As I dream on, in all the magic of Our love.
Unseasoned, a little reedy, the voice was transmitted through an amplifier to a recording device known as a lathe. The lathe drove the sound to a needle, and the needle carved a groove on a twelve-inch aluminum-based lacquer disc. The result was a record, to be played on a turntable at seventy-eight revolutions per minute.
The bandleader kept the record in a drawer for nearly sixty years. He would take it out from time to time, with delight and increasing nostalgia, to play for friends. The music on it sounds tinny, a relic of the infancy of recording technology. Yet the disc is kept in a locked safe. The attorney for the bandleader's widow, an octogenarian on Social Security, says the singer's heirs have demanded all rights and the lion's share of any potential income derived from it, thus obstructing its release.
The disc is a valuable piece of musical history. Its tattered adhesive label, typed with an old manual machine, shows the recording was made at Harry Smith Studios, "electrically recorded" for bandleader Frank Mane. Marked "#1 Orig.," it is the very first known studio recording of the thousand and more that were to make that skinny young man the most celebrated popular singer in history. For, under "Vocal chor. by," it bears the immaculately handwritten legend: Frank Sinatra
A year after making that first record, at twenty-five, Sinatra told a new acquaintance how he saw his future. "I'm going to be the best singer in the world," he said, "the best singer that ever was."
A Family from Sicily
Io sono Siciliano ..." I am Sicilian.
At the age of seventy-one, in the broiling heat of summer in 1987, Frank Sinatra was singing, not so well by that time, in the land of his fathers. "I want to say," he told a rapt audience at Palermo's Favorita Stadium, "that I love you dearly for coming tonight. I haven't been in Italy for a long time-I'm so thrilled. I'm very happy."
The crowd roared approval, especially when he said he was Sicilian, that his father was born in Sicily. Sinatra's voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he looked more reflective than happy. At another concert, in the northern Italian city of Genoa, he had a joke for his audience. "Two very important and wonderful people came from Genoa," he quipped. "One ... Uno: Christopher Columbus. Due: mia Mamma ..."
This second crowd cheered, too, though a little less enthusiastically when he mentioned that his father was Sicilian. "I don't think," he said wryly, "that they're too thrilled about Sicilia." It was a nod to northern Italians' feelings about the island off the southernmost tip of the country. They look down on its people as backward and slothful, and because, as all the world knows, it is synonymous with organized crime. It is the island of fire and paradox, the dismembered foot of the leg of Italy. Sicily: at ten thousand square miles the largest island in the Mediterranean, a cornucopia of history that remains more remote and mysterious than anywhere in Europe.
The island's story has been a saga of violence. Its ground heaved to earthquakes, and its volcanoes spat fire and lava, long before Christ. Its population carries the genes of Greeks and Romans, of Germanic Vandals and Arabs, of Normans and Spaniards, all of them invaders who wrote Sicily's history in blood.
"Sicily is ungovernable," Luigi Barzini wrote. "The inhabitants long ago learned to distrust and neutralize all written laws." Crime was endemic, so alarmingly so that a hundred years ago the island's crime rate was said to be the worst in Europe. By then, the outside world had already heard the spectral name that has become inseparable from that of the island-Mafia.
The origin of that word is as much a mystery as the criminal brotherhood itself, but in Sicily "mafia" has one meaning and "Mafia"-with an upper case "M"-another. For the islanders, in Barzini's view, the word "mafia" was originally used to refer to "a state of mind, a philosophy of life, a concept of society, a moral code." At its heart is marriage and the family, with strict parameters. Marriage is for life, divorce unacceptable and impossible.
A man with possessions or special skills was deemed to have authority, and known as a padrone. In "mafia" with a small "m," those who lived by the code and wielded power in the community were uomini rispettati, men of respect. They were supposed to behave chivalrously, to be good family men, and their word was their bond. They set an example, and they expected to be obeyed.
The corruption of the code and the descent to criminality was rapid. Well before the dawn of the twentieth century, the Mafia with a capital "M," though never exactly an organization, was levying tribute from farmers, controlling the minimal water supply, the builders and the businessmen, fixing prices and contracts.
Cooperation was enforced brutally. Those who spoke out in protest were killed, whatever their station in life. The Mafia made a mockery of the state, rigging elections, corrupting the politicians it favored, and terrorizing opponents. From 1860 to 1924, not a single politician from Sicily was elected to the Italian parliament without Mafia approval. The island and its people, as one early visitor wrote, were "not a dish for the timid."
Frank Sinatra's paternal grandfather grew up in Sicily in the years that followed the end of foreign rule, a time of social and political mayhem. His childhood and early adult years coincided with the collapse of civil authority, brutally suppressed uprisings, and the rise of the Mafia to fill the power vacuum.
Beyond that, very little has been known about the Sinatra family's background in Sicily. The grandfather's obituary, which appeared in the New York Times because of his famous grandson, merely had him born "in Italy" in 1884 (though his American death certificate indicates he was born much earlier, in 1866). Twice, in 1964 and in 1987, Frank Sinatra told audiences that his family had come from Catania, about as far east as one can go in Sicily. Yet he told one of his musicians, principal violist Ann Barak, that they came from Agrigento on the southwestern side of the island. His daughter Nancy, who consulted her father extensively while working on her two books about his life, wrote that her great-grandfather had been "born and brought up" in Agrigento. His name, according to her, was John.
In fact he came from neither Catania nor Agrigento, was born earlier than either of the dates previously reported, and his true name was Francesco-in the American rendering, Frank.
Sicilian baptismal and marriage records, United States immigration and census data, and interviews with surviving grandchildren establish that Francesco Sinatra was born in 1857 in the town of Lercara Friddi, in the hills of northwest Sicily. It had about ten thousand inhabitants and it was a place of some importance, referred to by some as piccolo Palermo, little Palermo.
The reason was sulfur, an essential commodity in the paper and pharmaceutical industries, in which Sicily was rich and Lercara especially so. Foreign companies reaped the profits, however, and most locals languished in poverty. The town was located, in the words of a prominent Italian editor, in "the core territory of the Mafia." The town lies fifteen miles from Corleone, a name made famous by The Godfather and in real life a community credited with breeding more future American mafiosi than any other place in Sicily. It is just twelve miles from the Mafia stronghold of Prizzi-as in Prizzi's Honor, the Richard Condon novel about the mob and the film based on it that starred Jack Nicholson.
It was Lercara Friddi, however, that produced the most notorious mafioso of the twentieth century. Francesco Sinatra's hometown spawned Lucky Luciano. Luciano was "without doubt the most important Italian-American gangster," according to one authority, and "head of the Italian underworld throughout the land," according to a longtime head of the Chicago Crime Commission. One of his own lawyers described him as having been, quite simply, "the founder of the modern Mafia."
Luciano, whose real name was Salvatore Lucania, was born in Lercara Friddi in 1897. Old marriage and baptismal registers show that his parents and Francesco Sinatra and his bride, Rosa Saglimbeni, were married at the church of Santa Maria della Neve within two years of each other. Luciano was baptized there, in the same font as Francesco's first two children.
In all the years of speculation about Frank Sinatra's Mafia links, this coincidence of origin has remained unknown. Other new information makes it very likely that the Sinatras and the Lucanias knew each other. The two families lived on the same short street, the Via Margherita di Savoia, at roughly the same time. Luciano's address book, seized by law enforcement authorities on his death in 1962 and available today in the files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, contains only two entries for individuals who lived in Lercara Friddi: one a member of his own family and the other a man named Saglimbeni, a relative of the woman Francesco Sinatra married. Even if the Sinatras and the Lucanias did not know each other, Luciano's later notoriety makes it certain that the Sinatra family eventually learned that they and the gangster shared the same town of origin. Kinship and origins are important in Italian-American culture, and were even more so in the first decades of the diaspora.
As a boy, Frank Sinatra could have learned from any of several older relatives that his people and Luciano came from the same Sicilian town. He certainly should have learned it from Francesco, who lived with Sinatra's family after his wife's death and often minded his grandson when the boy's parents were out.
Francesco, moreover, survived to the age of ninety-one, until long after Luciano had become an infamous household name and Frank Sinatra an internationally famous singer. Sinatra himself indicated, and a close contemporary confirmed, that he and his grandfather were "very close." Late in life, he said he had gone out of his way to "check back" on his Sicilian ties. And yet, as we have seen, he muddied the historical waters by suggesting that his forebears came from Sicilian towns far from Lercara Friddi.
That the Sinatra family came from the same town as a top mafioso was not in itself a cause for embarrassment. The reason for the obfuscation, though, may be found in the family involvement with bootlegging in Frank Sinatra's childhood and, above all, in his own longtime relationship with Luciano himself, the extent of which can now be documented for the first time.
* * *
There was only one school in Lercara Friddi, and few people there could read or write. Francesco Sinatra was no exception, but he did have a trade-he was a shoemaker. He married Rosa, a local woman his own age, when both were in their early twenties, and by the time they turned thirty, in 1887, the couple had two sons. As the century neared its close, thousands of Sicilians were going hungry, especially in the countryside. There were food riots, and crime was rampant.
In western Sicily, the Mafia's power had become absolute. Palermo, the island's capital, spawned the first capo di tutti capi, Don Vito, who would one day forge the first links between the Sicilian Mafia and the United States. His successor, Don Carlo, operated from a village just fourteen miles from Lercara Friddi. Some of the most notorious American mob bosses - Tony Accardo, Carlo Gambino, Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante - were, like Luciano, of western Sicilian parentage.
By 1889 Francesco and Rosa had moved to a working-class suburb of Palermo. Two more sons were born there, but died in infancy, possibly victims of the cholera epidemic that ravaged the neighborhood in the early 1890s. One and a half million Sicilians were to leave the island in the next twenty-five years, many going to Argentina and Brazil and, increasingly, to the United States.
Francesco Sinatra joined the exodus in the summer of 1900. At the age of forty-three, he said goodbye to Rosa and their surviving children-there were by now three sons and two daughters-and boarded a ship for Naples. There he transferred to the British steamer Spartan Prince, carrying a steerage ticket to New York. At Ellis Island, on July 6, he told immigration officials he planned to stay with a relative living on Old Broadway in Manhattan. He had $30 in his pocket.
Francesco found work, and soon had enough confidence to start sending for his family. His eldest son, Isidor, joined him in America, and Salvatore, just fifteen and declaring himself a shoemaker like his father, arrived in 1902. Rosa arrived at Christmas the following year, accompanied by Antonino, age nine, and their two daughters, Angelina and Dorotea, who were younger. Antonino-Anthony Martin or Marty, as he would become in America-was to father the greatest popular singer of the century.
The Statue of Liberty smiled, Frank Sinatra would say in an emotional moment forty years later, when his father "took his first step on Liberty's soil." For many Italian newcomers, however, the smile proved illusory.
(Continues...)
Copyright 2005 Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-375-41400-2
Frank Sinatra always denied his ties to the Mafia
, and neither government investigators nor the press could make the rumors stick- until now. In an excerpt from their book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan uncover the full extent of the immortal crooner's connections with Lucky Luciano and other infamous Mob figures.Sinatra: The Life, by Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan
Debut March 18, 1939.
In a studio on West 46th Street in New York City, a band was playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." It was a simple place, a room with couches and lamps, hung with drapes to muffle the echo from the walls. This was a big day for the musicians, who were recording for the first time.
A skinny young man listened as they played. The previous night, at the Sicilian Club near his home in New Jersey, he had asked if he could tag along. Now, as the band finished playing, he stepped forward and spoke to the bandleader. "May I sing?" he asked.
The bandleader glanced at the studio clock to see if they had time left, then told the young man to go ahead. He chose "Our Love," a stock arrangement based on a melody from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. Standing at the rudimentary microphone, he launched into a saccharine lyric:
Our love, I feel it everywhere Our love is like an evening prayer ... I see your face in stars above, As I dream on, in all the magic of Our love.
Unseasoned, a little reedy, the voice was transmitted through an amplifier to a recording device known as a lathe. The lathe drove the sound to a needle, and the needle carved a groove on a twelve-inch aluminum-based lacquer disc. The result was a record, to be played on a turntable at seventy-eight revolutions per minute.
The bandleader kept the record in a drawer for nearly sixty years. He would take it out from time to time, with delight and increasing nostalgia, to play for friends. The music on it sounds tinny, a relic of the infancy of recording technology. Yet the disc is kept in a locked safe. The attorney for the bandleader's widow, an octogenarian on Social Security, says the singer's heirs have demanded all rights and the lion's share of any potential income derived from it, thus obstructing its release.
The disc is a valuable piece of musical history. Its tattered adhesive label, typed with an old manual machine, shows the recording was made at Harry Smith Studios, "electrically recorded" for bandleader Frank Mane. Marked "#1 Orig.," it is the very first known studio recording of the thousand and more that were to make that skinny young man the most celebrated popular singer in history. For, under "Vocal chor. by," it bears the immaculately handwritten legend: Frank Sinatra
A year after making that first record, at twenty-five, Sinatra told a new acquaintance how he saw his future. "I'm going to be the best singer in the world," he said, "the best singer that ever was."
A Family from Sicily
Io sono Siciliano ..." I am Sicilian.
At the age of seventy-one, in the broiling heat of summer in 1987, Frank Sinatra was singing, not so well by that time, in the land of his fathers. "I want to say," he told a rapt audience at Palermo's Favorita Stadium, "that I love you dearly for coming tonight. I haven't been in Italy for a long time-I'm so thrilled. I'm very happy."
The crowd roared approval, especially when he said he was Sicilian, that his father was born in Sicily. Sinatra's voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he looked more reflective than happy. At another concert, in the northern Italian city of Genoa, he had a joke for his audience. "Two very important and wonderful people came from Genoa," he quipped. "One ... Uno: Christopher Columbus. Due: mia Mamma ..."
This second crowd cheered, too, though a little less enthusiastically when he mentioned that his father was Sicilian. "I don't think," he said wryly, "that they're too thrilled about Sicilia." It was a nod to northern Italians' feelings about the island off the southernmost tip of the country. They look down on its people as backward and slothful, and because, as all the world knows, it is synonymous with organized crime. It is the island of fire and paradox, the dismembered foot of the leg of Italy. Sicily: at ten thousand square miles the largest island in the Mediterranean, a cornucopia of history that remains more remote and mysterious than anywhere in Europe.
The island's story has been a saga of violence. Its ground heaved to earthquakes, and its volcanoes spat fire and lava, long before Christ. Its population carries the genes of Greeks and Romans, of Germanic Vandals and Arabs, of Normans and Spaniards, all of them invaders who wrote Sicily's history in blood.
"Sicily is ungovernable," Luigi Barzini wrote. "The inhabitants long ago learned to distrust and neutralize all written laws." Crime was endemic, so alarmingly so that a hundred years ago the island's crime rate was said to be the worst in Europe. By then, the outside world had already heard the spectral name that has become inseparable from that of the island-Mafia.
The origin of that word is as much a mystery as the criminal brotherhood itself, but in Sicily "mafia" has one meaning and "Mafia"-with an upper case "M"-another. For the islanders, in Barzini's view, the word "mafia" was originally used to refer to "a state of mind, a philosophy of life, a concept of society, a moral code." At its heart is marriage and the family, with strict parameters. Marriage is for life, divorce unacceptable and impossible.
A man with possessions or special skills was deemed to have authority, and known as a padrone. In "mafia" with a small "m," those who lived by the code and wielded power in the community were uomini rispettati, men of respect. They were supposed to behave chivalrously, to be good family men, and their word was their bond. They set an example, and they expected to be obeyed.
The corruption of the code and the descent to criminality was rapid. Well before the dawn of the twentieth century, the Mafia with a capital "M," though never exactly an organization, was levying tribute from farmers, controlling the minimal water supply, the builders and the businessmen, fixing prices and contracts.
Cooperation was enforced brutally. Those who spoke out in protest were killed, whatever their station in life. The Mafia made a mockery of the state, rigging elections, corrupting the politicians it favored, and terrorizing opponents. From 1860 to 1924, not a single politician from Sicily was elected to the Italian parliament without Mafia approval. The island and its people, as one early visitor wrote, were "not a dish for the timid."
Frank Sinatra's paternal grandfather grew up in Sicily in the years that followed the end of foreign rule, a time of social and political mayhem. His childhood and early adult years coincided with the collapse of civil authority, brutally suppressed uprisings, and the rise of the Mafia to fill the power vacuum.
Beyond that, very little has been known about the Sinatra family's background in Sicily. The grandfather's obituary, which appeared in the New York Times because of his famous grandson, merely had him born "in Italy" in 1884 (though his American death certificate indicates he was born much earlier, in 1866). Twice, in 1964 and in 1987, Frank Sinatra told audiences that his family had come from Catania, about as far east as one can go in Sicily. Yet he told one of his musicians, principal violist Ann Barak, that they came from Agrigento on the southwestern side of the island. His daughter Nancy, who consulted her father extensively while working on her two books about his life, wrote that her great-grandfather had been "born and brought up" in Agrigento. His name, according to her, was John.
In fact he came from neither Catania nor Agrigento, was born earlier than either of the dates previously reported, and his true name was Francesco-in the American rendering, Frank.
Sicilian baptismal and marriage records, United States immigration and census data, and interviews with surviving grandchildren establish that Francesco Sinatra was born in 1857 in the town of Lercara Friddi, in the hills of northwest Sicily. It had about ten thousand inhabitants and it was a place of some importance, referred to by some as piccolo Palermo, little Palermo.
The reason was sulfur, an essential commodity in the paper and pharmaceutical industries, in which Sicily was rich and Lercara especially so. Foreign companies reaped the profits, however, and most locals languished in poverty. The town was located, in the words of a prominent Italian editor, in "the core territory of the Mafia." The town lies fifteen miles from Corleone, a name made famous by The Godfather and in real life a community credited with breeding more future American mafiosi than any other place in Sicily. It is just twelve miles from the Mafia stronghold of Prizzi-as in Prizzi's Honor, the Richard Condon novel about the mob and the film based on it that starred Jack Nicholson.
It was Lercara Friddi, however, that produced the most notorious mafioso of the twentieth century. Francesco Sinatra's hometown spawned Lucky Luciano. Luciano was "without doubt the most important Italian-American gangster," according to one authority, and "head of the Italian underworld throughout the land," according to a longtime head of the Chicago Crime Commission. One of his own lawyers described him as having been, quite simply, "the founder of the modern Mafia."
Luciano, whose real name was Salvatore Lucania, was born in Lercara Friddi in 1897. Old marriage and baptismal registers show that his parents and Francesco Sinatra and his bride, Rosa Saglimbeni, were married at the church of Santa Maria della Neve within two years of each other. Luciano was baptized there, in the same font as Francesco's first two children.
In all the years of speculation about Frank Sinatra's Mafia links, this coincidence of origin has remained unknown. Other new information makes it very likely that the Sinatras and the Lucanias knew each other. The two families lived on the same short street, the Via Margherita di Savoia, at roughly the same time. Luciano's address book, seized by law enforcement authorities on his death in 1962 and available today in the files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, contains only two entries for individuals who lived in Lercara Friddi: one a member of his own family and the other a man named Saglimbeni, a relative of the woman Francesco Sinatra married. Even if the Sinatras and the Lucanias did not know each other, Luciano's later notoriety makes it certain that the Sinatra family eventually learned that they and the gangster shared the same town of origin. Kinship and origins are important in Italian-American culture, and were even more so in the first decades of the diaspora.
As a boy, Frank Sinatra could have learned from any of several older relatives that his people and Luciano came from the same Sicilian town. He certainly should have learned it from Francesco, who lived with Sinatra's family after his wife's death and often minded his grandson when the boy's parents were out.
Francesco, moreover, survived to the age of ninety-one, until long after Luciano had become an infamous household name and Frank Sinatra an internationally famous singer. Sinatra himself indicated, and a close contemporary confirmed, that he and his grandfather were "very close." Late in life, he said he had gone out of his way to "check back" on his Sicilian ties. And yet, as we have seen, he muddied the historical waters by suggesting that his forebears came from Sicilian towns far from Lercara Friddi.
That the Sinatra family came from the same town as a top mafioso was not in itself a cause for embarrassment. The reason for the obfuscation, though, may be found in the family involvement with bootlegging in Frank Sinatra's childhood and, above all, in his own longtime relationship with Luciano himself, the extent of which can now be documented for the first time.
* * *
There was only one school in Lercara Friddi, and few people there could read or write. Francesco Sinatra was no exception, but he did have a trade-he was a shoemaker. He married Rosa, a local woman his own age, when both were in their early twenties, and by the time they turned thirty, in 1887, the couple had two sons. As the century neared its close, thousands of Sicilians were going hungry, especially in the countryside. There were food riots, and crime was rampant.
In western Sicily, the Mafia's power had become absolute. Palermo, the island's capital, spawned the first capo di tutti capi, Don Vito, who would one day forge the first links between the Sicilian Mafia and the United States. His successor, Don Carlo, operated from a village just fourteen miles from Lercara Friddi. Some of the most notorious American mob bosses - Tony Accardo, Carlo Gambino, Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante - were, like Luciano, of western Sicilian parentage.
By 1889 Francesco and Rosa had moved to a working-class suburb of Palermo. Two more sons were born there, but died in infancy, possibly victims of the cholera epidemic that ravaged the neighborhood in the early 1890s. One and a half million Sicilians were to leave the island in the next twenty-five years, many going to Argentina and Brazil and, increasingly, to the United States.
Francesco Sinatra joined the exodus in the summer of 1900. At the age of forty-three, he said goodbye to Rosa and their surviving children-there were by now three sons and two daughters-and boarded a ship for Naples. There he transferred to the British steamer Spartan Prince, carrying a steerage ticket to New York. At Ellis Island, on July 6, he told immigration officials he planned to stay with a relative living on Old Broadway in Manhattan. He had $30 in his pocket.
Francesco found work, and soon had enough confidence to start sending for his family. His eldest son, Isidor, joined him in America, and Salvatore, just fifteen and declaring himself a shoemaker like his father, arrived in 1902. Rosa arrived at Christmas the following year, accompanied by Antonino, age nine, and their two daughters, Angelina and Dorotea, who were younger. Antonino-Anthony Martin or Marty, as he would become in America-was to father the greatest popular singer of the century.
The Statue of Liberty smiled, Frank Sinatra would say in an emotional moment forty years later, when his father "took his first step on Liberty's soil." For many Italian newcomers, however, the smile proved illusory.
(Continues...)
Copyright 2005 Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-375-41400-2
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