A little voice is telling me that a fair-sized portion of the stories Gianni Russo is sharing here aren’t reliable, but I love hearing them anyway. I don’t know how old this interview is, but it was only posted about two weeks ago.

The Frank Sinatra story sounds believable, especially the part regarding Sinatra immediately hanging up the phone when Russo called him back and said, “We’re friends, right? Would you turn down the [Maggio] part in From Here to Eternity if I asked you to?” The Kennedy stuff sounds familiar and is probably true to some extent, especially the stories about Joe Kennedy‘s thoughts about women and sexual favors, and Bobby Kennedy‘s hard-ass attitude about mafia guys, etc.

But there’s no way JFK told anyone that his administration would invade Cuba so the mob could get their casinos back. He felt pressured into supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion, yes, but that was a far cry from a full-scale U.S. invasion.

Wiki excerpt: “In 1988, Russo killed a man inside the Las Vegas club and casino he owned. When he tried to intervene to stop a member of the Medellín drug cartel from harassing a female patron, the man stabbed him with a broken champagne bottle. Russo, a legal carry owner, pulled his gun and shot him twice in the head. Russo was not charged with the killing because it was ruled a justifiable homicide. However, when Pablo Escobar heard about the death, he ordered a contract on Russo’s life. The Colombian drug lord supposedly only canceled it when he found out Russo had starred in…The Godfather.”

Russo has great looking teeth.