Ronnie and the maffia

[Gob]

A shocking new documentary screened exclusively by MailOnline exposes the chilling conncections between the Mafia, one of Hollywood's most powerful entertainment companies and its head honcho Lew Wasserman and President Ronald Reagan and his Justice Department.

From the mid-1950’s to the early 1960’s, Sunday evenings were reserved for millions of families to sit in front of the tube and watch the General ElectricTheatre on CBS hosted by genial Ronald Reagan, whose movie career had since dried up.

Television had offered him another chance.

What viewers didn't know was that Reagan was given this new opportunity of visibility and stardom in a highly lucrative and rare deal. Along with a big paycheck, he was made part-owner of the popular program that he hosted for eight years, making him extremely wealthy.

His mentor, close friend and the power behind the deal was Lew Wasserman, the very private head of the Music Corporation of America, better known as MCA, a Hollywood entertainment behemoth.

Under Lew Wasserman's brilliant and often brutal leadership, MCA's hugely financially successful forms of mass entertainment have been popular for generations of couch potatoes and movie-goers: from Leave It to Beaver to Miami Vice on television; from American Graffiti to Jaws on the big screen.

As a talent agency in the beginning, its rich acting stable had included Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford and Henry Fonda and Bette Davis. Wasserman had personally signed and represented many of them. Charlton Heston once described Wasserman as the 'Godfather of the film industry.'

Ronald Reagan, however, was the brightest star in Wasserman's personal firmament.

But there was a dark side to Wasserman - and to Reagan - all of which is revealed in a shocking new documentary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, that, according to the film's producer and those interviewed, links both of them in darkly shadowed ways to the Mafia, and the killing of a U.S. Department of Justice organized crime Strike Force investigation into Mob influence and infiltration at the highest levels of MCA.

It's a case that one participant in the film declares ‘dwarfs the Watergate scandal’.

Neither Reagan nor Wasserman were ever prosecuted, let alone interrogated as a result of the events presented in the film because both were so well-insulated.

Reagan died in 2004 at 93 after suffering from Alzheimer's for a decade, and Wasserman died in 2002 at 89. He was said to be one of the largest contributors to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California.

Seven years before Wasserman’s death, President Clinton -- who like Reagan got a lot of campaign and financial support from Hollywood power brokers -- presented Wasserman with the nation's highest civilian honor in a ceremony at the White House, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, produced and directed by Philadelphia filmmaker Shawn Swords, whose previous highly acclaimed documentary revealed the shady business practices of popular TV icon Dick Clark, will soon have it's world premier.

But MailOnline has been given an exclusive screening of the complex film which includes candid interviews with, among others, two former top Justice Department prosecutors and an ex-FBI agent who were spearheading the ill-fated top-secret probe of MCA. These men lost or left their jobs when their investigation was suddenly ordered shut down at 'the highest levels in Washington,' according to Swords and those he interviewed on camera over a two to three year period.

Richard Stavin, a former veteran federal prosecutor who was assigned to the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles and was an integral member of the MCA-Mafia probe team, declared in the film for the first time:

'It's my belief that MCA and its' involvement with Mafia individuals, Mafia-dominated companies and our inability to pursue those was not happenstance. I believe it was an organized, orchestrated effort on the part of certain individuals within Washington, D.C. to keep a hands-off policy towards MCA.

'At the time, Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States and Edwin Meese was the Attorney General of the United States [Stavin's ultimate boss]. A little known fact was MCA and Lew Wasserman supported Ronald Reagan when he wanted to become president of the Screen Actors Guild, which was the launch of Mr. Reagan's political career.

'I would like to think that the people in the highest levels of this government were not protective of MCA...But I'm not so sure about that.'

Stavin left his Mafia crime-fighting career to which he was dedicated because, as he said on camera,

'I was unable to fulfill the duties for which I took my sworn oath.'

Another veteran federal Strike Force prosecutor involved in the probe of organized crime infiltration at MCA, Marvin Rudnick, known for his bulldog tenacity, was shockingly fired by the Justice Department and considered 'rogue' because he wanted to continue to pursue the suspected MCA bad guys, even if the trail led to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Call the cops! Someone's stolen all the substance from that nice person's article!

[Lord Jim]

I think Strop's been holding out on us...

He's been getting emails from Steve, and now he's copied and pasted one here...

[rubato]

"...

Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, produced and directed by Philadelphia filmmaker Shawn Swords, whose previous highly acclaimed documentary revealed the shady business practices of popular TV icon Dick Clark, will soon have it's world premier.
.... "

His highly acclaimed film is one no one has seen yet.


yrs,
rubato

[Joe Guy]

"...

Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, produced and directed by Philadelphia filmmaker Shawn Swords, whose previous highly acclaimed documentary revealed the shady business practices of popular TV icon Dick Clark, will soon have it's world premier.
.... "

His highly acclaimed film is one no one has seen yet.

You should read it like this....

Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, produced and directed by Philadelphia filmmaker Shawn Swords, whose previous highly acclaimed documentary revealed the shady business practices of popular TV icon Dick Clark, will soon have it's world premier.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Uh and that missing hyphen has been located between the it and the s. What a creature of habit!