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Appendix 1
Pennsylvania, 1968: an illustration of the function and operation by political contributions by organized criminals.
The process by which politicians are corrupted by 'dirty money' was first illustrated to me when I was a
post-graduate student of politics at Oxford University. As part of my research, I visited America to follow the presidential nominating conventions of 1968. These were large gatherings of representatives first of the Republican Party and then of the Democratic Party. At each convention, the delegates - who at that time were activists and local office-holders - voted to choose each party's nominee for the elections to the country's highest office. The two nominating conventions were, therefore, important events.
During the convention held in Miami by the Republicans, there was a contest for the presidential nomination between supporters of Nelson Rockefeller and of Richard Nixon. Nixon won the nomination and went on to win the subsequent election for president against the Democratic Party candidate.
During the Republican Convention, I made a special study of the delegates from Pennsylvania, a state known for its political corruption. One of the Republican delegates was a mayor from a small town near Pittsburgh which I will call Manchester (this is not the real name). According to rumors, the mayor wished to cast his vote for Rockefeller but felt obliged - against his own wishes to vote for Nixon. Why?
This was the story: the mayor was a Republican office-holder in a working-class town which normally supported the Democrats. In order to win elections, he needed to organize a strong campaign - something that required money. He obtained this money - again according to the prevalent rumors - from the leaders of a crime syndicate. The criminals who were reportedly the source of his campaign finances made their profits from running an illegal gambling scheme called a 'numbers racket'. This consisted of betting on the. numbers of horses which ran in horse-races in other parts of Pennsylvania. Such betting was against the law. In order to be profitable, the 'numbers racket' had to have many clients - a mass of ordinary citizens had to know that the scheme existed and where they could obtain tickets. The fact that the illegal scheme was so well publicized inevitably meant that the police also knew of it. This scheme - like so many other forms of organized crime - could succeed only if the police turned a blind eye to what was going on. In brief, organized crime required corruption of law-enforcement officials.
The mayor of Manchester appointed and controlled the police chiefs. If the mayor was corrupted, then the police would be docile. If the mayor realized that he owed his election to money from the criminals who operated the numbers racket, he would order the police to leave them alone. If the police had to make arrests to assure the public that they were doing their job, the arrests should be of low-level members of the numbers racket. The bosses should always remain untouched. In this way, the organized crime involved not only police corruption but it also involved illegal sources of campaign financing.
But why did the mayor of Manchester feel obliged to vote for Nixon when he really wished - it was said - to vote for Rockefeller? Apparently, the prosecutor (district attorney) for the Pittsburgh area was a strong Nixon supporter. He reportedly threatened the mayor that, unless he voted for Nixon at the nominating convention, the prosecutor would send police under his control into Manchester; they would arrest the criminals who were running the numbers racket. The criminals would stop their contributions to the mayor's electoral funds. By making arrests in Manchester, the district attorney would ensure that the mayor would lose his main source of campaign financing.
Shortly after my initial researches into the dirty politics of Pennsylvania, a government prosecutor in Western Pennsylvania, Richard Thornburgh, who would later become U.S. Attorney General, discovered what he described as a 'politico-racket' complex in the Pittsburgh area. The scandal would lead to the suicide of the district attorney for Allegheny County (Pittsburgh). It was this man who, at the 1968 Republican Convention had been reported as pressuring the mayor of Manchester.
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