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Old 02-18-2008, 03:12 AM   #54 (permalink)
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If John mcCain is smart enough to be president, shouldn't he have had some curiousity about his new wife's father, James Hensley's background, that Hensley was "mobbed up", and so was his money and the money that McCain has ended up with? When did the money become "clean"?

Below are investigative reporter, Don Bolles' last words, spoken after a car bomb shattered his body in a Phoenix, AZ parking lot in 1976.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bolles#Death">"They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John (Harvey Adamson)."</a>

Quote:
http://www.amazon.com/Arizona-Projec...3312904&sr=8-1
The Arizona Project (Paperback)
by Michael F. Wendland

pps.93-107

...Dick Levitan, an award-winning reporter for WEEI-Radio in Boston and the only broadcast reporter with IRE, was assigned to visit with Harris to get his views on the mistrial and the subsequent removal of the case from his office. "Babbitt is a four-eyed prick, a real fuck-up," Harris told Levitan for openers. Sitting in his office, which was decorated with eight medals he had won as a Marine in Vietnam, Harris conceded that he wanted to call a grand jury. He was convinced that Kemper Marley, the wealthy rancher and political shaker, had contracted Adamson for the job. He also believed that Max Dunlap, Marley's protege, was the middleman. There were others involved, he said, who had assisted Adamson, but those were the big three. Rocking in his leather swivel chair and fondling his Western-style shirt, Harris changed the subject to the hundred thousand dollars a year he had raked in as a private attorney. Levitan steered the conversation back to the Bolles case....
Quote:
http://www.ire.org/history/arizona.html

....July 6, 1977 - Trial begins for Dunlap and Robison, who are charged with first-degree murder. During the trial, Dunlap's attorney tries to cast suspicion on Phoenix attorney Neal Roberts, who had dealings with both Adamson and Dunlap, as the real mastermind in the murder plot.

Nov. 6, 1977 - A jury finds Dunlap and Robison guilty primarily on the strength of Adamson's testimony. They also are found guilty of conspiring to kill then-Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt and advertising man Al Lizanetz. Adamson testifies that Dunlap wanted the three killed because each had angered Dunlap's friend, millionaire rancher and liquor wholesaler Kemper Marley Sr., who never is charged in the case.

Jan. 10, 1978 - Dunlap and Robison are sentenced to death......

Dec. 19, 1990 - Dunlap is recharged with Bolles' murder. Dunlap and Robison also are charged with conspiring to obstruct a criminal investigation into the slaying. Adamson agrees to testify against the pair in return for the reinstatement of his 1977 plea bargain and 20-year, two-month prison sentence.....

....April 20, 1993 - Dunlap is found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiring to obstruct the investigation of the case, and is later sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years....
Quote:
Kemper Marley Sr. Is Dead at 83; Name Arose in '76 Slaying Inquiry ...Kemper Marley Sr. Is Dead at 83; Name Arose in '76 Slaying Inquiry ... LEAD: Kemper Marley Sr., a millionaire Arizona rancher and liquor distributor whose ...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...55C0A966958260
Quote:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specia...-chapter5.html
Arizona, the early years
Dan Nowicki, Bill Muller
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 1, 2007 10:33 AM

CHAPTER V: ARIZONA, THE EARLY YEARS

.....Cindy's money came from her family business. Her father, Jim Hensley, owned a Phoenix Anheuser-Busch distributorship that had made him a multimillionaire. He gave his new son-in-law a job as vice president of public relations, but, really, McCain was just biding his time until the right political opportunity came up.

"Jim Hensley didn't care about PR," said Bill Shover, a former executive with The Arizona Republic who met McCain in 1981. "When you have the Budweiser franchise, you . . . don't need PR."......

....On the political front, McCain reached out to his Capitol Hill mentors and friends for guidance. Cohen put him in touch with veteran political consultant Jay Smith, who advised McCain to discreetly get out and start meeting Arizona VIPs.

<h3>His job with Hensley allowed him to do that.</h3>

It didn't take long for McCain to meet wealthy power brokers such as developers Charles Keating Jr. and Fife Symington III, who would later be elected governor. Local polls suggested McCain start slowly by running for the state Legislature, but McCain wasn't interested......

....Money-in-law
Many have told the tale of McCain winning the 1st Congressional District by wearing out three pairs of shoes, with the final pair immortalized in bronze by Cindy. McCain's footwear definitely took a beating during the race, but it was more greenbacks than soles that swept McCain into the House of Representatives.

McCain's first campaign benefited from his wife's personal wealth, some of which had been tied up in a trust set up in 1971 by her parents, Jim and Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley.

In 1981, the trust expired and was dissolved, giving Cindy a half interest in Western Leasing Co., a truck-leasing business controlled by her father, according to Trevor Potter, general counsel to the McCain 2000 presidential campaign and 2008 exploratory campaign. Potter also is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Western Leasing was not the only income the McCains had in 1982. They earned a combined $130,000 in salary and bonuses from Hensley, the beer distributorship controlled by Cindy's father. John also had his Navy pension, which paid $31,000 a year.

"No one pretends that Cindy had no money at all," Potter said. "It was hers. And it wasn't something Jim (Hensley) had given her for the campaign."

Under 1982 election rules, it was legal for McCain to tap his wife's assets, as well as his own, when making personal loans to the campaign. In 1983, the rules were rewritten, with tighter guidelines on the use of family money. .....
Quote:
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/sp...naproject.html
A look back at the Arizona Project
Lauren Vasquez
Special to The Republic
May. 28, 2006 11:25 AM

Thirty years ago, a team of investigative reporters from newspapers around the country gathered in a hotel room in downtown Phoenix intent on making journalistic history.

They came after a fledging organization called the IRE put out a call in the weeks following the murder of one of its own: Come to Arizona to expose the mob and finish the work that Don Bolles had started. Bolles, an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, had reputedly been working on stories exposing organized crime when his car was blown up in downtown Phoenix.

In the months that followed that call in the summer of 1976, nearly 40 reporters and editors from 23 newspapers as varied as Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal interviewed politicians, mobsters, prostitutes and businessmen, crossed and re-crossed the Mexican border and filled six large file drawers and 40,000 cross-index files with notes. It was the biggest investigation in Arizona history - and the only one of its kind ever conducted by the Investigative Reporters and Editors or any other media group.

Those involved with the project promised a blockbuster of a report - one that would expose corruption at the highest levels of Arizona's politics, put mobsters in jail and send a clear message that no one could kill a reporter in the United States and get away with it.

The report the IRE team produced the next year was a blockbuster -- at least in length. In 40 stories over 23 days, it aimed the spotlight on organized crime in Arizona and blamed the mafia’s infiltration on greedy public officials and a justice system that they called a “social club” of judges, prosecutors and bar associations....


....And that was the mild language.

“The state has become a haven for white-collar swindlers” with “itchy-palmed public officers eager to look the other way for a price,” states one story. “The ability of mobsters to move unscathed and corrupt public officials to go unpunished is the result of the benign attitude of some judges and prosecutors and bar associations that function more as social clubs than guardians of the legal ethic. The result is an attitude of arrogance and untouchability, logical precursors to the thought that the murder of a newspaper reporter is a reasonable way to halt his work.”

The report alleged that Goldwater, a millionaire and former candidate for president of the United States, had close ties with organized crime that went back for years. It said there were more than 200 people in the state with clear ties to the mafia. It argued that Del E. Webb Corp., still a major land developer in the Valley, was in business with the mafia.

One of the project’s most contentious reports came on day eight of the series, which focused on the citrus farms owned by Goldmar, a real estate and investment company owned by Barry Goldwater’s brother, Robert, and Robert’s longtime business partner, Joseph Martori.

The farms were run on the “sweat of illegal aliens who have been paid cruelly eager wages and forced to live in subhuman conditions,” the report reads. Goldwater and Martori claimed to have no knowledge of the use of illegal workers.

Phoenix millionaire liquor wholesaler Kemper Marley also took heat. The project pegged Marley as cowboy who earned his millions after an early life of sleeping on the open range and surviving on jerky and beans. Marley’s rise from cowboy to millionaire was attributed to suspected dealings with the mafia. and it was the mafia that gave Marley a seat on the Arizona Racing Commission, which regulated horse and greyhound racing.

At the time of the project’s publication, one of the theories was that Marley had ordered the hit on Bolles partly because of Bolles’ investigation of Emprise Corp., a sports concession company that had been linked to the mob. Marley was suspected of trying to get a seat on the Arizona Racing Commission to help out Emprise.

Reportedly Bolles’ last words when he was found in the parking lot the day of the bombing were, “They finally got me,” “the mafia,” and “Emprise.”

Police never found enough evidence to arrest Marley, who continued doing business in the Valley until his death in 1990....

Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...5BC0A96E958260
PRO FOOTBALL: NOTEBOOK; Bidder No. 7 Helps to Thicken the Plot in the Saga of the Browns' Ownership

By MIKE FREEMAN
Published: August 16, 1998
The process of finding an owner for the new Cleveland Browns team has at times resembled a mystery novel. The National Football League will not publicly identify any prospective owners, though six ownership groups have been identified in news media reports. And there have always been rumors of a seventh.

It is a rumor no more. As of late last week, seven groups had turned in their applications and paid the fees to reach the final step in the bidding process: a formal presentation to the N.F.L. owners next week.

The mystery group? According to several team executives, it is led by Jeremy Jacobs, owner of the National Hockey League's Boston Bruins and the Fleet Center. Jacobs is also the chief executive officer of Delaware North Companies.

This is not the first time Jacobs has pursued a professional football team. He wanted to buy the New England Patriots in the early 1990's, but they were eventually bought by Robert Kraft.

Jacobs, the N.F.L. executives said, has a solid shot at getting the Browns. His net worth is estimated at some $600 million. N.F.L. owners are familiar with him, and they like that he knows how to run a professional sports franchise. They describe Jacobs as an intensely private man with a thirst for sports. Jacobs did not return phone calls and has done few interviews.

N.F.L. team executives say Jacobs seems to be willing to spend what it takes to get the Browns. Estimates are that rights to the team could sell for anywhere from $400 million to $700 million.

The other groups in the running for the Browns are led by Richard Jacobs, who owns the Cleveland Indians and is no relation to Jeremy Jacobs; Tom Murdough; Bert Wolstein; Larry and Charles Dolan; the New York real estate developer Howard Millstein, and Al Lerner, who has teamed with Carmen Policy, the former general manager of the San Francisco 49ers.

It has been thought that the Lerner-Policy team is among the front-runners, but Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said recently that the race was wide open.

All the candidates are businessmen who own large companies. Jeremy Jacobs is no different, but his company may have the most interesting background.

Jacobs's company, which, among other things, is the concessionaire to several professional baseball teams, has more than 200 operating units in dozens of states and some half-dozen other countries. The company's yearly revenues top $1 billion. The company was built by his father, Louis Jacobs, who died of a heart attack while at his desk in 1968 when Jeremy was 28 years old.

Around the time of Louis Jacobs's death, investigators had been looking into the company, then named Emprise Corporation, for links to organized crime. Jeremy Jacobs, who took control of Emprise after his father died, strongly denied any wrongdoing.

In 1972, however, a jury in a Los Angeles Federal court ruled that Emprise conspired to conceal its ownership interests as well as the interests of two alleged organized crime figures in a Las Vegas casino. The jury said that Emprise gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to front men for alleged mobsters at the casino. The late Louis Jacobs and another son, Max, were named as unindicted co-conspirators. Emprise was fined $10,000.

That year, Sports Illustrated put Louis Jacobs on its cover as ''The Godfather of Sports.''
Quote:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/electi...z-hensley.html
McCain, his wealth tied to wife's family beer business
Dawn Gilbertson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 23, 2007 12:29 PM

The trophy case at Hensley

Hensley

Headquarters: Phoenix.

Business: Beer distributor in metropolitan Phoenix and Prescott Valley. The company, founded in 1955, is the nation's third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor.

Employees: 643.

Ownership: Privately held. Cindy Hensley McCain, wife of Arizona Sen. John McCain, is controlling stockholder and chairwoman of the board.

The blue-and-white campaign pin from the 1980s is a subtle reminder of the distributor's ties to Arizona's senior senator and would-be presidential candidate.

McCain's wife, Cindy, is the Hensley in Hensley, the nation's third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor. Her father, Jim, founded the company 50 years ago, and she became the controlling stockholder of the privately held company upon his death in 2000. Cindy Hensley McCain is chairwoman of Hensley's board of directors.

Cindy McCain's family business and her other investments have long been the source of McCain's wealth, according to disclosure reports candidates are required to file. He is the seventh-richest senator by net worth, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan, nonprofit group that tracks money spent in political campaigns.

The latest personal finances report, filed last May, shows assets worth a minimum of $27.5million for the McCains, with the company accounting for about half of that. The company portion does not include his wife's retirement plan from Hensley or the Anheuser-Busch stock held by her and their dependent children.

The total value is a bare minimum, as assets worth more than $1million in the name of a spouse or children do not have to be quantified in the financial reports. Many of Hensley's assets are listed in that "over $1million" category.

The only assets listed under McCain's name or held jointly are a few bank accounts worth less than $100,000. McCain has been far removed from the operations of the family business he married into, except for a brief stint as vice president of public relations at Hensley when he moved to Arizona in the early 1980s, company officials say.

"The limit of his questions to me is, 'How's business going?' That's about that," said Bob Delgado, Hensley's longtime chief executive and a close friend of the McCains.

"Senator McCain has never tried to advise us on how to run this business, and I certainly am not going to try to advise him on how to do what he's doing."

Cindy McCain isn't even a regular at the headquarters, preferring to keep abreast of company business largely through Delgado, he said.

They talk and meet often, usually about broad business issues, such as new products in the pipeline from Anheuser-Busch or the new plant Hensley is building in Chandler.

"That's what Cindy is interested in, the big picture and making sure employees' welfare is taken care of," Delgado said.

The only McCain who pulls into the Hensley offices near 45th Avenue and Indian School every morning is Andy, John's son from his first marriage. He is Hensley's chief financial officer and has been with the firm for about 10 years.

"He's really become part of the culture, part of the fabric of the company," Delgado said. "He's fit in very, very well."

Delgado said it was clear to him when he met John McCain that he did not plan to climb the ladder in the family beer business. McCain had moved to Phoenix after retiring from a job as naval liaison to the Senate.

"He always talked about world events, local events," Delgado said. "The beer business was not something of great importance to him."

He said McCain worked at Hensley for such a short time, "It's almost like he wasn't here."

Over the years, Delgado said, he does not think the McCain-Hensley connection has helped or hurt business at the company, which has a commanding 60 percent market share in the competitive Phoenix market. When he was elected to Congress, McCain said he would recuse himself from voting on issues related to the alcohol industry.

"Obviously there are a lot of people that know that connection, but there are a lot of people that don't," Delgado said. "It's not something I bring up."

Delgado said it has been his responsibility since McCain was elected to Congress in 1982 to keep things separate.

"We just think it's good business," he said. "The corporation has got its dealings, and the senator is in a political world."

Still, McCain and Hensley are inextricably linked, and those ties will no doubt be under scrutiny should the senator enter the 2008 presidential race.

The beer distributor came under fire more than a decade ago for allegations of grouping political contributions to skirt Arizona campaign finance laws.....
Quote:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specia...-chapter6.html
The Senate calls
Dan Nowicki, Bill Muller
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 1, 2007 10:34 AM

CHAPTER VI: THE SENATE CALLS

.....Kimball launched another series of attacks, calling McCain "bought and paid for" by special interests because much of McCain's campaign contributions came from political action committees in four industries: defense, real estate, petroleum and utilities.

Kimball also noted that McCain was a millionaire because of his wife's interests in the beer distributorship owned by her father. Kimball wasn't shy about airing the Hensley family laundry.

<h3>He had dug up old newspaper clips that showed Jim Hensley had been an underling to well-known power broker Kemper Marley Sr., a rich rancher and wholesale liquor baron with suspected links to the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
</h3>
After World War II (Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17 that was shot down over the English Channel), Hensley and his brother Eugene went to work at Marley-owned liquor distributorships in Phoenix and Tucson.

In 1948, the Hensley brothers were convicted of falsifying records to conceal, government lawyers contended, the illegal distribution of hundreds of cases of liquor. The sales occurred from 1945 to 1947, postwar years when liquor was rationed and in short supply.

Eugene Hensley was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Jim Hensley got six months, but his sentence was suspended. He received probation.

<h3>In 1953, Jim Hensley was again charged with falsifying records at Marley's liquor firms. The companies were defended by William Rehnquist, who would go on to become chief justice of the Supreme Court. Hensley was found not guilty.....</h3>
Ooops....sorry, wrong forum......
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