Original subtitles

The first known episode where Jack Kennedy and Frank Sinatra

kind of come together in Vegas is at the Sands Hotel.

The Rat Pack was the Mount Rushmore of men having fun.

They each got something out of the friendship

and, plus, they both were womanisers.

Sinatra is the one who can give Jack Kennedy easy entree

to any woman he wants.

Kennedy himself loves all this.

It's like a fairy tale.

And this is the junction of politics and show business.

And what he got up to in Vegas with Frank Sinatra

would not have been OK if made public at the time.

Frank Sinatra knew a lot of guys in the Mob.

It was Frank to whom Joe Kennedy, Jack's father, turned when he wanted

help from organised crime in getting Jack elected.

The Mafia thought it had a get-out-of-jail-free pass

because of the work that they had done for Kennedy

in the election.

And just the opposite happens.

As soon as Robert Kennedy becomes the Attorney General,

he goes after the Mafia.

Sinatra's very upset.

But, worse than that, Sam Giancana is upset.

And that's where it gets rather murky.

Nothing they're doing is escaping the notice of the FBI.

J Edgar Hoover finds out that Kennedy is having this affair

with Sam Giancana's mistress.

The President of the United States was palling around with one guy

who was an obvious associate, at the very least, with mobsters

and carrying on an affair with a woman who was an associate

and hanging out with mobsters.

This diabolical triangle all really kicked off by Sinatra.

And Hoover has got all the threads and he can go to the President

and kind of say, "Gotcha!"

Which leads into the greatest amount of conspiracy theory we've ever had.

All the "who killed Kennedy" all starts then,

because the Mob have got a very good reason to do it.

And that is why it remains important to know what happened

between Sinatra and Kennedy and the Mob.

GUNSHOTS, SIREN

In the early years of the 20th century,

a lot of the immigrants that came through Ellis Island, they all came

to the area around New York City.

So, many of them went to Brooklyn, some went to Queens,

others came to that fringe area just over the Hudson River,

which ended up being Weehawken and Hoboken and those cities

around New York City.

Downtown Hoboken was a true melting pot, predominantly a German town,

second by the Irish and then the Italians.

And the way it usually works is whoever is the latest group

to arrive sort of has to dig themselves up.

And so the Italians were discriminated against.

Many times, they did not know English.

Many times, they were a bit insular and they tended to live

in certain districts in Hoboken.

You had to mind your Ps and Qs and you wouldn't want

to call the Italians any names

and you wouldn't want to call the Irish any names

because it would catch up to you.

Frank's family - his mother, Dolly, his father Marty -

had come over to the United States as children.

They were both from families that were struggling to get a foot

on the ladder.

Both of those families were involved on the periphery of criminality.

Marty was involved on the periphery of bootlegging

but Dolly also worked in those days as an abortionist.

She was also a political animal.

She was very much involved with the Democratic machine

in Hoboken, and part of that was being associated with other Italians

trying to make a living.

And one of those Italians she rubbed up against early was a guy called

Angelo "Gyp" DeCarlo.

Gyp was a small time mafiosi associated with the bigger powers

in New York and New Jersey,

and by bigger powers I mean people like Frank Costello, Willie Moretti,

Meyer Lansky, the people who were really in charge

of the nightclub scene in New York and New Jersey in those days.

Frank was born in the early hours of December 12th, 1915,

and he was blue when he came out.

He was blue because he was 13 lb,

and somebody called a doctor.

Doctor came - an actual physician -

and in short order picked up this blue baby

and ran cold water from the faucet of the cold water,

flat over the blue baby and suddenly screamed, came to life.

It was Frank Sinatra.

It's hard to begin to even describe all the differences

between Jack Kennedy and Frank Sinatra.

But Jack Kennedy was a prince.

Jack Kennedy was born in May of 1917,

the son of Joe Kennedy,

who came up amidst the rough and tumble of Boston

in the early 1900s.

The Kennedy family, Irish Catholic. There was a heritage that

they were quite conscious of,

and it was one that was not looked upon with great favour

in large segments of American society,

particularly since they were Catholics.

Society was ruled by the WASPs - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

And they were the so-called Brahmins who ruled Boston.

It was just understood that presidents of banks are WASPs.

Anybody who runs for office is a WASP.

That's the way it worked.

But that's something that Joe, the father, confronted.

Joe Kennedy, on the one hand, was a very aggressive businessman

who knew how to cultivate people, knew how to obtain favours,

but he was also very manipulative, and a crook.

The myth that he created

was that he made his money in the stock market selling short.

The truth was, he engaged in insider trading.

He created these syndicates where friends would pump up the price

of a stock, and then they'd all sell and they'd make a fortune.

And his stock market manipulations today would put him in jail.

He also was a bootlegger during Prohibition.

He would order in Scotch from England.

He would give it to organised crime.

All of this was illegal.

So that was Joe Kennedy's connection began then with the Mob,

because they were in business together.

During Prohibition, that was the heyday of the Mob.

They branched out into drugs.

They branched out into prostitution.

They branched out into gambling.

They've got their tentacles in a lot of different things at that point.

So that connection was there. They knew he was malleable.

Joe could influence because he'd just buy people,

because they just had so much money.

He understood, money first, politics next.

The plan was he would make the money,

he would make the fortune,

and his sons would then go into politics and get power,

which he didn't have. He had economic power,

but he wanted political power.

He clearly wanted to create a dynasty.

Frank Sinatra has described his youth as being rough and tumble.

There were neighbourhood skirmishes.

Kids got into scrapes with each other.

Kids would make fun of each other.

As an Italian-American, he knew that he was not in an echelon

of American society that was well respected.

And also, he was small, he was skinny.

He was spoilt. He was a mama's boy.

There came a point in his young life where Frank Sinatra decided,

I want to be a singer.

The family had a bar.

It was called the Marty O'Brien Association,

and Frank would go shine shoes.

It was frequented by what we would now know

as some of the most famous names in the Mafia.

Well, the wiseguys, big mobster chieftains as they would become,

hitmen and lots of kind of gofers.

Then Frank would start singing, and the people, the audience,

really enjoyed it, and he saw that type of positive response.

It was a Frankie, Little Frankie fan club by the mobsters.

And because Sinatra had grown up feeling puny and looked down upon,

he very quickly came to idolise these guys.

He saw them as men of strength, men of honour.

And that's where kind of he was adopted by major -

as in major, major - mobsters.

He got a job singing at the Rustic Cabin,

and the job was given to him by the local mobster in his area.

Willie Moretti was a pretty substantial power in organised crime

in northern New Jersey,

and he was a close neighbour of Frank's.

And in the end, singing at the Rustic Cabin

gave Frank Sinatra one of his first big breaks.

Frank got a job with Harry James, a brilliant trumpet player.

He hired Sinatra on the spot with one condition -

he wanted Sinatra to change his name to Frankie Satin.

S-A-T-I-N.

And Frank Sinatra says, "The name is Sinatra.

"Frank fucking Sinatra."

That nine months with Harry James has so many memories

for Frank Sinatra and his family attached to it.

Frank was a young married at that point.

His young bride Nancy came along with them on the road.

It really gave Frank an opportunity to cut his teeth,

working with a real touring band

that was also performing on the radio regularly and making records.

Frank always wanted to be bigger than Hoboken, and he was.

And Sinatra retains, from young manhood until the very end

of his life, this idolatry for the Mafia, the mafiosi.

Sinatra is said to have said,

"I would rather be a don of the Mafia

"than President of the United States."

Joe Kennedy had this vision that he's going to establish

something that is unprecedented in American history,

and that is a dynasty -

our version of the Royal Family.

The eldest, Joseph Kennedy Jr, was the son who was really anointed

from birth to run for everything, up to and including the presidency.

And I think he was being groomed throughout his childhood,

and he was bigger and more charismatic and a better athlete

than his younger brother, John F Kennedy.

John F Kennedy - bookish, wry and detached.

Also funny, but in a quieter way.

He seemed destined for a quieter, contemplative life of some kind.

But then everything changed in World War II.

Unfortunately, Joe Jr, he flew in a plane loaded with explosives

that was supposed to explode over Europe, and he was killed.

Joe Sr was absolutely devastated.

They say he just used to walk along the beach silently

and just look out at the ocean, because all his hopes had been put

in his oldest son and he had to transfer.

I think he looked at JFK

as kind of a... Not a ne'er do well,

but certainly Joe Jr was, you know, was the golden boy.

And so all of the family's hopes and dreams,

particularly for public life, public service, now fall to Jack.

It wasn't long before Frank was approached by Tommy Dorsey,

who at that moment

was the biggest and most successful big band leader in history.

Once Frank Sinatra joined the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra,

the focus became the singer.

# You know, the one I love

# Belongs to somebody else

# You ain't nowhere # That's why

# She sings her songs for somebody else

# Whoa, oh, oh... #

When he sang, all the women in the audience

at whatever venue Sinatra was entertaining

would edge toward the bandstand, toward where Sinatra was singing.

# For somebody else

# Do-do do-do

# And when I hold her... #

All of a sudden, young girls wanted to go not just to dance,

but to stand in front of this wondrous singer named Frank Sinatra.

So by the end of 1942, Frank realises,

"I could do this as a solo act,"

and he decides that he's going to leave the Dorsey band.

Tommy Dorsey was a terrific band leader,

but Tommy Dorsey was also a brilliant businessman.

The contract that Sinatra signed with Dorsey is extortionate, really.

Unto perpetuity, a percentage of Sinatra's earnings.

Frank Sinatra knew a lot of guys in the Mob.

Everybody who sang in clubs at that point knew the boys,

the wiseguys, because they controlled the clubs.

Now, he liked hanging around with the boys because Frank Sinatra

was fascinated by power, and these guys exuded power.

Willie Moretti had long been involved with his career,

and when Sinatra went to him and said, "I've got a major problem

"here with my boss, Tommy Dorsey,"

Moretti went down there,

shoved a gun in his mouth,

and made him sell his contract for a dollar.

"Let him go, or you're dead."

Which is, it's back to the, "It's an offer you can't refuse."

It was a business relationship.

Sinatra was a commodity to these men who ran the nightclubs.

In 1947 Sinatra attends a Mafia conference in Havana

in tribute to Lucky Luciano,

who was the head of this conference in Havana.

Lucky Luciano, who had been deported from the United States,

was the ultimate godfather of American organised crime,

the man that was considered the founder of the American Mafia.

And he had been allowed

to leave his home in Sicily

and return as far across the Atlantic as Havana,

where in that period, in the 1940s and '50s,

lots and lots of organised crime figures had casinos

where lots of Americans went to play,

and where the Mob was holding a little group gathering,

and Frank was their chosen entertainment.

Now Frank arrived in Havana aboard a flight from Miami

with the Fischetti brothers, with whom he was extremely close.

They were all underlings of the Chicago Outfit.

When he arrived, he was seen getting off the plane with a briefcase.

And in that briefcase, later reports suggested

he was carrying $2 million in cash for Lucky Luciano.

And also, back in Naples, when Lucky Luciano's apartment was raided,

they found a gold cigarette case inscribed to Luciano

from his pal, Frank.

Frank talked around his connection with the Mafia,

but it is clear that throughout his life, Frank was close to the Mob.

It's very interesting to look at the beginnings

of John F Kennedy in electoral politics,

because in some ways he's not gifted.

He's awkward.

He's extremely skinny.

He hasn't filled out his frame yet.

He was not a natural politician.

He didn't have that instinct to dive into a crowd and shake hands,

sort of embracing people and getting to know them.

He was the kind of guy who would go to an event, stand in a corner,

and his aides had to kind of like get him...

"Come on, Jack, you've got to shake hands." Right?

He's green. He needs practice.

He is not terribly good at public speaking at first,

but he works hard.

He campaigns with his family.

In fact, it's an entire family affair.

The family's money gets behind it.

His mother and his sisters get behind it.

It's a really extraordinary operation to get him into Congress.

That's when he starts to put together this Irish mafia

that's going to be so important for his later career,

because the key people there are going to stick with him

over the next 17 years.

Bobby Kennedy was a fantastic political organiser.

He was really running the campaign,

so he brought his friend Kenny O'Donnell along,

who was a big organiser.

My dad was at Jack's side.

He was his right hand guy.

He was his logistics guy and his kind of political antenna.

There's also going to be Dave Powers.

There's going to be Larry O'Brien.

They were all Irish Catholics.

And, you know, they were truly the brains behind

what became this Kennedy political machine.

He blows away the competition in 1946 at a young age.

And it's a sign that it isn't just luck or his father's money -

that he is gifted in his own way also.

By 1952, Jack Kennedy was now confident enough that he runs

for the United States Senate, which is a huge promotion, right?

Every senator thinks of himself or herself

as the next president, right?

Not so true of members of the House of Representatives.

It's a steep hill he's trying to climb up.

A lot of Massachusetts is not Boston.

It's not Irish and Catholic.

And amazingly, he does win.

He's now on track.

By 1952, he is clearly on track for what his father wants.

Frank really was the first multimedia superstar.

He was on film.

He was on television in the early '50s.

He was on radio.

He was making records.

He was having these mass sell-out live appearances

all over the country.

He would open his mouth to start singing,

and this tidal noise would spring up,

and all he could do was stand there moving his lips.

They just wanted to see him.

He was the heart-throb.

He was the Beatles of the 1940s, really.

They would sit in their seats, they would pee in their seats.

They would not leave.

They would tear his clothes off.

They would scream, they would trample,

you know, anyone to get to Frank.

It was hysteria.

And there was no-one more successful than Frank Sinatra.

And then suddenly it all went away.

Frank Sinatra's career almost came unstuck permanently

because the world began to notice that he was associated

with organised crime.

Here he was, an Italian-American,

consorting with these Italian-American criminals.

So Sinatra must be a criminal himself.

His record company dropped him.

His movie studio dropped him, his agents dropped him,

his publicist. Everybody dropped Sinatra.

And so by the time he gets together with Ava Gardner

and Nancy divorces him in 1950, he is...

He's on his ass. He has no more career.

He has no more money. It's all gone.

And not only that, he is in quite ill repute.

And in the early 1950s, when no-one else was there to help him,

the Mob stepped in to help him.

The Mob let him play all of the clubs all over again,

and sometimes he was playing to half empty clubs,

but he really owed them from that time on.

The Mob had been in Hollywood from the '30s.

They've got money in the studios. They've got money in the actors.

They could close the sets.

They could close Hollywood. They could close the racetrack.

Could blink certain people, and just, that was it.

So their influence was monumental.

Sinatra gets a role in From Here to Eternity.

Suddenly, inexplicably, everybody hates him.

You couldn't even get fleas to attend a concert.

I mean, he was that down.

And suddenly he gets this major starring part in the biggest movie

that year in Hollywood.

It was felt that he owed the Mob for his success.

And he owed them later for getting him into Las Vegas

for the start of what would be an almost endless run in Las Vegas,

where he made a fortune and where the Mob made a fortune.

Early 1950s and mid 1950s, Las Vegas was a sleepy one-horse town.

It literally, in the downtown of Las Vegas,

there was this sort of bright flashing block

where you went to gamble.

But as Sinatra grew in power and fame,

he began to change Las Vegas.

It got bigger. It got glitzier.

More money flowed in,

and it became a place that was no longer a one-horse town,

because they built and they built and they built

along the Strip in Las Vegas more and more hotel casinos.

This was accelerated by the fall of Batista in Cuba.

The Mob is kicked out of Havana.

And so between Sinatra's rise and Batista's fall,

Las Vegas becomes the world capital of naughtiness, of fun and sin.

Lucky Luciano sent Bugsy Siegel out to Las Vegas

to really build up the whole gambling industry there.

Sinatra was actually offered a 9% share of the Sands,

because it was the great business model to bring top entertainers

to fill up these casinos.

Frank was hired in those early days in Vegas to play at the Sands

every single year until the late 1960s.

There, he built what can only be described as a sort of empire,

a cast of players who were just as talented as he was,

some arguably more talented,

if you speak of someone like Sammy Davis Jr, the young black dancer.

Dean Martin, very funny, very witty, very charismatic.

Joey Bishop, brilliant comedian.

Peter Lawford, the handsome, not necessarily terribly talented,

"Brother-in-Lawford", as they called him,

the brother-in-law of soon-to-be presidential candidate John Kennedy.

So you had this group that Frank headed.

They became known first as The Clan and then as the Rat Pack,

and they were just the summit,

the summit of everything in the '50s.

They said that the Rat Pack was the Mount Rushmore

of men having fun.

They made enormous fun for the huge audiences who came to watch them,

and they had a lot of fun on the side.

Women everywhere.

A lot of the women were young actresses and so on,

but a lot of the women were also prostitutes,

and they didn't make much secret of that.

The Rat Pack was good for the Mob

because it brought the huge audiences,

and Las Vegas was good for the Rat Pack.

It was a happy marriage of minds.

Everybody loves a comeback, and Sinatra had the biggest one ever.

And so people loved him just for rising out of the dirt

and brushing himself off and becoming a star again.

Nobody has ever failed so badly and come back so huge as Sinatra.

Sinatra first met Kennedy through Peter Lawford,

who married Kennedy's younger sister, Pat.

The first known episode where Jack Kennedy and Frank Sinatra

kind of come together

is at the Sands Hotel.

It was really the thunderbolt for both of them in different ways.

Obviously not a sexual thing, but something touching on sexuality

because they were both extremely attractive men

and both understood at once each other's magnetism.

Sinatra, of course, was this extraordinary singer

and presence in Hollywood, in the music industry, in film.

Kennedy, of course, was a rising star in politics,

the son of a famous American family

who had been splashed over all the papers.

And I think they were drawn to each other because they both

were drawn to that notion of excellence, of competence,

of star appeal.

Frank Sinatra was just, you know,

I don't think smitten is too strong a word.

He was smitten by him. And it wasn't just Frank.

I mean, that whole generation thought, this is our guy.

Jack sort of sees him as his,

not way in because he didn't need a way in.

But, like, everybody loves Sinatra, you know?

This is after the fall.

So Sinatra's back.

And by the time they really connect, you know,

Sinatra is the biggest thing on the planet at this point.

Sinatra gets out of it

this politician on the rise,

and with the Kennedy family background,

they lend a certain respectability to Frank Sinatra.

So he's getting a seat at the main table of political power.

And so they each got something out of the friendship.

And plus they both were womanisers.

JFK was, of course, married to the glamorous Jackie Kennedy.

But unseen by the public at that time

was his extraordinary addiction to bedding women.

And Frank was a master at having a good time

and helping others have a good time.

Jack Kennedy instantly understands Sinatra is the key to the kingdom

and the kingdom of the most beautiful women in the world.

Sinatra is the one who can give Jack Kennedy easy entree

to any woman he wants at all.

Sinatra fulfilled very much the role of pimp for Kennedy

when he was in California,

because Peter Lawford has the beach-side house

down in Santa Monica. All the parties go on there.

The LAPD are policing it.

So anybody goes there with a camera or a notebook or just a passer-by,

they're shuffled away very quickly.

So it's very private and people are there and you've got parties.

You've got Kennedy there, you've got Marilyn Monroe there,

you've got Warren Beatty. It's like a fairy tale.

So I think for Kennedy, this is...

Who's been brought up very strict kind of parameters of his life

because he's got to follow this path and worked very hard,

and his kind of escape is into the glamour.

And of course, Sinatra is like freedom.

He sees this kind of flyaway lad who seems to be able to do anything

and get away with anything. So I think that's the attraction.

This is a really good looking guy from a very wealthy family

and from the very beginning,

I mean, women were attracted to him. And again, it's natural.

You have money and looks, combination.

You're going to attract girls.

And I think a lot of these people realise this guy is on the rise.

And this is the junction of politics and showbusiness.

He is the sexiest of politicians

in a time when politicians didn't do that.

And what he got up to in Vegas with Frank Sinatra

would not have been OK if made public at the time.

There were a lot of secrets about the Kennedys

that the press sort of kept to itself.

They weren't about to report on the philandering

of this young senator from Massachusetts.

But the historical record shows

that there was a great deal of philandering.

And if the press decided to report it,

it probably would have ruined Senator Kennedy's career,

which gets to a certain amount of recklessness on his part.

As 1960 is beginning, everybody wants something new.

It's a new decade.

The same guy's been president for eight years.

Everyone knows he's leaving, but no-one knows who's coming in.

So the Democrats want someone new and exciting,

and it's the perfect time for a young, charismatic

candidate to emerge.

I am today announcing my candidacy

for the Presidency of the United States.

Kennedy offered a breath of fresh air, not through what he had to say,

but the image that he portrayed.

He was young, he was handsome, he was smart, he was clever,

and he was telegenic in a television age.

We stand today on the edge of a new frontier.

The frontier of the 1960s.

The frontier of unknown opportunities and perils.

The frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.

I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that new frontier.

This was what I think many Americans believed was the best of themselves.

And I think in many ways, that's what Kennedy offered to Americans -

a sense of what they could be.

John Kennedy is the first Catholic who is running for president

in a serious way since Al Smith of New York in 1928.

And Al Smith was defeated handily in 1928,

in part because of his Catholic faith.

The Ku Klux Klan would burn crosses outside of his campaign rallies.

Newspapers predicted that the Pope would for some reason

leave the Vatican and move to Washington.

People believed this stuff.

So that was the X factor in 1960.

Was the American public ready for a Catholic president?

Kennedy, in order to try to wrap up things as quickly as he could,

understands that the primaries themselves,

the presidential primaries that were held in a variety of states,

which were few and far between in those days,

and didn't have nearly the importance then as they do now,

they were still going to be crucial for Kennedy's ultimate appeal.

The West Virginia primary between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey

was pivotal because West Virginia was a Protestant state, right?

There were no centres of Irish Catholicism

in Wheeling, West Virginia.

So the test would be how would West Virginia react

to a Catholic candidate?

I am not the Catholic candidate for President.

I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President,

who happens also to be a Catholic.

I do not speak for my church on public matters,

and the church does not speak for me.

So the Kennedys poured money and resources into West Virginia

because they believed, and it turned out rightfully so,

if they could show the rest of the Democratic Party that, look,

a Catholic can win in this highly Protestant state,

well, that would send a message to the rest of the Democratic Party.

So the stakes were unbelievably high.

If I should win this election, I will faithfully execute the office

of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability,

preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, so help me God.

I think as Kennedy campaigned and was making these remarkable

speeches about how he was going to implement change in America,

I think Frank was really inspired

and wanted to help in any way that he could.

And the best way that he could help

was by lending his name to the campaign and saying,

"I support Jack."

He was really vital in terms of the campaign,

and I don't think people understand this.

He raised a ton of money.

He set up kind of a pseudo Kennedy campaign headquarters

at the Villa Capri in Hollywood.

He was like a don. He'd sit there and they'd set up phone lines

and he'd call everyone he could think of -

all the people in the business, and he'd get them to either give money

or commit to doing something for Jack.

And I mean, he worked it constantly and worked frenzied.

Frank really, really took it upon himself to gather

all of his Rat Pack cronies and send them out,

working at different events, travelling around the country,

playing different affairs, raising money.

He was very dynamic in that way.

People remarked on it at the time,

but more importantly, it was Frank to whom Joe Kennedy,

Jack's father, turned when he wanted help from organised crime

in getting Jack elected.

His connections with the Mafia go back to when he was a bootlegger

during Prohibition.

He was in partnership with major organised crime figures,

and so he just parlayed those connections

when it came to getting support for Jack.

From the 1930s on, Joe Kennedy had spent a lot of time at a resort

casino on the shore of Lake Tahoe called Cal Neva,

and it was a place where Joe Kennedy loved to go and relax

and mix and mingle with beautiful young women.

And the Mob was there.

And that was where Joe Kennedy and the head of the Chicago Outfit,

Sam Giancana, became friendly.

Sam Giancana ruled the Mafia in that area of the United States.

He's been called the heir to Al Capone.

And he was a very vicious, powerful, slightly mad character.

His nickname was Mooney, kind of mad as the moon,

which he then dubbed himself as Momo,

but he was known to be a very odd, dangerous guy.

He was such a psychopath,

the US Army wouldn't allow him to join the army during the war.

He was regarded as too dangerous to be in the army.

He was extremely powerful and he was close to Frank,

and that was important.

Joe Kennedy knew that he needed some help from organised crime.

He also knew that he could not go directly to Sam Giancana

for any help with the election.

And so Sinatra was Joe Kennedy's intermediary.

And so he summoned Frank across the country to Hyannis Port

and they had a meeting.

And he said to him, "I want you to bring people on board."

And Frank's mission was to bring on board, particularly Sam Giancana,

to enable him to swing every possible vote for Jack

in places where there would be tight primary elections

and then where there would be a tight general election.

The Mob controlled the unions.

The unions were big players in politics

because they could get out huge blocs of voters.

So if the Mob controlled the union and the Mob wanted somebody to win,

they would put the word out to the union

that we want your guys to vote for our guy.

So Sinatra went to Momo and said, the big man needs your help,

and we will give you... We'll make sure that the hounds will be off

your trail as soon as Jack enters the White House.

And, you know, they were not inclined to support Kennedy.

This is something people lose sight of.

They didn't like Jack Kennedy because of Bobby Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy was an infamous anti-Mob guy

and was known to be an anti-Mob crusader.

In the late 1950s,

organised crime was only beginning to really come under attack

as an entity. There'd been a big push by Bobby Kennedy as a counsel

to the Senate Rackets Committee to target the influence

of organised crime on organised labour

and people that were being targeted in particular, were people

who were leaders of the various organised crime families.

You've got people in Detroit, at least 15,

who have police records,

and it's not so shocking that you should be involved

in taking the Greenleaf money.

Mr Kennedy, it is shocking to even involve a man

with that kind of blood taint money.

And I don't go for that, Mr Kennedy.

I don't go for that kind of action.

It was very dangerous times, you know.

They were... Bobby was right on the edge going after these guys.

And one of the people that he went after was Sam Giancana.

Giancana is a guy that if you give him the wrong look, you're dead.

I mean, you're talking about a very scary guy,

but Bobby wasn't scared.

Can you tell us anything about any of your operations?

Or are you just gonna giggle every time I ask you a question?

I decline to answer because I honestly believe

my answer might incriminate me.

I thought only little girls giggled, Mr Giancana.

That's the same Giancana that then gets recruited for the campaign.

Kennedy becomes like Sinatra, someone who is going to be assisted

by the Mafia to get what he wants,

which is to become the President of the United States.

So the Mob are on his side.

What the Mob wanted to get out of that

was for the Kennedy administration, once it won, to go easy on mobsters.

There was a repeated, a modus operandi, if you will,

of cash being exchanged to get the vote out,

votes being cast and then a slim or substantial victory.

He won West Virginia, where the issue of Kennedy's Catholicism

had become a very big deal.

And then they turned out the vote in Illinois as well.

And he won by a wild margin in Chicago,

a small margin state-wide, which tells you something right there,

that the machine had done its work in the city of Chicago.

And Frank helped engineer that.

On election night, while the Kennedys were sitting up late

waiting for the election returns to come in,

Frank was working the phones from his home in California,

and one of the people he was calling was Giancana.

Giancana was sitting in his office in Chicago telling him,

"We're going to pull it out. We're going to pull it out."

And himself working the phones.

So you see this real connection between the campaign

of Jack Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and the organised crime figures

who are helping to make that victory possible.

Sinatra had a dangerous misapprehension of his relationship

with the men of the Mob.

He thought they loved him.

He thought they felt about him as deeply as he felt about them.

These were cold, calculating guys.

He was a commodity to them, and only as long as he brought home the bacon

was he persona grata to the Mafia.

In 1960, thanks to Frank Sinatra and his friends, you know,

Hollywood and American politics kind of fused together.

We hadn't seen the likes of Jack Kennedy

and look who he surrounded himself with -

Frank Sinatra and Frank Sinatra's friends.

And who's singing a campaign song for Jack Kennedy

but Frank Sinatra!

You know, you try to think of it today.

He had the biggest celebrity on the planet supporting him,

somebody people adored.

# Come on and vote for Kennedy... #

And that gives his campaign, on top of his youth,

on top of his good looks, on top of his beautiful wife,

it gives his campaign such a sense of the dynamism in the country,

the youth of the country, the hope of the country,

a sense of the involvement, the commitment to the future.

That was exciting.

# K-E-double-N-E-D-Y

# Jack's the nation's favourite guy

# Every one wants to back Jack

# Jack is on the right track... #

To everyone's delight,

Jack Kennedy wins the election.

Now we have the first Catholic president.

We have a president who has all sorts of friends in Hollywood.

This is going to be an inaugural gala like none other.

And sure enough, it was.

John Kennedy says to Frank Sinatra,

I'd like you to produce the inaugural gala

and Frank Sinatra being kind of the king of Hollywood,

he knows every A-lister in Hollywood

and they all turn up to perform at the inauguration.

You would have thought it was the Oscars.

You know, Hollywood comes out in their finest tuxedos and dresses.

The red carpet, it's a Hollywood production.

When you're dealing with the television age and you're dealing

with this relationship between the President of the United States

and one of America's most beloved movie stars and singers,

who has all sorts of friends in Hollywood,

you look at that inaugural gala and you say, yeah, this is it.

This is showbiz and politics come together

and neither will ever be the same.

And arguably, that's true.

I know we're all indebted to a great friend, Frank Sinatra.

APPLAUSE

You cannot imagine the work that he has done

to make this show a success.

Tonight there are two shows on Broadway that are closed down

because the members of the cast are here,

and I want he and my sister Pat's husband, Peter Lawford,

to know that we're all indebted to them,

and we're proud to have them with us.

APPLAUSE

It was a big night for Frank,

as it should have been, because he was this guy,

you know, he's come from really nowhere.

Now you've got the guy who's going to the White House, you know,

standing up and saying, we want to thank you, Frank Sinatra.

Without you, this couldn't have...

I mean, you don't get heights like that.

That was a big deal.

He said to my dad, "We did it.

"We're in the White House."

You know, and it was very much a "we" thing.

The friendship, of course, is at its height then

and then the problems ensue after that.

The fact is that there's somebody else who has helped Jack Kennedy

get elected, and that is the head of the Chicago Outfit, Sam Giancana.

Frank Sinatra, and the people around him had been very instrumental

in helping Jack Kennedy get elected president.

Sinatra was treated with gratitude by the Kennedys at the beginning.

The moment he was elected,

Jack started to look at Frank in terms of his liabilities

instead of his positives.

The people close to him and his advisers could see

that Frank Sinatra could be a dangerous figure to be seen next to

a man, to their man in the White House.

Once you're in the White House, it's just everything changes.

Your relationship with everyone changes.

And Frank couldn't see that

because he thought things would continue the way they...

In the way they did before - that he could just pick up the phone

and chat with them.

And I think that was very hard for him.

I think the first step in the unravelling of the friendship

actually happens when Joe Kennedy has his stroke.

NEWSREEL: Joseph P Kennedy, father of the President,

has improved after suffering a stroke,

Press Secretary Salinger announces,

as his sons and daughter arrive in Palm Beach to be by his side.

One of the nation's richest men,

Mr Kennedy is one of the few fathers to see his son become president.

Joe Kennedy liked Frank Sinatra. They understood each other.

Two immigrants who had worked their way up, in effect.

So without Joe there, it starts to crumble a bit.

Bobby Kennedy and Jackie were not as big Frank Sinatra fans.

Jacqueline Kennedy had very mixed feelings about Frank Sinatra.

She understood, of course, that in the ways in which

he could help her husband.

But she also understood about the womanising,

and she was high culture,

and Frank Sinatra was not always high culture.

Frank Sinatra is soon edged out of the picture,

not only because of Jackie Kennedy's dislike for him,

but because of Bobby Kennedy's dislike for him.

Bobby Kennedy and the people around him were concerned

about Sinatra's links to the Mafia, which he did have,

and which, in the view of Bobby Kennedy,

should not be allowed to besmirch the Kennedy presidency.

At the same time as Frank was starting to really relax

and enjoy his relationship with the President,

and the fruits of his labours...

..John Kennedy appointed his brother Robert to be the Attorney General,

and one of Robert Kennedy's first missions

was to go after organised crime.

The people who got you elected

and helped you get there, you're now telling them - what they would say,

that you ratted on them.

So the Kennedys rat on the Mafia.

You don't get something for nothing.

And I think even though the Mob didn't expect to have carte blanche

and do whatever they wanted unopposed,

I don't think they expected to have this tremendous microscope

put on them, and have them systematically dismantled.

That was the goal.

To the point where even Kennedy aides at the time,

they intervened and said to Bobby Kennedy,

"Can't you just back off a little?"

I mean, but he was hell bent.

Politics mean nothing to Bobby, you know. It's right or wrong.

The first day in the Oval Office

and they're talking about all this stuff,

and the first thing Bobby says is he's going to set up a, you know,

a "Get Hoffa" and a "Get Giancana", you know, squad.

First thing he said, day one. It's like a Saturday.

And my father says to him, you know, Bobby, like a dog with a bone.

There came a time, a year or so into the Kennedy presidency

when known mafiosi were leaving the United States,

fleeing justice and going back to Sicily.

He was winning, in a way, against the Mafia

in the United States, in a way that no Attorney General ever had before.

Sam Giancana hits the roof.

He thought, "What are they doing?!

"We put this man in power. They owe us.

"Why are they coming after us?"

And that was one of the big concerns that the Mafia had.

Why have the Kennedys turned on us? Because we did them favours.

They never thought, when they're supporting Kennedy

and Frank got them involved,

they never thought Bobby would be the guy

who's their archenemy going into the AG office.

And even though Frank Sinatra had promised Momo Giancana

that Frank could get his good friend Jack Kennedy to tell his brother

Bobby to just let up a little bit on the Chicago mob,

it never happened.

The Mafia thought it had a get-out-of-jail-free pass

because of the work that they had done for Kennedy.

And just the opposite happens.

They're getting arrested. They're getting busted.

They're getting shut down all over.

And so they are furious.

They felt quite betrayed by the whole thing.

And whereas Frank Sinatra had been very good at repaying debts

and turning up at Mob nightclubs,

it was perceived the Kennedys were not.

And that particularly Bobby Kennedy, I mean,

he was behind the Joseph Valachi testimonies,

which ended up with 317 mobsters being banged up.

So, I mean, they felt the pain of what Bobby Kennedy was doing.

So they were angry, very angry.

And what's important to understand in the background to all

these relationships is how much the FBI has been monitoring

not only Frank Sinatra from the time he first got into the business -

it's almost sick how much they monitored him -

but they'd been monitoring Jack Kennedy the same amount of time.

By the time Jack Kennedy is in office,

J Edgar Hoover, he's been in power - literally in power - for...

..35 years, and he was an almost immovable object

in the American psyche.

Part of the reason he kept his job for so long was because he would

make clear to the presidents that he knew where the bodies were buried,

that he knew where the dirt was.

And from the 1960s, because he was continuing to age,

he was also fearful that any new administration

would try to push him out.

So he was very much clinging for power

and using the power he had accumulated

over all of those many years

of knowing where all the bodies were hidden.

And he was very prepared to use that same kind of power and leverage

with the Kennedy brothers.

J Edgar Hoover started as a low level G-Man,

eventually advocated for the creation of the FBI,

and then when the FBI got created shortly after that,

he became its director, and he stayed on as director

for an unprecedented period of time.

He was the FBI director for Roosevelt, for Truman,

for Eisenhower, for Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

Blackmail was a favoured technique,

and his method was to ask for a meeting with them

and, you know, just very nicely reveal to them

that he had this information about their association

with the underworld or the fact that they were sleeping with so and so,

and he would just speak to him very nicely

and tell him that he had this information

and that he certainly would keep it confidential.

And when he told people that

they wanted him to keep it confidential and they protected him.

And Hoover has his own agenda. He despises Frank Sinatra.

And, you know, everybody says, well, you know,

it's because of the Giancana and the mobster connection.

I think he also just didn't like him because he was Italian

and Frank Sinatra and successful.

I mean, I really think it was that, you know,

and he's also... He despises Jack Kennedy.

His disrespect for them goes back to before they were at the White House

and in the Justice Department.

I mean, he really regarded them as reckless.

He did not like the direction that a lot of Kennedy policies

were going in, particularly with respect to civil rights.

He was an inveterate anti-communist.

He had feared, especially regarding civil rights,

that the communists had infiltrated the civil rights movement

and was deathly afraid of that.

And he was anti-Kennedy.

He didn't like them as playboys.

He didn't like the way that they threw themselves around,

they threw their money around.

And so he was somebody not to be tangled with.

Hoover and the FBI are watching Sinatra closely.

They're watching Jack Kennedy closely.

And they also started paying attention to Sam Giancana.

One can read wiretap after wiretap of various mafiosi

expressing their absolute outrage, their...

Their threats, their vows of revenge

against both Sinatra for failing them -

failing to act as an intermediary -

and against the brothers for continuing to persecute them

after they had offered all of this help.

Principal among those angry threats

were those that came from Sam Giancana.

Sam Giancana at one point is quoted as saying,

"I'll never get another penny to the Kennedys

"because of what they're doing now."

He was furious.

You can hear these tapes where one of Giancana's associates says,

"Do you want me to take care of Frank?"

And Sam Giancana says, "No, I have other plans."

And the other plans are that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin

played Giancana's nightclub, Villa Venice in Illinois, for free.

All these people are being watched.

Nothing they're doing is escaping the notice of the FBI.

And so all of these factors are coming together,

and Hoover has got all the threads.

And what happens is once you're in the White House,

he has the opportunity to pull them all together.

Which he hadn't been able to do before.

And he can go to the president and kind of say, "Gotcha!"

Virtually as soon as Jack Kennedy entered the White House,

one thing that Hoover knew

was that the presidential candidate and then the President-elect,

and then the new President, had a girlfriend.

While Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack

were filming Ocean's 11 in Las Vegas,

they did a performance at the Sands Hotel.

Senator Kennedy was at that performance.

At the time, Frank Sinatra was preparing to help campaign

for then Senator Kennedy,

and around that same time, at the Sands Hotel,

Frank Sinatra introduced Jack Kennedy to his former girlfriend,

Sinatra's former girlfriend, Judith Campbell.

Jack Kennedy is smitten by Judy Campbell.

She's clever.

She's not a doormat. She's assertive.

And Jack Kennedy found all these things very attractive,

and he found something in her that he wanted more of.

And so they had a thing that lasted for a little while,

even as Jack Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961.

Judith Campbell was a stunningly beautiful young woman

who was somewhat reminiscent of the young Elizabeth Taylor.

Well-spoken, middle class.

You know, she was not the image of a party girl or someone who was,

you know, a person of loose or cheap morals, as they would have said

and described it in those days.

She was a "classy dame"

and therefore she would have appealed to Frank.

She would have appealed to Jack Kennedy,

she would have appealed to Mooney Giancana.

And this is the nub of the story about Judith Campbell.

At the same time that she was seeing the President,

she was having a sexual affair with Sam Giancana.

Frank introduced her.

So by now you have an intersection of Frank Sinatra, Sam Giancana,

Judy Campbell, and the President of the United States.

The fact that the President of the United States

was engaged in a relationship

with a woman who had a relationship with this powerful mobster

in Chicago, is...

I'm saying it - in some ways, I still find it hard to believe

that a man could be that reckless.

They were all at the height of their power, you know,

and they couldn't imagine that they had to live by the rules

everybody else did, because they had never had to.

And it works well until it doesn't.

When Jack Kennedy takes office and enters the White House,

Sam Giancana, along with J Edgar Hoover,

is very aware that Judy Campbell's visiting the President

in the White House, and Sam Giancana and J Edgar Hoover both understand

that this is a cudgel they can wield

over the most powerful man in the world.

In the midst of all this, as if the story couldn't get any crazier,

the FBI stumbles upon a CIA plot...

..to assassinate Castro.

The plot is to be carried out by the very mobsters

that is hanging out with Sinatra,

hanging out with the president's girlfriend, Sam Giancana.

He's in the thick of this plot.

He's working with the CIA to assassinate Castro.

Judith Campbell claims she was a messenger taking messages

from Kennedy, and possibly money from Kennedy, to Sam Giancana

to carry on this CIA plot.

You have this crazy situation where very early in the presidency

of John F Kennedy, the head of the FBI realises

that the President is sleeping with a woman

who's an associate of mobsters.

He's being politically supported by a prominent singer

who's an associate of mobsters.

The mobsters are all complaining that they didn't get what they paid

for by supporting Kennedy.

And meanwhile, these same mobsters are working with the CIA

to assassinate Castro.

J Edgar Hoover, who was no friend of the Kennedy presidency,

had something, and something very big, on the President.

Now he wants to make sure it's clear - I'm going nowhere.

Hoover had the goods and was able to put pressure on the Kennedy

administration to break its ties to Sinatra.

And the big break comes in 1962.

About a year or so into Kennedy's presidency,

he's going to make a trip to California.

The purpose of the trip is for him to do presidential things

that presidents always do, but also to try to solidify political support

in California, which was a very close race

that Nixon won in 1960 -

Nixon carried the state of California.

And they really wanted to shore up support in that state,

so they sent Kennedy to go there.

Peter Lawford, Kennedy's brother-in-law,

has arranged for Frank Sinatra's

Palm Springs kind of compound to be where Kennedy, the President,

will stay on his visit.

And Sinatra goes full Conrad Hilton and, you know,

brings in the special soaps and baths and walkie talkies.

Puts a flag up like the same flag that's up at Hyannis Port,

where the Kennedy compound is.

You know, it's a bit like vacuuming under the bed and under the carpet -

the Queen's coming.

For Sinatra, this is the fulfilment of his greatest hopes for power,

for glamour, for reputation.

The President of the United States

is going to visit him in Palm Springs.

And so Sinatra pulls out all the stops.

He has a helicopter pad installed for the presidential helicopter.

He has special telephone lines installed so the President

can be in touch with anybody around the world,

the military, if he needs to.

He has a special guest house fitted out for the President.

Frank Sinatra does all this stuff to make it welcoming for the President

right when Hoover lowers the boom on this by informing Robert Kennedy

of how close his brother is to both Judith Campbell and Sinatra,

and how close those two are to the Mob.

Just as he did when he wanted to use blackmail, he made an appointment

to see the President and suggest that this was not a good idea.

Hoover was very slick that way.

He knew to be... To hold this in until he had to use it,

and he never asked to see the President unless it was serious.

So he got in, he got his lunch with the President,

and he had his memo and he laid it out right for him.

Like, "This is what we got. Gotcha."

Bobby Kennedy realises the scandal is going to destroy his brother's

presidency, because it's all going to come out about Judith Campbell,

and it's going to explode.

Bobby Kennedy, who was practical and really was ruthless,

he knew and he just said, "That's it. The visit's off."

It wasn't like it was, there was a big discussion about it.

It was a done deal.

Bobby Kennedy tells his brother, you can't go.

You cannot stay with Frank Sinatra.

You can't be involved with this woman any more.

You can't be involved with Frank Sinatra any more.

You can go on this trip.

But if you're going to stop in Palm Springs,

you can't stay at Frank Sinatra's.

And so this side visit, which had been heavily publicised,

is suddenly terminated.

And Jack Kennedy was not foolish.

He was reckless, but not foolish about politics.

He knew it was done.

And so the person who was going to pay the price, of course,

was Frank, because he couldn't stay there.

And, you know, I feel badly for Frank

because Frank doesn't know any of this is happening.

Nobody wants to tell Frank. That's the reality.

And the President says to my dad... My dad said, "I'll tell him,"

because my father is just -

he and Frank had this very direct relationship.

And so he said, "No, have Peter do it,"

because he wants it to go smoothly.

He doesn't want to... The president didn't want to lose Frank.

This is what people don't get.

He wasn't trying to cut him loose.

He wanted him to understand the circumstances.

So they tasked Peter Lawford with it to explain the situation.

But Peter has a history of stalling on these things with Frank.

And Frank doesn't have a great deal of faith

in Peter's candour with him.

So Frank doesn't understand

because he doesn't understand sort of the Kennedy way.

Like, this is "Don't take it personally, Frank.

"This is not personal. It's just politics."

And that's what needed to be said to him.

But nobody actually says that. Peter sort of dances around it.

Kennedy does, of all things,

Kennedy stays at Bing Crosby's house in Palm Springs.

Bing Crosby is a Republican, and this is like -

this is the final straw!

This is the most public of slights, of insults,

of comedowns for Frank Sinatra.

It's a humiliation. It is...

It's a humiliation on as grand a scale

as the pleasure and honour would have been

of hosting the President at his compound.

And Sinatra goes into a fury.

Tina Sinatra said, who wrote a very forthright biography,

interesting memoir about her father.

And she says, if the Kennedys had tried to come up with a better

way of hurting my father, it would have been impossible.

He was devastated by this break-up.

Sinatra is so kind of bereft by it,

he takes out a sledgehammer

and starts cracking up the concrete helicopter pad.

He's so maddened by it all.

He blamed the messenger, and he cut Peter Lawford out

of any planned roles in the movies.

They were done. And that friendship never, ever recovered.

My father, at one point said, reaches out to Sinatra, and says,

"Listen, Frank, if you're going to be mad at somebody,

"be mad at me. It was my decision.

"It was a political decision.

"I brought it to Bobby. Bobby said, that's it, you know?

"And you're going to be mad at someone, be mad at Bobby and I.

"But don't be mad at Peter. He just did what we asked him to do."

And Frank's position was

it was the principle of the thing for Frank.

Because if Peter had just spoke the truth to him

and just said to him,

this is what it is and this is why it's happening,

he said I could have dealt with it.

"If he had dealt with me like a man," is the way Frank put it.

My father always felt that if the President had just picked

up the phone and said to Frank, "Look, this is what it is,"

it would have been fine because Frank got the point,

but it was the way it was handled.

He was insulted at the way it was handled

because he was a very proud man.

And as I said, they were giants of their worlds.

And he expected to be treated with a certain respect.

Frank Sinatra believed in Jack Kennedy,

and from all appearances,

was very, very fond of Jack Kennedy.

I am not convinced that that feeling was reciprocated.

I think that Jack Kennedy,

as Shirley MacLaine said, "When Frank met Jack

"he met his match in terms of cynical manipulators."

Sinatra was depressive.

He was furious. Sinatra was never cynical.

Sinatra was not a cynic.

Sinatra couldn't be cold and calculating

the way Jack Kennedy could be.

It broke Frank's heart, broke Frank Sinatra's heart

to be discarded by Kennedy,

and in fact, set him on a rightward drift

where, by the late 1960s, he had moved from being a staunch,

lifelong Democrat into the orbit of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan,

where he would stay for the rest of his life.

Sinatra has lost this grip on power, this access,

this unparalleled access, to the greatest power in the world,

all through this...

This diabolical triangle

between Momo Giancana and Jack Kennedy and Judy Campbell,

all really kicked off by Sinatra.

Sinatra's very upset.

But worse than that, Sam Giancana is upset.

Which leads into...

..um, probably the greatest amount of conspiracy theory

we've ever had, you know?

All the, "Who killed Kennedy?" all starts then,

because the Mob have got very good reason to do it.

SIRENS WAIL

It appears as though someone in the limousine

might have been hit by the gunfire.

There had been plans for a presidential visit to Dallas

for some time before November 1963.

There were people around President Kennedy who were opposed to it,

thought he shouldn't go,

because there was clear hostility to him in Texas,

but particularly in Dallas.

But he was he was determined to go.

The Democratic Party in Texas is at sixes and sevens.

There's a division between a liberal wing

and a conservative wing.

He needs to patch that up in advance of the campaign season in 1964.

It's important that he shore up a region that he knows is trouble

to him now, particularly because he's advanced civil rights

legislation - that doesn't go over terribly well in the South -

and particularly in Texas.

And Dallas itself is a trouble spot of anti-liberal

and certainly anti-Kennedy sentiment.

He flew into Dallas on the presidential aircraft that morning.

Was welcomed at the airport.

Smiles, cheers.

Glamorous president, glamorous wife, come down the steps of the aircraft.

They get into the motorcade,

which was going to be ten miles long,

to where then he was going to do a speech at the Trade Mart.

Again, these are the Kennedys. These are rock stars.

So if they're in an open motorcade and they're waving to the people,

that's what you want. They can see the pretty people,

and they wanted to see Jackie in her pink dress

and JFK with his nice thick head of hair.

And that's what they want, right?

So they're using, you know, their looks and their charisma

to their advantage.

You also put yourself in danger

because a lot of powerful forces hate you.

Kennedy had a lot of enemies.

And that is the background music to what happens on November 22nd -

that the Mob, angry at Sinatra for failing them,

angry at Bobby Kennedy for persecuting them,

now chooses to go after JFK.

And that is why it remains important to know what happened

between Sinatra and Kennedy and the Mob.

They turned down Elm Street through Dealey Plaza.

As they passed underneath the Texas School Book Depository building,

shots were fired.

One of them hits Kennedy in the neck and back.

It goes through him.

It goes through to the front seat where the current Governor

of Texas, John Connally, is sitting.

And then the fatal shot hits Kennedy in the back of the head.

It... It-it appears as though something has happened

in the motorcade route.

Something, I repeat, has happened in the motorcade route.

The limousine is now travelling at a very high rate of speed.

Secret Service men standing up in the limousine.

They are armed with submachine guns.

It appears as though someone in the limousine might have been hit

by the gunfire.

At that moment, the President was effectively dead.

He was rushed to Parkland Hospital,

but he was given the last rites

and he, as all the world knows, did not survive.

It's official. As of just a few moments ago,

the President of the United States is dead.

The official investigation into the assassination

of President Kennedy in Dallas was, of course, the Warren Commission,

which concluded that the President had been shot

by a former defector to the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald.

And that he had fired at the President from his vantage point

in the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository,

up and behind the President.

But the Warren Commission,

um, could see no motive for Oswald,

and it is very hard to see the motive because good sources,

including his wife and other people,

say that Lee Harvey Oswald was a person who approved the work

of President Kennedy, who has actually spoke always,

if he spoke about him casually in social situations,

if anything, liked President Kennedy and supported him,

so why would he shoot him?

The Warren Commission decide it's a lone gunman

and it's all done and dusted.

But meanwhile, even Bobby Kennedy is asking himself,

am I responsible for my brother's death?

Is something I did, something I put into motion,

behind why my brother was killed?

And ten years later, a new government inquiry,

the House Select Committee on Assassinations,

comes to the conclusion that, in fact,

there probably was a conspiracy.

There probably was more than one actor involved,

and the most likely actor that their chief counsel pegs

is organised crime.

The Mafia had the motive and they had the means.

Their motive was that they were furious at the Kennedy clan

for betraying their relationship with the Mafia.

The Mafia felt they had helped to put him in power, and Bobby Kennedy,

both into power, and were very angry at this crusade

that Bobby Kennedy led against them.

So they definitely had a motive.

And of course, curiously, through all the work

that they've been doing with the CIA,

the CIA had given the Chicago Mob poison pills

and all kinds of regalia for killing someone.

So the idea of assassinating a politician had already been seeded

by the CIA itself.

You know, the official story is that Lee Harvey Oswald

was in that book depository,

and he uses this imported rifle, got from mail order,

and somehow manages to shoot Kennedy.

Hit him with those two shots as the car was going away

through the trees. Very bad angle.

And then the feat...

And actually get the three shots off in 5.6 seconds.

None of the FBI marksmen who attempted that shot could do it.

It didn't make any sense from a logical standpoint.

From the shot that was supposedly taken from the Book Depository.

And there has been argument ever since about whether the accused

assassin, shortly afterwards himself to be killed by Jack Ruby,

who had links to organised crime,

not least to organised crime in Chicago.

There is still argument about whether Lee Harvey Oswald

shot or shot at all, or shot on his own, fired on his own,

or whether there were at least two, and possibly more, assassins,

firing from a place usually accepted to be the grassy knoll,

which was off to the right of the President's car.

And what is fascinating is that the Church Committee,

was, in 1975, to actually investigate what were the links

between the CIA and the Mafia.

And strangely, Sam Giancana was killed days before that.

Giancana was killed in a way that the Mob uses

to ensure people's silence.

He was shot with a ring of bullets around his mouth,

which is a way of telling the world, we don't want you to talk.

The other bloke who was the top gunman did testify

and then was found dead a few days later.

So the Mafia were trying to cover up their links with the CIA.

Whoever killed Kennedy was dead not long after.

Certainly within the year of killing Kennedy.

They do clean house.

And I think if you've done that, you're going to not talk about it.

We're at November 21st, 1963.

The day before the assassination.

Frank Sinatra was making a movie called Robin and the 7 Hoods.

They are shooting in a graveyard.

Sinatra wanders off to have a smoke during the break.

He kind of goes up and is leaning against this tombstone.

And he looks at the tombstone,

and the tombstone name is John Kennedy.

Everybody laughed.

It was, of course, a totally different John F Kennedy,

who'd died much earlier.

And then came the news that Kennedy had been assassinated.

It's announced on the set, when they're shooting.

They take a break.

They actually finish the day's shooting,

and then Frank Sinatra goes to Palm Springs, to his compound,

and he just holes up.

He is so devastated by this, even though they were not the best

of friends any more by a long shot,

he still, he's mourning the friendship.

He's mourning the loss to America.

To the world.

And he's in his room solitary for a very, very long time.

Sinatra was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated.

I talked to his constant companion and valet for many years,

who told me that Sinatra drank himself stupid for days.

A couple of days, just more and more whiskey, bourbon,

went down his throat.

And a week later,

Sinatra's son, Frank Jr, was kidnapped and held for ransom.

And was eventually released for money,

but Sinatra told his daughter

that he thought the kidnapping of his son

was a message from the Mafia to make sure that he shut his mouth

about anything he knew about the possible Mob involvement

in Jack Kennedy's death.

Bobby Kennedy, in turn, would be assassinated

when he was running for president in 1968.

When one looks at the relationship between Frank Sinatra,

the Kennedy White House, and organised crime...

..you have to look at what the quid pro quo was

that the Mob was expecting out of the Kennedys.

And whether or not they felt that the Kennedys lived up to it.

The answer is no, they didn't.

Sinatra, all his life -

who, after all, was a genius -

and I'll say it flat out, he was a genius.

But he could never really totally glory in his own genius

because he saw himself as lesser than.

And Jack Kennedy was class incarnate,

and Sinatra was helplessly and hopelessly and pitifully

drawn toward what he considered class his whole life,

because he didn't think he had any.

And Jack Kennedy was the whole package.

And so with the rupture in 1962

and then with the death of Jack Kennedy, this was...

It was a wound that Sinatra felt I think until the end of his days.