Total Corruption: Robert Anton Wilson, the Mob, and Crooked Judges
When RAW wrote about the Mafia’s control of Chicago politics for RogerSPARK in 1968
As I mention in my book Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson, Wilson’s time at RogerSPARK, the short-lived Chicago community newspaper, produced many interesting articles, but the ones that stood out most were those covering The Blakey Report. RogerSPARK, in a series of articles published in late 1968, claimed that most, if not all, newspapers, besides the SPARK were no longer talking about the Blakey Report. Of course, since the SPARK was in Chicago, the members of the newspaper were more invested in further investigations. The Blakey Report was born from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, which had mandated to be the most far-reaching study of U.S. crime ever conducted. George Blakey is an American attorney and Law professor most known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). However, before then he was hired on as a consultant by President Johnson to work on his crime commission.
The Blakey Report was a sixty-three-page analysis which revealed links between influential individuals within the Chicago judicial system to the Mafia. It was submitted to President Johnson as part of his stated desire to understand and combat the influence of the Mafia and other criminal syndicates in American society. The report laid out the structure, operations, and legal vulnerabilities of organized crime groups which helped shape Johnson’s law enforcement strategy, including support for stronger wiretap laws and the eventual creation of the RICO Act.
Despite LBJ’s vocal allegiance to eliminating the Mafia, when his Crime Commission report was published, Blakey’s sixty-three-pages were reduced to four footnotes. Somehow, the Blakey Report was discovered by journalists at Life magazine and mentioned in the magazine’s September 8, 1967, issue.
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Life reported that there were two glaring omissions from LBJ’s report, and they were Blakely’s specific reporting that the success of the mob was its ability to corrupt both the cops and the courts. Meanwhile, LBJ’s report also suppressed Blakey’s statement that Chicago politicians were so controlled that they were told when they could and could not run for public office. Life reported that Blakey’s work may have been censored because LBJ did not want to get too specific in speaking about exact localities, however, journalists like those at Life and later, Robert Anton Wilson took issue with that.
In the RogerSPARK’s series of articles, published in late 1968, Robert Anton Wilson, writing under different pseudonyms, unpacks the backstory to the Blakey Report as he reflects on the impact such a corrupt system has had on the lives of people living in Chicago.
The first article, “Suppressed Blakey Report,” by Adam Selene, tells the reader about the Blakey Report and how it was suppressed by LBJ. The article also asserts that because of LBJ’s alliance with Chicago’s Mayor, Richard Daley, the Blakey Report was excised from his crime commission report. A suppression done in anticipation of the 1968 election. The piece also tells the story of how Chicago activist, Sherman H. Skolnick, chairman of the Citizens’ Committee to Clean Up the Courts, who in September 1968, filed suit against US District Court and the POTUS Commission to get the report released. “The suppression of the report is more important than the data.” The Spark quoted Skolnick as saying, “The Blakey Report, quite simply reveals a picture of total corruption — in politics, in the police, in the courts — a system based on murder and thievery.” Blakey in his report asked, “What can the public do if no dare investigate the investigators?” Continuing, Blake wrote, “Anyone reporting corruption to the Cook County Sheriff may be speaking to his own executioner…” Unlike today’s world of media oversaturation, just getting his hands on the report proved an epic battle for Skolnick. However, he was able to have a Senator from Iowa, H.R. Gross, read from Blakey’s report into the public record. Gross called out the corruption happening in Chicago and called out specific names. People like the Chief Judge of the US District Court in Chicago, Illinois, William J. Campbell. Gross stated that Campbell was involved for a “hoodlum frat organization” called the Albert Parvin Foundation.
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Also in this first article, Wilson sketches the network Blakey reported on, that of a collusive corrupt relationship between those who worked for the Syndicate-cops-courts-politicians-banks.
The RogerSPARK’s second article covering the Blakey Report, “Blakey Report.” was written by Omar K. Ravenhurst. It tells a story of a crooked Cook County cop named Richard Cain who was busted for supplying lie detectors to the local mob so they could detect informers. Wilson repeats the tidbit about Judge Campbell being involved with the Albert Parvin Foundation, or as it was described as “a hoodlum front group.”
The RogerSPARK’s third article on the Blakey Report, published on December 11, 1968, Omar Ravenhurst, i.e., Wilson, reported that the Spark was getting evicted, which makes for uncanny timing, being given the boot after publishing articles about the Blakey Report. However, Ravenhurst fails to mention the reason for the eviction. He does write, however, that no other Chicago Newspaper covered the Blakey Report. Did “they” go after RogerSPARK because Bob and company had the cajónes to report on the crime happening right in front of everyone’s faces? Wilson reported that more than eighteen Chicago area judges were puppets of the Mafia. The mafia had its own judges sitting on the boards of the banks simultaneously trying over legal cases involving the banks that came to court. For instance, half of the judges on the two of the highest courts in Illinois, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the US Court of Appeals in Chicago, were bank officers. As a result, these judges frequently decided cases in favor of their bank cronies, bilking the public of millions of dollars in the process. “The banks, you see,” he writes “are central to the advance stage that capitalism has reached in the United States. The entrepreneur, or industrialist capitalist, does not call the tune these days; it is the finance capitalist, the money capitalist.” Next, Wilson relates the now obvious fact that both Republicans and the Democrats go the people with the money when they are planning their election campaigns. “Understand that fully,” he writes, “and you will not wonder why there has been no organized effort against the Mafia by either party since the Mafia went into the banking business.”
The article also mentions that Judge Otto Kerner Jr., the one-time Governor of Illinois before LBJ appointed him to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, as a judge involved in shady dealings with possible mafioso. Wilson writes that Kerner’s name on the list may surprise readers. Well, the surprises didn’t end there because Judge Otto Kerner was later sent to prison, because of Skolnick’s investigations, years after this article was published!
In conclusion, as I state in Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson, Wilson’s foray into studying the underworld and its networks of corruption. Twenty years later, while living in Ireland, Wilson would observe a similar pattern, only on a much larger scale, when he began examining the Propaganda Due scandal. However, in 1968, Wilson and the RogerSpark provided some real news about a suppressed topic, which is what RAW was all about.
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Works cited:
1. Selene, Adam. “Suppressed Blakey Report.” RogerSPARK. Vol. 1 no. 17. October 24, 1968
2. Ravenhurst, Omar K. “Blakey Report.” RogerSPARK Vol. 1 no. 18. November 11, 1968
3. Ravenhurst, Omar K. “Sparks Eviction and our Corrupt System.” Vol. 2 no. 1 December 11, 1968.
A note on the authors names of these articles. Wilson used a lot of pseudonyms during his journo years. Some speculate that he used pseudonyms because he worked for Playboy magazine, but he used pseudonyms before beginning work at Playboy. However, it does make sense that he may have used pseudonyms his Playboy years to avoid having to answer any unruly questions from A.C. Spectorsky, the editor ran RAW’s department. He may also have been contractually bound to only write for Playboy as well, prompting him to utilize his literary sock puppetry. Another reason RAW likely used so many pseudonyms, especially at RogerSPARK, was because he wrote lots of the material for the newspaper. There were many other writers involved in the activist newspaper, but Wilson was pumping out with intense velocity at that time. It makes sense to cover his tracks and utilize other names. In the RogerSPARK many of the pseudonyms used for RogerSPARK were character names from Illuminatus!
Omar K Ravenhurst was Kerry Thornley’s Discordian non-de-plume. However, Thornley announced that “Anybody can say ordo anything in the name of Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. For better or worse, that never fails to confuse the authorities.” Omar Khayyam was the Persian Poet, Polymath, and Mathematician who lived during the 11th and 12th centuries in what is today referred to as Iran. Omar Khayyam was also boyhood friends with Hassan-I-Sabbah, founder of the Order of the Assassins and a major character in Illuminatus!
The author of the first article Adam Selene is one I had never seen associated with Wilson previously. It is not a name, like Simon Moon or Kevin McCool, which is used more than once, only for this article. Adam Selene is a character from Robert A. Heinlein’s book; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. (1966) Selene is the mysterious leader of the lunar revolution of the rising “Loonies” in the story. Turns out, Selene is a sock puppet, created by Mike, aka HOLMES IV, the sentient computer who orchestrates the whole revolution. My guess is that Wilson wrote this piece, using Selene as a pseudonym. Adam Selene also sounds a lot like Hagbard Celine, the infamous character from Illuminatus!
