Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America

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This fascinating book is credited to Chuck Giancana, the writing brother of Mafia capo Sam Giacana, AKA Mooney. The book may have been expertly ghost-written or edited by someone who chose to remain uncredited. In any event, it's well worth examining for its insight into how the Chicago mafia worked.As in a good screenplay, we are witnesses to endless fully dialogued & staged scenes between older and younger brother. Chuck, always in the shadow of his more famous and notorious brother, was apparently privy to Sam's confessions. But as we read, we can't help but wonder if he really heard all this in such astonishing dramatic detail or did Chuck (or the ghost) make some (or most) of it up.A great deal of the book is devoted to depicting how beautiful, intelligent and loyal Chuck's wife was in all of this. One cannot help but guess that perhaps he with the help of some enterprising journalist got Mrs. C to tape what she heard, or guessed--again taking us another step either closer or away from the truth. We have no away of knowing,Other books by more reliable journalists and historians tend to support many of brother Chuck's contentions: for one, that the Kennedy Assassination was covered up by the Warren Commission so as not to reveal the CIA's long-term involvement with the Mafia. Feeling betrayed by Jack Kennedy whose election they had a lot to do with fixing, and by old man Joe, the Outfit arranged for big brother Jack's murder, using Oswald as the patsy--a classic Mafia device. Little brother Bobby was done the same way.This good read is full of fascinating stories about the growth of the Chicago rackets, and the mafia's involvement with the CIA in Cuba. It is also a very human story about two dissimilar brothers--one a killer, the other not--which you can read as human drama, even if you doubt it's accuracy. Fiction is sometimes stranger than Truth.

gives a good insight in a mob outlook on life

They were happy with book

I enjoyed The whole book! It’s amazing how the mafia the CIA and the FBI all working together from time to time! Incredible how JFK and RFK assassinations took place and why including the death of Marilyn Monroe! The real killers exposed! What a fabulous book this was! Answered a lot of questions!

I will just mention this one thing that really bothers me and leads me to believe that this is just another make believe book to make money from famous and notorious dead people.Twice in the book where Sam is talking about the need need and reasons to kill JFK he mentions Camelot. Camelot was used after the murder in an interview Jackie gave to Life Magazine. Sam was calling the presidency Camelot in the book before the term came into use!It is very interesting though if you can believe any of it and his childhood and rise are totally interesting and things he suppose to have said regarding politicians and Hollywood stars is very insightful but other things not so much. I have read different accounts of who was really the Boss and who was involved in St. Valentines and none match this book so who do you believe?I think that it is worth reading though but don't believe everything in this book or others. The truth is with the guys who are no longer here...

I couldn't put this down. Usually, it takes me at least a couple of weeks to read a book, but I read this one in a week. The tone of the book was great and the stories told in there were incredible. Do I believe everything in the book is 100% accurate? Absolutely not. I'm sure there are some stories that were stretched to some degree, but nonetheless I think there's a lot of teeth behind many of the conspiracies. I was very interested in how Mooney and the CIA worked together in the Kennedy assassinations. I've bought a few books on the Kennedys that I've yet to read, so I'll be interested to see the the differences in the stories told as far as the involvement of the Outfit and the CIA.I do think Chuck Giancana might have been just a little too fascinated with his brother and thus there's some inherent bias in the stories. I did find it interesting that he had such a love/hate relationship with his brother. He seemed somewhat hypocritical in his thought process. He wanted to be respected, but he didn't want to be associated with the family name as time wore on. He didn't want money from Mooney at times, yet he thought he should be given more high paying jobs.All of that being said, this was one of the more enjoyable Organized Crime books that I've read. I spent several late nights reading this book and didn't realize it was well past my bed time. :) I would give it 5 stars, but I'm somewhat skeptical of some of the stories and not entirely thinking they're 100% accurate.

Could not put the book down. Reveals some tangible evidence of how secretive and underhanded our government was and contin ues to this day. Would have liked to see how Meyer Lansky was so invovled with no written records. The CIA , FBI and the outfit were mearly three peas in a pod. His writing style is to the point and does not delve into detail that is not essential to the narrative.

Some old gossips, unproven fantasies and Mario Puzo-style plagiarism. A very bad book. By the way, the name Camelot was used only after the Kennedy assassination.

It is not often I come across a book that I don't want to put down ...but this is one such book. It is the story of one of America's most influential mobsters and his family. It begins in the Italian ghetto of Chicago, rife with poverty and crime, which molded the character of a man who grew up to wield enormous power both in the underworld and in American politics and espionage. Sam Giancana was known to almost everyone who walked on the American stage from Sinatra and his Rat Pack to Marilyn Monroe to the Kennedys and numerous others who pulled the strings behind the scenes. The story is told primarily by his younger brother and we are carried along as Giancana rises from street-level hoodlum to the boss of an empire which controlled billions and could make, destroy or end the lives of others. Those who have looked into the assassination of John F. Kennedy will come across a lot of familiar names in this book. A great read!

Charles"Chuck" Giancana, younger brother of Chicago mob boss Sam "Mooney" Giancana indeed had a unique position to observe not just his older brother 's role in the "Outfit" ( as Chicago's branch of the Mafia is traditionally known in The Windy City, with varying overtones of respect or even fear, but never ever in jest), but the interface between American politics and organized crime. According to "Mooney" practically all US Presidents from say Theodore Roosevelt to say Richard Nixon were "connected" at some level. More to the point, the "Outfit" and the CIA had forged an unholy alliance( esp in the attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who needless to say passed away due to sheer old age- "El Jefe Maximo had the last laugh).My only question is: does the de facto alliance between the Mob and Presidents endure to this day> Thankfully I would have to say it is pretty unlikely.Post Watergate campaign financing laws have eliminated or at the very last drastically diminished the need for Mob money and muscle in deciding as to who gets to be elected-even to the Presidency. The "Double Cross" in the title refers to old man Joseph Kennedy and his Faustian bargain with the Mob to get his son Jack elected to the White House(Of course Kennedy pere has had ties to the Mob dating back to the bad old days of Prohibition; it;s no coincidence that his business papers from the 1920s remain closed nearly half a century after his death). After JFK's accesion to the Presidency, he turned his brother Bobby loose on the Mob, so with the help of "rogue" CIA operatives, extreme right wingers and anti- Castro Cubans, Mooney, Marcello and Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa got their revenge in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Several observers of the Kennedy assassination such as Anthony Summers in "Conspiracy"(1980) and David Scheim " Contract On America: The Mafia Murder of President John F.Kennedy"( Zebra Books, 1993) have implied or suggested Mob involvement in it but this is proof positive.My only complaint is that Chuck Giancana exaggerates his brother's power in the Outfit- even at its height it NEVER seems have to outranked that of Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo. At one stage according to William "Zip" Roemer a former FBI agent and Accardo's biographer, an infuriated Giancana exclaimed that he was putting a contract out on Roemer's life. Accardo , observing that such an act would be insanely counterproductive as the FBI would come down on the Mob not just it in Chicago but all over the country , unilaterally cancelled the proposed "hit".

A very interesting book, although rather depressing. Useful in knowing what went on 50 years ago, and for inferring what still goes on. I particularly like Sam Giancana's remark to his brother, that Americans will do anything provided they have an enemy, and the job of those who would control them is to create an enemy. Sounds like 9 11 ? I was also interested to hear the account of the Kennedy assassination. James Files (who claims to be the grassy knoll shooter) ties in with this, although inevitably his account differs in the detail.

AWESOME