I can’t believe I’m doing this right now, because I have to be dressed and ready to go somewhere in exactly T minus 20 minutes, but I feel like it’s big enough to stop everything and post this.
Remember when I had that online afterparty in which we discussed a few more of Ron’s scribbles on his FBI records? At the end of the post, I had a little game where I highlighted a couple mysterious phrases and asked people to offer up their suggestions on what they might mean. Both were on a record dated May 9, 1973, in which the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office had sent in the fingerprints of a Ron look-alike from Welco Industries to FBI Headquarters and asked them to compare them to Ron’s prints. Here’s one of the notations, beginning with the numbers 366:
It looks like an address, beginning with the numbers 366, which are unmistakable. I just haven’t been able to figure out the rest of it, which looks like an “m” followed by an “hau” or something like that.
Well guess what, you guys. I found another “366 m hau” (or something like that) on another FBI record! Here it is:
The record with the new “366 m hau” in question belongs to someone whose name has been redacted for the attempted bombing of a 1973 Lincoln four-door sedan in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The owner of the car was Irving “Ash” Resnick. According to his Wikipedia page, Ash “has been credited with helping to organize gambling in Las Vegas,” which is news to me. I’d known about Bugsy Siegel, but somehow Ash Resnick had slipped by me.
For those of you keeping track at home, this is Ronald Tammen’s second tie to Sin City, a town that would be completely out of character for him if it weren’t for everything else we’ve been discovering about his FBI docs. The first tie was when we found the letters “Hac,” which are written in the top right corner of ten of Ron’s records, in the same handwriting on documents for Herman “Hank” Greenspun. Greenspun was the former publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, and his Hacs had to do with an attempted burglary of his office by G. Gordon Liddy, James W. McCord, and likely others associated with Watergate.
So to recap: Ron Tammen has marks on his FBI records that match marks on records having to do with two bigger-than-life figures in Las Vegas. One man was the target of a planned robbery by the Watergate burglars, including James W. McCord, who, by the way, had other stamps and scribbles in common with Ron’s FBI records. The other man was the target of an attempted car bombing in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace.
Are these just coincidences? It’s starting to feel like they aren’t.
Resnick was a new name to me but his Wikipedia mentions a casino skin conviction that was overturned. Casino skim was one of those areas where the CIA, the mob and politicians commingle. Resnick was associated with the Patriarcha crime family according to Geno Munari in his book on the Dunes.
Re the bombing there are lots of interesting details. The police were tipped off before the bombs were placed and a man named James Carl was arrested. James Carl was an alias for Donald L. Layton a mechanic from Gary Indiana contracted by Charlie Berns in attempt to take over some of Irving’s rackets.
Speculation is the tip off to the police that generated your file came from an insider like Morris Shenker playing both sides.
The casino skim in this era went to crime families but also to politicians like LBJ through men like Bobby Baker and to off books CIA silliness.
I can’t see how it all fits to Ron yet but whatever he was mixed up in was high level. Highly recommend this book about the Dune’s by the aforementioned Geno Munnari “The Dunes Hotel and Casino: The Mob, the connections, the stories”
He was an insider who worked there for 8 years and then sent years doing research and interviewing other insiders to make this book.
Wow. Thank you for all of this background intel. I wondered how they found out about the bomb plot, and this makes sense. Thanks also for the book recommendation. It’s on the list. Thank you again!