Flawed Patriot Page 35

  “We sat on a couch and discussed the old days, and he growled something about that SOB George Blake, among other things. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about this. It must have been in early 1973.”

  Bill’s state of health is important, in view of the suddenness of his death a couple of years later and the disbelief it caused among many people. It is, of course, impossible to get his medical records without the next-of-kin’s consent, which was not forthcoming.

  14

  A MURKY PASSAGE: BILL HARVEY AND THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CHINIGO

  So there was Bill in Indianapolis, in wavering health, performing a perfunctory job in which he tried to keep himself interested, a devoted family man, amateur horse trainer, baseball fan, bridge player, up-standing member of his church, and occasional traveler abroad.

  Did his past come back to haunt him in Indy?

  Despite the outward tranquility of his life, there was cogent, even pressing, reason for Bill’s continued caution, which was certainly more than just the prudence of a longtime counterintelligence officer. Harvey was very, very wary of inimical forces, which he labeled, publicly, as KGB but which could hardly have been Soviet. By 1973, his knowledge of the CIA was dated and, as we have noted before, opposing intelligence services of any standing do not murder each other’s people. It is more likely that Bill’s vigilance was based in a domestic American concern and that he covered that concern with the more palatable explanation that the Soviets were out to get him. The question is, of which stripe were his true enemies? And were they so inimical that they would truly want to murder him?

  Almost everyone who knew Harvey in the Cold War—those who bore him enmity excepted—wishes, devoutly, that his story would have had a mundane ending, involving him laying off the booze in a nice suburban house with family, friends, and community respect. Yet two questions hang over the memory of Bill Harvey, first being the question of foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. To delve into the second, we meet interesting new characters.

  Apart from his testimony to the Church Committee, the biggest event in Harvey’s latter years was the entrance into his life of Marajen Chinigo, whom he had certainly known of while he was in Rome a decade earlier. When Harvey and Chinigo connected in the United States in the 1970s, Marajen was still married to her most recent husband, Michael Chinigo, though their marriage was teetering. Michael Chinigo was a journalist of sorts and also a former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent, an honorary papal count, and an owner of Sicilian property given him under peculiar circumstances. And there was more.

  THE ALLEGATION

  Joe Shimon was the only outsider on record who could be even partially authoritative on matters concerning dealings between Johnny Rosselli and Harvey. Richard D. Mahoney in his book, Sons and Brothers, writes that there was a “little problem Johnny took to Bill Harvey. One of Rosselli’s old flames, the wife of a newspaper publisher, had called him in 1973 to say that her husband had put out a contract on her. Could Rosselli help? According to the story Rosselli told Shimon, he turned to Harvey, who did the job himself.

  “The husband died of a massive (and induced, Rosselli says) heart attack. Whether the story is true or not, here was Rosselli ten years later claiming that he and Bill Harvey were still trafficking in murder.”1

  Mahoney cites a statement by Shimon to the FBI, dated September 8, 1976, i.e., shortly after Rosselli’s death. Shimon had no axe to grind, except the fact that he loved being a source. It’s possible that Shimon’s tale was true, that Harvey did volunteer to take care of Michael Chinigo, a man he almost undoubtedly knew.

  Sally Harvey says, “Around 1974, after he got out of prison, Uncle Johnny came to visit us, and then Dad drove Johnny to Chicago…. No! To Champaign…. And we came along. Johnny had a girlfriend there who owned the local paper. She was flamboyant, sort of exotic looking, wild, long hair. Sexy, but aging. Made a very big impression. Strange woman.”2

  MARAJEN STEVICK AND MICHAEL CHINIGO

  It must be stipulated that, in what follows, a number of sources I talked with flatly refused to be identified for what seemed to me to be good cause: in one way or another, their livelihoods and their pensions depended on the goodwill of Marajen Chinigo and her estate.

  That said, let’s look at the dowager of Champaign, Illinois. Marajen Chinigo was born on September 12, 1912. She approached her ninetieth birthday determined to stave off death as long as she possibly could, but shortly after arriving at that milestone, she died.

  Marajen is limned in the Champaign News-Gazette’s official corporate biography as being the very hands-on executive of the Champaign media miniempire created by her father in a 1919 merger. The official version of her life is all gracious smiles and good works. She was a beneficent philanthropist, a patron of the arts, and a painter in her own right. Mrs. Chinigo gave handsomely to causes she supported, among them Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma.3

  The News-Gazette’s version excludes the spiteful streak she showed if she felt her interests were crossed. One who knew her well said she had “an exaggerated sense of paranoia.” Someone else said, “She’ll lie in a heartbeat…. She tells stories she comes to believe herself, but always with an eye to her own image.”4

  Marajen always believed she was the center of the universe. She lived to be adored. The family money was a tool to help her waltz her way into the circles of those with whom she sought to consort. She collected men who were achievers in fields of risk, even danger.

  If she were done dirt, Marajen’s revenge was vicious. With some cause, in 2000 she turned on her top executive, whom she had known since his teenage years, and effectively ruined his life. She had known of the man’s shortcomings from 1991, yet proceedings against him were only instituted in 1999. Around 1998, she made discreet, not terribly idle, inquiries about a Mafia hit man whose name she knew, with the idea of disposing of the executive in mind.

  Someone says of her early years, she “was one of those midwestern heiresses who went out to the Coast and had to be seen in the company of the movie crowd and the Mob.” Another friend adds, “Her whole life was one big party.” Others are less complimentary. A former employee says, “She was always an undisciplined child who had wealth coming out of her ears. If you wrapped Elmore Leonard, Harold Robbins, and John Grisham together, they still wouldn’t do justice to Marajen Chinigo.”

  The man I refer to as Marajen Chinigo’s conservator has a less cynical take on her life and habits. A distinguished gentleman, the conservator observed Marajen with wry humor and questioned her closely on my behalf.

  THE MARRYING KIND

  In its obituary, the Chicago Tribune detailed Marajen Stevick’s six marriages. Two were with the same man, the brother of the old-time movie actor, Buddy Rogers. The most notable was with a Texan, Lt. Col. Edwin Dyess of the U.S. Army Air Force. They were married shortly before he sailed with his squadron for the Philippines in May 1941. Dyess was captured by the Japanese when American resistance collapsed; he survived the Bataan Death March, was imprisoned, eventually escaped, and was evacuated by an American submarine. Dyess was killed when he deliberately flew a crippled P-38 Lightning fighter plane into an unpopulated area near Los Angeles rather than crash it into a residential area. Marajen arranged to have his horrific POW camp experiences published in 1944.5

  Even before she met Colonel Dyess, Marajen shimmered in Los Angeles with her mother. When the high rollers moved out to the desert, she and her mom headed for Palm Springs. Marajen was one of the pioneers, along with Alice Faye and Phil Harris and others, who made Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage bywords in the gossip magazines and later on television. There she met Frank Sinatra and at least one of his Mob friends, Johnny Rosselli. She once commented to a friend, with considerable surprise, “John is really an arsenal!”

  Rosselli and Mrs. Chinigo had an on-again-off-again romance that flamed hot in the years before Rosselli was murdered. Immediately after the discovery of Johnny’s mangled body in August 1976,
the FBI, based on their surveillance and Johnny’s chronic telephonitis, came calling, to talk with Marajen about Rosselli. It was evident that Marajen trusted Johnny and that he had considerable influence over her.

  MICHAEL CHINIGO

  Around the name of Michael Chinigo there hangs a heavy miasma of bad taste, double dealing, petty crime—a feeling that not everything was quite as it seemed to be or should have been.

  Michael, son of Dimitri Chinigo, was born August 28, 1908, at Macchia Albanese, Cosenza, in Italy.6 Of Albanian extraction, his brothers, Dimitri and Constantine, bore first names associated with the Greek Orthodox faith. In his later life, there are vague references to Michael’s “Greek connections.”

  Michael’s mother brought her children to the United States in 1915, four years after Rosselli arrived in Boston. The Chinigos settled in Norwich, Connecticut, and prospered sufficiently for Michael to attend Yale. He studied pre-med, started an internship at Bellevue Hospital in New York, then dropped out, allegedly to pursue his medical studies in Italy, but instead, before the outbreak of World War II, he appeared in Rome as a journalist.

  A chronicler of OSS’s activities in Italy during World War II notes that among the early recruits to the clandestine service was “Mike Chinigo, a reporter for International News Service (INS), who had returned to the States on one of the last ships from Italy, and who would go back under newspaper cover to participate in the Italian campaign.”7 Michael’s most legendary exploit is retold in various versions, of which this is one:

  Michael Chinigo … accompanied the landing [on the south coast of Sicily] of the Seventh U.S. Army…. As he walked along the beach he heard a phone ringing in a house near the shore. Since no one was around Michael decided to answer it. A gruff voice said, “Ah it’s you. It is all well, I presume? I have a report here that the Americans have landed in your sector.” Chinigo answered, “Oh no, no. All is quiet here. No landing anywhere.” “No wonder,” the voice said, “In weather like this.” Then hung up. The gruff voice belonged to Italian General Achile de Havet commandant of the 206th Coastal Division who was totally deceived by a reporter who happened to speak perfect Italian.8

  Of course, Chinigo was an OSS agent, not a reporter. The ruse was no accident. Indeed, Chinigo may have placed the call. Later, “the first person to enter [Messina, as the Axis forces retreated] was ‘Sorel,’ … operating under media cover.”9 Sorel was an operational name for Chinigo.

  Michael continued to serve throughout the war in Italy and probably knew Lester Houck, Harvey’s predecessor in Berlin, and Jim Angleton, who then was a young OSS officer. After World War II, Angleton for a while headed OSS/SSU operations in Italy.

  Out of uniform, Chinigo returned to Rome as a Hearst correspondent. It is highly possible that Angleton continued Chinigo as an ongoing contact, principal agent, or even deep-cover case officer in the late 1940s. Angleton was involved at that time in CIA operations against Albania—operations that were quickly and disastrously rolled up because of injudicious, boozy comments made by Angleton to Kim Philby.

  It is logical that Angleton would have used Michael Chinigo in the Albanian ops. Not only did Angleton know Chinigo, but Chinigo’s family was of Albanian origin, and even spoke a particular dialect, which was used in Albanian pockets, even in Sicily.

  The Chicago American, one of the old Hearst chain of newspapers, ran a front-page story on Sunday, August 29, 1954—fifteen months after Michael married Marajen—headlined, “Lowdown on Mafia Revealed … Despite warnings that he would endanger his life, Michael Chinigo, INS Chief Correspondent in Italy, visited Sicilian strongholds of the dreaded Mafia…. He tells herewith what he could and could not find out about the international ramifications of this organization, believed by many to have links in the US.”

  I had met the late Don Calogere Vizzini [until his death in July 1954, reportedly the chief of the Mafia] at Villalba while US troops occupied Sicily….

  In the meeting with Vizzini I had tried to establish a link between his cooperation with American troops and Lucky Luciano, the American gangster … [portion illegible] … the U.S. forces during the invasion of Italy. Vizzini had simply smiled and said: “Salvatore Luciana—Luciano as you call him—is an honorable man.” … I got no further on the Luciano topic.

  Chinigo added that Luciano was born in Lercara Friddi, which was in the Mafia “province” run by Vizzini.

  The Hearst reporter visited Luciano. “Lucky won’t even admit he is an ‘honorable man’ … which is in keeping with the unwritten rule of secrecy, mostly about yourself, if you are a Mafioso. Luciano told me, simply: ‘I donna know nuttin.’ Then shut up like a clam.” Despite Lucky’s reticence, the Chicago American ran a large photo of Chinigo and Luciano in what might have been cordial conversation.

  The story contained intimations that the Sicilian Mafia from time to time sent ambassadors to the United States to help iron out difficult problems among its rambunctious American nephews.10

  While Harvey was in Rome, a decade after the article on Chinigo was published, the CIA likely maintained some form of covert liaison with the Sicilian Mafia and with the Camorra in southern Italy. Harvey would not have wanted to jeopardize his official cover by visiting the Mafia, unless absolutely necessary. He might go to Sicily to pay a formal call or to negotiate important matters, but he would have left routine dealings to a trusted senior agent. And who was more trusted than Michael Chinigo, an American citizen with perfect cover and mobility and praiseworthy status from his service in the war?

  The CIA studiously ignored my Freedom of Information Act requests for OSS and CIA files on Chinigo for more than two years. Finally, the Agency replied that it had searched high and low and could find no mention of Michael Chinigo. This is possible if the CIA cleanses its files periodically. Otherwise, a man like Chinigo, with his rich foreign background and his OSS past would undoubtedly have appeared in Agency files numerous times.

  MICHAEL AND MARAJEN

  The circumstances under which Michael Chinigo and Marajen Stevick Dyess met are unknown, although it’s likely that Marajen and her mother were on a grand tour, absorbing culture and sieving the Continent in search of a European husband with class—all the better if he knew something about the news business. Michael fit the bill almost precisely. Even though he was not even minor nobility, he probably represented what the Champaign ladies thought of as Continental glamour. Similarly he wouldn’t have minded marrying into money. Though Michael’s divorce from his previous wife, a Romanian, was not yet effective, he married Marajen in Rome on May 7, 1953.

  Michael told his bride that he would take her to “one place, an absolute must, for their honeymoon.” He said he had spent his childhood there, which may have been a little white lie. For him the destination was more than just romantic, it was “a very spiritual place”: a twelfth-century Italian monastery, Torre di Civita, at Ravello, overlooking the Amalfi drive.

  The innocent American heiress was totally taken in. Her conservator notes, she “fell in love with the monastery. She bought the villa because Michael persuaded her to…. It was in ruins.” The couple restored the monastery. “Michael even worked at it … laying cobblestones,” which sounds unlikely but possible. Marajen Chinigo’s conservator continues that Marajen had no understanding of art. “If Michael got it, it was OK with her.” Among other things, Michael may have been involved in antiquities fraud. The conservator: “The marriage provided Michael with good cover, great mobility, a private expense account … and it also helped in his petty crimes.” There is a symbiosis, well-known to customs inspectors and narcotics officers, between the trade in antiquities and drug smuggling.

  Gore Vidal lived in Rome from 1962 to 1964, before he bought his own villa at Sorrento, near Marajen. Vidal calls Marajen “Margarine” and says she was “bad news.” Vidal continues, “I thought Margarine was just your average good-time girl. Yes, she was a heavy drinker … an amiable drunk … a playgirl … a mother’s girl…. [She] Always
Did The Right Thing.”

  Michael Chinigo? “A most insignificant person. Plain. Very small. No charm. Boastful. I thought of him more as a crook. He knew shady types of people … thugs…. He worked for INS, which everyone knew was spook cover.”11

  BACK HOME IN CHAMPAIGN

  Back in the United States, Marajen at some time in their marriage made Michael publisher of the Champaign News-Gazette. “Marajen treated Michael as the son she never had,” said someone who knew the relationship.

  Then, in the early 1970s, Michael’s eye lit upon a young employee of the newspaper, who is variously described as a reporter or a cleaning woman, depending on who’s talking. The glint developed into an affair. Toward the end of February 1974, Marajen had Michael’s clothes and books tossed into the street.

  One report says, “There was a restraining order on Chinigo…. Late in the evening of March 31, 1974, four private security men raced to the Chinigo residence in response to an emergency call about an intruder. Michael Chinigo emerged from the shadow of a low-hanging tree, and the team threw him to the ground. One held him down on the sidewalk at pistol point, “It was like, ‘stay right there on the ground, motherfucker!’” Soon thereafter, Michael retreated to Rome.

  Despite their differences, Marajen Chinigo asserted when questioned that she had never been afraid Michael would cause her bodily harm. “He never would have done that to me!” During this period, however, she had a goodly number of telephone conversations with Bill Harvey.

  OTHER RECOLLECTIONS OF MICHAEL

  Few of the recollections people have of Michael Chinigo are flattering. Indeed, there’s an aura of sleaze in the memories heartlanders as well as expat Americans have of Marajen’s last consort.