Robert Peloquin

Robert Dolan Peloquin (January 9, 1929, Fall River, Massachusetts, to March 24, 2011, Frederick, Maryland) was a lawyer in the Department of Justice who left it in 1967 to practice with William Hundley, became in 1970 the first president of Intertel, a private intelligence company owned by Resorts International, ran it until 1985, and was chairman and executive vice president of Resorts International from 1985 to 1990. Intertel's clients included Howard Hughes, ITT and the shah of Iran.¹

Navy and Justice

An applicant investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1958 recorded that Peloquin attended Georgetown University from 1947 to 1951, served on active duty in the United States Navy from August 18, 1951 to June 4, 1955, leaving as a lieutenant (junior grade), and studied at the Georgetown law school from February 1953 to October 1956. He was an attorney in the department's Internal Security Division from early 1957 to August 1961, when he resigned for private practice, writing to the Director on August 25, 1961 to thank him for the Bureau's courtesies. He returned to the department, on a date the Bureau did not know, as an attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.² He held a commission in the Naval Reserve as an intelligence specialist and retired from it in 1981 as a commander.¹³

At Justice Peloquin led the first Organized Crime Strike Force, in Buffalo, New York, against the Magaddino and Profaci families, investigated the 1964 murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Mississippi and organized crime control of casinos in the Bahamas, and received a department award for outstanding performance in 1966.¹ He worked on the squad assembled to pursue Jimmy Hoffa.⁴ The Bureau's summary records that from January to August 1967 he was in charge of the Buffalo task force, "during which period he attempted to set up his own investigative organization, ignoring the responsibilities of the various Federal agencies, particularly the FBI."²

Operation Tradewinds and Paradise Island

In 1965 the Internal Revenue Service began Operation Tradewinds, a tax investigation of the means by which American racketeers, lawyers and businessmen laundered, concealed and skimmed cash in the Bahamas. Jim Hougan wrote that Peloquin was "deeply involved" in it and served as "middleman among the agencies," and that it was Peloquin who informed the Department of State in 1966 of a meeting between IRS intelligence officers and his superior, Henry Petersen, chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, which dealt with evidence acquired "in ways that violated Bahamian laws and which therefore required 'special handling'": the IRS could continue to obtain information from bank employees in the Bahamas through American agents such as Norman Casper, to be used "for lead purposes" and delivered on American soil. According to Hougan, a January memorandum by Peloquin on the casino planned for Paradise Island by James Crosby's Mary Carter Paint Company stated that "the atmosphere looks right for a Lansky skim," a reference to Meyer Lansky, and while the casino was under construction Peloquin shuttled between Washington, D.C. and Nassau, conferring with the new American consul general, Turner Shelton.⁵

A royal commission of inquiry sat in the Bahamas in 1967 under Sir Ranulph Bacon, formerly commissioner of Scotland Yard and later a director of Intertel. Hougan wrote that Peloquin was an "unofficial" but influential observer of its work; that the commission examined the casino interests of Wallace Groves and the fees of Sir Stafford Sands but not Crosby, whose casino had not yet opened; and that a few weeks before the casino opened on January 1, 1968, Crosby, who had grown close to Bebe Rebozo and Shelton, wrote thirty-four checks to campaign committees of Richard Nixon, all but one for 3,000 dollars, and raised a further 100,000 dollars from friends at the urging of Maurice Stans.⁶

Hundley and Peloquin

The Bureau's summary records that Peloquin resigned in August 1967 "to enter law practice with William G. Hundley, former Chief of the Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, and to assume the position of Chief of Security for the football leagues." Hougan likewise dates the firm to 1967; a 1977 profile in The Washington Post states that Peloquin left Justice in 1968.²⁴⁶ Hougan described Hundley as a veteran of Smith Act prosecutions who had "harried John Frank and quizzed Robert Maheu in the wake of the Galindez kidnapping."⁶

The firm advised the National Football League on security; one player recalled Peloquin lecturing training-camp locker rooms on how to turn away mobsters offering bribes to fix games.⁴ Hougan named the firm's other first client as Time-Life, "sued by Mike McClaney."⁶ The Post wrote that the firm took on Life as a client, "gathering evidence for law suits filed against Life's investigative team," a group of reporters who had examined gambling in the Bahamas, and that Resorts International then became a client. A former member of the Life team said: "It sort of bothered me when I found out about Peloquin's association with Resorts." Peloquin said: "We certainly had both of them as clients at the same time, but I checked with Life before we took Resorts on as a client."⁴ Hougan wrote that within weeks Peloquin and Hundley were named vice presidents of the Resorts subsidiary responsible for the new casino.⁶ In 1970 Peloquin was a vice president of Paradise Enterprises, Ltd., a Resorts subsidiary.³

Formation of Intertel

On April 22, 1970 the FBI's Miami office reported to the Director that a confidential source, whose name is withheld in the released file, had learned of a newly formed private organization, International Intelligence, Inc., formed by the former Justice Department attorneys Peloquin and Hundley, "whose identities are well known to the Bureau," both associated with the Paradise Island hotel and casino at Nassau. The source advised that "Peloquin has made no secret of the fact that he intends to use information obtained from the Justice Department files" to gather information on racket control of corporations and to furnish it to professional sports organizations, casinos and others. The memorandum was captioned under the Bureau's Criminal Intelligence Program.⁷ A Bureau letter of April 29, 1970, copied to the Deputy Attorney General, described the source as "most reliable."⁸ On July 24, 1970 headquarters asked the New York office to check its indices, and on August 5, 1970 the former FBI supervisor John D. O'Connell, Intertel's executive vice president, gave the New York office a brochure listing the company's officers.³

Intertel was incorporated in Delaware in January 1970 "to conduct and carry on a management advisory and consulting business relating to the protection of business firms of every type and description from the infiltration, incursion, attack and influence of crime and criminals." Crosby was chairman of the board, Peloquin president, and Hundley secretary and general counsel. The officers included the treasurer Raymond M. Gore, also vice president for finance of Resorts International; Fenelon Richards, former director of enforcement of the Bureau of Customs and director of security for Resorts; Thomas McKeon, formerly a Justice Department organized crime attorney and chief of the Special Projects Section of the National Security Agency; David Belisle, formerly deputy director of security at the State Department and director of investigations at the National Security Agency; William Kolar, former director of the intelligence division of the IRS; and James Golden, a former Secret Service agent and director of security at the 1968 Republican National Convention.³

The records give different accounts of the financing. The Post wrote in 1977 that in 1970 Peloquin left the law firm to form Intertel "with $100,000 staked by Resorts International," which then owned 81 percent of its stock.⁴ A teletype of December 7, 1970 from the FBI's Las Vegas office recorded a report that Intertel was "originally financed to extent of about two million dollars" by Resorts International.⁹ A White House memorandum of 1971 described Crosby as "assertedly owning" what it typed as "%91" of Intertel's stock.¹⁰

On December 31, 1970, Peloquin wrote to J. Edgar Hoover on Intertel stationery with birthday wishes and "the best wishes of the employees of INTERTEL, an organization of former government employees who have long admired your contribution to law enforcement," adding: "Please be assured of our best wishes and continuing cooperation." Helen Gandy replied that Hoover appreciated the "offer of cooperation." A Bureau note prepared for the reply records that the Bureau had enjoyed favorable relations with Peloquin while he was at Justice, that he had since been critical of the Director, and that at a conference in Buffalo on January 29, 1969 he had said that Hoover "did not recognize the existence of organized crime until 1960" and that businessmen would have to "harass" the FBI to get results on organized crime.²⁸ On January 5, 1971 the Bureau told its legal attaché in Ottawa, in reply to an inquiry of December 17, 1970, that "no investigation has been conducted of this organization by the FBI," and that it might be engaged to run security at the Hughes casino-hotels.⁸

The Hughes Account

In late 1970 the Hughes Tool executives Raymond Holliday and Frank W. Gay and the lawyer Chester Davis moved against Robert Maheu, who directed Hughes's Nevada operations. Hughes left the Desert Inn in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving Eve, November 25, 1970, and flew to the Britannia Beach Hotel on Paradise Island, owned by Resorts International. Hughes discharged Maheu on December 5, 1970.¹¹¹²

The Las Vegas teletype of December 7 reported that Davis and Gay had announced that Intertel would be engaged on contract and that Intertel officials were in Las Vegas awaiting authorization to assume complete security responsibility. It recorded the statement of "an official of Hughes operations (former SA Richard Danner)" that the Mary Carter Paint Company and Resorts International "may possibly be hoodlum infiltrated or financially indebted to Meyer Lansky," and asked headquarters and Miami for all available information on both companies.⁹ A memorandum from J. H. Gale to Mr. Sullivan, prepared at the request of Mr. Tolson and filed in January 1971, states: "During the past week, Intertel has been engaged by officials of the Hughes Tool Company to take over the management and operation of several of the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, which are owned and operated by Howard Hughes."¹³

Hougan recorded Maheu's account that "Peloquin and Crosby, the Intertel people, came through Las Vegas months before Mr. Hughes disappeared," ostensibly to compare the Desert Inn's security with the Resorts operation in the Bahamas, and that Maheu regarded the visit as "casing the place." Hougan also recorded the statement of Intertel's general counsel, McKeon, that meetings with the Davis faction beginning in the summer of 1970 were devoted to planning the removal of Hughes from Las Vegas ("We developed a plan this thick"), and wrote that Peloquin denied that such a plan existed and attributed the summer meetings to a bomb threat against an Air West aircraft.¹⁴ In its written rebuttal of the Las Vegas Sun series of 1971, Intertel stated that the Resorts executives Jack Davis and Crosby had been in Las Vegas on the date in question solely "to aid Robert D. Peloquin, President of INTERTEL, in his consulting with the Board of Directors of the Hughes Tool Company," and that Intertel "was retained by the Board of Directors of Hughes Tool Company as consultants on security for its Nevada properties, not by Chester C. Davis, nor anyone acting alone."¹⁵

A CIA memorandum for the record of May 20, 1971, written by an agency employee seeking a position with Intertel, records that he was introduced to Peloquin on May 10, 1971 by a former agency employee then on Intertel's staff. It states that "it would appear that since December of 1970 much of their active staff working out of the D. C. office have in fact become just exactly that," detectives; that Hughes Tool had engaged Intertel "to conduct a sweeping and exhaustive investigation into the affairs and past activities of Robert A. Maheu," on a contract "reported to run upward to a million dollars"; that the investigation had "already turned certain significant information over to the Internal Revenue Service," with Kolar on the scene in Las Vegas; that the lawyer Edward P. Morgan, whom the Intertel source described as having been paid almost a million dollars by Hughes Tool, was "making noises to certain unnamed Hughes Tool Company officials to the effect that they had better take it easy on Maheu because of the past involvement with CIA in covert operations," and that Intertel had studied approaches to him through former FBI channels but had not made one; and that the Intertel source "will not allow Maheu to use the Agency as a shield." The memorandum adds that the Washington lawyer Bernard Fensterwald had told a friend: "It looks like may be the good guys (INTERTEL) are in fact the bad guys with the Mafia connections."¹⁶

Asked in executive session in December 1973 whether Intertel had investigated the relationship between Maheu and Larry O'Brien, Chester Davis answered: "the only thing I know about Intertel and its activities are activities under my direction with respect to gathering facts germane to issues involving litigation."¹⁷ Hougan wrote that in Maheu's libel suit, Maheu's lawyer, Morton Galane, called Peloquin, who acknowledged that Intertel agents had filed more than five hundred written reports on Maheu and found no evidence of theft.¹⁸ In February 1977 Intertel still controlled the security for much of the Hughes empire. On Christmas morning 1972 Peloquin telephoned Bacon in Brighton to arrange the immigration clearance at Gatwick of an arriving client, "Howard Hughes," and Peloquin counted as a principal success the identification of Edith Irving as the "Helga Hughes" who cashed the checks of McGraw-Hill in the Clifford Irving hoax.⁴ Peloquin told the writer Eamon Javers in 2008 that Hughes's money was the reason he could afford his farm in Fairfield, Pennsylvania.¹⁹

The Bureau's Files

On May 24, 1971 a former FBI agent then with Intertel, Fred G. Robinette, called on the Bureau official A. Rosen to offer help in answering a column by Jack Anderson on the royalties from Hoover's books; the memorandum notes that he and Kolar had earlier passed the Bureau information about a television program on the Director.²⁰ On January 26, 1972 Robinette wrote to John P. Mohr, assistant to the Director, about a matter "in which we are so deeply involved," enclosing an Intertel brochure to "dispel any image we may have as a 'National Private Detective Agency'," and noting that the former FBI agent Ralph Winte had just taken a position with Bill Gay, one of Hughes's top executives. Mohr reported to Tolson that he had told Robinette that the firm "was not entitled to any information in our files."²⁰

Watergate

Jack Caulfield, a White House aide, testified to the Senate Watergate committee that "Intertel was deeply involved in the Maheu-Hughes battle, with Intertel being on the side of the Hughes interests," and that his proposal for a private political intelligence organization, Operation Sandwedge, was written around July 1971.¹⁰ The Sandwedge memorandum, printed as Tab 31, warned of the "new and rapidly growing Intertel organization" as a "gun for hire" that could be turned against the President in 1972. It described Hundley as former special assistant to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Peloquin as a "Kennedy loyalist who functioned as Senior Attorney in Justice's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section"; named Belisle; stated that Stephen Smith, the Kennedys' brother-in-law, had visited Intertel's New York office, headed by O'Connell, whom it called a "black bag" specialist; recorded that O'Connell had taken an electronics specialist to sweep the offices of Howard Stein and of Jerome S. Hardy of the Dreyfus Corporation, an Intertel director; alleged that one Intertel principal, related to a Baltimore Cosa Nostra figure, was in charge of Hughes security in Las Vegas; and noted that Kolar and the Resorts president, Jack Davis, had testified before the New Jersey legislature in favor of legalized gambling. It recorded that Golden, "formerly with Intertel, has now switched over to the Hughes' Tool Company," stated a "consensus in the federal intelligence sector" that Intertel "in all likelihood" had delivered to Hughes the details of a reported Justice-IRS skimming investigation of Maheu, and recommended that Intertel be "neutralized by Justice" through a case on whether it had "unauthorized access to sensitive government files."¹⁰ Caulfield testified that information had come to his attention "indicating that Intertel was unlawfully receiving information from Government files," and that his intent was to find out whether that was so.¹⁰ He also testified that Intertel's financial success, and the IRS background of some of its leading principals, bore on his proposal that the IRS official Vernon Acree handle IRS matters for the new organization.²¹

The committee's Hughes and Rebozo hearings touched Resorts International. William E. Griffin, a lawyer consulted by Rebozo about the 100,000 dollar Hughes contribution, testified that around 1969 or 1970 he had one conversation in Washington with Crosby and Jack Davis, at which he thought Peloquin and Robert Abplanalp were also present, about options Resorts had obtained on Pan American World Airways stock, and that he advised them to see the senators sponsoring restrictive legislation.²² Herbert Kalmbach testified that Rebozo suggested he see Crosby, whose pledge to the 1970 senatorial campaign program fell from 25,000 dollars to 5,000 dollars.²² The May 1971 CIA memorandum recorded that Resorts had tried in January 1969 to take control of Pan Am by buying a 9.7 percent interest.¹⁶

Peloquin said that after the Watergate break-in both Edward Bennett Williams and Murray Chotiner asked Intertel for help, for the Democrats and the Republicans respectively, and were turned down. The investigative reporter Les Whitten said that ITT hired Intertel to spy on Jack Anderson's office after the publication of the Dita Beard memorandum, to learn who had leaked it. Peloquin answered: "We never spied on Les."⁴

Resorts International and Atlantic City

Intertel represented Resorts International in its campaign for legalized gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1977 it employed about fifty professionals, most from the FBI, IRS and CIA, and former employees put its income from more than two hundred clients at about 2 million dollars. Peloquin said: "I get 'em cheap. I capitalize on government training." On informants he said: "When I was at Justice, I probably had the best system of informers that anybody ever had. They were my sources; not the department's." The Post listed among the staff J. Edgar Hoover's only nephew.⁴ A Central Intelligence Agency press digest, "News, Views and Issues" no. 19 of December 6, 1974, reproduced Hougan's article on private intelligence agencies from Harper's Magazine, which also named Hoover's nephew among the staff, gave Edward Mullin, formerly of the FBI and the CIA, as Intertel's director of intelligence operations, recorded that Peloquin and McKeon denied that Golden had worked for Intertel although an Intertel brochure associated him with the firm, and stated that an attempt to "rescue" Hughes in the Bahamas was thwarted by Bahamian officials accompanied by Intertel agents.²³

Peloquin became chairman and executive vice president of Resorts International in 1985 and retired in 1990. He moved from Bethesda, Maryland to Plantation, Florida in 1990 and died after a heart attack at a nursing home in Frederick, Maryland, on March 24, 2011.¹