Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli - #823: The CIA and Mafia's Plot to Assassinate Fidel Castro With Thomas Maier

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Starting point is 00:01:14 We got author Thomas Mayer coming on talking about mafia spies. This weekend, I will be in Louisville, Kentucky at the Murder circus. And then they'll be followed by Tulsa, Oklahoma. Get in it to win it guys. And then again, quiet drops October 15th. You can find it on samtribly.com. You can find it on samtribly.com and you can find it on Rumble as well. They're getting behind the show.

Starting point is 00:01:43 So that's great. And let's get in to our interview with Thomas Mayer. Yeah, we're let's get into it. He is an author. He's a journalist. He's got eight books out and he's here to talk about mafia spies. Please welcome Thomas Mayer. How are you, sir? Very well, Sam. Thank you so much guys for inviting me. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to this honor and a privilege. I even brought a tin hat with me just in case I need it.

Starting point is 00:02:14 We love it. The more the merrier. When we do live shows, people come in tinfoil hats and we appreciate their enthusiasm. So thank you. So, um, Thomas, for those who may not be familiar with you can you tell us a little bit about self and where our listeners can find you uh... my name is thomas mayor i am a long time a reporter for newspaper here in the new york called newsday it's here on long island i worked there for forty years it just left uh... and basically what i've been doing is now writing books

Starting point is 00:02:47 and doing, writing a movie. And also we have a TV show called Mafia Spies that's out. That's based upon a book that I wrote five years ago. You know, it takes a long time. We had a little thing called COVID that happened. So kind of got delayed a little bit, but it's out on Paramount Plus. It's also available on Showtime.

Starting point is 00:03:09 I think you can get it other places as well, like Hulu and Amazon, if I'm not mistaken. But it's fundamentally, it's a Paramount Plus six-part series, and it's fundamentally about two gangsters, two top gangsters, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, who were hired by the CIA during the Cold War

Starting point is 00:03:33 to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. And their story is just an amazing, it's an absolutely true story. It's an absolutely true story. It's an absolutely true conspiracy that took the CIA about 50 years to acknowledge. They actually formally acknowledged it in 2007. So I always thought, you know, I've done other books. I've done books about the Kennedys.

Starting point is 00:04:01 I did a big book about the Churchills and the Kennedys. And as part of that, I just was aware of Sam, Jean, and Connna. I used to work as a, before I worked for Newsday, where I worked for 40 years, I worked for the Chicago Sun Times. And I had covered a couple of different crimes. So I was aware of Sam, Jean, and Connna as the head of the mafia out in Chicago during that time. And Johnny Roselli, who was really the key for me

Starting point is 00:04:29 in putting the story together, he was part of the Chicago mob. But they sent him out years earlier, out to Hollywood. And he was the mob's guy out in Hollywood. So he's a fascinating guy. And they both got involved in running the mob's casinos in Havana, Cuba, just before Castro takes over in 1959. And when he does, he throws all the mobsters out.

Starting point is 00:04:58 They're incredibly upset about it. So the mob wants to get Castro out of there. But also what happens is that Castro allows the Russians into Cuba. And in fact, we actually have a big confrontation called a Cuban missile crisis. And so we always wanted, the United States government wanted to get Castro out of there. So we always wanted, the United States government wanted to get Castro out of there. And so these two forces, the CIA and the mafia got together and that's the beginning of the story. And to do so, they particularly hired these two guys, Gina Kana and Roselli to try to kill Castro. This also kind of falls under like government cutouts where the government doesn't necessarily do it, but they somewhat, whether it's out in the open or behind closed doors, hire somebody

Starting point is 00:05:53 else to do the bidding of the government. We see that a lot in government contracts and other stuff, black ops. So if you think about this time, it is so crazy. All the stuff going on. So you got the CIA and the mob working on like many, many different, um, assassin projects, right? You know, we have, okay. And, and, and, and Castro it's, it's, it's very interesting because, you know, I

Starting point is 00:06:23 mean, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that there is a fine line between law and crime. You know, it's like a very, so you got the CIA, which we all want to believe is law enforcement. And then we also have the mob, which is, you know, crime. So, and it's crazy how often they work together more than not. I mean, we, we somewhat see that happening right now in Mexico with the cartels. There's a, you know, when Obama, go on, sorry. Yeah, you know, this book would not have been possible

Starting point is 00:06:53 when it was happening. In fact, when it was all happening, the rest of America had no idea that, for instance, we had a war going on down in Florida, that we had the CIA with all these Cuban exiles who had fled Cuba, who were being trained as an army to go back to Cuba and invade Cuba. We didn't know. That was all done in a very hush-hush way. And it didn't come out to about 15 years later. It didn't come out until about the mid-70s.

Starting point is 00:07:26 And a lot of this still didn't come out until recently, about five years ago, President Trump allowed, then President Trump allowed the papers related to the JFK assassination to come out. And although those papers didn't have any smoking gun or any great revelation about the Kennedy killing, what it did have is a lot about the efforts by the CIA to kill Castro, which the Kennedys were very much involved in.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And those papers, there are literally thousands of papers that were released in 2017 and 2018. And that really helped make Mafia Spies possible, because it gave me a lot of, you know, this is one big jigsaw puzzle. It gave me a lot more little pieces to help make the overall picture come into view. Oh, crazy, man. It's just so nuts that time in history.

Starting point is 00:08:33 It is. It is. And you know, the releasing of, it's very interesting because, you know, Trump wanted to release a lot of papers and one of them was going to be the JFK assassination. And he's like, ah, I don't think I would release this So we have to wonder what is actually in those papers? Uh, the connection between it, you know, the the the government and the mob is is well documented. Um Where do you want to begin? How does this ball start rolling? Well real quick. Let me before I get in that

Starting point is 00:09:03 Do you find it absolutely insane that they couldn't take out Castro? I mean, you think about how small this Island is and what they had in the CIA, the mob, everybody's trying to take this guy out and nobody was able to do it. He died. It's like whack a mole, you know, where you,, where you keep on hitting, try to hit the mole. And that's why these papers that I was talking about that came available about five years ago,

Starting point is 00:09:33 they provide a lot of insight about how Castro put in informants and double agents, not only in Cuba, where he was, but he also planted them in Florida so that he knew a lot of what was going on in Florida in the attempts to kill him. He was a lucky bastard, there's no two ways about that. For sure, dude. He definitely was.

Starting point is 00:10:00 But what we didn't know in these papers that became available, that had been confidential for 40 years, 50 years, is just how much they became aware. There's one particular guy at the CIA, a guy named Bill Harvey. He was kind of described as the James Bond of the CIA. But he was a smart. he was a very smart spy. And he got involved in this overseeing this project

Starting point is 00:10:32 after a couple of failed attempts. And they brought him in. And he definitely had his suspicions about certain people and whether or not they were double agents. And there's a lot of conflicting loyalties and, and interests, uh, in this story. And so, um, you know, these papers help, uh, explain that.

Starting point is 00:10:55 It's, it's, it's absolutely insane. So, so we get into, where, where the, so where do you want to begin? Cause I've been reading a lot of books on a Kennedy assassination, Meyer Lansky and all that stuff. And so, so where would you, where do you want to begin? Cause I've been reading a lot of books on a Kennedy assassination, Meyer Lansky and all that stuff. And so where would you, where would you like to begin? Well, you know, I have to say, uh, my book, uh, has a ton of footnotes in the back of it. I spent my whole life as an investigative reporter. Uh, and so what I'm getting at is this is not a this is this is a true

Starting point is 00:11:26 conspiracy and there's a lot of documents that are cited. You know the Mafia spies is based upon FBI files. They're based upon court testimony. It's based upon Senate and House testimony. Johnny Roselli, for instance, testified. And he didn't say a lot, but enough that it provided. And so when you put all these pieces together, I have a huge writing outline when I put this together. And so, and as I said, many footnotes. So it's, like I said, it's a jigsaw puzzle. And you can actually get a much better understanding

Starting point is 00:12:06 of what was motivating people and all the different contradictions and conflicting motivations. But it also provided, to me, a real interesting analysis of the two characters themselves, the two men, the two gangsters. In many ways, I don't know if you ever saw that movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sund characters themselves, the two men, the two gangsters. In many ways, I don't know if you ever saw that movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but fundamentally Mafia Spies is a buddy movie.

Starting point is 00:12:32 It's two very different type of gangsters, and I'd be happy to explain that. I mean, Sam Gene Conda was big pals with Frank Sinatra. And I think this gets into a lot of Sinatra's world, the Rat Pack and such. Johnny Roselli, who was not as well known as Sam Jean, but much more fascinating. I mean, he was a guy.

Starting point is 00:12:57 He was like a Casanova guy in Hollywood. And this was a man who dated beautiful women out there. By day, he's working with the studio heads to fix labor contracts and get rid of troublesome people from the studio heads in Hollywood. But at night, he's going out with people like Lana Turner, who was a big beauty from that time period, a very well-known actress.

Starting point is 00:13:27 He went out with, he knew Marilyn Monroe very well. He went out with Donna Reed, which is the one, I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, It's a Wonderful Life, but what is she doing with this bad boy, Johnny Roselli? But he was a very handsome guy, and he was a guy that just women really were attracted to. And one of the women that he is introduced to,

Starting point is 00:13:53 that he actually lives in the same apartment place out in Los Angeles during this time period, we're talking about the 40s, Johnny lived in a place called the Garden of Allah, which was this place in Los Angeles, kind of like this condominium place, with a big pool and a lot of young people, a lot of actresses, actors, and the resident mafia guy, Johnny Roselli, who was working with the studios.

Starting point is 00:14:20 And he was introduced to a woman named Judy Campbell, who later became known as Judith Exner. That was her married name. But during that time period, during the 50s, she was known as Judy Campbell. She meets Johnny and through Johnny she meets Frank Sinatra, goes out with him. She goes out and then she, Judy meets a young senator who's running for president. His name is John F. Kennedy and she begins a two-year affair with him in 1960 and it carries on to the time period which Kennedy was president. We know that because there are logged, you know, the inscriptions in the log at the White House that have been

Starting point is 00:15:07 counted of telephone calls between the Kennedy's office and Judy Campbell. And so Judy Campbell is part of Johnny's world as well, and she plays a real big part in Mafia Spies. Wow. And she plays a real big part in mafia spies. Wow. I mean, I mean, if you even look at like Marilyn Monroe, like she was like at the time of her death, she was like with several different guys and one of them was one of the mafia heads and, but then she started dating a Russian spine. I think that's where she gets in trouble.

Starting point is 00:15:43 But she's like, she's, with all these major politicians, it's like crazy to me. And then imagine if you're a young actress and you move into apartment complex or whatever it is, and then there is a mafia, like the head of the mafia live in there. That's gotta be nuts, dude. That's got to be nuts.

Starting point is 00:16:03 Crazy. Yeah, there's a scene in Mafia Spies where Marilyn is at a place called Cal Neva, which was a resort right on the California-Nevada line. That's why they call it Cal Neva. And it was owned ostensibly by Frank Sinatra. Secretively, it was owned by Sam Gene Conner. Gene Conner was banned, as was a number of gangsters, from having any interest directly in casinos in Nevada, in Las Vegas.

Starting point is 00:16:38 So they got around it. And Sinatra said, oh, no, I wasn't involved. Gene Conner wasn't involved. Gene Cotter wasn't involved. But there was a weekend shortly before Monroe's death where she was out there with them. And this is a time period before Me Too, all this stuff, like in the last five years. And where women, even accomplished actresses by that point, like Marilyn Monroe, were still very much treated as kind of playthings among the controlling men.

Starting point is 00:17:16 And so what happened in that weekend out at Cal Neve is still not very clear. But you know, it's the involvement of Gene Conner in that world. I think what he was trying to do was somehow compromise things even further with Marilyn Monroe, the same way they were already doing with Judy Campbell. The whole idea was to get something on Kennedy. The fact that JFK had an involvement, a very clear involvement with Judy Campbell,

Starting point is 00:17:52 that was dynamite. And there were a number of people by that point who were aware of that relationship. And in fact, Sam Gene Kanna started to court and go out and date Judy Campbell as well. And that's how the FBI finds out about this relationship involving Judy Campbell, the president of the United States, and one of the top gangsters, arguably the top gangster

Starting point is 00:18:23 in the United States, same Gene Kana. So, so I've always had this theory and this is not to get too far from your book and the show. But, you know, if you look at the most of your mafia, they're, they're very, they all have a Catholic base. And if you study, yeah, yeah, yeah. They have a Catholic base. That's why I said Xavier, right? Xavier. I said your name.

Starting point is 00:18:50 That's why Jesuit school is Catholic, dude. He's, oh, yes, very much. I went to Fordham, the Jesuit school, and I went to St. Anthony's high school. So Xavier just went to the border and he snuck over. So he's here with us today. And there you go. Good.

Starting point is 00:19:06 Good for you. Hey, TJ's got a nice public school. Yeah. So, so, and then you study like, I mean, this gets a little into the conspiratorial side, but you know, you study like where a lot of the Nazis went. They went to the Vatican and you know, you have operation, uh, uh, the operation paperclip. There we go. Thank you, Xavier.

Starting point is 00:19:28 And where they brought a lot of these, these people over, which, you know, a lot of the Nazis over which events, eventually the OSS, which was the intelligence agency before the CIA becomes a CIA, and I've always said that it's like, it's kind of like two sides of the same coin in some weird kind of way where it's like they're almost hand in hand almost. If we look at all the stories of like, you know, George Bush and drugs being smuggled into the country. And then it turns out it's like they're using that money to, you know, fund Iran Contra

Starting point is 00:19:59 and all that stuff. It's just interesting how it's, it's, it's step by step together. Hey guys, real quick. I want to tell you that again, that my special is dropping October 15th. Why is everybody getting quiet? And the reason I'm telling you that right now, because our good friends at Wise Wolf Gold and Silver help sponsor the whole special they gave us. And they helped chipped in and the cost of a doing it. I can't thank them enough. And I really want to tell you about my good friends at Wise Wolf, gold and silver. If you're paying any attention, you know that the D dollarization is real.

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Starting point is 00:21:51 My question to you is because you know, it's like the CIA technically at one point, I don't know where it is right today, you know, couldn't do, couldn't, was seen as law enforcement and they, you know, they're not supposed to operate on American soil. So again, they have to kind of have these weird kind of cutouts where, at least that's the rule, whether they follow it or not, I don't know. So it's like, you know, they have something like a mob, you know, whether it's the Mexican cartels, the Italian mob, the Irish mob, the Jewish mob, there's several different versions of these mobs. of versions of these mobs.

Starting point is 00:22:27 Um, where, where does the Genesis of this connection, do you know, between Sam and the CIA begin? How do they know he's the guy to do it? It really starts with a guy who is a cutout for the CIA, a guy named Robert Mayhew. And, uh, Robert Mayhew got to know Johnny Roselli and it was through Johnny Roselli that he was introduced to Sam Giancana. So that's how Giancana gets involved to answer your question directly. Just to pull back though a little bit further you know kind of so people understand back then then, the CIA, these were guys that went to Princeton, they went to Yale.

Starting point is 00:23:11 They didn't want to get involved in getting the blood on their hands directly like that. So they were told by the president, Eisenhower, to get rid of Castro, to saw him off. That was the phrase. Everybody speaks in euphemisms here. And so it was their job to get rid of him. So how do you do that without directly getting

Starting point is 00:23:38 part of the, you know, any members of the CIA directly involved in murdering somebody? And bear in mind, just a step one step further back, back in the early days of the world, back in World War II, we really did not have an intelligence agency. That was something that was created called the Office of Strategic Services, I believe it was, OSS. The OSS.

Starting point is 00:24:04 Truman, who became president right at the end of World War II, decided, we don't want to do that. And there was a big debate within the government about whether or not we should have an intelligence agency. Believe it or not, there was a guy named Stimson, who was the Secretary of State who said said just earlier to that point, gentlemen do not read other gentleman's mail. You know, that basically he was saying that we don't need, that's really not the type of thing that diplomats should be involved. Now, of course, that's laughable, that view, but that was our stance.

Starting point is 00:24:40 You know, somebody like Winston Churchill, that's laughable. He absolutely believed in this power and the need for good spying. And the Russians, oh my god, they, you know, they, they obviously, as we know right now, but you know, their, their dependence upon spying, their belief in spying goes way back, goes back more than 100 years from where we are right now. So they have a long history. So the Brits, so do many other people. We were the oddity in saying, oh, we don't think so.

Starting point is 00:25:14 So they decided to create the OSS. They did it. But then Truman, at the end of World War II, ends OSS. Unilaterally says, thanks, everybody. You did a great job, that's it. And for two years we didn't have any intelligence agency and then they realized by 47, oh we've have to, we really do need this. And um also because the Russians were finding out about nuclear secrets and such and there was a lot of concerns there. But even when we had the early days of

Starting point is 00:25:46 the CIA, it was all about intelligence gathering. In other words, we would spy and collect data and develop sources and such, but we were not actively engaged in covert actions. And that's where Maf where mafia spies comes into place in 1959 1960 what they saw as an existential crisis with castro They saw that you know bear in mind these guys like Alan Dulles who was running the CIA He had been involved in World War two. Yeah all these guys they said, geez, you know, if we had gotten Hitler in the early days, before World War II started, or in the early days, if we had gotten him, you know, would the world have been a much different place, would millions of lives been saved? And so, cut to like 20 years

Starting point is 00:26:41 later, Alan Dulles now running the CIA. They're looking at Castro as almost that type of threat. A guy 90 miles away from Florida who's sucking up to the Russians basically, and the idea of nuclear weapons. And also the Russians had developed the Sputnik satellite in 1957. And that sent shivers down the spine of policymakers in Washington, because we thought

Starting point is 00:27:15 we were way ahead of the Russians. And now they're the first one in space. The idea of a nuclear bomb on the top of a satellite like Sputnik, that's scared the bejesus out of everybody. So getting rid of Castro was a super high priority, first for President Eisenhower, and then the Kennedys, they inherit these plans and they pursue it very vigorously themselves.

Starting point is 00:27:46 Yeah. And the thought of like Russia putting nukes in Cuba or missiles in Cuba, scared the crap out of everybody. And it was a giant threat, which is so nuts because we have patients everywhere. I mean, like, but we were going to get some of our own medicine right there. And they didn't want that at all. I mean, like, but we were going to get some of our own medicine right there. And they didn't want that at all. I I'm just shocked that Island 90, 90 miles from our coast is like such

Starting point is 00:28:11 a different vibe than right here. It's, it just does amaze me. And because he, he was communist, he got, he got embargoed and they were shut down right there. And, and, you know, you have operation, uh, uh, North woods, which is the story of, you know, basically they wanted to frame Fidel Castro as causing a war and shooting on a plane. That was the link they were going to go to, to try to get that guy out.

Starting point is 00:28:37 And it ended up not happening because Kennedy vetoed it, but like that, that's how they saw it. Like how we see our, our media and how our, our, our, our state department and the Pentagon paint some of these people on, uh, you know, in Russia and in, in the Middle East is how they were looking at, uh, Fidel Castro as, you know, the boogeyman that we had to get rid of. And it's very crazy to me, dude, cause it's such a tiny, tiny, tiny island. And, uh, the, the links in which they would go to to get rid of them and the fact that they

Starting point is 00:29:09 didn't is just so shocking. It's still like it's amazing to me that never happened. Well, you know, the world was a different place back then in a couple of respects. First of all, the fear of nuclear weapons. I'm old enough to remember when kids were taught to put your head under the desk, and the whole idea we would have some type of air raids, and there would be bomb shelters,

Starting point is 00:29:41 and we talk about tin hats and whatever, but there really was a lot of conspiracy not conspiracy but paranoia back in the early 60s about having and it was well placed the paranoia it was a lot of fear public fear people would build bomb shelters in their backyards you know I think you could actually get that from like Sears or what, you know, like today, Home Depot, you go to Home Depot instead of, you know, the snow blower or whatever. I'll have that bomb shelter there and put it in my backyard. And that's that type of atmosphere back in the 60s in that regard.

Starting point is 00:30:21 Also the press was very different back then. You know, the press was all-male, all white male fundamentally. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That sounds like the glory days to me. Go on. Well, you know, a lot of those guys, and I worked for some of those guys, you know, as a young reporter, I know they came of age in the military everybody had served in World War two. So they were used to saluting and They were used to understanding. There's a general and there's a colonel and a sergeant We're all privates, you know and all that type of stuff. And so they

Starting point is 00:31:04 And so they, there was more trust also in the government. And, and that was a good thing. Generally speaking. That's a great point. That's a really great point. And you could say that in society as like everybody used to join the military. All the men would join the military at some point and they would come back with that kind of military discipline that they applied to society. And we don't necessarily, I mean, more and more people, I mean, all the men would join the military at some point and they would come back with that kind of military discipline that they applied to society.

Starting point is 00:31:27 And we don't necessarily, I mean, more and more people, they're having trouble meeting their numbers and we can get into why that's happening. I have my own personal opinions. Yeah. That's a whole other subject, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you know, so, uh, that's a really great point.

Starting point is 00:31:42 I've never even thought about that. But like the discipline that comes from the, you know, World War II, everybody's, you know, everybody was in the military coming back. Now they're in the workforce and they're just applying that kind of military discipline to everything they're doing. That's a great point. That was really good.

Starting point is 00:31:59 Well, you know, I think that's one of those things where it's hard to imagine by today's standards, because we've had between Watergate, Vietnam, the Iraq War, going into a war where there really wasn't any real basis to it, and all the disinformation that we have received, particularly from people like the Russians, who this was like a new toy for them in the last five or seven years, their ability to get onto social media and puts disinformation involved in campaigns and things of that nature. These are, that's like a whole new, whole new spying tool for the Russians, and other countries as well.

Starting point is 00:32:49 So it's a different time and place. But what's important, I think, particularly for today, is that Mafia spies represents the first time that the United States got into the assassination game, if you will. In other words, instead of just saying we're going to collect information on the Russians and any other adversaries, what we will also do is get involved in covert action. And we had been involved in the 50s in some degrees, and trying to influence elections and whatever. But in 1959, 60, the word coming down from Eisenhower

Starting point is 00:33:31 and then from Kennedy's is to get rid of Castro. It was covert that we would go in many ways, attempts to try to kill Castro. And now we are in the killing games. Now we are in the killing games. Now we're in the world of assassination. So the CIA is not only involved in collecting information, but now they're essentially overseeing killing, assassination.

Starting point is 00:33:58 And that was a big rubicon. It was a big fence to jump over for a lot of people. Obviously, as I mentioned, the guys who were running the CIO, we don't want to have any blood on our hands. So they hired this guy, Bob Mayhew, who had been a cutout, who actually went to Holy Cross at a Jesuit school. And he claimed later on that he had to go home

Starting point is 00:34:25 and he had to think about whether or not he wanted to be involved with this. And I describe it at length in my book, Mafia Spice, but he goes home, he puts on the stereo, has a few drinks and thinks about whether or not he should get involved in trying to kill a foreign leader on behalf of the CIA and eventually decides, yes, I'll do it.

Starting point is 00:34:46 As I mentioned, I think they all had that Hitler idea that in other words, if Castro was such a threat here like Hitler, and if we can take him out now, we would save ourselves a lot of agony later on. He would save the world. And so he goes ahead and who's going to do it for them? So Mayu had met. Mayu was working for a guy named Howard Hughes, kind of like the Elon Musk of his time period.

Starting point is 00:35:16 Howard Hughes was the richest man in America. And Mayu worked for him. He was kind of, he did a lot of odd jobs for him. And one of the jobs was one time Howard Hughes wanted to get, on very short notice, wanted to get a place in Las Vegas to stay. He was dating an actress named Ava Gardner, who later on gets married to Frank Sinatra.

Starting point is 00:35:43 And Howard Hughes wasn't thrilled about that. In fact, he had Robert Mayhew actually spy on, monitor Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner as part of his job. But Mayhew also did jobs for the, he had been in the FBI, but he did a lot of jobs for the CIA. He did odd jobs for the CIA. And so they, the CIA approached Mayhew and said, do you know anybody that can help us? And he said, yeah, you know, I know this guy, Johnny Roselli,

Starting point is 00:36:21 who's a mobster out in Las Vegas, who, when Howard Hughes wanted to get a hotel room at short notice, I called around and I was told that Johnny Rosselli is the guy who makes things happen in Las Vegas, that if anybody can get a big suite for Mr. Hughes, Howard Hughes, on short notice, it would be Johnny Roselli. So that begins the relationship between Bob Mayhew and Johnny Roselli. And the CIA considers it, and they first approach Roselli about it.

Starting point is 00:36:56 Roselli is a guy who is an illegal alien, illegal, I shouldn't use that phrase, I guess, illegal immigrant into this country. He and his mother had immigrated from Italy to Boston. And Johnny, his name was Filippo Sacco. That was his real name, Filippo Sacco. And he changes. Johnny changes his name. He was involved in some type of crimes in Boston,

Starting point is 00:37:26 and he goes to Chicago, and that's how he gets involved with the Chicago mob. But Johnny, he thinks of himself as a patriot, and he says, yeah, okay. The CIA offered him something like $150,000. Oh, at at that time that's even more money. A shitload of money. Yeah. Back then, you know, it was like, you know, easily about 1.5 million, 2 million by today's dollars to kill Castro.

Starting point is 00:37:57 Now bear in mind, they're already upset. The mafia is already upset because they had a big time casinos down in Havana. You know, back then, people didn't go to Las Vegas during the winter months. If you lived in New York, they would go down to Havana. That's where all the entertainers, Tony Bennett, Sinatra, they would go down to Havana. And it was like, it was a playground for the mob. They owned everything. In fact, Meyer Lansky was the head of tourism for the for the

Starting point is 00:38:25 Cuban government there. He was oversaw that. It was like a perfect world for the mafia back then. And so in comes Fidel Castro leading a revolution from the hills out in the mountains and he takes over and he says he throws the mob out so the mob like I mentioned before they really want to get rid of Castro and so Rosselli was very receptive said you don't have to pay me $150,000 I'll do it for free And you know, I'm a patriot. In fact, Johnny Rosselli was

Starting point is 00:39:08 Born on the 4th of July, no less. So he did that, but he said, I have to get the okay from my boss, who is his longtime pal, Sam Giancana. And Giancana thinks about it and basically says, yeah, okay, I'll get involved in it. And so there's a big meeting that takes place around March of 1960 at the Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami Beach, which I don't know if you've ever seen, I think it's Goldfinger, the James Bond movie. And that movie begins with an aerial shot of this, the Fountain Blue Hotel, which is this big, white, beautiful, very stylish, very 60s type of building. And they have the big giant pool. And in fact, the beginning of the James Bond movie,

Starting point is 00:40:00 they come in on a helicopter. And then you see somebody on the diving board when diving boards used to be like 12 feet high. Somebody does a double flip and they go right into the pool. Well, that's where in, in, in March of 1960, they, uh, Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, uh, they meet with the CIA and Johnny and Sam bring along another mobster, a guy who speaks Spanish, a guy who would deal with them, help them run the Havana casinos when they were running them in Cuba, who also spoke Spanish. His name was Santo Traficante and

Starting point is 00:40:40 he was like the head of the mafia in Tampa. He also worked with Meyer Lansky. So the perfect mob name, by the way, traffic. I don't traffic. And let me tell you, you don't want to fool around with this guy. Because he, you know, he, he wasn't a D's and DOS type of guy. He was a second generation mobster. He had a bow tie. He had glasses even more nerdy than my glasses.

Starting point is 00:41:12 He looked like the accountant. He didn't look like a mobster, but he was really sharp. He was very much a killer. And he was involved in a very complicated way in this whole story. And I think in the last in terms of the last man standing in my story, there are two. There's one is Castro, but the other one is Santo Tropicante. So that was something that I didn't really

Starting point is 00:41:46 realize coming into the story, but as I did more and more research and particularly as I got those documents, I could see that they had suspicions that Santo Traficante would turn out to be a double agent. And so that, yeah, that was a big part of the story. Hey guys, real quick, man. I want to tell you about our good friends at arena club. Listen, as a kid,

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Starting point is 00:43:12 quite a lot of money. It's a ton of fun. I also have quite a few of the cards in my collection on there. You can go check me out. I searched my name Johnny Woodard on Arena Club. I'm on there all the time. Love it. Great servers. Arena Club Slap Packs are revolutionizing the repack game with transparency. After your pulls are revealed, they'll immediately be placed in your showroom for safekeeping, selling, trading or auction. The Arena Club grading process is accurate, fast and transparent with a full grade rationale provided and explanation

Starting point is 00:43:46 of how your card was scored. Whether you're buying, selling, trading, or displaying, Arena Club is the card collecting platform you have to check out. So listen, right now Arena Club has given us a great deal. Right now you can get 10% off your first slab pack or card purchase by going to arenaclub.com slash tinfoil and use the code tinfoil that's arenaclub.com slash tinfoil code tinfoil for 10% off your first purchase. Yeah, guys, real quick again, I just want to remind you that, that, uh,

Starting point is 00:44:21 why is everybody getting quiet is dropping October 15th. So Sam trippley comm and rumble comm and this weekend I will be in Louisville at the murder circus comedy and in mid November at Tulsa, Oklahoma at the looney-ben Anything else guys? Hit that like button subscribe go to XG marks the spot on YouTube for a skank fest vlog. That's out now now marks the spot on YouTube for a skank fest vlog that's out now now check out uh new broken sin we talk about russell brand and all the weirdness around him i don't know what to make of it but neither does sam check it out though okay i just want to say that this just enforces what i've always believed is that everything was better when the mob ran it. Right? I mean, if you look at Cuba, everything was flourishing. Vegas, I'm sorry, dude, I just went to Vegas. These

Starting point is 00:45:12 banks are nickel-ing and diming us on everything. $25 to go eat dinner at the Caesar's Palace for the valet. Back in the day, they would give you that so it's interesting that you know they had Meyer Lansky who is like a very interesting uh personality running there like tourism like that's right right easy to me was that nominal or did he actually have a was that just him skimming or was was that an actual effective role was was he the tourism thing oh Lansky. Yeah, he was very actively involved. In fact, the top official hotel. Well, he ran the net the Hotel Nacional in Havana. He built it. And it was his and if you can still go down there. In fact, my wife and

Starting point is 00:46:01 I we went down to Cuba as part of the research, and there's still a big floor show at the Hotel Nacional. If you guys, if you go onto YouTube, I actually put some of the video from that floor show just onto my web page there, just because it was so much fun. It was so retro too, you know, it was really from the, it was like, I mean, that whole, Havana even to this day looks like it's still stuck in the 1950s, 1960s. But yeah, Lansky, in fact, if you ever watch The Godfather, there, if Godfather II, the second one,

Starting point is 00:46:41 there's a guy named Hyman Roth, I believe the name of the character is. Yeah. And there's a scene in Godfather 2 where they have all the mobsters and their old gathering in Cuba and Michael Corleone is there and they roll out a big cake and the cake is in the shape of Cuba and they literally start carving up the cake as if the same way they were carving up Cuba itself and you know we have three clips that from the Godfather saga that appear in Mafia Spies Mafia Spies is produced by Paramount as was the Godfather. Oh, perfect. That works. Yeah. And so there's three clips.

Starting point is 00:47:26 In fact, the guy, there's a number of recreations in Mafia Spies. And the guy who plays Johnny Roselli, Nick Anunziata, he was in The Sopranos. He was in six episodes of The Sopranos. So in terms of our mob bona fides, I think we have some pretty good, you know, between the three clips from The Godfather

Starting point is 00:47:52 and Johnny Roselli character played by somebody who was in The Sopranos, I kind of like that. I think it was kind of poetic justice as part of it. But yeah, I mean, back in the day, Lansky ran everything down there. And, um, you know, just to get back to what I was saying about the fountain blue, cause I know we go off and on, you know, I go, the story

Starting point is 00:48:13 has a lot of, a lot of rabbit holes. And we're all about it. But with the, so it's here we are. Really the beginning of the story is at the Fountain Blue Hotel, where they all get together. Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, Santo Traficante, and Robert Mayhew, the cutout, and a CIA agent. And they meet at the Fountain Blue Hotel. What I always liked that was also that same time period,

Starting point is 00:48:40 that same weekend, Sinatra was down there. And he's palling around with Sam, G and Conner and why is Sinatra down there? Well they were filming a TV show with Elvis Presley so there's actually if you go on to YouTube there's actually a video of Sinatra and Elvis Presley singing together. I've seen that video. That's down at the Fountain Blue Hotel. Oh wow. Uh, at the same weekend that Sinatra is hanging out with Giancana.

Starting point is 00:49:13 Who's planning to kill Castro with the CIA. Now that is an amazing group, uh, you know, uh, of, uh, circumstances there. So, so Castro had a spy in this ring that was planning on assassinating him? Well, we're, you know, Tropicante is somebody that you could almost do a whole program about, because when Castro takes over the government, they arrest Tropicante. And Tropicante had a kind of a mob attorney. In fact, he later wrote a book about himself called Mob Lawyer, so not being unfair to him.

Starting point is 00:49:52 And they somehow got Tropicante out of jail in Cuba. When everybody else was either lined up with firing squads or somehow were never seen from again. Somehow Tropicante got out and so and that's before this meeting at the Fountain Blue Hotel. So there was always a question you know bear in mind Tropicante his big business was not only Bolita which was like this game of chance with balls that that people would do in Tampa and other type of things that the mafia does. But narcotics was the big thing for the mafia

Starting point is 00:50:33 and for Traficante. And if you wanted the flow of narcotics into this country coming into the Florida area through the Caribbean, you had to have the cooperation of the Cuban government. Whoever was in charge of Cuba, you need especially with Castro. So was Traficante a devil agent, or did he develop those conflicting loyalties?

Starting point is 00:51:01 So at this meeting at the Fountain Blue Hotel, he's presenting himself as a mafia guy who wants to get rid of Castro. So he's playing one end of the candle. He's lighting that. But on the other hand, he's apparently involved with narcotics and needs the help of Castro's people in some way. And this is not my speculation.

Starting point is 00:51:29 It's not only the speculation, shall we say, of the top CIA guy, a guy named Bill Harvey, who when they're not having any success killing Castro, they bring in Bill Harvey, the James Bond, as they call him, of the CIA, to kind of oversee things. And he's the one in these documents that I saw that only became available within the last five years or so, where it's really clear that Harvey has got a lot of doubts

Starting point is 00:52:00 about Traficante. He believes that Roseli is sincere and that Roseli is a patriot and that he definitely wants to get rid of Castro. But Traficante is involved in some of these other plans to get rid of Castro, poisons, for instance. And they don't work out the way that they're supposed to. So Harvey has his doubts about traffic Conti and that's reflected

Starting point is 00:52:32 in some of these documents. You got to be absolutely crazy to cross both the mob and the CIA. Even this CIA and its form where it's not necessarily aggressive and attacking even though this is the beginning of that. Like you said, it was like a little more of an observational than influencing outcomes. Well, you know, as I mentioned, I did books about the Kennedys. My first book, which was 20 years ago, was about how their Irish Catholic immigrant experience influenced the Kennedys. And we went to Ireland and that was one book. Then I did another book which was 20 years ago, was about how their Irish Catholic immigrant experience influenced the Kennedys.

Starting point is 00:53:06 And we went to Ireland, and that was one book. Then I did another book about the Churchills and the Kennedys 10 years later. But what I'm getting at is I was aware of these different books about the mob, Jinkana, conspiracies, who killed Kennedy, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my head would spin. And a lot of it I thought was pretty thin,

Starting point is 00:53:34 particularly as an investigative reporter. Not everything. And I don't want to cast aspersions on other people's work. But what I'm getting at with Mafia Spies is I always keep the focus on the two gangsters. They're my window into this, you know, like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz where they open up, you know, and suddenly it's all color. They open up, you know, the doorway. Dorothy comes in. That's kind of like the doorway for me in this, in a sense

Starting point is 00:54:07 that I wanted to tell the story of these two guys, but they're the window as I go through all these different worlds. Because, and I think that helps make it understandable to people. I think that's, in terms of my book, I think that's the thing that is the best thing about it, is that you can follow all this complicated stuff, and it makes sense because partly I'm always keeping it in the window of these two characters, Johnny Roselli and Sam G. Kana, and not going off on, or just dumping my notebook

Starting point is 00:54:44 on the page. And I think, you know, we tried to do that as well with Mafia Spies. It was done by showrunners, Tom, Donnie Yu, and Alon Arboleda. And they were working with Danny Strong, who is a very accomplished producer, writer as well, an actor as well and so but they kind of did the same thing. They followed the two gangsters. I think that makes it different

Starting point is 00:55:17 than other documentaries or even other history books where you know all the notes are thrown in, you have the talking heads I Always wanted to follow these two guys and the fact that they were two very different men Made it really interesting to me as well and that's streaming on paramount right now So I know I keep on saying it but yeah, it's on paramount and showtime If you go to showtime on demand, they showed it on Showtime throughout the month of August. They started in late July through August.

Starting point is 00:55:52 Oh, there we are. And so it's a six-part series. So it's a docu-series. Exactly. And it has recreations in it, but it follows the two gangsters. There's another documentary that I'm aware of that was done on another platform. It's a terrific documentary, but it's a very traditional documentary series with talking heads.

Starting point is 00:56:18 In fact, some of the people that are in Mafia Spies are in that as well. What's different about Mafia Spies is it's really more a narrative about the two guys. There are, there are, there we are, there are entry into this whole world, these two guys. And particularly in my book, I make a big effort to do it almost as a biography of these two men. And so, you know, the fact that that when I say they're very different men,

Starting point is 00:56:49 they were both gangsters. They were both killers. But I was really intrigued by Sam Gene Conner, who was a guy who was put in as the head of the mafia and told, keep your profile low. Don't attract any attention to yourself. Look at Al Capone. Al Capone was like John Gotti, a big braggart.

Starting point is 00:57:17 And he got his name in the newspapers. And what happened? It was attracted, the FBI. And eventually, Capone goes to jail on a tax fraud charge. And it really burned a lot of people in Chicago, mobsters, who said, nothing like this again. So Gene Kahn, if you're going to run for us, we want you to stay low.

Starting point is 00:57:39 And the reason why they liked Gene Kahn initially, because he was a married guy. He had a house out in the suburbs. He used to mow his own lawn out there. He had three daughters, teenage daughters. And then something terrible happened in Gene Kanna's life. His wife, who he adored, he was one of these guys. You know, you ever hear that phrase, Madonna whore?

Starting point is 00:58:03 Yes. You know, men who either, they either idolize, usually their wives, or they have a girlfriend on the side, or you know, it's a Guamara on the side, and this Madonna whore type of view of men towards women, not that I'm endorsing it, of course, but you know, I'm just trying to describe it. And that's what Giancana was like.

Starting point is 00:58:27 And then his wife dies. And now he's bachelor mobster father with three teenage daughters. And life is completely out of control for him. And in fact, his oldest daughter is a real hellion, as they say. She's a real cut upup and she's now 88, almost 90 years old. She's in Mafia Spies. She's without doubt the funniest person

Starting point is 00:58:53 in Mafia Spies. She's very funny. She talks about how she had the hots for Johnny Roselli. And but she was a real handful for Sam Jean, and he kind of winds up going hanging out in Las Vegas with his old pal, Johnny Roselli. And when he's out there in Las Vegas, he meets an actress, not an actress, a singer, by the name of Phyllis McGuire. She was part of one of the biggest singing acts

Starting point is 00:59:23 on television and all around the country, the McGuire sisters. And she was like the big one of the biggest singing acts on television and all around the country, the McGuire sisters, and she was like the lead sister. And she falls in love with Sam Gene Conner. And suddenly Gene Conner is in the papers all the time and he's hanging out with Sinatra. And in Chicago, all the old gangsters, the older guys who had given him this power, the consulares of the mafia, particularly a guy named Tony Ocardo, they looked at this thing. What the hell is Sam Gene Kana doing in Las Vegas hanging out? He's in the paper all this time. We don't need this type of publicity. You know, and so that's Gene Kana. And as I mentioned before,

Starting point is 01:00:07 Johnny was a different type of guy. He was married for about 10 minutes. He married an actress who probably thought it was a good career move to get married to Johnny because of his closeness with the studio heads and such. There's, there is a number of accounts that suggest that Roselli, for instance, was involved in helping Sinatra get a very key role in a movie because Johnny Roselli was very close to Harry Cohn, who was the head of Columbia Pictures, and he also knew

Starting point is 01:00:47 a number of other studio heads. So Rosselli was just a different type of guy. He was the smooth guy who dated all these different women but he also liked women. He really loved women in a Casanova type of way. And so it was very different. These were two different guys, a guy who liked to be married, and his wife dies, and he's kind of lost at sea, and things are not going well. That same Gene Conner. And Rosselli, who is the smoothie that

Starting point is 01:01:21 is able to get all dressed up. He had his own tailors in Beverly Hills that he would go to. He was dressed to the nines. Handsome guy. Literally, he was known as Handsome Johnny. So the idea of these two guys in one big adventure story was to me a real interesting buddy movie. So let me ask you, was there any actual attempt at taking out Castro by any of these guys? Did it, did we actually have a moment where they went green light go and the, they went for it, whether it was gunmen, assassins, poisoning.

Starting point is 01:02:05 I know you mentioned poisoning earlier. Was there any one shot where they're like, oh, we took our shot. It didn't happen. Any time like that. Well, there was a lot of attempts to kill Castro. In fact, when he visited New York, there were plans to try to get rid of him. In terms of my two guys, Sam, Gene, Kana, and Roselli, there were a couple of different things that went on.

Starting point is 01:02:30 They would definitely, when they had that meeting at the Fountain Blue Hotel, the CIA says, and Mayu said as well, they cut out and said, you know what we should do, you guys should do is get these machine guns and just shoot them and whatever. And Sam Gene kind of said, wait a minute, that's not the way we do it. The way we would do it is poison the guy. And this way we don't have any fingerprints.

Starting point is 01:02:57 If you go into Cuba with guns blazing, you're not going to come out, most likely. Or that's a suicide mission for people. Whereas if they said, look, we still know people in Cuba from the days that we were running the casinos and if they get close enough to Castro, we think we can poison them. That's what Giancana is pushing for. And Traficante says, yeah, I know somebody that can do it for us. And so the CIA has a guy named Sidney Gottlieb and he runs a lab for the CIA that specializes in all these James Bond methods of killing people. Yeah, all these types of, in fact, the Kennedys liked this.

Starting point is 01:03:41 And the Kennedys would look at some of these James Bond movies, and then the word would come down within the CIA from Alan Dulles and others saying, hey, this is a James Bond movie. Do you think we could come up with a killing device like this? But this guy Gottlieb that I'm talking about, he develops pills that are able to be put in different places.

Starting point is 01:04:07 They had one woman who went with, been a former lover of Castro. Oh, that's who you get. Ex-girlfriends. Marita Lorenz. And there's a big scene that's in Mafia Spies, both the, you know, my book and, and the TV show where Marida Lorenz goes back down to Florida on the pretense that she wants to get back with Casho.

Starting point is 01:04:29 And they're in the hotel room together. And she goes into the bathroom. The moment of glory is about to happen here in a hotel room between the two of them. And she excuses herself. She goes into the bathroom. And in a jar of cold cream have been placed two or a couple of pellets of poison capsules. Unfortunately, the moisture

Starting point is 01:04:56 from the cold cream made the capsules that made them dissolve and so they were ruined and so she couldn't do anything about it and there's as she tells the story she comes back out and the way that she was acting Castro said you came here to kill me didn't you and he had a he had a gun on on the night table and he said well if you want to kill me there's a gun go ahead kill me and to her, instead what she does is she jumps into his arms and they make love instead of she killing him. She goes back to the United States shortly thereafter. And that was one of the more dramatic scenes of attempts to kill Castro that didn't work out. That's the most guy story I've ever heard in my life, by the way,

Starting point is 01:05:47 like someone's coming to assassinate. I know you're trying to kill me, baby. Yeah. But can I get laid real quick before we'll forgive it? I don't want to take it. Don't take this the wrong way, but, uh, so anyway, uh, put up that literally Castro literally said would right after that would, right? Yeah. Well, Castro had a great way of smelling out these things. He developed, with the help of the Russians, a really great spy network very quickly, very quickly.

Starting point is 01:06:20 And so he knew a lot of things that were happening or about to happen that he can anticipate. There was an attempt to, they knew that he liked to scuba dive. And so there was an attempt to put a CIA plan to put poison into a scuba outfit so that that would kill him. There were attempts to just get rid of some type of depilatory so that he would lose his beard and somehow he would be ridiculed in the eyes of his countrymen for losing his beards. Sorry, Xavier, I'm not trying to give anybody any ideas here. You too, right? Sam? So, but you know,

Starting point is 01:07:06 that, in a way, I think the most dramatic involving my two gangsters, particularly, is with Johnny Roselli. So you know, Johnny becomes really gung-ho. He's down there in the Florida Keys, he's training, helping the CIA train some of the Cuban exiles. And at one point, Johnny goes out in a group of boats in the middle of the night, and they're loaded with arms. And they're going to meet somebody, people in Cuba, waiting for them.

Starting point is 01:07:37 And as they get to the shoreline, and bear in mind, I don't know how familiar you folks are with that area, but as I mentioned, it's 90 miles from Key West to Florida. And those waters are pretty swift. It's in the middle of the night. It's incredibly dark, as you can imagine. And so when they get to Cuba, when they get to the point,

Starting point is 01:08:01 suddenly these lights come on. And it's Castro's security people who are waiting for them. And they start firing at them. And in fact, Johnny is in one of those rubber boats, and it takes on water. Apparently, he was hit by a bulletin. And he had to jump out of the boat that he was in, and he got into another boat and they

Starting point is 01:08:26 wound up fleeing the site. But this is all an attempt to try to kill Castro. And that was that was something that was described by Rosalee and it was described by other people as well as part of my research for this. Well, I mean, so how do, how do you think this whole assassination thing affected like, cause right after this, what JFK comes, right? So how did that all affect, you know, the, the, the JFK investigation or, or, or the JFK project to, to assassinate JFK?

Starting point is 01:09:02 Well, Kennedy's, you know, we were talking about Catholics before. You know, I think the Kennedys, like a lot of Catholics, were really outraged by the communist world because even more so than Mussolini, for instance. Mussolini did not, he did not disassemble the church. But when the Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe after World War II, they uniformly took apart the church. And the Kennedys had a lot of connections.

Starting point is 01:09:38 They were, particularly their father, Joe Kennedy, who had been an ambassador, a very wealthy man, one of the wealthiest men, and really was the motor in the car for the Kennedys, if you will. He had very close connections with the Vatican. That was part of the first book I wrote about the Kennedys. I had access to Joe Kennedy's papers up at the JFK Library. And when you look at the Catholic background,

Starting point is 01:10:05 part of it was Joe Kennedy's connections to the Vatican. But the Catholics, a lot of Catholics were, they saw, particularly saw communism as a real threat to the church. And so the idea that now Cuba, which was essentially a Catholic country, was now in the hands of the communists, that was definitely part of the whole milieu,

Starting point is 01:10:31 the whole motivation of the Kennedys that time period. When JFK, though, gets killed, Johnson decides essentially to give up on Cuba. And he turns his attention quite faithfully to Vietnam. Our war against the spread of communism really shifts from Cuba to Vietnam after JFK's murder. The whole aspect of the JFK assassination comes up back in the 70s, when after Watergate,

Starting point is 01:11:11 the Senate is looking at the use that President Nixon, part of the Watergate scandal, was the misuse of the FBI and the CIA by Nixon. In fact, the Watergate break-in was done by a former CIA agent named E. Howard Hunt. But in any event, the Senate is looking at the CIA and they realize about this plan to kill Castro. And that's when all the stuff about Sam, G, and Connor comes up and about Johnny Roselli and also this woman named Judy Campbell who back in the 60s was all she was a party girl who was hanging out with the Rat Pack and Johnny Roselli and Sam

Starting point is 01:11:55 Giancana Sinatra and JFK but becomes president and all of that was a secret for 15 years Nobody in the United States knew about this until about 1975. And that's when the Senate finds it out. And they actually put it in a very small footnote in a report about this woman. And they don't even name her. And of course, the press by that point

Starting point is 01:12:21 is a different press than it was 15 years earlier. Woodward and Bernstein had broken the Watergate scandal so the press was all over it. There's a guy still alive his name is Seymour Hirsch. Fantastic. He's still going today. Still going today. Good luck. Good luck. Great. And he was breaking stories left and right about that. So were other. The Times was really, the New York Times was really on top of this. This is like in 1975, 76.

Starting point is 01:12:54 So they call Sam, Jeanne, and Roselle, they kind of reel them in, both of them, to testify. And Johnny talks initially, but he really doesn't say much. And he says, why are you bringing Judy Campbell's name into this? You know, she's a good girl. She's a nice girl, whatever. She's a sweet girl. You shouldn't be dragging her name into it.

Starting point is 01:13:20 But of course, she very much gets involved. Her name does become part of it. But they also subpoena Sam, Jean, and Connna. And the Senate sends out two investigators out to Chicago. And that same night that the investigators arrive, Sam, Jean, and Connna has a dinner at his house. And one of his daughters is there, a couple of other friends are there. They go home around 10 o'clock somewhere in

Starting point is 01:13:49 that hall bar. They go home and in Gene Connors house, it's out in the suburbs of Chicago, but he had like this man cave that he hung out in, so it's like a furnished apartment in the cellar, the basement of his home. And he had a kitchenette type of thing where he'd make himself a little dinner. And somehow, some way, somebody came in to this downstairs man cave of Jeanne Connors, and with a silencer, shoots Jeanne Connors six times. Mainly one in the back of the head, I believe it is. But most of the shots were around the mouth,

Starting point is 01:14:35 which is a mob way of saying, anybody who talks is going to wind up just like this guy. And so that's what happens with Jeanne Gene Kana. He's murdered in 75. And Gene Kana, and Johnny Roselli, obviously is really shaken by this. I mean, this is front page news when it happens. He witnessed in a Senate investigation, it's murdered. And so they decide by 1976 to call Johnny Roselli back. And Johnny Roselli, by this point, the FBI has learned the biggest secret in Johnny Roselli's

Starting point is 01:15:22 life, which is that he's here illegally, that his real name is Filippo Sacco. And in fact, the FBI agents come up to him and say, here's a picture, they actually were able to find a picture of him as a little kid and said, we know you're Filippo Sacco. And what that meant for Johnny was that he would be deported, thrown out of the country because he was here illegally. And they would do that to gangsters, that if they knew that they were here illegally, that was a way of throwing a gangster out, getting rid of a problem by throwing him out of the country.

Starting point is 01:15:57 And Johnny realized that if he gets thrown out of the country, he's definitely going to be dead. So Johnny goes to his lawyer, a very high priced lawyer, and he basically says, I have something to tell the committee about who killed JFK. He kind of like dangles that to the investigators. And so they make room for him to testify again. But before that happens, and then by this point,

Starting point is 01:16:30 Johnny's moved down to Florida. He's living. He's basically broke at this point. He's living with his sister down in Florida, her husband. And he tells her husband, he says, you know, I think I've got a target on my back and says that if I if I if I'm not if I wind up missing go look for my car in the airports and

Starting point is 01:16:57 That's what happens is that they usually leave when they they kill somebody they leave the car you know in like one of those big airport parking lots. And so Johnny goes missing. He went to play golf one day. He never comes back. He never comes back. And the brother-in-law goes looking for him. He goes to one airport, he's not there.

Starting point is 01:17:18 Then he goes to another airport, there's Johnny's car. So now they're really flipping out in the US Senate because here they not only had the one, they're one, the one guy, Sam Gene Kana killed in Chicago, but now here almost a year later, Johnny Roselli is murdered. And then what happens is they report a missing

Starting point is 01:17:46 and about two weeks later, not far from the Fountain Blue Hotel, believe it or not, in the waters in that area of Miami Beach, there's a 55 gallon barrel that comes bubbling up to the surface. And it's the chopped up body of Johnny Roselli. When the body's decaying like that, there's all these gases.

Starting point is 01:18:06 So whoever thought they were killing Johnny and putting him in a 55 gallon that would go down to the surface of the water was mistaken because with all those gases from the body, it raises the 55 gallon barrel. So they fish out, some local fisherman reports they sees this body part hanging out of a 55 gallon barrel. And so again, the Senate is all nuts about that there.

Starting point is 01:18:36 Oh my God, now we have two of our key witnesses that are murdered here who were going to tell us about the CIA to kill Castro, and maybe even more about what else was going on, perhaps even the Kennedy assassination. And what's interesting for me as an investigative reporter with this was both those murders of Gianni Roselli and Sam Gene Kana remain unsolved. But when you go back and you look at those murders of Johnny Roselli and Sam Gene Canna remain unsolved. But when you go back and you look at those murders,

Starting point is 01:19:09 with Gene Canna with the silencer, whoever it was that killed, there's a lot of debate about who killed Gene Canna in Chicago. Was it locally, or was it an imported killer, an assassin from out of town, if you will? Well, I think when you look at the silencer, what happened was, whoever killed Gene Kana must have heard the cops call. Because Gene Kana had housekeepers

Starting point is 01:19:33 in the upper part of the house. And they must have called the cops. The cops, whoever killed Castro, got in a car, but threw the gun with the silencer out a window, about a mile and a half from his house And it was recovered and when they traced the the silencer it went back to not Chicago It went back to Tampa, Florida the land of Santo Tropicante

Starting point is 01:19:59 Oh Yeah, and I always thought that was really interesting. And in the case with Johnny Roselli, about two weeks before Roselli is murdered, when he knew he had a target on his back, he goes to dinner with Santo Traficante, who he still thinks has been his friend when Johnny was on the lam. And whatever, Traficante provided some money to his family. has been his friend when Johnny was on the lam and whatever

Starting point is 01:20:27 Traficante provided some money to his family So he's still thinking Traficante is his friend But he kind of knows that he's got a target on his back that the people in the mob The National Commission is angry about the fact that they never knew about this Attempts to kill Castro that it was a secret that that Johnny Roselli and Sam Gene Conner kept from them. And basically Johnny at this dinner essentially is trying to make amends with, in other words, ask Trafikanti in so many words, can you get me out of this? You know, it's almost like that scene again from The Godfather, many words, can you get me out of this? You know, it's almost like that scene again from The Godfather. Hey, Tom, can you get me off the hook, that type of thing?

Starting point is 01:21:11 Santo. And of course, the answer is no. And generally speaking, Santo Traficante was perceived as the responsible somehow, some way for Rosevelli's murder in Florida. That's so crazy. I mean, when you get that high up, it's just, you're just with sharks. You're in a shark tank.

Starting point is 01:21:36 And it's just like, you never know when it's your number, when it's more, more, um, it's better for the mob that you'd be dead than alive. That's I, I mean, that's just crazy life, dude. That's just a crazy, this story's nuts, man. It was a great story, dude. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us it, man. So, uh, it's, it's on, it's on, um, Paramount, anything else you, you got Paramount plus showtime.

Starting point is 01:22:03 Well, you know, I have this little, this little novel called Montauk to Manhattan. Yeah, I love the Montauk story. That I'm pushing because it's my little baby. The mafia spies that got Paramount and Showtime behind it. This is a novel that I wrote. And basically it's about two things. It's about they're making a TV show out in the out Montauk and a lot of those experiences. It's a novel. So it's a fictional Account, but it's kind of based upon my real-life

Starting point is 01:22:36 experiences with a show Called Masters of Sex that was on Showtime for four was in a who's that about? It was about Masterson Johnson, who were sex researchers. I did a piece for Newsday, actually, about it. And I wound up writing a book about them called Masters of Sex. It was about this married couple.

Starting point is 01:22:55 They weren't married initially. And they studied love and sex, particularly sex, and how the body worked. And they were dealing with a lot of married couples. But they were like the go-to people in the during the whole sexual revolution. They would be on TV all the time, Masters and Johnson. They were like a brand name.

Starting point is 01:23:16 And so I did a book about them. Virginia Johnson was still alive. I had interviewed Masters as well for that initial article, and it became a Showtime series. So every year, my wife and I would go out to Hollywood, out to the Sony Studios, which is where Masters of Sex was filmed. It was so much fun, needless to say.

Starting point is 01:23:38 You know, you're behind the scenes, but I was a producer of the show, just like Mafia Spice. You know, I was not a writer. It was based upon my book,, just like Mafia Spice. You know, I was not a writer. It was based upon my book, and I would be consulted about it. But I did get a sense of what it's like to see a TV show being made. So I used that idea in this novel, Montauk to Manhattan, where they're making a TV show.

Starting point is 01:23:58 It's the summer of 2016, and it's based upon a book written by a reporter not unlike myself There's a guy named the main characters guy named Jack Denton and he's kind of my alter ego You know my life went one way his what life went completely his life is completely in a dumper But he's covering the Trump campaign for a paper just like the New York Times and he's working with somebody not unlike Maggie Haberman, the New York Times. And he's covering the Trump campaign all during the summer of 2016. At the same time, they're filming the show out in Montauk.

Starting point is 01:24:39 And so I'm trying to capture the time period when everybody said, wait a minute, could Donald Trump really become president of the United States? That was a crazy time. It was, you know, it's hard to imagine now, but back then in 2016, people said, could he really become president? And of course he did. And so I was kind of capturing that. But Jack Denton, the main character in, excuse me,

Starting point is 01:25:07 in Montauk to Manhattan, it's kind of a satire of that whole time period. It's a lot of jokes in it. It becomes a murder mystery because there's an actress that goes missing. And at the very end, it all comes to a head as to who killed this woman when they have a big party for the TV show.

Starting point is 01:25:27 They've made the TV show, and now they're showing it at the Morgan Library, which is this big library in Manhattan, which is where in real life, Masters of Sex had this huge party, Showtime had this huge party, back, this was like 10 years ago. So I kind of used that experience as well.

Starting point is 01:25:46 And so there's a lot of people in it, uh, that, uh, so I think it's a lot of fun. And, uh, you know, it's certainly different than mafia spies in that regard. And, uh, so, you know, I'm, I'm pushing it only because it's my baby. I love it. And we'll put links to both books in the description below and Thomas, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great discussion. I, I, I, you know, I'm going to be honest with you, man, the more and

Starting point is 01:26:13 more I study this stuff, the more and more I go like, man, the intelligence agencies influence on our life and our culture is like, it's so incredible. Almost everything is like an intelligence trick at this point. And just to hear the connections. I mean, I've been reading a lot about the JFK assassination, the mobs role in that, the crime syndicate throwing that. And this just is like just a hand in hand rate with that. So thank you so much.

Starting point is 01:26:40 This is the group. You were excellent. The show was a great interview. Uh, one more time, tell them where they can find you. Sure. I have a website called Thomas Mayer Books and you can find both my books on Amazon or any other online bookstore. And just one last point, Sam, before we go. I think it's really incumbent on us to have people of good character in both of our, all of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. And I think both those agencies did have a lot of reforms, but I think it's really incumbent

Starting point is 01:27:17 upon us, particularly when information and misinformation is so prevalent for us to have the best people who follow the law and who are committed to protecting our constitution in our institutions that provide us with the freedoms that we rely on for our markets, for our very lives. So I think that's one of the real morals of the story, if you will. Well, I love what you're saying. You know, it's like I get a little nervous when we start getting into like misinformation and stuff like that, because it's very easy for the powers to be to label somewhat the truth, like even this story, let's say you come out with this story when it's happening, the government could easily be,

Starting point is 01:28:09 well, that's a lie. Four years later it comes out true, but they never come back and apologize for that. But I think you're right. I mean, I think it's right, but there's people like you, and a lot of people think journalism is dead. I don't think it's dead. I think it's just gone super indie,

Starting point is 01:28:23 and you see a lot of people out there doing really great work, and just got to find those people that are out there taking truth to power and just, you know, and again, like my grandfather was a cop, my cousin is a cop, they're good people, you know, so there are good people out there, but I think we also have to have a class of journalists whose job it is to be fearless and take truth to power. And that's why I love what you just talked about right there and the role that you don't see a lot of people doing that right now. So I think it's important again, thank you for coming on. And I look forward to talking to you again down the line when you got another project you want to talk to us about because this was an excellent episode.

Starting point is 01:29:05 So thanks for coming on Thomas. We really do appreciate it. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks guys. All right, let's break down this episode. All right, man.

Starting point is 01:29:14 What'd you guys think? I wonder where we are with spies right now. Like where we're in the future of spies. Where are we now? That's a great question, XG. For somebody that was fighting for his life during the whole show, that's an excellent question to ask. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Starting point is 01:29:42 clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't remember saying that part. Visit DejaDen.com slash care and get insurance. That's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Now where are we? Where is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the is, is, is the, is Chapo, does Chapo got spies? Is the cartel? I think, like, this is like, I didn't want to go too deep down that rabbit hole with him. Uh, but I, I 100% believe people like Chapo are a controlled op. They're just like middle management.

Starting point is 01:30:18 They're, you know, that their job is just to run a territory. And that's what, that's, that's what they do. And the whole time he's just donating to the Clinton foundation and all that stuff right I mean and then they just like at some point they got to throw somebody in jail because they got to act like they're doing their job so they're just like which one of these employees do we want to throw in jail uh boom right there right so you kind of know when you sign up right it's it's no different than like Diddy hey man you're gonna live a life of luxury for a very long time

Starting point is 01:30:48 And then at any point when it's convenient for us, it's all gonna end for you Yeah, and then some people make it through and they don't get thrown under you may not Yeah, it's like it's like the godfather deal, you know in the godfathers like hey this day may never come But I you know, I may call on you at some point Yeah, 100%. Cause I found it very interesting. You know, I had to bring up Meyer Lansky. Uh, I think Meyer Lansky has a bigger role than most, uh, people want to talk

Starting point is 01:31:16 about in the, in, you know, in the, in the, in the crime syndicate, the Italian mafia, uh, the Jewish mafia is very powerful and a big role in this. A lot of people don't want to talk about that again. So it's like, I think that's very important, but I mean, really crazy story. Great. I mean, I could listen to him talk forever. He's a great speaker and I thoroughly enjoyed what he had to say. And it is so crazy like the characters that used to be out there. I mean just wonderful, wonderful people. He had a little weird reaction to my, the things are better when the mob ran anything.

Starting point is 01:31:58 I don't know why, but I find that to be true. I think he's probably thinking about the violence, the way they enforce things was you know, no trials take you out back Boy brains out kind of right, but yeah, I'm not in the mob But if I go to Vegas and get a 99 cent cocktail exactly and not to pay for valet parking, right? You know like I'll take Don't charge me for valet and that's all I'm saying Vegas. So what if they break people's bones for count cards? What do you like? Maybe you shouldn't be counting cards, Johnny.

Starting point is 01:32:29 Huh? Is that against the rules of the house? It's not illegal. Not illegal. Okay. Not illegal. Do you think if Trump had some of Castro's people, he'd ever they'd even get an attempt? Dude, well, that's saying that you believe that that's real.

Starting point is 01:32:45 You know, that's my opinion. I don't, I mean if you look at like how many layers Castro had, you know, and like what it took to even try to get close to him. Way back then too. I mean, although you know the technology, the assassination technology now is like so much better. Yeah, if they want you dead, they're not shooting you. They're not having some cooks shoot you, bro. There's like some guy can be two blocks away with a blow gun and just like that. Yeah. Heart attack. With some sort of direct energy weapon, just understand like what we're seeing

Starting point is 01:33:17 now is old tech, like they got stuff that we won't even know about for 30 years. Yeah. It's like the salt that they sprinkle on your, your salad or, you know what I'm saying? They bring the food out to you and you die three weeks later. Didn't the V didn't, didn't the VA just, uh, like acknowledge, uh, direct energy weapons, the veterans, they all are. They, uh, dude, everyone's talking about it. And then you still have my liberal friends on Twitter, go to, uh, dude, they think talking about it. And then you still have my liberal friends on Twitter. Dude, they think you're controlled.

Starting point is 01:33:48 Why I'm like, how are you this smart and this dumb at the same time? That that's half the reason I retweet half the shit I have. Cause I have a bunch of liberal friends. I'm like, you need to see this. This you need to get out of your algorithm. You know, that ain't showing that to them. It that I've even if you're following somebody, if, if Twitter doesn't want you to see it, they won't show it to you. I know I know So annoying

Starting point is 01:34:13 Yeah, like have you noticed now half the comments on a post on Twitter are just other shit that's unreal like it's not even replies to the post it's it's Related like videos and stuff that they're trying to get you to click on you got a scroll it not like I mean I least on Instagram when I go click on comments it gives me whatever I want to hear or see but if you keep scrolling it starts like giving you shit that has nothing to do with if you get what I mean it'll like if you know you get two comments and then like three videos that are kind of vaguely related but they're viral you know it's like hey watch this cute puppy fall down the stairs. So annoying.

Starting point is 01:34:49 And I don't know if it's better or worse. You know, I heard who was it? Jordan Peterson was on Bill Maher. It's kind of an interesting discussion because Bill Maher really likes Jordan Peterson surprisingly, especially given his stance on religion. But he like really likes him. He's kind of open-minded to the whole, maybe, his book and everything. But they were talking about, and this Bill is just off on this, he's talking about how Elon made Twitter a mirror of what it used to be. He made it like a right-wing insanity echo chamber. But really what happened was all the people in the right wing and, and, you know, just normal people who were being censored were allowed to talk and the left wingers hated

Starting point is 01:35:32 that so much that they just all quit the platform is what happened. Yeah. But they'll come back because I love Twitter. I mean, it's, it's, it's a little crazy, crazy, but I take crazy over what it was before, which was just a bunch of astroturfing bullshit. Yeah. You know, and now is it perfect? No.

Starting point is 01:35:49 Is Elon Musk a good guy? I jury's still out for me. The jury's way still out. I'm not going to sit there, but I feel like there's things going on in the world that people are waking up to that. If Twitter wasn't around, we wouldn't be hearing it. Johnny caught Johnny caught YouTube censor me on positive shit. Right.

Starting point is 01:36:08 It's like so crazy to me. It's like, if you do positive vibrational stuff, you'll positive vibrational stuff having this is hate speech against a certain group. I'm like, what? This is going to be a mistake. I, but I, they, I can't find, nobody will reply to me and they confirmed it by manual review and I typed in the appeal I was like listen this timestamp you have here. There's nothing but just like, you know positive love

Starting point is 01:36:31 Yeah, it's like positive the power of positivity What's the deal and it just came back confirmed? Am I the only one on threads? Yes, why would you be on thread? Is there any butthole on threads? Oh, there's nothing on threads. Yeah. Instagram. They made an effort. They made an effort. I was on it for a little bit and it's just dead. Like you said, Johnny has faith in these classes that Mark Zuckerberg is making. He hasn't made one thing that worked outside of Facebook. He stole, he bought Instagram, you know, I mean, Facebook. Yeah. But that's the point. I mean, how do you, how do you feel if you live in LA, you drive a Tesla and then Elon Musk just over there endorsed on Trump? What do you do with your Tesla? Yeah, they're all going nuts. They will not do shit. None of them will do anything. They'll just keep

Starting point is 01:37:23 driving the car. They're stupid. They don't care My buddy was my buddy did that he was like, I can't believe I bought a Tesla now this I'm like, dude I love you the pieces. You're one of my favorite people Chill out dude. It's just so crazy Like dude politics have made everybody dumb If you threw everything out that had a connection to some asshole at the corporate level. You, your house would just be empty. I mean, dude, I am showing amazing, amazing restraint, not trying to light up people.

Starting point is 01:37:53 You know, that's, that's impressive considering your Twitter feed is unrestrained, I would say it's pretty aggressive. Well, it's, it's, it's restrained in that my friends are tweeting things. I think are absolutely retarded and I'm not telling them anymore. I'm just letting them, I'm just letting them be retarded. Do you still type twitter.com when you want to go to X? I still type it every time. Yeah, all the time.

Starting point is 01:38:17 Yeah. All the time. Every time, dude. Um, what'd I have to say to you, Johnny? Oh, fuck. I forgot what I had to say. Trump has his video. Uh, Trump goes, where's gays for Trump? And the to you, Johnny? Oh fuck. I forgot what I had to Trump has his video Trump goes where's gaze for Trump and the guy goes we're over here and Trump goes you don't look gay

Starting point is 01:38:34 Dude I mean like so these polls keep telling us that like this thing's close and I just I'm trying to figure out outside of not shitting the bed in the debate with Trump what has gone well and like what's gone well for Camilla Harris. I show me one on Stern today. The big sellout Howard Stern is having her on day after. Right. But like every single interview she's done has gone awful. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:39:02 But the Harris supporters don't see it that way. You know that Yeah, that's my whole thing. It's just like they're not good And even the people on the shows are saying they're not good Like when you watch the oprah interview oprah's looking they're going what the fuck are you saying? Yeah I mean, yeah, whatever I mean, let's not Trump can come across a little weird to let's be.

Starting point is 01:39:27 I can be a retard, too, but I'm telling you, like, they're acting like these polls are close. I don't see anything she's doing to give anybody any kind of faith. Like she's getting no. I mean, this Dana doesn't Dana's not in the come on. We haven't talked about I ask her day. She's outside and my girl's mom that I see every now and

Starting point is 01:39:50 then, I mean, she's over the moon and she's so happy with everything she's doing and she thinks she's kicking ass. So your girl, my girl's mother, my girl doesn't give a shit about politics, but my girl's mother is all about it and loves Kamala and is so impressed with everything she's doing.

Starting point is 01:40:04 So it's real Sam it's real like you meet these people they're like they're committed they got like no I had a friend of mine come the other day she and she was telling me that um that her her friend I'll say it was working on a epic rap battle and they're like yeah dude they're like the the Kamala Harris rapper rushed it and I'm like oh no like I gotta shut my mouth I just gotta shut my mouth and I just shut my mouth. What is that? You know epic rap battles you know where they play like it's the best Johnny if you never have you never gone down epic rap battles? No nice dude what is it like freestyle well no

Starting point is 01:40:49 it's like they play characters it'll be like Genghis Khan versus blah blah blah and it's like it's so good dude it's so good are they so is it somebody that looks like Kamala or yeah they'll have somebody like all and she'll rap and it's probably against Trump And they'll make her look good him look done. That's not really fair. Is it because you have black versus? I mean black people are better rapping. Let's be honest. The great forever of all time is white Johnny. I don't care Yeah, I know you're probably right, but that's he's the exception that proves the rule Yeah, he's the tiger woods of that shit. Yeah. Yeah exactly. No, he's the Tiger Woods of that shit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Even though he's shady.

Starting point is 01:41:26 By the way, this is how old I am. Eminem is going to be a grandpa. That's how where we are in society. Good for him. Congratulations. Even though you were you've heard this song where he calls out Diddy where he said something about like, if you take the P out of rape, it's spells Diddy or some shit like that. And I was like, this was I came out like a couple months like his last album.

Starting point is 01:41:44 It was like pretty I was like, this was, I came out like a couple of months, like his last album. It was like pretty, I was like, Oh shit. Dropping fast. I don't understand how the P out of rape is P. I'm not the rapper. He said something like that. One of his verses and it's like just saying like he literally like was dropping little facts before. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:41:58 Well, Eminem I love you to pieces. You're one of my favorites all the time. Your early stuff is the greatest ever. Check out your boy, Dr. Dre and what's he, he, what's he into? Okay. Hi. What do you think about Kamala going on?

Starting point is 01:42:10 Uh, what do you think about Kamala going on? Call me daddy or call her dad or whatever that is. Well, I mean, Johnny, you're, you're, you're in the, on the internet. Was that received well at all? I mean, like I'm seeing a bunch of people saying it wasn't a good interview and that even the fans of that show hated the interview So I that's my whole thing. You know, you're in a you know, you're in an echo chamber, dude I mean I am so the New York Post is is the post is a right-wing paper. Yeah, that's post

Starting point is 01:42:36 Yeah, so can you look up right now? How great did she do? I mean why did the girl Johnny? Why did the girl on the fucking show have to put out a fucking video explaining why she did it? Let's see. She basically was like, you know, here's a story from the Atlantic. What going on call her daddy did for Kamala Harris conventional news shows lack the podcaster Alex Cooper's reach in young female middle America. It's talking about how she attracted young female medical. Very few pilot podcasters would apologize to their fans for clogging up their feed by interviewing a presidential candidate, but they're making a good thing out of what you

Starting point is 01:43:15 just described. But Alex Cooper, the host of the popular pod, that's such a good swing. You know, that's a, you know, they're spinning that Johnny. I'm saying you're asking me, did anybody say it was a good thing and the Atlantic did yeah Yeah, but you but you hear what they're saying and it's bad shit like oh, yeah I don't usually talk about politics. Yeah I get it man. I I dude if she Broken Sam I want I really want us to dig into it there But there's that we'll talk about the draft. Okay, I mean fucking the only thing good about Kamal

Starting point is 01:43:49 Harris are these AI bots of her She just looks like the most smoke show stripper and fucking ladyboy from Thailand, you know, she's just on fire That's about it. That's it. That's all guys See me live okay see me live I'm being this weekend I'm going to be in Louisville four shows grab your tickets now okay grab your tickets now Louisville at the murder circus grab your tickets let's go Tulsa Oklahoma on the November 14th through the 16th and then Tampa Bay at the end of the month,

Starting point is 01:44:25 still trying to put together some more shows to get that shit going. Uh, yeah, dude, uh, the premium content is on fire on samtriplea.com. You can go to rockfin, you can pay that for everybody there, or you can go to Sam Tripley, just get Sam Triples. My, my content, we got dangerous, dangerous. We got, and then we got giant cash reading the Bible. And then we have a bunch of other stuff I put up every day. I'm also-

Starting point is 01:44:51 And that's how you get a special, right? Is that how you get a special if you have premium content? Well, we're working on that right now. We're working on that right now. So, yeah, we're going to make that happen. If you want to look into investing in the, uh, in the markets, cash day's Patreon is right there. It's super fire.

Starting point is 01:45:11 Patreon.com slash cash daddy's how we do every day takes you through what to invest in, in, uh, the markets. Uh, if you go back, we got, uh, we're working on the chaos twins, another episode coming out and all of our Affiliates are fire all of them are fire all of them anything you need. We're gonna add some more affiliates to buy gold and silver we love our Wise wolf gold and silver go sandra ble dot gold sandra ble dot gold Join the wolf pack

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Starting point is 01:46:53 Uh, my special will be on sam triply.com. So check it out. Anything else boys hit that like button, subscribe and go to actually marks the spot for a skank, the skank fast blog over that actually my spot on YouTube. Thank you Check out broken sand everywhere youtube.com slash Sam triple if you want to help fight the censorship over there where we're getting community strikes now for sending out positive vibes Or you can check it out rumble to what is Sam triple a on rumble to right Sam. It's Sam Tripoli

Starting point is 01:47:21 Well, so special is going to be at rumble.com slash quiet. Yeah. I was sorry. I just, your channel, though, if they want. My channel is Sam Tripoli dot. Yeah. Yeah. Rumble.com slash Sam Tripoli.

Starting point is 01:47:34 All right. Bang, bang, pow. All right. Enjoy these highlights, guys. Here's a clip from the latest Broken Sim. Oh, I did. I think if you're like anywhere from 22 to like 28 or I'd say 22 if you're a woman 22 to about 26 years old you want to go all night long because you're not doing a

Starting point is 01:47:51 lot of the work said that the other guys come so you're like let's go keep going you're like I need I like how you just said the other guy is going so that that was funny well I just had a little Freudian slip there same you said oh the other guy is doing all the work so that that's why. And what am I doing? Sitting in the corner? You're the guy. Yeah. That's what I'm wondering. Why? Hurry up. It's just ridiculous, dude. So anyways, they don't even jerk it off. They don't even tell you that the that's crazy. I never heard of a hotel. Not that's the first hotel that's not got a phone. They have made everything way more complicated And it's just somebody justifying their job. That's it

Starting point is 01:48:31 Like to go to your hotel you have to put your key on to get led in then you have to press a button It tells you what what elevator go to and then takes you right? There's no elevators in the the elevator. There's no elevator buttons in the elevator anymore It's just wait. Where do you tell it that you want? So they have these like weird gates you got to go through you got to put you got to put yeah I get what you're saying so they don't have to have a person standing there right so you got put there it opens up Okay, you go through then there's like a little press touchscreen presentation inside the elevator No outside the elevator, and you got to press your your um

Starting point is 01:49:09 Your your your floor and then it tells you what elevator to go to and then brings you right up there Yeah, it's just like I get it. Is it necessary? Yeah, did we need to reinvent the elevator? No, it's like when you go to your favorite Yeah, did we need to reinvent the elevator? No, it's like when you go to your favorite Website and then suddenly has a whole new design and you're like, why did we do that? Oh cuz someone's job there is to Innovate and they have to make shit up. Yeah, well, you know I think the great thing is that somebody thought that that was gonna be a selling point for that hotel What's it called Circa? You know, it's like dude. Have you heard about Circa? They got those elevators Oh, they got those elevators dog. The buttons on the outside. Everything is

Starting point is 01:49:43 heard about Circa they got those elevators. Oh they got those elevators dog. The buttons on the outside. Everything is analytical. The buttons on the outside. Yeah it's so stupid. So you go up there there's like no you can't you can't so you're just looking for a phone to call and you can't find it. They don't even say hey I had to call down to the front desk to the front desk on my regular phone to ask them a question. Which I guess, I guess if you're thinking like, okay, hey, these are, nobody uses the phones in the rooms anymore. Everybody already has a phone. Why are we doing this?

Starting point is 01:50:14 Then I guess, I mean, I get what they were thinking. Yeah. But they should tell you that. Tell me, oh, hey, by the way, AI is taking over this hotel. That's what it's like, right? Right, right. So the new thing in Vegas is, you know, I mean, everybody talks about, Vegas is where

Starting point is 01:50:31 the mob ran. They're nickel-and-diming you to death. They're just nickel-and-diming you to death. So my buddy calls me up, OK? My buddy calls me up. He owns Toe Hop, OK? He calls me up. Toe Hop? Toe Hop, okay? He calls me up. Toe Hop?

Starting point is 01:50:46 Toe Hold, okay? Toe Hold? Yeah, Toe Hold, hold on, let me. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, okay. Toed Hop? Is that what you're talking about? No, Toe Hold, AG. You said Toe Hop.

Starting point is 01:50:57 AG, who's a Freemason. Okay. Okay? Calls me up, he's like, hey dude, do you wanna come to dinner with me tonight at Caesar's Palace? It's my buddy's birthday, we're celebrating, I'm taking him out, you wanna join us? I'm like, I love AG, you know?

Starting point is 01:51:16 That's his name? Yeah, AG's his name, he owns Toe Hold Sandals, look it up. Toe Hold Sandals. Yes, and he's a great guy guy and he is a Freemason. You know? So. Did he try doing weird handshakes or anything? No, no, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:51:33 So he calls me up, he's like, meet me over there. I'm like, okay, I'll meet you there. So I go there and dude, I mean, it is, Vegas is insane. It's not. Get him sponsored podcast. Yeah, I would love that. Nice website. Yeah, it's so nice. Dude, he's making. Got Joe Rogan quotes on there. Yeah, not. Get Game sponsored podcast. Yeah, I would love that. Nice website.

Starting point is 01:51:45 Yeah, it's so nice. Dude, he's making- Got Joe Rogan quotes on there. Yeah, yeah. It's so nice. They are the best flip-flops I've ever had. Joe Rogan. Yeah. It's a direct quote. Hey, Jody, could you not say with attitude? What do you mean? I'm just saying.

Starting point is 01:51:57 No, sell it like Russell Bramwood real quick. That's a little better way to sell it. Wait, well, how would he sell it? He'd be like, enthusiastic. That was enthusiastic. No, you were you were you were very like negative negative energy. They're the best flip-flops I've ever had! No, you gotta be like, oh, okay. Okay. Listen, uh, they're the best flip-flops I've ever had. Oh my god. It's like Jesus wore them. That's how great it is. You see how excited I was. I was reading what he said. I know Johnny, but you gotta sell it. I'm gonna make shit up. I got you

Starting point is 01:52:25 Yeah, be excited. Okay. Let me try it again. Okay. These are the best flip-flops I've ever had It's amazing. Yes. Yes. There you go Johnny Johnny you are you had that like late night info commercial enthusiasm That gets people to buy useless shit. don't need. That's what we need, okay? But anyways, AG started this out of nowhere. He started his own and dude, they're making millions of dollars selling sandals. They sell wallets too. Yeah, they sell everything dude. Snakeskin wallets, nice. So he invites me, I love it, I show up there. Traffic is nuts, okay.

Starting point is 01:53:09 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit DejaDen.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

Starting point is 01:53:38 Vegas has gotten crazy. Try to get in this. Are they really that expensive? Yes, dude. $7,000? Yeah, dude. Wow Yeah, well, these are a thousand dollars. Yeah, these Himalayan crocodile sounds are real elephant Gray elephant damn dude. Oh man. Damn dude was that praying mantis? Green I white was that trans Trans? Clown? These are $7.95 Those are the affordable Those are nice. Okay. They must be

Starting point is 01:54:10 Johnny, so I go there Good luck trying to find how to get into Caesar's Palace It is chaos. It is an ecosystem like I've never seen before Yeah, I was there over the summer to see Garth Brooks. It's crazy, right? Yeah, it's crazy. It's like like by the way the thing that Tom and Christina started about about

Starting point is 01:54:30 Garth Brooks being a serious that's starting to get traction. Yeah. Oh, have you seen that people? I thought was they made a joke, but is there something to it? Where are the bodies right? Apparently he hates that by the way, Garth Brooks. You don't think so? The corporate guy hates that people are calling him the serial killer. The only person who's ever used that as a selling point is Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is the only one who marks himself as possibly being a serial killer. Just to make himself more likeable. Yeah, yeah, that's the most likeable thing about him. Right? It's so crazy to me. So I go there Johnny and I'm trying to find, because dude they're just funneling you into valet that's all they want you to do so they can charge you charge. I hate valet. Right? So I finally find it. Johnny do you know how if you want to be, if you want to sell park for let's say just an hour, maybe

Starting point is 01:55:24 two, I'll give you two hours. Guess how much Caesar Palace calls you cost you guess how much it charges you. Excuse me 30 bucks $25 that's about right. Yeah, what are you doing? I stop I used to rent a car when we go there now I don't anymore I just let my drug cuz it's not they rip you off so much Yeah, so this is it so I go eat with these guys, you know Agee's a good guy his you know, it's all his jujitsu friends and striking friends. They're all 10th planet guys I'm a 10th planet guy. They're all killer black belts. I Will get into my weekend with jujitsu. Okay. So anyways, uh, we're hanging out. It's a good time. Everybody's talking They're they're discussing Shane Gillis and skank fast with me

Starting point is 01:56:08 They all hate political correctness. It's so weird. Everyone hates political correctness Yeah, but they can't say anything about it because they don't want to get in trouble at work Which is the whole part of the plan completely so anyways, you know, I I mean dude I mean he he he paid for everything. I I hate I mean dude, I mean he paid for everything. I hate Making people pay for my food. I hate it. Yeah, I like to pay I bought everybody dinner the whole weekend like the whole weekend I'm just buying cuz I I'm old school like that. We we fight over the check. That's how we do it You can get some people fought me for the check zero

Starting point is 01:56:43 Zero fought me for the check zero zero fought me for the check But I do it I do it because I love them. They invited you the guy who sells He paid for everything okay, make no illusions of that. Okay, I was about I would just tell you I don't like that Because I like to pay I like to pay but he I ordered a lot of food I felt very bad. He's like no dude go for it. Oh, that's good, good for him. He's a great guy. He's a great guy.

Starting point is 01:57:07 I said nobody fought you, I was worried. No, no, no, no, no, no. Dude, I'm joking. Right on. Okay, about nobody fighting for it. I saw some friends that I hadn't seen in a while, like from my recovery group, gladly bought it. Anyway.

Starting point is 01:57:19 Oh, I see, okay, somebody else. I was joking. I know that some of them listen to podcasts. It's a joke. I'm old school. I'm gonna get a text about two hours after the show. Hey, can you take me? Nope. Nope. Nope. You won't have to. Anyways, so Johnny, I'm going back. I have to run, do my set because I had a bunch of sets at the, at Skank Fest. How many did you do? Well, they booked me for six. Six. Six sets. Wow. But I ended up doing like a thousand.

Starting point is 01:57:46 More than six. Oh yeah. That's crazy. When's the last time you went up that much in a weekend? It was exhausting. I'm gonna be honest with you. The hardest part is coming up with new material to do for these people

Starting point is 01:57:56 because the same people come to every show. Oh, I didn't even think about that. So you gotta like keep mixing it up and I'll get into what I learned and I'm gonna get into that in a few. But so I'm like, I'm like, I'm like like I don't mind like dude he's he's paying for everything I feel like a bitch but okay and I go I go I go hey I'm not bitching but did you guys know it's $25 the park here and they go yeah but we're local so we get in for free

Starting point is 01:58:24 right which is like Okay, because they scan their driver's license. We'll get into that. Okay, we'll get into that But so I'm like, okay if I used to be a resident, I'm not anymore granted It was only like for six years, but so anyways, I'm like I got run to my set. I love you guys I gotta go. Uh, we run off and it's so funny because all of the, everybody in 10th Planet all know each other. Like it doesn't matter where they're from, you be like, oh yeah, I trained this guy,

Starting point is 01:58:51 like boom, boom, boom, then you tell them what school, they know exactly who owns that school and how they're doing, it's like crazy to me. So anyways, so I'm about to go pay, I'm about to run off, I have to figure out how to get out of here, dude. It's in the Caesars Palace Mall, which was one of my last jobs when I worked in Vegas I worked in uh did I already tell you yeah the forums at Caesar Palace I

Starting point is 01:59:12 worked there at Boogie's Diner and did I already tell you about Boogie's Diner that half of it was a diner half of it was high-end clothing and it was just the most gorgeous models working there and they would just talk to me all the time and then what they didn't eat I would go in the back and eat it. Yeah you said that. Right? And they're like oh my god you're eating that? Dude they were eating that. I go I would eat their assholes. Do you think I care what they put in their mouth? Yeah I mean that's who I am okay. So anyways dude I invented ass eating. I don't care what anybody says

Starting point is 01:59:45 Nobody's debating you for the right to say they invented ass eating I'm just telling you if you can find someone who could prove they ate ass before 1978 I will I will I bet you the Greeks were getting down in the bus I bet you they were too, but you know, it's lost and then it's brought back. There's a reason Tom Hanks moved there Okay., for sure. It's so funny Dylan on the conspiracy social club is just starting to go down these fucking holes these rabbit holes Yeah, he's starting to flip over. It's so great. You're gonna break him, too. Oh, yeah for sure For sure for sure. I don't know if I should make this announcement on the show because go ahead. It's not set But I think Helen might want to come back to the show. Oh really?

Starting point is 02:00:29 There's the streets are talking breaking news breaking news everybody. I don't know if we should announce that might be the call No, I'd the call after the show We might be having Calum back. We don't know yet. We don't know. If you'd like to hear the rest of this episode, subscribe to Broken Simulation in your podcasting app or check us out at youtube.com slash Sam Tripoli. We go deep home, boys.

Starting point is 02:00:56 Eric, open your mic. Drink from the fountain of knowledge. There's lizard people everywhere. In just a few weeks, DraftKings Sportsbook will be live in Ohio! Right now all new customers will receive $200 in free bets when you sign up today using code music! When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountain tops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs! Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care.

Starting point is 02:02:13 And get insurance that's really big on care. Care! Care! Did I mention that we care? In just a few weeks, DraftKings Sportsbook will be live in Ohio! Right now all new customers will receive $200 in free bets when you sign up today using code music! When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountain tops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs! Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

Starting point is 02:03:10 Visit Desjardins.com slash care. And get insurance that's really big on care. Care! Care! Did I mention that we care? In just a few weeks, Draft Kingings Sportsbook will be live in Ohio! Right now all new customers will receive $825 free bets. No purchase necessary for sweepstakes. Void were prohibited. En's first-day Draft Kings is allowed to operate in Ohio. See terms and official rules at dkng.co. slash o-h. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you!

Starting point is 02:04:05 Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care. And get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli - #823: The CIA and Mafia's Plot to Assassinate Fidel Castro With Thomas Maier

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