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.It was so covert that its acronym, NSA, is still jokingly said to mean No Such Agency.The NSA happened to be just down the hall from Peloquin’s navy office.He worked his connections there, and landed a job in 1954.Peloquin found the work fascinating.It was his first exposure to the world of intelligence.He worked in the security office, helping to vet and investigate the agency’s own employees suspected of being spies for the Soviet Union.While working there, he became familiar with the case of two American defectors: William Martin and Bernon Mitchell.In 1960, these two men defected to the Soviet Union, saying that they opposed U.S.policy on spy flights over enemy countries.Martin and Mitchell had gotten advance word that Peloquin and other NSA investigators were snooping around.That prompted panic: the two men had long been selling information about the NSA’s code-breaking abilities to the Soviet Union, and getting caught could mean spending the rest of their lives in federal prison.They decided to make a dash for freedom, taking planes to Mexico City, then Cuba, and finally Moscow.All they left behind was an anti-American manifesto in a safe-deposit box at a bank.But Peloquin says the NSA wasn’t nearly as close to discovering the truth as Martin and Mitchell thought.It was investigating the two men, but not for spying.The investigators were instead trying to figure out if Martin and Mitchell were gay.This was a time when even a suspicion of homosexuality created doubts about a person’s loyalty to the government—and could end a career.Peloquin says the NSA had no idea the two men were active spies for the Soviet Union.But rumors of their sexual orientation had prompted the NSA’s security people to start an internal investigation.If Martin and Mitchell had stayed, it is possible that they would have been drummed out of the NSA for being homosexuals instead of locked up for being spies.At about the same time, Robert Peloquin hopped to a new job.His supervisor had a contact at the Department of Justice, and Peloquin went to work at its internal security unit.From there, he jumped, again, to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering section.This was the early 1960s, and John F.Kennedy had been elected president, naming his brother Robert as the attorney general of the United States.Bobby Kennedy was fascinated by the organized crime section, and Peloquin became Bobby Kennedy’s boy.Peloquin would spend most of the next decade tracking down high-level Mafia figures and putting them behind bars.At one point, while Peloquin was in New Orleans on an investigation, Kennedy called to see how it was going.The phone rang, and a voice with a New England accent asked, “Is this Bob Peloquin? This is Bobby Kennedy and I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”Not believing that the attorney general would call such a low-level investigator, Peloquin suspected that one of the other investigators was having fun with him.“Sprizzo, cut that shit out,” he said.“No, this really is Bobby Kennedy,” came the reply.Peloquin leaned back in his chair and saw that the man he suspected of playing the joke, John Sprizzo, was in the next room—and he wasn’t on the telephone.Peloquin was horrified.But Kennedy didn’t mind.The Kennedys invited the young criminal division investigators, FBI agents, and others involved in the fight against the Mafia to Hickory Hill, the family estate in suburban Virginia.On one evening, a nervous Peloquin sternly warned his wife not to bring up certain topics in front of the boss.“Don’t embarrass me,” he told her.As he and Peggy settled their buffet dinners on their knees, though, Peloquin himself mishandled a piece of roast beef, sending it skittering onto the floor.That attracted the Kennedys’ enormous dog—a Newfoundland called Brumus—who came lumbering across the room, scattering tables and chairs.All eyes turned to the hapless Peloquin.Peggy leaned over and whispered, “Don’t embarrass me.” Her husband has never forgotten the lesson.At the Justice Department, Peloquin learned another lesson he’d never forget: how to combine forces.While he was there, the department came up with an innovative structure for going after the mob.Using strike forces, the government pooled senior-level people from every agency that had a hand in the fight: the IRS, the bureau of narcotics, the FBI, the border patrol, and more.Each strike force would take a particular organized crime family and devote all its disparate resources toward taking that family down.Peloquin headed up the first organized crime task force, and set his team on the Magaddino crime family in Buffalo, New York.Working with the Canadian Mounted Police, they broke up this long-reigning Mafia family, sending nine of its members to prison.Soon, the Department of Justice deployed similar organized crime strike forces across the country.At the time, the Mafia was making inroads into all types of businesses.With a foothold in Las Vegas gambling, mob bosses were now poised to go big-time: into the National Football League (NFL).For owners of professional teams, the prospect of the Mafia influencing players to throw games or referees to make bad calls was a nightmare.Millions of dollars in future profits depended on the fans’ belief that the game was honest.The football commissioner, Pete Rozelle, knew that the league had to develop some defense.He brought in Peloquin’s boss, and Peloquin tagged along, jumping to a cushy job as associate counsel at the NFL.The new team put together an innovative solution to the problem.Fixing football games was illegal, and so was gambling on them.But in order to weed out illegal attempts to fix the games, Peloquin’s security team cultivated sources in the illegal gambling world.“The last guy in the world who wants to see a fixed football game is a bookie, because if he’s not in on it, he’s going to get taken badly,” Peloquin reasoned.He saw the irony of illegal gamblers working to protect honest games, but still, the bookies became his best source of intelligence about the Mafia’s attempts to fix games.If an unusual amount of money flooded in on bets on one team, Peloquin heard about it from his bookie informants and checked it out.Before long, Peloquin and his boss Bill Hundley—who had been born in Brooklyn and had worked at the Department of Justice as an anti-Mafia fighter*—began to get restless.They’d both been commuting to New York during the week and living in Washington on weekends.They both had large families (each had six children).And both thought they could make even more money selling their services to clients beyond the NFL.Once again, a powerful senior player stepped in to boost Peloquin’s career: Pete Rozelle agreed to set Peloquin and Hundley up in a law firm of their own in Washington.After all, he was already paying their hotel bills and dining and travel expenses.The two men were getting expensive [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]