Details
All-American Mafioso: The Johnny Roselli Story

When the CIA decided to assassinate Fidel Castro, they called upon a classy, well-spoken, and totally ruthless mafioso name Johnny Rosselli. In response to the government's offer of several hundred thousand dollars for the hit, Rosselli stood up, saluted, and declared he would perform the task for the love of America. Rosselli was a smooth Mafia man who moved with amazing ease between the world of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Washington. He was the mob point man for several covert operations involving the Mafia and the U.S. Government. His career reveals the tangled links between Al Capone's Chicago, Harry Cohn's Hollywood, Howard Hughes' Las Vegas, and JFK's Washington. Dispatched by Capone to muscle in on Hollywood, he became the Mafia Lord of Los Angeles in the thirties. He then moved on to Vegas, where he orchestrated the Mafia's infiltration of the casino counting rooms while serving as the gambling capital's host-in-residence, entertaining the likes of Sinatra, Monroe, Hughes, and the Kennedy clan. His collusion with the CIA and Washington influence peddlers eventually led to his grisly murder in Miami. Beyond Rosselli's ubiquity, his life and career make a fascinating story because of the glamour he exuded and attracted. The Johnny Rosselli story is more than the sum of its biographical, social and political parts. Rosselli's rise was inextricably intertwined with the creation of the American myth on the sound stages of Hollywood, and with the nation's emergence as a modern world power.