Mr. Cleanface’s Dirty Laundry: Harry Reid’s Mob Money

Original FReeper research | 01/20/2006 | Fedora

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#51: Fedora: Any connection between Reid and the late Alan Dorfman (Las Vegas casino skimmer from the mob), who ended up with two to the head or back in a car trunk in Chicago?

You’re right about the Chicago and Kansas City mob having direct ties to the Vegas Mobe. That is what later involved the casino skimming of Dorfman and his execution, among other activities.

Any investigation by Carter’s Attorney General (Ed Levi), then Griffin Bell and Asst AG Ben Civiletti (later AG), would be an effort in futility or coverup. Civiletti later tried to let two indicted Soviet spies come back into the US and avoid a trial (Martha Dodd Stern and Alfred Stern, in “The KGB against the ‘Main Enemy’: How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates Against the United States”, Herbert Romerstein and Stanislav Levchenko, Lexington Books, 1989. Levi was just a dumb Chicago schmuck.

Wonder if any of Reid’s land-deals/schemes in Nevada involved the Mustang Ranch? That would be a logical place for him to have earned the nickname “Little Harry” Reid or “Dingie Harry.”

His son escaped, barely, a major investigation into illegal donations/work re the real estate scheming of his father, as you mentioned. The whole story was never told to the public.

I personally think that Dingy, like Mohammed Ali, took too many punches to the head during his boxing days, which would explain his political-babble and incomprehensible mumblings. Or, he could just be a shrewd politician who got lucky by playing dumb. OR he could just be dumb, and lucky.

Either way, he is a blithering idiot who should be investigated as a threat to the nation’s sanity.

I’ll buy his first straight jacket.

[Luigi Vasellini]

BTTT

[KC Burke]

I had dinner with Dorfman and some KC figures once.

[doug from upland]

Great work. Thanks for sharing it.

[kenavi]

BCCI didn't enter the U.S. until 1982, when it was behind a group that purchased First American Bankshares, so you can't blame President Carter's Administration.

I think you throw around associations loosely.

[Travis McGee]

I’m sure the MSM will dig right into this, as soon as they finish up with investigating Fast & Furious, Corzine, etc.

[bcsco]

Are you two people talking? Daxton, see purkinje’s post #21 from 2006 re. Harry Reid.

[Terry Mross]

I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll never see anymore corrupt politicians go to prison as long as they vote they way they’re told.

[Fedora]

As I'm reviewing my notes, Dorfman did come up briefly in relation to some of the backstory mentioned here. Though his mention is brief, the context is significant. I'll quote from my original personal notes I created when compiling this article:

* * *

May 1979: Nevada Gaming Commission revokes Glick’s/Argent’s license; Las Vegas papers carry reports that group of investors headed by Tropicana attorney Jay H. Brown are planning to bid for Glick’s properties, but bid is allegedly (per affidavits filed by Kansas City organized crime strike force) withdrawn because it fails to win approval of Chicago underworld; according to affidavit second buyout plan involving Teamsters associate Allen Dorfman and Civella family is approved by Mafia but falls through; affidavit also alleges third plan is arranged by Agosto to work out compromise involving Briggs and Rosenthal; Glick eventually agrees to sell Stardust and Fremont to Doumanis (who by now own Tropicana—when did they get it?), with provision that if sale to Doumanis fall through first right of refusal to buy belongs to Allan D. Sachs (associated with Herbert Tobman), who has been licensed by Gaming Commission despite FBI informer Fratianno’s allegation that Sachs has organized crime connections

[Fedora]

Again I will refer you to the full BCCI report with its extensive background information about the role of the Carter administration.

[exit82]

Fascinating read, Fedora. Thank you.

An oldie but a goodie.

[Fedora]

For future reference, here is some information for anyone who is interested in the brief mention of BCCI in the article. And before I even address this, I want to emphasize that this brief aside was merely meant to highlight corruption in the Carter administration and raise some questions about why some of the Nevada corruption described here was not addressed effectively at a federal level. My intent was not to provide a detailed chronology of BCCI. The most relevant aspect of Carter-era corruption in relation to Reid would be to get into how federal regulatory and law enforcement bodies handled some of the Nevada developments described in the article. BCCI is a tangent to this. That said, for those who are interested in BCCI chronology, here is an online copy of the report on that:

The BCCI Affair

The full report is about 583 pages when converted into PDF format. To save reading time, regarding BCCI's activity during the Carter administration, relevant sections include Chapters 1-3 with the Executive Summary and overview of BCCI's early history, Chapter 13 on Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, Chapter 16 on BCCI and Georgia politicians, and Chapter 17 on BCCI's lawyers and lobbyists.

The key development documented here that I was alluding to occurred during the 1977-1981 period. It began in 1977 with BCCI's initial approach to Bert Lance. Lance had manipulated loans at the National Bank of Georgia to finance Carter's election and had been forced to resign as Carter's OMB Director as a result. BCCI's approach to Lance alerted banking officials and regulatory authorities early on about BCCI's predatory intentions, blocking an early BCCI attempt to take over Financial General Bankshares.

To counter this early alert, BCCI then recruited Lance's lawyer Clark Clifford in February 1978. Clifford subsequently helped convince regulatory authorities that BCCI was not behind a follow-up takeover attempt that employed a front company, CCAH. Authorities suspected CCAH was a BCCI front, but Clifford convinced them otherwise by recruiting a group of key Democratic Party insiders for an April 1980 CCAH shareholders meeting and follow-up lobbying, to give the appearance that CCAH was controlled by individuals of known reputation and not BCCI. The final review filing for the takeover was submitted in November 1980 and completed in April 1981.

These key developments were completed during the tail end of Carter's administration and the transition to the Reagan administration, and it is quite just to lay some of the blame on Carter's doorstep (along with many others too numerous to list in this brief summary--BCCI was a more tangled web than I care to try to unravel in one post). Lance, Clifford, other Carter officials, and Carter himself subsequently received various forms of compensation from BCCI. Lance, who continued to remain a key Democratic Party financial figure into the Walter Mondale and Jesse Jackson campaings, put BCCI's Agha Hasan Abedi in direct touch with Carter as well as Andrew Young after Carter left office. As the report summarizes in Chapter 16 on BCCI and Georgia politicians:

President Carter was used by BCCI to enhance its credibility around the world and particularly in developing countries. President Carter travelled to a number of these countries with BCCI's president, Abedi, increasing Abedi's status and helping Abedi gain access and entry to political leaders from those countries. At the same time, the former President became beholden to the bank for its generous contributions to his charities. While President Carter did not show sufficient interest in establishing the bona fides of the bank, the CIA, which had substantial negative information on BCCI, failed to provide him with that information. When a President of the United States becomes a private citizen, it is obviously his choice with whom he associates. Nevertheless, former Presidents are afforded physical protection, and should be afforded, to the extent possible, protection of their reputation. As a result of his own lack of diligence in seeking information on BCCI's poor reputation, and the CIA's lack of diligence in telling President Carter what they knew, President Carter became closely associated for a decade with a bank that constituted organized crime. This outcome was not in the interests of the United States.

While the summary here tries to portray Carter as a witless dupe, it is difficult to reconcile this with Carter's full history of involvement in similar activity, which was evident in Billygate and continued up through the Oil-for-Food scandal at least. But that is another story.

[TigersEye]

bttt

[MileHi]

bflr

[GOPJ]

Did Sharpton contribute to this report?

[Fedora]

No, the investigation covered in this article was conducted during the 1970s and had wrapped up by about 1980; Sharpton didn’t become an informant until the mid-80s, and he was informing on activity in New York City rather than Las Vegas.

[GOPJ]

Sharpton didn’t become an informant until the mid-80s, and he was informing on activity in New York City rather than Las Vegas.

Thanks Fedora... Interesting stuff...

[Vision Thing]

Steve Wynn, a casino developer who used profits from a 1970 deal involving Howard Hughes and Caesar’s Palace to purchase the Golden Nugget; described in a Scotland Yard report as a front man for New York’s Genovese Mafia family.

Interesting. Steve Wynn always struck me as a staunch Republican. He spoke some harsh words against obama during the 2012 election.