http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20071210/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_vegas_mob_museum
Las Vegas plans to open a mob museum
By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 10, 2007
Las Vegas is building a museum about some of its founding fathers and most influential figures — guys with names like Bugsy, Lefty and Lansky.
The mob museum will stand as frank acknowledgment of the major role mobsters played in developing Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America and giving the city its rakish glamour during the 1940s and '50s.
"Let's be brutally honest, warts and all. This is more than legend. It's fact," said Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former defense attorney whose clients once included mobsters Meyer Lansky and Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro. "This is something that differentiates us from other cities."
The project has gained the support of the FBI and is guided by a retired FBI agent. They say they are involved because you can't tell the stories of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, his banker, Lansky, casino boss Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal and others without telling the story of the lawmen who pursued them.
"This is a way to connect with the public and show the results of our work," said Dan McCarron, a spokesman for the FBI in Washington.
Ellen Knowlton, who retired in 2006 as FBI agent in charge in Las Vegas and now heads the not-for-profit museum organization, said FBI officials have offered to share photographs, transcripts of wiretaps and histories of efforts to kneecap organized crime in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
"Despite the sort of edgy theme, this museum will be historically accurate and it will tell the true story of organized crime," Knowlton said. "The plan is to give people a kind of gritty taste of what it would have been like to be not only a person involved or affiliated with organized crime, but also what it would have been like to be in law enforcement."
Officials expect to open the museum by 2010 in a brick federal building that was the centerpiece of this dusty town of 5,100 residents when it opened in 1933. In 1950, the three-story building hosted a hearing by Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver's special investigating committee on the rackets.
Goodman, who showed his own willingness to play up Las Vegas' mob past by making a cameo in the 1995 Robert De Niro-Joe Pesci movie "Casino," has pushed the idea of a mob museum from the time he was elected mayor in 1999.
He brokered a deal for the city to buy the building in 2000 for $1, with the understanding it would be turned into cultural center. Officials expect the final cost, including renovations, to reach almost $50 million.
About $15 million has been raised through grants, city funds, contributions and the sale of commemorative license plates that marked Las Vegas' centennial in 2005.
It was Siegel who pioneered the transformation of this one-time desert stopover into a glittering tourist mecca, opening the $6 million Flamingo hotel on the fledgling Las Vegas Strip in 1946 with financial backing from Lansky.
The movie-star handsome Siegel was rubbed out six months later in Beverly Hills, Calif., perhaps because he angered the mob with cost overruns on the hotel.
Spilotro and Rosenthal were associates in the 1970s, when Rosenthal ran several casinos, including the Stardust. Spilotro was killed in 1986 and buried in an Indiana cornfield.
Organized crime eventually was driven out of Las Vegas in the 1970s and '80s by the FBI, local police and prosecutors, state crackdowns and casino purchases by corporate interests.
Many of these stories have been dramatized by Hollywood in such movies as "Bugsy," "The Godfather" and "Casino." But documenting mob history isn't going to be easy.
"If anybody out there finds a memo saying: `To the boys, from Meyer. Re: Bugsy. Kill him,' We'd love to have it," said Michael Green, a College of Southern Nevada history professor who is researching exhibits for the museum. "But we doubt it's there."
"Because of that, you have to do a lot of reconstructing, inferring and implying," he said. "There's a lot of winking we're going to have to do."
Green pointed to stories about Moe Dalitz, a Cleveland businessman who rescued the Desert Inn and Stardust casinos in the 1950s and '60s and built a hospital, golf courses and shopping centers.
"Was he tied to the mob or involved with the mob? Yes," Green said. "A mobster? Harder to explain."
Dennis Barrie, who designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the popular International Spy Museum in Washington, said he will design the as-yet-unnamed Las Vegas museum to show how organized crime and the fight against it shaped modern life.
"Whether it's running the casinos in Las Vegas, or controlling cigarette sales or numbers or trash collection in any city, organized crime is part of the American culture," Barrie said. "Everybody has a mob story or a brush with the mob world. Or they at least say they do."
Organizers say paying visitors might be asked to decide as they arrive which side of the law they want to be on, and then be given a story line tracing the life of a famous lawman or mobster or a street cop or numbers runner.
"Were you a hit man? Were you a prosecutor? What choices do you have to make?" Green said. "We're telling a story of things that are multisided."
Organizers also hope to have an oral-history area where visitors "can sit down in front of a camera and say, `I knew Bugsy,' or `I saw Meyer,' or whatever," he said.
Showing posts with label Organized Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organized Crime. Show all posts
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Probe of ref is a gut shot to the NBA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/21/SPG4AR4M2B1.DTL
Probe of ref is a gut shot to the NBA
Ray Ratto
Saturday, July 21, 2007
David Stern's worst nightmare as NBA commissioner has just come true. The FBI is investigating whether one of the league's referees bet on games, including ones he officiated, and his possible connection to organized crime.
Friday's news that Tim Donaghy, a 13-year journeyman official, was being investigated to determine if he wagered on games and made calls that affected point spreads was a monumental fist to a sport already dealing with its full measure of troublesome issues.
It is potentially more damaging to basketball than the Barry Bonds debates are to baseball and more disturbing, at least for many fans, than even the Michael Vick dog-abuse case. This is sport's last true vulnerability -- the concept that the games might be crooked, that the only thing that binds all fans together has been compromised.
It also brings into doubt the idea that the games are officiated fairly and as accurately as possible, because basketball is the sport that requires the most judgments per minute of action of any sport, and is therefore the one most vulnerable to chicanery.
Donaghy is a second-tier NBA official. He'd been in the league more than a decade but worked only 20 playoff games, five this past season (one of them was Game 3 of the Warriors-Dallas Mavericks series, which Golden State won 109-91). Thus, all the Internet conspiracy freaks who threw out dozens of names and cited hundreds of games will have a difficult time finding Donaghy's alleged footprints on games of import, because he didn't seem to work in that many.
His last game was Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals between ultimate champion San Antonio and Phoenix, which the Spurs won 108-101. It is unknown if that is one of the games under suspicion (the Spurs were favored by 4). Meanwhile, out in the Wild West of the Internet, one gaming Web site, Webwire.com, claimed Donaghy's games end up "over the Las Vegas total points line 57 percent of the time," an unusually high number that proves nothing but suggests way too much.
The suggestion alone leads to the great unmentioned weakness of any sport -- the idea there are lots of games out there for the fixing, and that some get fixed. College football has had its recent scandals (Northwestern in the mid-'90s, most notably), college basketball as well (Arizona State in the late '90s). College sports are particularly vulnerable, because the players are either not paid or paid illegally at less than market rate.
The professional leagues' stance for their competitive sanctity had always been that the money was so good the players would never be tempted to gamble on games. The money is that good, but players get caught in more exotic and disturbing ways, and their real collateral when the money gets tight is the game.
Officials have always been considered vulnerable because they aren't paid nearly as well (NBA referees make from a low of $90,000 to a high of $225,000). That is great money by most standards, but temptation is still temptation, and vice is still vice, and human judgment is still human judgment.
In other words, if this FBI investigation produces what it purports to, Donaghy was tempted by vice, his judgment was compromised and he got squeezed in a most vulnerable way -- his work product.
Which brings us back to Stern, and his league's tarnished image this year.
There were the low television ratings for both the regular season and the playoffs, which the league tried to slough off by redefining what good ratings actually are. There was the infamous Joey Crawford-Tim Duncan on-court argument that caused Crawford, one of the game's best officials, to be suspended for the duration of the season. There was the study by an academic and a graduate students purportedly showing evidence of racial bias in the volume of calls made against African American players as opposed to other ethnic groups. There was the All-Star Game in Las Vegas, which was cited by a number of observers as a weekend of debauchery and lawlessness that rebounded, largely without merit, back to the NBA and its African American clientele.
Stern, the NBA's undisputed leader for the past 23 years, has in recent times behaved more like a dean of privileged students trying to regain classroom control than a commissioner. Dress codes, more technicals for dissent, a general shrinking of tolerance for the talent has all been noticed.
But the Donaghy investigation changes everything. Stern now faces an audience that won't be so willing to bow to his contemptuous pique when confronted publicly by a difficult subject. He may have to convince people that his game is not only fashionable and exciting and telegenic but on the up-and-up. The possibility of manipulated games raised the stakes about NBA officiating beyond the Crawford or racial bias stories. They called the game itself into question, and mere glibness or disdain won't work for Stern here.
Nor world it work for the NFL's Roger Goodell, Major League Baseball's Bud Selig, the NHL's Gary Bettman, MLS' Don Garber or any league commissioner. Ultimately, the personalities and the athletic gifts and the celebrity wheel and the bling and the multimedia machine balance on the virtue of the game itself. If the game is not to be trusted, we have professional wrestling, only without the stylized violence. We have art forms without validity. We have entertainment that is a lie.
That is why David Stern must hope to his very soul that Tim Donaghy is innocent at best, and an isolated case at worst. Stern must live in daily dread that there might be another official, or a player, or a team official in a position of influence who is weak, or vulnerable, or venal.
The sport is nothing without the game, and if no other useful lesson is learned here, it is that.
E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.
Probe of ref is a gut shot to the NBA
Ray Ratto
Saturday, July 21, 2007
David Stern's worst nightmare as NBA commissioner has just come true. The FBI is investigating whether one of the league's referees bet on games, including ones he officiated, and his possible connection to organized crime.
Friday's news that Tim Donaghy, a 13-year journeyman official, was being investigated to determine if he wagered on games and made calls that affected point spreads was a monumental fist to a sport already dealing with its full measure of troublesome issues.
It is potentially more damaging to basketball than the Barry Bonds debates are to baseball and more disturbing, at least for many fans, than even the Michael Vick dog-abuse case. This is sport's last true vulnerability -- the concept that the games might be crooked, that the only thing that binds all fans together has been compromised.
It also brings into doubt the idea that the games are officiated fairly and as accurately as possible, because basketball is the sport that requires the most judgments per minute of action of any sport, and is therefore the one most vulnerable to chicanery.
Donaghy is a second-tier NBA official. He'd been in the league more than a decade but worked only 20 playoff games, five this past season (one of them was Game 3 of the Warriors-Dallas Mavericks series, which Golden State won 109-91). Thus, all the Internet conspiracy freaks who threw out dozens of names and cited hundreds of games will have a difficult time finding Donaghy's alleged footprints on games of import, because he didn't seem to work in that many.
His last game was Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals between ultimate champion San Antonio and Phoenix, which the Spurs won 108-101. It is unknown if that is one of the games under suspicion (the Spurs were favored by 4). Meanwhile, out in the Wild West of the Internet, one gaming Web site, Webwire.com, claimed Donaghy's games end up "over the Las Vegas total points line 57 percent of the time," an unusually high number that proves nothing but suggests way too much.
The suggestion alone leads to the great unmentioned weakness of any sport -- the idea there are lots of games out there for the fixing, and that some get fixed. College football has had its recent scandals (Northwestern in the mid-'90s, most notably), college basketball as well (Arizona State in the late '90s). College sports are particularly vulnerable, because the players are either not paid or paid illegally at less than market rate.
The professional leagues' stance for their competitive sanctity had always been that the money was so good the players would never be tempted to gamble on games. The money is that good, but players get caught in more exotic and disturbing ways, and their real collateral when the money gets tight is the game.
Officials have always been considered vulnerable because they aren't paid nearly as well (NBA referees make from a low of $90,000 to a high of $225,000). That is great money by most standards, but temptation is still temptation, and vice is still vice, and human judgment is still human judgment.
In other words, if this FBI investigation produces what it purports to, Donaghy was tempted by vice, his judgment was compromised and he got squeezed in a most vulnerable way -- his work product.
Which brings us back to Stern, and his league's tarnished image this year.
There were the low television ratings for both the regular season and the playoffs, which the league tried to slough off by redefining what good ratings actually are. There was the infamous Joey Crawford-Tim Duncan on-court argument that caused Crawford, one of the game's best officials, to be suspended for the duration of the season. There was the study by an academic and a graduate students purportedly showing evidence of racial bias in the volume of calls made against African American players as opposed to other ethnic groups. There was the All-Star Game in Las Vegas, which was cited by a number of observers as a weekend of debauchery and lawlessness that rebounded, largely without merit, back to the NBA and its African American clientele.
Stern, the NBA's undisputed leader for the past 23 years, has in recent times behaved more like a dean of privileged students trying to regain classroom control than a commissioner. Dress codes, more technicals for dissent, a general shrinking of tolerance for the talent has all been noticed.
But the Donaghy investigation changes everything. Stern now faces an audience that won't be so willing to bow to his contemptuous pique when confronted publicly by a difficult subject. He may have to convince people that his game is not only fashionable and exciting and telegenic but on the up-and-up. The possibility of manipulated games raised the stakes about NBA officiating beyond the Crawford or racial bias stories. They called the game itself into question, and mere glibness or disdain won't work for Stern here.
Nor world it work for the NFL's Roger Goodell, Major League Baseball's Bud Selig, the NHL's Gary Bettman, MLS' Don Garber or any league commissioner. Ultimately, the personalities and the athletic gifts and the celebrity wheel and the bling and the multimedia machine balance on the virtue of the game itself. If the game is not to be trusted, we have professional wrestling, only without the stylized violence. We have art forms without validity. We have entertainment that is a lie.
That is why David Stern must hope to his very soul that Tim Donaghy is innocent at best, and an isolated case at worst. Stern must live in daily dread that there might be another official, or a player, or a team official in a position of influence who is weak, or vulnerable, or venal.
The sport is nothing without the game, and if no other useful lesson is learned here, it is that.
E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.
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