One of the most difficult parts of figuring out what happened to Ronald Tammen is the inconvenient truth that he had to have reinvented himself. He no longer went by the name Ron Tammen, at least not on paper. He never used his Social Security number, his Selective Service number, or any of the other numbers that had been assigned to him during his formative years ever again. His former life was wiped clean and the feds were keeping mum about whoever it was that he became. It’s likely that very few people were in-the-know then, and, as the years roll by, even fewer are in-the-know now. So what’s a researcher who wants answers to do?
She keeps her eyes peeled for anyone who mysteriously shows up in FBI reports who isn’t identified, like, ever. And she starts with the FBI reports concerning the most in-the-know person she can think of: Robert Maheu.
I now have a candidate for someone who could conceivably be Ronald Tammen. Oh, I know, I know. It’s likely that this guy was NOT Ron Tammen. However, what I’m about to share with you is evidence that there were people running around doing Robert Maheu’s dirty work and they were doing it anonymously, under assumed names. What’s more, I now know for a fact that Robert Maheu was what’s known in the literary world as an unreliable narrator. In his autobiography, the more important the topic, the more likely it was that he glossed over crucial details or flat-out lied. He kept the really big secrets—including the name of someone who performed a highly sensitive illegal wiretap for him—to himself until the day he died.
Our story begins in October 1960, when Robert Maheu was working on the Fidel Castro assassination plot with Mafia men John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante, as well as his pals at the CIA. One day, Roselli approached Maheu and asked him if he could find out if Giancana’s girlfriend was having an affair with one of the guys from Laugh-In.
You want to do this as a Q&A? Good, that works for me too.
What’s Laugh-In?
It was a TV show that ran from 1967 to 1973. It had its funny moments but the writing relied heavily on catch phrases like “Sock it to me” and “You bet your sweet bippy,” which (imo) got old. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were the comedic co-hosts, with Rowan being the easy-on-the-eyes straight man and Martin being the funny one.
Now, when Roselli approached Maheu, he didn’t mention Laugh-In per se because that show was still seven years in the future. In 1960, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were mostly playing nightclubs, especially the ones in Las Vegas.
Who was Sam Giancana’s girlfriend?
Sam Giancana was in love with Phyllis McGuire, one of the McGuire Sisters, and I’ve read in various accounts that the feeling was mutual. The McGuire Sisters were three sisters from Middletown, Ohio, all of whom wore bubble cuts and had matching everything, right down to their suntan-tinted pantyhose and orange patten-leather pumps. They sang familiar fare—sometimes in unison, other times in harmony, never very complicated. Phyllis was the cute, perky one with the wildly flailing arms.
Here they are on the Ed Sullivan Show, with the ever-ebullient Phyllis in the center. (You really need to watch this, because I swear she shoves the sister on the left with her hip about 29 seconds in.)
Was Phyllis McGuire having an affair with Dan Rowan?
That’s what Sam Giancana suspected, and I guess so do I. What can I say? She was a glamorous, vivacious Las Vegas singer. He was a chain-smoking, wisecracking Vegas comedian. Even though she was crazy for Giancana, she may have given into temptation while he was away in Miami Beach plotting Castro’s murder. You have to hand it to Rowan though: if he indeed started things up with McGuire during that period, it was a gutsy, if not insanely stupid move. But then again, if Phyllis was into bad boys, what could be badder than a guy who wasn’t afraid to be seen around town with the girlfriend of Chicago’s Mob boss?
Why did Maheu get involved?
Even a Mob boss can feel fragile at times, and Sam Giancana was feeling especially mopey and vulnerable. He loved Phyllis McGuire so much, he could barely concentrate on the task at hand, which was the assassination of Fidel Castro. Maheu needed to find out if Phyllis was fooling around with Dan Rowan so that Sam could think more clearly about the work he was conducting for the CIA. Dan and Phyllis’s allegedly illicit affair had thus become a matter of national security. If Maheu didn’t find out whatever was going on, Sam was going to go there himself, which, for the good of the country, Maheu needed to prevent. Maheu briefed Sheffield Edwards, the CIA’s director of the Office of Security, about the plan of action, which was to bug Rowan’s hotel room at the Las Vegas Riviera. Shef gave him $1000 for the job but warned Maheu to keep the CIA out of it.
Who did Maheu hire to do the bugging?
Robert Maheu hired a private investigator and former FBI special agent he knew from Miami named Edward DuBois to send two of his men to Las Vegas to conduct the bugging operation. The men who were scheduled to go were Arthur Balletti and a former FBI special agent named Fred T. Harris. According to Maheu’s autobiography, the plan was for them to book a room next to Rowan’s room and have them put a listening device on the shared wall so they could listen to whatever was going on in Rowan’s hotel room without having to break in.
At the last moment, however, Maheu contacted DuBois and told him to send only one man for the job and that Maheu would be sending the second. DuBois sent Balletti, while the other man, the man sent by Maheu, went by the alias J.W. Harrison. Balletti and Harrison met at the Miami International Airport and flew to Las Vegas together, with Harrison using Fred T. Harris’ airplane ticket. At least that was DuBois’ story.
In his book, Maheu only describes one man doing the job—the one who got caught. He never mentioned a second man.
Someone got caught?
Yeah. Arthur Balletti was caught and arrested on October 31, 1960, which happened to be the day after Maheu’s 43rd birthday. Maheu’s guy, the guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison, got away.
What went wrong?
It’s hard to say what exactly happened because the stories differ depending on who’s talking. One minor difference was that Rowan’s room was below Balletti’s and Harrison’s room, not next door. A major difference was that, in addition to bugging Dan Rowan’s room, they wired his phone.
In his autobiography, written in 1992, Maheu expresses utter bewilderment as to why in the world DuBois’ PI—Balletti—would wire Rowan’s phone when the whole point of the job was to listen to bedroom banter, not to intercept phone calls. “Just why he thought tapping Rowan’s phone would help determine details about his love life, I’ll never understand,” Maheu mused for the people who’d spent good money on his book of occasional facts in a sea of fiction.
But in an FBI interview in 1962, Maheu readily admitted that he authorized the wiring of Rowan’s telephone too. The reason for the change in plans was the CIA had reason to believe the Castro plot was being leaked, beginning with our three swingin’ singles. Giancana could have told McGuire, McGuire could have told Rowan, and heaven knows where it might have traveled after that. What if Dan Rowan told Dick Martin? What if Dick Martin mentioned it to his caddy? What if Dick Martin’s caddy told his bartender? And let’s not forget about everyone’s hairdressers. It could have gotten out of hand fast.
J.W. Harrison, the man who DuBois said was sent by Maheu but who Maheu denied ever knowing, installed the wiretap, while Balletti conducted the bugging part of the operation. The bugging was considered lawful since they didn’t break into Rowan’s hotel room. The wiretap part, which did involve breaking and entering, was 100 percent in violation of the federal Wiretapping Statute. First the sheriff’s department got involved, then the FBI, then the Department of Justice. And since Harrison had managed to hightail it out of town beforehand, Balletti was on his own.
How did he get caught?
Again, the stories differ. I’m going to go with the summary that was written for the Church committee, compiled from FBI reports, because it makes the most sense:
The hotel manager advised that “…according to hotel records, Arthur J. Balletti checked into the hotel on October 26, 1960 and was assigned Room 331 and that the registration card bears the notation, ‘in room with Harrison.’ Since Balletti’s hotel bill was in excess of $100 and he was not known, the manager and the chief of security for the hotel went to Room 331 and no one was in the room when they entered. At this time, they observed a yellow pad with the notation of time and a date which referred to Dan Rowan and the hotel manager observed in the top desk drawer what appeared to be a recording device. After discussing the bill with Balletti and receiving a somewhat uncertain identification, the hotel manager subsequently notified the Clark County Sheriff’s Office that he had observed what appeared to be a recording device in Balletti’s room and suspected that a listening device might be installed in Rowan’s room.
“The hotel manager and Deputy Sheriff Eversole and another Deputy, name unrecalled, entered Rowan’s room and the hotel manager observed what appeared to be some type of microphone taped to the rear headboard on the bed in Rowan’s room with wires running to the telephone wall box. The hotel manager observed the Deputy Sheriff remove the article from the headboard.”
If you’re wondering why the manager and security chief felt that a $100 hotel bill was worth paying a visit to Balletti’s room, that amount would be equivalent to over $1100 today. Still, it seems like a weird reason for them to go rifling through Balletti’s desk drawers while he was out, but I’m glad they did.
Then what happened?
You know how the CIA relies on “plausible deniability” to get out of every potential scrape they find themselves in? That didn’t happen this time. With all of his meticulous planning and troubleshooting, Robert Maheu forgot to instruct the men what to do if they got caught.
When Balletti was asked who he was working for, he immediately pointed to DuBois who, in turn, directed law enforcement straight to Maheu. Eventually, after lying to the FBI about why he hired DuBois, Maheu vaguely stated that he was using the surveillance to help the CIA obtain intelligence about Cuba through the “hoodlum element.” The DOJ was considering prosecuting Maheu for the wiretap until Sheffield Edwards stepped in and told the DOJ to back off because the prosecution of Maheu would expose sensitive information about “the abortive Cuban invasion in April 1961” (i.e., the Bay of Pigs), which occurred months after Balletti’s arrest and wasn’t exactly pertinent to the issue at hand. In April 1962, the head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division advised Attorney General Robert Kennedy that “it is clear that the national interest will preclude any prosecution resulting from the Nevada wiring case,” and that “prosecutive action will be declined.” In May 1962, Robert Kennedy was fully apprised of the CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro.
Thanks to the hard-loving Sam Giancana, the fast-living Dan Rowan, and the arm-waving Phyllis McGuire, the FBI and DOJ learned about the Mafia-CIA Castro assassination plots early in the game and we got to learn about a mystery man who went by the alias J.W. Harrison.
To this day, the mystery of J.W. Harrison has never been solved. In 1979, a staff report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated, “Clearly someone arranged for Harrison’s presence and knows his true identity.” My money is on Maheu, despite his staunch denial of ever knowing J.W. Harrison. You’d think that Maheu would’ve at least mentioned in his book that a guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison had wired Rowan’s room, though he didn’t have a clue who he was. Perhaps he understood that no one would believe him.
Did they learn anything else about J.W. Harrison?
A little. We have a writing sample, we have an address, and we have a physical description.
— J.W. Harrison’s handwriting
Here’s J.W. Harrison’s handwriting sample when he signed in at the Las Vegas Riviera on October 26, 1960. The FBI Laboratory attempted to compare his handwriting to another guy’s—someone named J.A. Rolliins—but they came up empty.
I tried to compare J.W. Harrison’s handwriting to Ron Tammen’s. Unfortunately, I don’t have a large enough sample of Ron’s handwriting to make an adequate comparison—just a couple yearbook signatures plus his hand-printed application for college. The big, loopy J in J.W. reminds me of the similarly balloon-like R at the front of Ronald. Other aspects are conceivably similar. But there are notable differences too. J.W. Harrison’s capital “F” in San Francisco and Ron’s capital “T” in Tammen look nothing alike, even though, in cursive writing, people tend to make their capital T’s and F’s the same way except the F gets a crossbar. But handwriting is tricky and it can change. Sometimes it changes gradually over time, and sometimes it happens abruptly, when a person writes a certain way on purpose.
As I was lamenting my lack of Ron’s handwriting samples, it occurred to me that I may be able to obtain two additional samples of Ron’s handwriting—lengthier ones. I’ve written to someone who hopefully still has them and I’ll be back in touch if she does. If so, and if some of the letters do look similar, this may be one of those times when it’s worthwhile to hire a professional.
–– His address
The address that J.W. Harrison wrote on the hotel registration was 214 W. Water St., San Francisco. Although there is a Water Street in San Francisco, it’s an alley the length of one block with no West or East designations. Also, the house numbers are in the double, not triple, digits. Lastly, if the FBI was attempting to find him, and they were, surely they would have sent someone from the San Francisco Field Office to Water Street to knock on doors. The fact that they weren’t able to locate him tells me the address isn’t real.
— His physical description
On December 14, 1960, the Miami Field Office sent a report to the FBI Director with the subject head “Arthur James Balletti.” In it, they provided updated information from DuBois and Balletti, including Balletti’s description of J.W. Harrison. The description Balletti gave of J.W. Harrison was as follows: “white, male, age 50, 5’10”, 200 pounds, brown hair, balding.”
If these descriptors are true, then J.W. Harrison is without a doubt not Ron Tammen. In October 1960, Ron was 27 years old, so his age is way off. I don’t think Ron would have been balding either. His father and brothers had full heads of hair in their later years. His height is consistent with the description as well as his hair color. I suppose it’s possible that he put on 25 pounds since his sophomore year in college, but I doubt it.
Here’s my issue with that description: For a guy who had little to say about his mysterious counterpart, Balletti seemed to be able to reel off his exact age and dimensions with no room for error. All of the numerical measurements he gave were precise. There’s not even an “s” after 50 to indicate a general age range. Arthur James Balletti was 28 years old when he bugged Dan Rowan’s hotel room. He barely knew his accomplice. To someone in his 20s, 50 is considered way up there. Besides, 50 is old for someone doing undercover intelligence work, particularly someone who’s working on assignment with a low-level investigator like Balletti. Between 1978 and 1987, the average age for CIA operatives was from the upper 20s or low 30s to the mid-to-upper 40s. When James McCord was bugging the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, he was 48. E. Howard Hunt was 53 during Watergate, but he was one of the planners, along with G. Gordon Liddy, who was 41. So while it’s feasible that J.W. Harrison was 50, he would have been at the high end of the spectrum and not typical for his line of work.
I’m wondering if, by the time his interview had been conducted, Balletti had been coached. Balletti worked for DuBois, and DuBois was a friend of Maheu’s. It’s possible that Maheu told DuBois that they needed to keep Harrison’s identity secret and to make up some of the identifying characteristics to throw officials off. We already know that Maheu was capable of lying to the FBI when he wanted to protect the CIA. He lied to them when he first told them why he hired DuBois. Maybe he convinced DuBois and Balletti that, in the interest of national security, they should lie too.
Is it possible that J.W. Harrison was Ron Tammen?
I think it’s improbable that J.W. Harrison is Ron Tammen. However, I also see it this way: we have evidence that Ron Tammen had ties to the CIA’s Office of Security, and it appears he also was known to Robert Maheu. Those two things both apply to J.W. Harrison. It also appears from Ron’s FBI records that Ron was involved in dangerous, perhaps deadly acts—maybe even assassination. But that couldn’t have been all that he did for the CIA. Assassinations didn’t happen that frequently. A hypnotic assassin (if that’s what Ron was) had to have some down days, right? What could Ron Tammen be doing on one of his quieter days?
Here’s a link to a photo from Ron Tammen’s junior year in high school for a school club called the Science Forum. (You might have to sign in to e-yearbook.com first. It’s the bottom photo.)
In the photo, Ron is sitting at a table between his brothers John and Richard. Ron’s attention is focused on what looks like two tall cans, or maybe they’re batteries, that he’s lined up and wired together. The wires lead to the body of an old telephone, which another student at the end of the table is sitting next to while talking into the receiver. By all appearances, Ron’s wiring is making it possible for that guy to talk to whomever he’s talking to. If Ron Tammen was comfortable wiring up a phone in 1950 when he was still in high school, it’s possible that he could become proficient at wiretapping a phone ten years later.
But if it wasn’t Ron? Well, who’s to say that old, overweight, balding J.W. Harrison wasn’t a colleague or mentor of Ron Tammen’s? At least we now know that, if Robert Maheu did know Ron Tammen, he would have done everything in his power to protect his identity.
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Note: I’ve been spelling John Roselli’s last name with one ‘s,’ which is consistent with many FBI records, Congressional reports, and newspaper articles that spelled it that way. I’ve now come to learn that the official spelling was Rosselli, with two s’s. In today’s post, I’m spelling it with one ‘s’ to keep things consistent. From here on out, I’ll be spelling it with two s’s. John Roselli’s/Rosselli’s birth name was Filippo Sacco.
