Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency FOIA release, dated 2025-06-12, collects 1976 CIA paperwork on Harold Weisberg's request (76-F-382) for records on Martin Luther King, Jr. It includes routing slips, an Operations Staff memorandum listing releasable press items and exempt cables, dispatches and memoranda, and a CI Staff reply citing a 1968 Office of Security memo on Coretta Scott King. It also contains a 16 May 1968 memo to the FBI reporting that Gerald Lee Richards, investigated in Japan, did not resemble suspect James Earl Ray.
“Anderson”8 pages
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# Nixon and the Mafia - Conclusion Jeff Gerth Contributing Editor SunDance Magazine 1913 Fillmore St. San Francisco, Calif. 94115 "Organized crime will put a man in the White House someday, and he won't even know it until they hand him the bill." - Ralph Salerno Part 1 of "Nixon and the Mafia" was published in the September issue of "Computers and Automation"; Part 2, in the October issue. Part 3 begins here with further information about the relation of President-to-be Richard M. Nixon with shady transactions in the Bahamas. ## Shakeup in the Bahamas By the middle Sixties there was a storm brewing. Internal friction had forced out a few people like Lou Chesler, while a wave of public investigations were blaring the role of underworld figures like Meyer Lansky. The 1967 Royal Commission of Inquiry also dredged up another familiar name - Richard Nixon. Testimony before the Royal Commission by Max Courteney, a Lansky lieutenant, detailed a long bookmaking career and brought out the names of a large clientele, including the then ex-Vice President Richard Nixon. ## Mary Carter Paint The Royal Commission also bared a deal which implicated Richard Nixon far more deeply than passing mention by an underground bookie. In 1967 Lyndon Pindling became the first black premier ever to serve the almost one hundred percent black citizenry of the island. Pindling was hardly a revolutionary, however, for among the people instrumental in putting him in office was a gambler close to Lansky named Mike McLaney. The Royal Commission branded McLaney a "thoroughly dangerous person" and accused him of maneuvering Pindling into at least one deal involving a questionable gambling concession. Part of the post-election controversy was a company based in Tampa which bore the innocuous name of "Mary Carter Paint Company". In 1965 Lansky's front-man (and former Key Biscayne landowner) Wallace Groves, filed a joint application with the Mary Carter Company to open a casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. The ubiquitous Sir Stafford Sands handled the legalities. Knowledgeable observers looked for the mystery man, and a Justice Department memo, dated January 18, 1966, predicted that "the atmosphere seems ripe for a Lansky skim". After Pindling's election, Groves was forced out and the Mary Carter Paint Company had itself two new casinos. At the 1967 opening of one of them - the Nassau Bay Club - the honored guest was Richard Nixon. The following year 1968 the other Mary Carter Club, the Paradise Island Casino, opened for business. The owners felt close enough to Nixon to offer him use of their facilities during the 1968 Republican Convention. Nixon felt more comfortable at Key Biscayne, but some of his staff took up the offer. ## Mary Carter Becomes Resorts International In 1969 Mary Carter — now called Resorts International — reluctantly "released" one Dino Cellini, claiming that while he "had a relatively unsavory background, he had no criminal record, no criminal associates". Cellini hopped across the water to Miami, where, according to Dade County Sheriff Intelligence Reports, he continued to work in conjunction with Paradise Island Casino. The reports allege that Cellini was an almost daily visitor to Resorts International's Miami office, where he checked credits and worked with a company booking junkets to the Paradise Island Casino. There are those who maintain that Cellini's connections with Resorts International symbolize the influence of Lansky. In a 1971 editorial, the Las Vegas Sun concluded an eleven part series on organized crime — some of which centered on Resorts International — by charging that "however cloaked and cleverly concealed by the guardians, gambling in the Bahamas is controlled by Meyer Lansky and it has been established in police intelligence reports that the fee is fifteen percent of the gross income". The now defunct Toronto Telegram reported in 1970 that "observers believe that the resourceful Lansky is still managing to get his cut from the Bahamas". Resorts International, through its ninety-one percent owned subsidiary, Intertel, has denied all allegations of involvement with organized crime. It
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 295 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.