FBI vault contains Sinatra items, including Cal-Neva documents
By George Knapp, 8 NewsNow
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas icon Frank Sinatra had an FBI file that was one-foot thick. So, why did agents follow the singer for more than 40 years? And why were they interested in Marilyn Monroe’s lovers?
The FBI has created an online vault packed with millions of pages of once confidential information including reports on everything from Las Vegas casino moguls and gangsters to UFO’s and animal mutilations.
The vault was created in the interest of public information but it was also done so the FBI could cut itself some slack in responding to huge numbers of public records requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. Most of the documents inside the vault have been made public to one degree or another but they never before been so accessible.
To Las Vegas casinos, Frank Sinatra was a god, a moody magnet for high rollers. To the FBI, Ol’ Blue Eyes was a wannabe mobster. FBI agents compiled more than 1,200 pages in their Sinatra dossier, from his 1940’s friendship with supreme Mafioso Lucky Luciano to his 1960’s secret partnership with Chicago boss Sam Giancana, a hidden co-owner of Sinatra’s Cal Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe.
Included in the file are news clippings about Sinatra’s drunken Las Vegas rampages. A 1963 memo shows the FBI planned to pressure members of the Rat Pack to rat out their chairman. It never happened though. And in 1964, heat from the FBI prompted Sinatra to announce he was selling his interest in Cal Neva.
