-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Arizona Project
Michael Wendland©1977
ISBN 0-8362-0728-9
Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc.
6700 Squibb Rd.
Misson Kansas 66202
276 pps. - first edition - out-of-print
New revised edition - available amazon.com
Paperback, 304pp.
ISBN: 0945165021
Blue Sky Press, Incorporated
June 1988
--[15]--
15
Revenge on Deadline
Robert Goldwater and Kemper Marley threatened to sue for libel even before
the series was published.
"We must be on the right track," said Greene in mid-February as he, Dick
Cady, and Newsday story editor Tony Ansolia directed a small platoon of
rewritemen recruited from a half-dozen papers to flesh out the file
information into readable newspaper stories. "They're blasting us before they
even know what we'll be writing."
The pressure took the form of sternly phrased letters sent to each of the
thirty-six reporters and to their various newspaper publishers threatening
libel suits if inaccurate, damaging information were printed.
"My attorneys have informed me that I have the good fortune of not being
viewed as [a] 'public figure' by the laws of this country," Goldwater wrote
each newspaper that participated in the project, pointing out between the
lines that, unlike public officials, he is entitled to his privacy and thus
can sue for things politicians can't. "I understand that our relative
anonymity affords us protections under the First Amendment that might not be
available to those more often found in the public limelight."
Marley's attorney, Robert Mills, also indicated his client's disapproval.
"Without intending to prescribe any unreasonable restrictions upon anyone's
right to responsibly exercise the privilege of freedom of speech, or to
appear to sound threatening, please be advised that Mr. Marley intends to
preserve and pursue all remedies provided for by law with reference to any
defamatory statements broadcast or published concerning him."
These undisguised threats to sue were unnecessary since every newspaper would
carefully examine each of the IRE stories for inaccuracies or libelous
material. Such scrutiny was standard procedure on major investigative pieces.
The recipients of Goldwater's and Marley's warnings viewed them for what they
were: an attempt to scare off or intimidate libel-shy editors. But the legal
letters weren't the only complications encountered by IRE.
Since the beginning, the project had been the subject of considerable debate
in the journalism world. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the
Los Angeles Times—the jealously competitive "Big Three" of the nation's
newspaper industry-had all denounced the Phoenix project as gimmicky and
unworkable, claiming that it
smacked of elitism and was insulting to the local Arizona media, who suddenly
found themselves invaded by "outsiders." Not one of the three papers had
bothered to check the makeup of the team. Drehsler, Rawlinson, Overton,
Weisz, and John Winters, assisted by local student interns and a couple of
other Arizona Republic staffers, were all Arizonans. Indeed, of the other
most active team reporters, only Greene, Renner, Wendland, and Koziol were
outsiders. Arizona reporters had made up over half of the fulltime reporting
cadre.
But were they, unfairly, picking on Arizona, as Barry Goldwater would later
suggest?
"You know," mused Koziol during one of the late-night drinking sessions in
the Adams Hotel bar during the height of the project, "sometimes I wonder
what would happen if we used this approach not on Arizona, but Chicago. Sure,
things are rotten here. But I wonder. Are they any worse than Chicago?"
"Or Detroit?" asked Wendland. "Or New York, Washington, Congress, a dozen
places? What if we were to turn a team like this loose to investigate the
CIA, the FBI, or the Kennedy assassination?"
Gradually, the reporters accepted their role. Arizona happened to be the
focal point of their experiment for the simple reason that Bolles was killed
there. His murder was the catalyst. It affected the media emotionally,
prompting the sudden formation of the IRE team. And as the reporting gathered
momentum, the team members found other compelling reasons for their efforts
in Arizona.
The mob takeover was a classic example of how an entire state could literally
be bought. There were national lessons to be learned from Arizona. Perhaps
IRE's reporting would cause an awakening among the local citizens. It was
still not too late to save the state.
And finally, for journalism, the Arizona project was a first. The banding
together of reporters from different geographic areas with different
specialties was indeed significant. Turning them loose on a single project,
bound only by professionalism and not by time or the prejudices of editors
tied to regional interests, held immense possibilities. If such a project
worked in Arizona, it could work anywhere.
The reporters were dog tired. Even Greene, who was first in and last to leave
the office each day, was affected. He looked terrible. His jowls seemed to
hang to his chest. His eyes were bloodshot. One morning in mid-February, on
his way to the state capitol to interview a legislator, he made it all the
way down the Adams's elevator to the parking garage before noticing that his
shoes were still upstairs. He had also gained even more weight from the
months of expenseaccount living. Once during a late January interview held
outside, the lawn chair Greene was sitting in sank two inches in the ground.
But, by February 22, the work was done. The stories, written and rewritten a
dozen times, were piled on a long wooden table in the IRE suite. In all,
there were twenty-three main investigative articles, most with accompanying
sidebars. Altogether, the series was over 80,000 words in length.
Three attorneys flew into Phoenix: Andrew Hughes, whose expenses were paid by
Newsday; John Martin, sent by the Kansas City Star; and Ed DeLaney,
representing the IRE board back in Indianapolis. Hughes and Martin,
middle-aged and bespectacled, and the younger and modish DeLaney spent the
next five days carefully reading every single word, studying and debating
each phrase and the more subtle nuances of the series.
Reporters instinctively distrust lawyers, especially libel lawyers. Given the
power and opportunity, a lawyer will gut a story just to be on the safe side,
most reporters feel. Nevertheless, legal review is a routine and necessary
part of investigative reporting. For no matter how sure a newsman is of the
accuracy of his report, he better be able to prove it. It is the lawyer's job
to make sure every allegation is backed up.
The IRE stories would begin appearing in newspapers across the country on
March 13, a Sunday. The initial report was an overview, noting the
interrelated patterns of corruption in politics, real estate, and justice.
Over the next three days, the "Arizona Triumvirate" of Barry and Bob
Goldwater and Harry Rosenzweig would be analyzed, detailing the relationships
between the trio's rise to power and their longtime associations with
criminal elements. The exploitation of illegal workers at Bob Goldwater's
Arrowhead Ranch-and a separate story on the harassment suffered by IRE
reporters in documenting the story-was treated in depth. So were the Hobo
Joe's restaurant chain story and Herb Applegate's curious relationship to
mobster Licavoli. The business side of life in Arizona was treated in two
days' worth of stories that profiled the huge Del Webb company and Valley
National Bank, as well as Kemper Marley's use of political influence and
money. The way land fraud czar Ned Warren, Sr., literally bought the state of
Arizona was told over a four-day period. There were three days of narcotics
stories, including a special report which named twelve major drug trafficking
rings. The mob—in the form of the Bonanno and Licavoli families and the
lesser—known and cruder hoodlums of Phoenix and Tucson-was exposed in the
series. Other stories examined and spotlighted Arizona's curious system of
law enforcement, justice, and politics.
All of the stories had one thing in common-names were named. It was something
that, with the exception of Don Bolles's reporting and occasional efforts by
a couple of his peers, hadn't been done in Arizona for a long time.
The lawyers read each story. Their questions were agonizingly simple. "How do
you know this?" they would ask time and time again as a particular phrase
troubled them.
Greene, chain-smoking his Pall Malls, would holler for a file. If the
attorneys still weren't satisfied, he kept team members Drehsler, Becker, and
Weisz on hand to answer in depth.
Always, the lawyers were calm and cool. Greene, as the hours and days of
legal nit-picking continued, sometimes exploded.
"Jesus Christ, the son of a bitch fucking admitted the goddamned thing!" he
bellowed at one point when Hughes questioned a statement made by a minor
Phoenix hoodlum that he took orders from the Bonanno family.
"Yes, Bob, but how do we know he was telling your reporters the truth?"
Greene slammed his meaty fist on the desktop. "Jesus Christ! Do we have to
take you lawyers by the hand?" Ten minutes later, after Greene had inundated
the lawyers with background reports, police surveillance observations, and a
half-dozen other pieces of information documenting the point, the attorneys
accepted it. The story stood.
On Friday, February 25, the legal review was complete. And despite the hours
of tension and heated debate, the series was basically unchanged. Only a
couple of stories were killed. One listed several dozen Phoenix hoodlum
hangouts. The lawyers felt that there simply wasn't enough documentation to
call them "mob bars." Another dealt with the associations and activities of
the businessman friend of ASU football coach Frank Kush. The attorneys did
not think the associations—in the form of complicated social and financial
dealings—were significant enough to risk the possibility of
multimillion-dollar lawsuits.
But what impressed the IRE reporters and the lawyers after the review was
completed was how well the reporting had stood the test of legal scrutiny.
The reporters had done their homework. The stories were solid. They were
ready to run.
Martin, the attorney sent to Phoenix by the Kansas City Star to review the
IRE series, commented in a letter mailed to the various news organizations
whose reporters worked on the Arizona project: "The series is immense in
scope. It relates to many subject matters and refers to perhaps hundreds of
individuals.... The abundance of documentation created by the reporters and
editors working on the project was very impressive. Surely no previous
investigative project has been so thoroughly investigated, documented by
records and sources, and cross-indexed. . . . I am not only impressed by the
series, I feel comfortable in defending most litigation filed by some
individuals mentioned in the articles."
The IRE series was distributed to the two dozen newspapers and broadcast
outlets on Friday, March 4. It was set for release for Sunday, March 13. But
because of the extraordinary length and scope of the twenty-three
installments, each paper was expected to rewrite and condense many of the
reports. Thus, a week was set aside for each participating paper to analyze
and edit the IRE series.
On Saturday, March 5, IRE itself held a meeting of its board of directors in
Indianapolis. There was much talk of the literary agent's plan to enrich the
organization's coffers. Ben Bagdikian, a respected media critic, had agreed
to write a book on the team. A tentative deal was being worked out. The
literary agent had come up with a publisher who agreed to a $30,000 advance.
It would be split in half, with IRE and Bagdikian each getting $15,000. Also,
there was still a possible deal in the works with TV producer David Susskind,
though the IRE board was angry that no advance monies seemed to be
forthcoming.
Ron Koziol, the first president of IRE, had driven from Chicago to attend the
meeting. He knew that it would be his last. IRE had turned into a
power-hungry machine, he felt. Koziol himself was thinking about writing a
book on his Phoenix experience. Later, he would decide against the idea and
return to full-time reporting at the Tribune. But at the March 5 board
meeting, he suddenly found himself besieged by hostile questions from his
fellow board members, who demanded that he tell them of his personal plans.
"There's a lot of things I may do," Koziol answered at one point. "I just
haven't made up my mind."
But the questioning continued. The IRE board members didn't want Koziol to
foul up their plans for an "official," IRE-censored view of the Phoenix
project. Besides, as IRE president he had agreed to hire a literary agent.
The board felt it wasn't fair that Koziol, in effect, then compete against
the agent he helped hire.
Koziol returned to Chicago depressed. "They're not the same people," he said
a few days later. "IRE started as a fraternal organization. We were all
investigative reporters and what we wanted to do was improve our profession.
But what I saw at that last meeting turned my stomach. They were like a pack
of jackals, ready to tear the flesh off anyone who got in the way of their
prize." On Monday, March 7, Koziol sent a telegram to Indianapolis, resigning
as IRE president and a member of the board.
On Tuesday, March 8, IRE retaliated.
Though Koziol had resigned, an official news release from Indianapolis was
issued. It made no mention of the president's resignation telegram. Instead,
it claimed that Koziol had been "expelled." It was a dirty trick. But the
release contained still another lie. The IRE claimed that all participants in
the Phoenix project "had promised not to seek any personal profit as a result
of the Phoenix project." In other words, only the IRE-controlled "official"
book would be allowed.
Koziol was telephoned by virtually all of the full-time Phoenix reporters,
who voiced outrage at Indianapolis's clumsy handling of the project's
aftermath. There was never an agreement, either in writing or verbal, that
would prevent any IRE reporter from writing magazine articles or books about
his or her experiences in Phoenix. Indeed, several of the team leaders were
already at work on various free-lance stories. Dave Overton had been hired
temporarily as a special reporter by ABC television to cover the Arizona
team's findings. Alex Drehsler was planning a book on land fraud czar Ned
Warren, Sr., and had agreed to work for the BBC as a special correspondent
during a week's filming in Arizona on the IRE team reports. John Rawlinson
was arranging a deal to write a lengthy free-lance article for a magazine.
Dave Offer and Nina Bondarook were planning similar stories for journalism
publications. Wendland was writing a book.
On Sunday, March 13, five months and nine days after IRE reporters assembled
in the Adams Hotel to begin work, newspapers across the nation began carrying
the finished stories. For the next twenty-two days, the Arizona reports were
page one news nationally and were often featured on the nightly newscasts of
the three major television networks.
Among newspapers carrying all or substantial parts of the series were the
Arizona Daily Star, the Denver Post, the Colorado Springs Sun, Newsday, the
Miami Herald, the Indianapolis Star, the Detroit News, the Riverside (Californ
ia) Press-Enterprise, the Elyria(Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, the Eugene
(Oregon) Register-Guard, the Reno (Nevada) Journal and Gazette, the Boston
Globe, the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal, the Gulfport (Mississippi)
Herald, the Kansas City Star, the Kansas City Times, the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, the Idaho Statesman, the Wenatchee (Washington) World, and
the Milwaukee Journal. Scores of other newspapers which did not participate
in the project gave major play to wire service versions of the IRE reports.
(The Chicago Tribune, obviously embarrassed over IRE's underhanded treatment
of Ron Koziol, did not print the series.)
Even Johnny Carson referred to the IRE reports in his late-night television
comedy skits.
"Bob Goldwater was charged with a new crime today," said Carson, "conspiracy
to commit poppycock." Repeatedly, when asked by other media to comment on the
IRE reports detailing his associations with organized crime, Goldwater had
labeled the series as "poppycock." In another monologue, Carson said: "You
all probably noticed that neither Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman was at the
Academy Awards presentation last night. That's because Jason Robards sent
them on assignment to investigate Arizona."
But also on Sunday, March 13, came another lie. This time, it was from the
Arizona Republic. In a page one "statement" it informed its readers that it
would not publish the IRE series. "Some of the unpublished material contains
statements and allegations for which the Republic... [has] not yet been able
to obtain sufficient documentation and proof to justify publication,"
editorialized the same paper that Don Bolles had worked for. In the fourth
paragraph of the Republic's statement, the newspaper denied that it had been
a participant in the project. Besides John Winters, who had spent full-time
on the project from start to finish, at least two other Republic staffers had
worked with IRE reporters. "This underlines what is terribly wrong in Phoenix
and Arizona," observed Bob Greene, back in Long Island. "People are not given
a right to know what is going on."
The following week morale sunk at the Republic. Several staffers began
talking about quitting or organizing a union. It was not city editor Bob
Early who had made the decision not to print, but publisher Nina Pulliam. It
was, felt reporters for the Republic and the out-of-town papers who had
worked on the Arizona project, a clear indication that the power structure in
Phoenix still controlled the Arizona Republic. Wendland's "Henny Youngman"
news source, who had repeatedly warned of a double cross by the Republic, had
been right after all.
To fill the news gap, some five thousand extra copies of the Arizona Daily
Star in Tucson were rushed up to Phoenix each day. Similarly, the Denver
Post, which also printed the entire IRE series, tried to increase its
presence in Phoenix. They were sold out in minutes. The result was
pandemonium outside the few Phoenix newsstands that carried the out-of-town
publications.
"They're mad," said Sam Bard, owner of a downtown newsstand.
"There was a line of 150 people waiting at the door at seven when I opened. I
sold out in less than a half-hour. If I had them, I could sell one copy for
ten dollars." Other more enterprising souls were hawking xeroxed copies of
the stories for fifty cents apiece on downtown street comers. Picket lines
went up around the offices of the Republic and Gazette by a hastily formed
group known as Citizens for Freedom. "Has Barry G. Stifled the R & G?" asked
one sign. "Whose Truth Does the R & G Print?" said another.
George Weisz, the IRE team researcher who remained in Phoenix after the
project ended to supervise the packing and storage of the voluminous IRE
files, began writing long letters to the other team reporters to keep them
abreast of the latest developments in Phoenix.
"It's an unreal feeling just walking down the street in Phoenix," he wrote on
March 16. "The series is the only thing that's being talked about. I wish you
all could be here to feel the atmosphere. It's incredible. It's
overwhelmingly good for us. It's as if these people have waited decades for
someone to 'rescue them' and publicly expose this stuff. And we've
accomplished that task. People are scurrying from newsstand to newsstand,
out-of-town papers are being scalped in price, the Republic is being picketed
each day."
The other media in Phoenix were quick to fill in the void left by the Republic
's refusal to run the series. KTAR-TV featured the IRE series each day,
KOY-Radio, in perhaps one of broadcast journalism's most unusual and
innovative efforts, read each IRE story almost word for word. Since some of
the articles were as long as five thousand words, the on-the-air reading took
upwards of an hour each evening. The two stations did not limit their
reporting to just the IRE stories. Instead, they backed them up by going out
and contacting many of the original news sources for the team, who confirmed
the details. New Times, an award-winning weekly newspaper that served Phoenix
and its suburbs, devoted two entire issues to nothing but the IRE stories.
And New West magazine, based in Los Angeles, printed major excerpts.
The best assessment of the IRE team's effort came from law enforcement
people, those responsible for cleaning up the mess documented in the team's
80,000-word indictment. Without exception, Arizona's legal establishment had
nothing but praise for the series.
Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt: "We werefortunate to have this kind
of a truly professional team working on the Arizona crime problem. Their
reports were very well documented. What they did was to go out and uncover
this state's very considerable problems, to put them together as never has
been done before, and then to highlight them. I think that what they did, and
did so well, was to do a thorough, professional job, like the Senate
investigating committees under Senator John McClelland. They did their job,
now it's up to us to do ours."
Leon Gaskell, Special Agent in Charge, the FBI, Phoenix: "Their reports
finally drew the awareness of the people of Arizona to the fact that there is
a major crime problem here. For the FBI, the stories and the IRE findings
have helped fill in some of the grey areas. We're looking with great interest
at these articles. We have obtained some information through these articles
that we intend to follow through on."
Vernon Hoy, Director, Arizona Department of Public Safety: "What they wrote
about is something the police have been screaming about for years and no one
before would listen. Finally, someone is listening. Their excellent, factual
reporting will help the entire criminal justice situation in this state."
Lawrence Wetzel, Chief of Police, Phoenix: "The bright light they've shined
on our organized crime problem was long overdue. From a policeman's view, the
IRE investigation was a big success.
Michael Hawkins, U.S. Attorney, State of Arizona: "It was excellent,
first-rate reporting. From their reports, we have found new things that are
now the subject of active investigation."
Philip Jordan, Director, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Arizona: "Arizo
na has a tremendous drug problem, perhaps the worst in the nation. The
publicity these reporters have given that problem will help us tremendously."
William Smitherman, former U.S. Attorney and, in March, 1977, director of the
Arizona legislature's joint task force on organized crime: "The stories were
a great exercise in the First Amendment. Organized crime in Arizona is
finally out in the daylight.
Politicians also voiced opinions on the IRE series.
U.S. Representative Morris K. Udall described the series as "journalism at
its best," but voiced the hope that there would be no tendency to "sweep this
under the rug, to pooh-pooh it, to put it down as a rehash of old charges and
unsubstantiated rumors. It's not a time for recriminations, it's a time for
constructive action. If we're sitting here two or three years from now and
organized crime continues to grow, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves."
Udall's opinion was not shared by Arizona's senior senator, Barry Goldwater.
"I think that in the last twenty-five years, I've been in Arizona a total of
six or eight months," said Goldwater, shortly after the series began. "I'm a
United States Senator. I have nothing to do with the state government of
Arizona. I don't know a single man out here connected with crime at any
level, be it the Mafia or local. I challenge them [IRE] to bring up the name
of one nationally known gangster in Arizona today. If they're there, I don't
know about them."
New West magazine, in an IRE-inspired piece entitled "Da Senator from
Arizona," depicted a perspiring, churlish-looking Goldwater, dressed in a
bolo tie and cowboy hat, standing in the middle of the desert while a group
of gangsters gathered behind him around a funeral wreath. The Arizona Daily
Star editorialized that Goldwater's professed ignorance of his home state's
organized crime problems 16 won't wash." The Kansas City Star ran an
editorial cartoon that copied the front dust jacket of the best-selling novel
The Godfather showing the puppeteer's strings connected to the words "The
Goldwater." And an Albuquerque Journal cartoon depicted an angry Goldwater
talking on the telephone at his desk, surrounded by newspaper headlines on
the IRE series. The caption read: "You're filming a sequel to WHAT? No, I do
NOT want to be played by Marlon Brando."
For the IRE reporters, the end of the project was an anticlimax. While the
investigation was generally hailed as a success, changing gears from the
months of hectic work in Arizona to the routine of their daily jobs back home
was difficult. Many kept in touch for weeks by long-distance telephone.
A few were able to get a couple of weeks of leave from their newspapers as
compensation for the time away from home and families. Most, however,
immediately went back to their regular reporting. Alex Drehsler applied for a
job with Greene at Newsday and was promptly hired.
Ross Becker, who had felt so strongly about the project that he quit his job
in New Mexico, landed a reporting position with a mediumsized newspaper in
New Jersey.
George Weisz was briefly hired as a summer investigator for the Arizona
legislature's joint task force on organized crime. He was joined there by Kay
Nash, one of the volunteer researchers on the IRE investigation, who took a
secretarial job.
Tom Renner, the tireless reporter for Newsday who spent so many weeks being
"Deep 'n Dirty," had grown so enamored of Arizona's climate that he began
shopping around for a winter home near Scottsdale.
Dick Levitan, the Boston radio reporter, married the Boston policewoman he
had been dating. He also was able to use the three-foot-long flashlight and
secret tear-gas dispenser he bought in Arizona. While he was covering a riot
in mid-March, his car was attacked by a group of thugs. "It worked
beautifully," he cheerfully reported.
Myrta Pulliam was appointed acting IRE president until a replacement could be
found for Koziol. Later, Greene was elected permanent president.
Despite the threatened suits, only three of the hundreds of persons named
in the twenty-three-day IRE series had filed suit by the end of the summer.
Peter Licavoli, Jr., the twenty-nine-year-old son of the aging Detroit Mafia
chieftain, claimed seventeen million dollars in damages against IRE, all of
the reporters who worked on the project, and most of the newspapers which
carried IRE stories listing him as a narcotics trafficker. Jerry Colangelo,
general manager of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, filed a $500,000 suit
against IRE, accusing the group of libeling him by implying that he
associated with gamblers. Colangelo was named in the IRE series as a patron
of a downtown Phoenix bagel shop frequented by gamblers. And Alfred Gay, the
Alaskan bush pilot who bought the Arizona border town of Lukeville, filed a
million-dollar suit against the Associated Press and several Alaskan
newspapers which carried IRE-inspired stories identifying him as a suspected
narcotics trafficker.
Meanwhile, there were other suits not involving IRE. Rosalie Bolles,
frustrated by the government's inability to file charges against Kemper
Marley, filed a five-million-dollar civil suit against the powerful
rancher-politician, accusing him of conspiring to murder her husband and thus
depriving her of his love and care. Marley, who remained free of any charges
in the Bolles murder despite Adamson's sworn testimony, promptly filed a
fifty-one-million-dollar civil suit against Mrs. Bolles, contending that her
allegations defamed him.
In early June, one year after her husband's murder, Rosalie Bolles remarried.
Her new husband was a middle-aged Phoenix insurance agent.
IRE and its reporters won a number of press awards. The American Society of
Journalists and Authors gave the group its annual Conscience in Media gold
medal. Patrick M. McGrady, chairman of the society's professional rights
committee, said: "IRE's Arizona project was the finest hour of American
journalism—bar none." The project also received the National Journalism Award
of Ball State University and a scroll of appreciation from the Sigma Delta
Chi chapter at New York University. The series was also nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize, to be judged in 1978.
A group known as the Behavioral Research Center of Arizona conducted a survey
of 1,000 heads of households in late April 1977 and found that eighty percent
of Arizona's residents had read or heard portions of the IRE reports. The
study also found that forty-one percent of Arizonans believed that organized
crime in their state was more serious than elsewhere in the country.
Jack Duggan, the bearded proprietor of a Phoenix nightclub who unknowingly
served as an IRE source, was convicted of running a gambling operation in
early May and sentenced to three years' probation and a $1,000 fine.
Four narcotics traffickers named in the IRE series as major sources of
Mexican heroin were indicted in late May by a federal grand jury. State,
federal, and local authorities said a number of other investigations prompted
by disclosures in the series were underway.
Harry Rosenzweig was honored as "Man of the Year" by the Phoenix Association
of Christians and Jews.
The Intelligence Division of the Phoenix Police Department received a
half-million-dollar-a-year budget increase after the IRE series and was
renamed the Organized Crime Division.
Arizona Governor Raul Castro was under "serious consideration" by the Carter
administration to become the new ambassador to Argentina.
Two IRE sources had personal setbacks.
Richard Frost, one of the team's land fraud sources, was convicted in federal
court of land fraud and, shortly before the series began, was sentenced to
serve one to three years in a federal penitentiary by U.S. Judge Walter Craig.
In early March, land fraud "godfather" Ned Warren, Sr., suffered a serious
heart attack. A few weeks later he was interviewed by reporters from his
hospital bed. Warren had read the IRE series. "I'm not happy, but it's
basically accurate," he said. Warren said doctors told him he only had three
to five years to live.
By the beginning of May, the Arizona project was past history for the
reporters. Yet another form of afterlife began to evolve. The former
teammates started contacting each other for story ideas. Wendland and Koziol,
whose newspapers covered the Midwest, worked together on an investigation of
mob ties between Chicago and Detroit. David Offer of the Milwaukee Journal joi
ned in, offering the names of businesses in his city which had shady dealings
in Illinois.
Out west, John Rawlinson of the Arizona Daily Star and Dick Lyneis of the
Riverside (California) Press planned to jointly probe the presence of
organized crime in Palm Springs.
Dick Cady of the Indianapolis Star got on the telephone with a half-dozen
former IRE team members seeking and sharing information on a nationwide
garbage-disposal firm suspected of being a front for the mob.
No longer were the reporters isolated and frustrated by a lack of manpower or
money in following a story out of their paper's circulation area. Because of
the Phoenix project, criminals were not the only ones who were organized.
So were the media.
Don Bolles's murder had been avenged.
pps. 252-264
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
