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VENOMOUS IN THE EXTREME: UNDERSTANDING FRANK SINATRA'S ACRIMONIOUS 1963 EXIT FROM NEVADA GAMING

2020; Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.; Volume: 24; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1089/glr2.2020.0013

2572-5327

David G. Schwartz,

Literature and Culture Studies

Gaming Law ReviewVol. 24, No. 7 ArticlesFree AccessVENOMOUS IN THE EXTREME: UNDERSTANDING FRANK SINATRA'S ACRIMONIOUS 1963 EXIT FROM NEVADA GAMINGDavid G. SchwartzDavid G. SchwartzDavid G. Schwartz is a gaming historian the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:16 Sep 2020https://doi.org/10.1089/glr2.2020.0013AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Today, there are few personalities more intimately connected with the classic era of Las Vegas casinos than Frank Sinatra. Indeed, the pre-corporate period (1940s to 1966) is often referred to as the “Rat Pack era,” in reference to the cohort of performers who coalesced around Sinatra at the Sands in 1960. This was a time, it is imagined, when the personal touch dominated, when guest satisfaction and table drop mattered more than corporate profits. The zenith of Rat Pack Vegas might have been getting comped into the late show at the Copa where Frank, and maybe Dean and Sammy, would be onstage. Sinatra was more than a singer for hire at the Sands; by 1963, he was (on paper at least) a nine percent owner of the resort. In 1961, he became the majority owner of Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge.1 Looking back, one can't imagine a more ideal pairing than Frank Sinatra and Nevada gaming.But in reality, Sinatra had a fraught relationship with the Nevada gaming establishment and even his Sands co-owners. Tensions between Sinatra and the state's gaming authorities boiled over in the summer of 1963, as regulators, fearful of federal pressure, could not countenance Sinatra's open embrace of alleged organized crime figures, the most notorious of whom was Chicago's Sam Giancana. The confrontation between Nevada gaming and Sinatra culminated in the singer surrendering his license rather than defend himself against a complaint alleging that he had permitted numerous gaming violations at the Cal-Neva, and that he had “maligned and vilified” members of the Gaming Control Board (GCB) and Gaming Commission.2 The conflict—and Sinatra's ultimate retreat from Nevada gaming—demonstrates the lengths to which gaming regulators were willing to go to forestall external pressure that could upset the delicate balance between the sometimes-unsavory elements on which the industry relied for capital and expertise, and the state's need for respectability.Old Blue Eyes in Las VegasFrank Sinatra's first association with Las Vegas came early in his career. In 1941, as a 25-year-old singer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, he appeared briefly in the Paramount film Las Vegas Nights, performing “I'll Never Smile Again” with the band. It was Sinatra's motion picture debut, and it was not an auspicious one. After the singer, standing in the middle of a vocal group, crooned a few bars of the verse, the film cuts away to a riveting conversation between the romantic leads about the benefits of moving to the low-tax, always-friendly state of Nevada, although the focus shifts back to the stage for the song's conclusion.3 Sinatra was paid $15 a day for his services during the shooting.4Sinatra returned to Las Vegas five years later as an investor in an “ultramodern” hotel being built on the Los Angeles Highway (today, the Las Vegas Strip). Work on the resort was started under the name “Nevada Desert Inn,” but in April 1946 Sinatra's attorney Albert Tearlson announced that Sinatra was buying into the project, which was now known as the New Horizon. Designed by Los Angeles architect Paul Williams (who would later design other Las Vegas landmarks including the La Concha motel, whose lobby building is now part of the Neon Museum), the hotel would feature a radio studio which would be linked via wire to stations around the country. Sinatra, according to the plan, would broadcast from the studio himself as well as persuading other radio stars to do the same.5The New Horizon, however, was not to be. Originally slated to be finished in six months, the hotel, which would have been across from McCarran Airport, was dogged by a trio of lawsuits. The first, which disputed the land's title, was thrown out of court in 1946, as was the second. But the hotel itself was a forgotten memory by the time a third was filed in California in 1949.6 At that stage, it was reported that singer Bing Crosby has been a partner in the project as well.7 But despite Sinatra's ambitious plans to make Las Vegas a high-tech (for the time) media center, the New Horizon did not make any meaningful progress, and never came close to opening. Yet it would signal Sinatra's desire to be more than a singer in Las Vegas.But, for the time being at least, Sinatra would have to content himself with singing for his supper. He began an engagement at Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn (which was not connected to the earlier Nevada Desert Inn debacle) on September 4, 1951.8 Much of the news coverage centered on the singer's relationship with Ava Gardner, whom he was in the process of divorcing his wife Nancy to marry.9 That November, he returned to Las Vegas briefly to obtain that divorce, and the Review-Journal headline reveals the esteem with which he was then held by locals: “Belligerent Singer Gets Divorce; Scorns Reporters.” 10 Identified as the “one-time idol of the nation's bobby-soxers,” Sinatra was further described as “pale,” “wan,” “pugnacious,” and “spindly.” He failed to endear himself to local reporters after “letting loose a stream of profane threats” at a reporter who had the nerve to call him in his hotel room. Deputy Sheriff John Lytle was present outside of the courtroom to prevent any violence between the singer and those who Sinatra called “newspaper bums” after his 15-minute session in closed court. He left the courthouse without incident.11Sinatra's first stand at the Desert Inn went well enough that he was back for another set the following July.12 Yet he wasn't universally loved in Las Vegas, and, when it was announced that he would be moving to the Sands for an October 1953 engagement, expectations were low.13 Indeed, Sinatra himself wasn't 100 percent committed to the gig. In late September, Sinatra announced that he was going to skip playing the Copa Room if he was able to land the part of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront.14 As it happened, Marlon Brando took the role (and the Oscar), so Sinatra did make it to the Sands in time.The Sands, which opened in December 1952, had already established itself as one of the chief showplaces in not just Las Vegas, but the nation, under the leadership of entertainment director Jack Entratter. Having distinguished himself at New York's Copacabana, Entratter lured a number of high-profile stars, including Danny Thomas, Lena Horne, Ezio Pinza, Robert Merrill, and the Ritz Brothers to compete with the other six Strip resorts, who fielded names like Marlene Dietrich, Donald O'Connor, Ray Bolger, and Red Skelton.15Frank Sinatra's first Sands engagement came as he was beginning to recover from the prolonged career downturn that had started in 1947. His performance as Maggio in From Here to Eternity would earn him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, and he was about to release a string of successful albums on Capitol Records.16 Still, some critics were underwhelmed by the “New Sinatra” at the Sands: he was initially lambasted for “rough treatment” of his orchestra on his opening night, though even his harshest critic admitted he won “fan acclaim.”17 One critic said point blank that “Sinatra's showing is a failure … he is a warmed over has-been.”18 Even the favorable Bill Willard of Variety lamented Sinatra's tendency to “insert dubious gags or parody lines in great established melodies,” though he conceded that “the unmistakable stamp of quality is always present.”19Sinatra's drawing power increased over the next few years, as his resurgent film and recording careers made him one of the most sought-after showroom performers of his generation. And he was a Sands exclusive. For the next 14 years, Sinatra would perform multiple three-week engagements each year and become identified, along with Danny Thomas, as the premier celebrity spokesperson for the resort. When the Sands' owners needed someone to promote the relaunch of the struggling Dunes casino, which they had just acquired, they picked Frank Sinatra. Entratter filled the Copa with stars, and Sinatra was the biggest.The zenith of Sinatra's run at the Sands started in January 1960, when he appeared onstage at the Sands with Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford while filming Ocean's 11. Though Sinatra himself preferred to call the group “The Summit” (after a series of meetings between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev), the media labeled the gathering first “the Clan” and later “the Rat Pack,” the name that has stuck.20 Sinatra in the early 1960s was one of the most visible performers in Las Vegas.Frank Sinatra and “Those Guys”From early in his career, Frank Sinatra was dogged by rumors that he was close with organized crime figures. Though he admitted to having known several of “those guys,” Sinatra would long remain touchy on the subject of his associations with alleged mobsters, avoiding direct answers both in media interviews and in congressional testimony.21 Sinatra reportedly had friendships with a number of prominent reputed Mafiosi, including Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Willie Moretti, and Frank Costello, going back to the dawn of his performing career.22Throughout the 1940s, reporters raised allegations that Sinatra was too cozy with both organized crime and leftist groups. A January 1947 trip to Havana, Cuba, to see Lucky Luciano, who had been deported from the United States, became grist for gossip columnists. Robert Ruark and Lee Mortimer claimed that Sinatra had delivered $2 million in small bills in a briefcase to Luciano, tribute from his former mob underlings stateside (a whimsical notion, unless the briefcase was somehow bigger on the inside than the outside).23 In April of that year, Sinatra punched Mortimer at Ciro's restaurant in Hollywood. Though he settled out of court for $9,000, the incident helped to sink Sinatra's reputation with both the national media and fans; the attack marked the beginning of his career's decline.24One of the sauciest Sinatra/Mob stories had, by the early 1960s, filtered into the public consciousness, though it hadn't been proven or disproven. In 1942, Sinatra had left the Tommy Dorsey band to embark on a solo career. Dorsey, however, insisted that his former boy singer honor the terms of his contact, which specified that the bobby-sox idol was to continue to pay Dorsey one third of all earnings over $100 a week and an additional 10 percent to Dorsey's manager, possibly for ten years, possibly for perpetuity. When Sinatra refused to advance his pay, the pair sued. The action was settled out of court shortly thereafter. Sinatra claimed that, after Dorsey rebuffed his initial request, he retained entertainment attorney Henry Jaffe, who, with the backing of MCA chief Jules Stein, informed Dorsey that, unless he set Sinatra free, would no longer be broadcasting on NBC. Dorsey then capitulated.25Dorsey himself recalled the incident differently. In a 1951 New American Mercury article written by Sinatra's journalistic nemesis Lee Mortimer (Sinatra so despised the columnist that he reportedly literally urinated on his grave after his 1963 death)26 Dorsey claimed that he had “been visited by three businesslike men,” who told the bandleader to “sign or else.”27 Five years later, Dorsey had a slightly different version: “I was visited by Willie Moretti and a couple of his boys. Willie fingered a gun and told me he was glad to hear I was letting Frank out of our deal. I took the hint.”28Although a Sinatra apologist later claimed that Dorsey's visitors weren't genuine mobsters but merely rough-looking characters that Sinatra's manager Hank Sanicola had dispatched to intimidate the bandleader, the story, first whispered in Hollywood and on Broadway, became part of Sinatra's legend thanks to the Mortimer article and subsequent retellings.29 The tale of a bandleader convinced at gunpoint by a gangster to let a rising young Italian-American singer out of his contract was later fictionalized in Mario Puzo's The Godfather and Francis Ford Coppola's film of the same title; the similarities between Sinatra and Johnny Fontaine would lead to a restaurant confrontation between the singer and author, though no punches were thrown.In addition to his ongoing ties with New York and New Jersey (alleged) mobsters, Sinatra kindled an enduring friendship with Chicago's Sam Giancana in the 1950s. Sinatra did not exactly keep the relationship a secret. He and Giancana were seen together at the El Rancho Vegas in 1958, and Sinatra attended the wedding of Giancana's daughter Bonnie in Miami Beach in July 1959.30Though his career had seen ups and downs, by the early 1960s Sinatra was used to bad press, and not used to having to back down before anyone. He may have felt that, given the money and attention he had drawn to Nevada, he was immune from the kind of scrutiny that others were increasingly falling under. Mob ties were never exactly celebrated in Nevada, but after the Kefauver Committee's negative assessment of legalized gaming in 1951 and with the threat of federal intervention hanging over the state, associations with organized crime began to be taken much more seriously as the industry matured and became the state's economic dynamo. Federal anti-gambling action during the Kefauver era was largely restricted to the Johnson Slot Machine Act and the Wagering Tax Act, which did not strike directly at Nevada.31 But under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the Justice Department took an intense interest in Nevada gaming, going so far in the summer of 1961 as to prepare a federal strike force that would, in the words of then-governor Grant Sawyer, “invade every major casino in Reno and Las Vegas” in pursuit of evidence of mob penetration.32 Though Sawyer had gotten flak for his “hang tough” gaming policy, which some perceived as too aggressive, the Democratic governor flew to Washington to head off the raid.33 The attorney general was dismissive of Sawyer, but the governor was able to persuade President Kennedy that destroying the state's top employer would dim the Democrats' chances in 1964 and long after; the raid didn't happen.34 Still, it was a reminder that, should Nevada be seen as too lax in its vigilance towards organized crime, the federal government was only too eager to step in.Despite nothing having been proven in a court of law, as of 1963, federal law enforcement believed just as firmly as gossip columnists that Sinatra was linked to organized crime. With the Justice Department taking an increasingly hard look at Nevada gaming in the Kennedy years, the state's power structure began taking possible mob infiltration of its gaming industry more seriously. The bar for permissible fraternization with mobsters, convicted or reputed, had been steadily lowered over the previous decade. Rumors of Sinatra's associations with gangsters, hoodlums, and other unsavory types had been part of his public persona for over a decade at this point. This wasn't enough to keep a performer out of the state's showrooms. But, if flagrant enough, such relationships could potentially disqualify someone from owning a casino. As Sinatra had long since crossed from the first category to the second, any mob associations that moved out of the realm of rumor had the potential to provoke severe consequences.Frank Sinatra as a Casino OwnerThe failure of the New Horizon only whet Frank Sinatra's appetite to own a share in a casino. And the Sands gave him the chance to do just that. When he visited the Sands in May 1952, it was noted that he had already filed an application to buy a percentage of the casino.35 The Sands' ownership had been a matter of concern for the Tax Commission (then the Nevada body charged with gaming licensure) since before its opening. Mack Kufferman initially built the resort, but he was repeatedly denied a gaming license due to the perception that he was too close to Joseph “Doc” Stacher, a reputed underworld figure. Jake Freedman, a Texan who had long run ostensibly illegal operations in Houston, was then licensed, initially as a sole owner, though he then took on 11 partners. Sinatra was to be the twelfth.36To argue his case, Sinatra engaged Harry Claiborne, whose client list already included several casino owners. Claiborne would go on to represent both entertainers and those suspected of ties to organized crime.37 The application was not a slam dunk. In addition to his many run-ins with reporters, Sinatra owed $200,000 in federal taxes—hardly the sign of financial stability required for suitability.38 Indeed, this would be a sticking point during his licensing hearing. Requesting permission to spend $54,000 to buy a two percent interest in the Sands, Sinatra enjoyed a generally favorable reception by the Tax Commission, with the exception of member Robert Allen.“I move that he take the $54,000 and give it to Uncle Sam,” Allen said.39But deference to Washington was not a virtue in Nevada.“I say, let the government collect its own money,” responded another member, to applause. The panel was satisfied with Sinatra's explanation that he had a payment plan with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in place and had already more than halved his tax debt. On October 30, 1953, Sinatra's application for ownership was approved.40Over the next decade Sinatra's ownership share increased until, by 1962, he owned a nine percent stake in the Sands. But that was not enough for Sinatra, who wanted to have not just ownership, but a controlling stake in a property. He got his chance in 1960, thanks to the declining fortunes of the Cal-Neva, a casino on Lake Tahoe's North Shore, which dated to 1926. Bert “Wingy” Grober had become the major owner in 1955. It has been rumored but never proven that Grober was actually a front for Joseph Kennedy. In any event, the Kennedy clan spent a great deal of time at the Cal-Neva during Grober's time as owner.41 At the time, casinos in Lake Tahoe ran only for a brief season, generally June to September, and were precarious investments. In 1960, either Kennedy or Grober wanted to get out—all that remained was to find a buyer.42In June, it was announced that Sinatra, along with Dean Martin, was negotiating to buy a share of the Cal-Neva, with a few other investors.43 As it eventually happened, Sinatra, his manager Hank Sanicola, and Sanford Waterman emerged as the major stockholders in the deal. The trio formally bought the Cal-Neva at the end of the summer 1960 season and were approved for a license to operate the casino the following May.44 There was one hitch, however: Sinatra and his fellow investors in Park Lake Enterprises, the Cal-Neva's operating company, were responsible for paying over $200,000 in back taxes and interest accrued by former owner Elmer “Bones” Remmer. By this point Dean Martin had sold his share in the casino.45 That May, Sinatra, Sanicola, Grober, Waterman, and Ike Berger were listed as licensees, with Sinatra owning a 36.6 percent share.46 Following the 1961 season, Sanicola announced Sinatra's intention to spend $10 million improving and expanding the Cal-Neva.47When the Cal-Neva's application for the 1962 season was approved in May of that year, only Sinatra, Sanicola, and Waterman were listed as investors, with Sinatra owning a 50 percent share, Sanicola 33.3 percent, and Waterman 16.7 percent.48 It is believed, however, that Chicago underworld figure Sam Giancana actually owned Sinatra's share, though that has never been proven conclusively.49 Whoever the real owner, Sinatra was on paper the largest stockholder. The 1962 expansion, which included an improved showroom opened by Sinatra himself, primed the resort for a successful 1963 season.50 Sinatra was far from an absentee owner—the signs pointing the way to the resort advertised “Frank Sinatra's Cal-Neva Lodge.” Entertainment columnist Earl Wilson—who would later write a sympathetic biography of the crooner—described in August 1962 Sinatra's routine: Frank hops over in a private plane from Los Angeles, looks in at the till to see how business is, then over to San Francisco for a ball game, then wings back over here so he can get up early next morning to play golf.“He's even bought me a set of clubs,” says his manager, Skinny D'Amato, “so he'll have somebody to beat.”51While all appeared to be running smoothly, D'Amato's presence at Tahoe was a red flag for Nevada regulators, and a preview of the confrontation that would drag through the following summer.Paul “Skinny” D'Amato, an Atlantic City native, had run illegal gambling games in that city from his youth. In 1942, he began operating the 500 Club, a nightspot that would become a nationally known entertainment venue. An example of D'Amato's alchemy: in 1946, he paired Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis onstage for the first time. The two would go become acclaimed nightclub performers together and, after their 1956 split, individually.52 D'Amato met Sinatra in the summer of 1939, when the singer was performing with Harry James on Atlantic City's Steel Pier. As Sinatra's career fizzled in the late 1940s, D'Amato's rose, and performances at the 500 Club sustained Sinatra through his lean years. D'Amato was the one who recommended that Moe Dalitz hire Sinatra to sing at the Desert Inn in 1951, starting his Las Vegas performing career.53D'Amato's loyalty over the years—and his experience in running the 500 Club, which in addition to its showroom had a clandestine casino—meant a great deal to Sinatra. So when Sinatra became not just an investor but a majority owner in a casino, he wanted D'Amato to run it. D'Amato had just demonstrated his value to Joseph Kennedy when he used his influence with West Virginia sheriffs to help swing that state into Jack's column in the 1960 Democratic primary.54 Though D'Amato did not have an official title at the Cal-Neva (his business card merely read “Paul ‘Skinny’ D'Amato”), one employee described him as “the right hand of God,” whose word was to heeded as if it were that of Sinatra himself.55For all of the respect that D'Amato rightfully commanded in his native Atlantic City and at the Lake, federal law enforcement had long been suspicious of the nightclub impresario's possible links with organized crime.56 As the federal government ratcheted up the pressure on Nevada gaming regulators, any potential connections with the underworld were going to be scrutinized much more heavily than before. This would set the stage for the confrontation between Frank Sinatra and Nevada gaming.“A Big, Fat Surprise”The 1963 season started well enough for Frank Sinatra at the Cal-Neva. The Gaming Control Board recommended the lodge and its owners for re-licensing as a matter of course.57 But Sinatra's continuing contact with Sam Giancana, should it become more than an open secret, had the potential to ruin everything.In 1960, as part of its “hang tough” policy, the Gaming Control Board, with the approval of Governor Sawyer, inaugurated the List of Excluded Persons—colloquially known as the “Black Book”—a list of 11 suspected mobsters and other “persons of notorious or unsavory reputation”58 whom gaming licensees were instructed to “prevent the presence [of] in any licensed establishment.” As it happened, Sam Giancana was one of the names on that list. Sawyer himself admitted in his 1993 oral history interview that the list was “a good idea, but perhaps one that was unconstitutional.”59 John Marshall, one of the other individuals listed, sued the hotel, the governor, and the state after the Desert Inn, at the urging of gaming personnel, ejected him from the casino. Ultimately the Ninth Circuit Court sustained the legality of the Black Book, but in 1963, it was still far from settled law.60While Sinatra was winning raves for signing Tony Bennett to perform at the Cal-Neva,61 Giancana was having a difficult summer. Subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, he took the Fifth despite a U.S. Attorney's offer of complete immunity for anything he cared to discuss. As contempt proceedings against Giancana began, the FBI maintained a 24-hour surveillance on him. Giancana sued the FBI, arguing that the surveillance was so intrusive that it had disrupted his golfing. After the court stipulated that FBI agents had to remain at least one foursome behind Giancana while on the links, the Bureau, in a fit of pique, turned its surveillance over to the Cook County Sheriff's Office. A few hours later, Giancana was in the wind.62On July 17, the alleged gangster, who authorities said had “disappeared from the face of the earth,” materialized in Chalet 50 of the Cal-Neva, the temporary abode of Phyllis McGuire, who was slated to appear in the Celebrity Room with her sisters.63 For the next 11 days, he had run of the property; although Sinatra was reportedly not happy with the “heat” Giancana could bring down on him, he was not about to demand Giancana leave.64But a dinner argument would force Sinatra's hand. A disagreement between McGuire and her manager Victor LaCroix Collins became heated enough that the two began shoving each other. Giancana, hearing the tumult, ran in and decked Collins, who inexplicably chose to fight back.65 Sinatra's valet, George Jacobs, wanted to break up the fight but Sinatra refused to let him. After security guards separated the pair, Sinatra and Giancana reportedly took a moonlight stroll together. “Tomorrow, you're leaving,” Sinatra reportedly said. “Sure, why not? I caused enough trouble,” Giancana is said to have replied with a laugh.66 Sinatra had Jacobs drive Giancana to Sinatra's Palm Springs home to lie low.67Collins began telling anyone who would listen that Giancana and Sinatra had issued “Mafia death threats” to him, and news that Giancana had definitely been at the Cal-Neva finally reached the ears of the Gaming Control Board, which had begun investigating reports that the gangster was in the region after he and Phyllis McGuire ran out of gas and made an impression at the tiny Christmas Tree lodge, who spread word that McGuire (they didn't recognize her escort) had been in their establishment.68The Control Board shared news of Giancana's erstwhile whereabouts with the FBI. Two days later, on August 2, a front-page Chicago Sun-Times story leaked news of Giancana's stay at the Cal-Neva and the ongoing Gaming Control Board investigation.69 Media coverage of the investigation intensely angered Sinatra, fueling the intensity of his coming clash with gaming regulators. In his oral history, Gaming Control Board chair Ed Olsen implied that the leak came from far outside of his state, noting in his oral history that “Nevada newspapermen, who are notorious for not reading anybody else's newspaper, didn't have the same story until thirty days later.”70Meanwhile, the Control Board's investigation of whether Giancana was actually present in Nevada—and what other misdeeds had been perpetrated at the Cal-Neva—continued. The political ramifications of the inquiry were high: on one hand, a Black Book entrant had allegedly been hosted by a casino owner, a clear violation of that edict. On the other, the owner was a popular and well-connected celebrity with strong ties to the White House (Sinatra had produced JFK's inaugural gala).71 The state's gaming apparatus, already enmeshed in litigation over the Black Book, couldn't ignore Sinatra's apparent flouting of it, but disciplining Frank Sinatra brought its own set of problems. Olsen later admitted that he “as a matter of fact, wanted to keep it as quiet as possible, because it was a pretty much of a hot potato. What are you going to do with Frank Sinatra?”72It wasn't widely known, but Sinatra's closeness to Giancana had already effectively cut him off from the President. In March 1962, Sinatra was scheduled to host JFK on a West Coast tour at his Palm Springs home, which he extensively renovated for the occasion, even adding a heliport. In February, however, Robert Kennedy's Justice Department produced a report stating that Sinatra's “long and wide” association with “hoodlums” including Giancana, D'Amato, Joe and Rocco Fischetti, and John Formosa was “continuing.”73 Kennedy's misgivings against Giancana and Sinatra were magnified when, later that month, he learned that Judith Campbell, who Sinatra had introduced JFK to during the then-candidate's January 1960 visit to the Sands, was sleeping with both the president and Giancana. Bobby forbade his brother from staying with Sinatra, ending the friendship between the two.74 Olsen and Sawyer might not have known the details of Giancana's role in the Sinatra-Kennedy relationship, but they knew that he was high on the Justice Department's list of suspected mobsters, and that appearing to allow him carte blanche in their state could invite federal intervention. Sawyer had no love lost for Bobby Kennedy—the Democrat later derided the attorney general's “arrogance and cavalier attitude” and claimed that he would have supported a Republican rather than back RFK during his campaign for the 1968 Democratic nomination—but he didn't want to give him any excuse to claim that Nevada was soft on the mob.75Sinatra and his associates didn't make the investigators' jobs easy. A week in, all the Control Board knew was that Giancana had apparently stayed in McGuire's chalet, but they wanted to know more: why he was at the Cal-Neva, to what extent Sinatra knew about his presence, and who had invited him. On August 8, investigator Charles LaF