Epilogue: The Pardon
In 1962, just two days before he was to be
deported from the United States to a jail cell in England, John Factor was
granted a Presidential Pardon by John F. Kennedy.
• • •
Shortly after Roger Touhy was out of the
way, the Chicago mob saw fit to push Factor out of the Stardust casino and
place the operation into the steady hands of Moe Dalitz. But when the facts
behind the transaction hit the media-that John Factor had sold one of the
largest and most profitable casinos in the world for the paltry sum of $15
milllion-Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered an investigation into the
sale. The United States Internal Revenue Service along with the State of Nevada
Gaming Commission started a joint investigation into the Stardust sale.
The joint force intended to call Factor in for
questioning. However they were beaten to the punch when the Los Angeles Office
of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) suddenly ordered him in to
show due cause why he shouldn't be deported to England where he was still a
wanted felon. The INS had now decided, based on Jake's arrest and conviction in
1942 for fraud, that he was an undesirable alien. At seventy years of age, John
Factor, who had lived in America since at least 1919, was being ordered out of
the country.
The problem was that the INS had never
closed its record on Factor since he entered the country through Mexico after
the British stock swindle. It was a minor, white lie that kept the record open.
Jake had told the INS at the border that he had been born in England while their
records said he was born in Poland and the INS could prove it. Unable to show
due cause why he shouldn't be deported, Factor was ordered to surrender to the
INS on December 25, 1962, at which point he would be arrested and deported to
Poland.
At the time, Poland was a backward, war-torn
country, crushed under the iron-fisted rule of the Russian Communist Party. The
conditions in Poland caused Factor to fight hard to prove to the government
that he was, in fact, a British citizen. The problem with sending Jake to
Britain was that his conviction for stock fraud remained in force. The second
he landed at Heathrow, he'd be jailed. Adding to Factor's woes was the ongoing
IRS investigation into payment of his back taxes for the years 1935 through
1939. The government wanted Factor to explain where he received $479,093.27 in
income, and Factor couldn't remember. If he was deported, the Government would
impound his holdings, which Factor estimated to be $13 million, until the
matter was settled, which meant that he would leave the country the way he came
in, penniless.16
The only thing that could save Factor from
deportation was death or a miracle. The miracle came straight from the White
House in the form of a pardon.
Presidential pardons, the last imperial
power of the Executive Office, have long been the golden parachute for the
mob's monied elite looking to avoid deportation, obtain a position in the
casino business or a labor union, or to help muscle their way into a legitimate
enterprise.
Abusing the pardon privilege has had a
torrid and often astounding history, even on a state level. In the early 1920s,
Illinois' incredibly corrupt Governor, Len Small, sold an estimated 500 pardons
before he was indicted and chased from office. Small's broker on the pardon
deals was a union extortionist named "Umbrella Mike" Boyle, a bigwig
in the Electrical Workers Union. Among Boyle's clients was Spike O'Donnell, who
started the great Chicago beer wars of 1926 upon his release.
In the 1970s, when federal prosecutors tried
to deport southwestern Pennsylvania mob boss, John S. LaRocca, Governor John
Fine pardoned the alleged godfather of corruption along with his capo, Frank
Rosa. Later, Governor George Earle pardoned Mafia bosses Joe Luciano, Luigi
Quaranta and alleged Caporegime Nicholas Piccolo. He also pardoned Frank
"Binkie" Palermo, allegedly a made member of the Mafia; Felix
Bocchiccio, a fight fixer; Leo Kamminski and Louie Barish, suspected mob
members.
One of the most outrageous pardons on record
belongs to Harry Truman who pardoned "Ice Pick" Danny Motto, a labor
thug in the Gambino family. He had been convicted of wartime racketeering and
as a result, Danny the Ice Pick wasn't allowed to hold an "elective"
office in New York's Bakers Union local 350, a 900-member local which he
terrorized from 1939 until his death in the 1980s. Motto's 1947 federal
racketeering charge, plus a previous one for murder, gave the Justice
Department due cause to deport him.
However, at the last moment, after
deportation had been ordered, Truman granted a pardon and the deportation was
canceled. The man who worked behind the scenes on Motto's behalf was his
lawyer, Herb Itkin. Itkin was a shadowy figure with unspecified connections to
Naval Intelligence and later to the CIA. It was Itkin who introduced New York's
mayoral administration (under John Lindsay) to labor mobster and loan shark
Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corralo, who was also Danny Motto's boss. That
meeting would eventually lead to the James Marcus scandal of 1966.
Truman also pardoned many felons from the
Boss Pendergast political machine. More than half of those pardoned were
convicted of interfering with a citizen's right to vote, or, in other words,
were members of Owney Madden's goon squads.
And now it was John F. Kennedy's turn.
During his brief presidency, Kennedy issued 472 pardons, more than any chief
executive before or since. About half of these appear to be questionable, at
best.
On November 26, 1962, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy did something unusual: he changed the laws that govern
presidential pardons. It was unusual because the fourteen sets of rules, all
advisory in nature that govern presidential pardons, have seldom been tampered
with, since they were written in 1893.
The change that Kennedy made in the rules,17
only sixteen days before John Factor was pardoned, allowed all pardon requests
to go directly to the White House and then to the Justice Department, and not
the other way around.
A few days after Kennedy changed the rules
for pardons, an alcoholic Chicago hood named Chuckie English, a former 42 Gang
member and bodyguard to Sam Giancana, strolled out of the Amory Lounge and
leaned up against the FBI observation car parked just across the street from
the tavern. The agents reported, "English is bemoaning the fact that the
federal government is closing in on the organization and nothing can be done
about it. He made several bad remarks about the Kennedy administration and
pointed out that the Attorney General raising money for the Cuba invaders makes
Chicago's syndicate look like amateurs."
Business executives and CEOs across the
country were whispering the same thing. Many of the executives were amazed to
find themselves talking on the phone with the Attorney General of the United
States and were even more amazed at what they heard. Kennedy operated
shamelessly. He told businesses he wanted money for the Bay of Pigs program,
and reminded them that they had either pending contracts before the government
or criminal cases before the Justice Department. Before they could respond,
Kennedy again mentioned the fund to free the Cubans, and hung up.
John Factor also knew about the fund to free
the Cubans. In fact he threw $25,000 into the project and later explained to a
curious press corp that James Roosevelt, the problem child of the clan, had approached
him about the donation.18
Factor had already given Kennedy $25,000 to
help retire his campaign debt and his wife gave several thousand more. Despite
the endless rumors to the contrary, Factor denied that he had given $1,000,000
to the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation19 as well.
Miraculously, on December 24, 1962, after
Factor's contribution to the Bay of Pigs fund, President John F. Kennedy signed
a presidential pardon for Factor for the mail fraud conviction. As a result the
deportation proceeding against him was dismissed. For mob watchers and law
enforcement employees, who had put so much faith in Robert Kennedy's war on
crime, Jake the Barber's presidential pardon fell from the skies like a bolt of
lightning.
It was never made clear if Kennedy's actions
also killed the investigation of Factor's dealing in the Stardust but one way
or the other, that investigation was closed.
Factor always denied that the mob used
pressure with the White House to win him his pardon but in mid-1963, while Jake
was trying to gain control of the National Life Insurance Company of America
and was buying up the company's shares at $125 each; he sold 400 shares to
Murray Humpreys at $20 each. Factor's loss was $105 per share. Humpreys then
sold the shares back to Factor for $125 a share, making him $42,000 richer in
one day.
As far as the Hump's unusual and creative
stock transaction with Jake20 the Barber was concerned, the government decided
that it was a taxable exchange "for services rendered" and sent
capital gains tax bills to both of them.
A presidential pardon was good but just to
be sure, on July 16, 1963, in Los Angeles, John Factor, the poor kid from the
ghettos of Chicago, raised a slightly shaking hand and along with a dozen other
more recent arrivals took the oath of citizenship of the United States of
America. "I'm the luckiest man alive, “he said and he was probably right.
• • •
John Factor died after a long illness at the
age of ninety-one in 1984. More than 400 mourners, including California's
Governor Pat Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley attended his wake.
During the last half of his long life Factor
contributed millions to charitable causes and made serious efforts to change
his life and his reputation, but nothing ever changed.
Once, after giving an enormous donation to a
charity in the mid-sixties, the newspapers that covered the event wrote about
Factor's shady past. The report brought on a rare display of public anger when
Factor called the reporter on the story and demanded to know "What, my
dear, must one do...how much does a man have to do...to bury his past?"
It was proof that despite his incredibly
agile mind, John Factor either never really understood or refused to recognize
the harm he had inflicted on others during his long life.
His stock swindle in England had fleeced
thousands of people out of their life savings. His self managed kidnapping had
sent five innocent men to jail for a total of 125 years. The skim from the
Stardust he helped to shelter produced an estimated $2,000,000 a year, net
income, for each of the Chicago bosses who held points in the resort casino.
A better question would have been, "How
much should a man pay before he is allowed to bury his past?"
• • •
In the end there were no winners, only
losers. All that was left was the tragic tale of two men who willfully lived
outside the law and then refused to accept the consequences of their actions.
Up to their dying day, neither Roger Touhy nor John Factor would ever fully
admit to wrongdoings in their lives or to the suffering they had created for
others, including those who loved them.
16. If his wife, Rella, went with him, he would have been more
fortunate; the INS estimated her wealth to be, in 1960, $40 million.
17. The rules that govern federal pardons are just those...rules...not
laws. They can be made, broken or ignored by the President. All of these rules
are simply procedural in nature. Pardons
are the last imperial power of the presidency, and aside from the few pardons
that have outraged Americans, such as Jimmy Hoffa's highly questionable pardon,
the practice goes on, unregulated.
18. James Roosevelt, then a member of Congress, strongly supported
Factor's bid for a Presidential Pardon as well.
19. The Foundation refused this writer access to their records and
refused to deny or confirm that Factor donated money to its treasury. The reader should note that the Foundation is
a privately held trust; it does not have to account for its spending or explain
salaries given to its executives, many of whom are, and have been members of
the Kennedy family.
20. In 1960 an FBI informant, believed to be Jimmy "The
Turk" recorded Humpreys and Joey Glimco discussing Roger Touhy's murder, a
month after it happened. Humpreys said, "But this Factor, he's a dirty
cocksucker...here's a guy I've always gone along with. We go ahead, and we do
it, originally, and I wouldn't...so he says, ok...200,000." It’s not clear
from the transcripts if Humpreys was referring to a payment from Factor to him
of $200,000 to murder Touhy. Humpreys added, "I had to give the cocksucker
ten thousand dollars."