Crime Inc. Frank Sinatra's Mafia Connection

On February 10, 1961, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a pointed memo to United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, regarding singer Frank Sinatra's extensive connections to organized crime figures. In the memo Hoover gave a précis of Sinatra's alleged criminal background prior to his Mafia involvement. Hoover then ticked off Sinatra's criminal associates, including Joseph and Rocco Fischetti, who were cousins of Al Capone; New Jersey crime boss Willie Moretti; James Tarantino who was himself an associate of gangster Bugsy Siegel; Mickey Cohen of Los Angeles; and reigning Chicago boss Sam Giancana. According to Hoover, when Giancana had been arrested in 1958, the police found Sinatra's private telephone number in Giancana's wallet. Hoover described a command performance by Sinatra and singer Dean Martin at the home of "notorious Chicago hoodlum" Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo. According to Hoover, in the summer of 1959, Sinatra allegedly hosted a nine-day, round-the-clock party at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City where Chicago wiseguys rubbed elbows with top East Coast mobsters, including Vito Genovese and Tommy Lucchese. Hoover even quoted a female informant who had met Sinatra and Joe Fischetti at the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami and believed that the singer had "'a hoodlum complex.'"