On this edition of Parallax Views, Jonathan Marshal, author of Dark Quadrant: Organized Crime, Big Business, and the Corruption of American Democracy and (with Peter Dale Scott) Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, joins me to discuss his Lobster Magazine piece “Wall Street, the Supermob, and the CIA” examining the strange web of connections between organize crime, tax-exempt foundations, Hollywood, and U.S. intelligence in the 20th century.
Among the topics discussed:
– New York stockbroker David G. Baird, the Russian Orthodox Church, Serge Semenenko of First National Bank of Boston, the investigation of Baird’s tax-exempt foundations for illegal activities, and the Central Intelligence Agency
– The “Supermob”, a name taken from the Gus Russo book of the same name, that represents figures who were involved both heavily in organized crime as well as the aboveground white-collar business world
– The Chicago Outfit, Sam Giancana, and the Hollywood mob-affiliated lawyer and “fixer” Sidney Korshak
– Meyer Lansky vs. the Las Vegas-based gangster Morris “Moe” Dalitz and gangsters that become successful as businessmen beyond the criminal underworld
– Organized crime, anti-communism, the “foreign entity within our midst” narrative, and the myth of American purity
– The entertainment industry, the hotel industry, and organized crime
– The development of American capitalism and American organized crime
– And much, much more!
