Amid Capitol riot, FBI released files from Kennedy-era investigation into Nancy Pelosi's father
In a 1961 memo to the White House, an agent summarized allegations that Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. took payoffs from applicants to the police force, and helped to hinder the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
While Washington, D.C. was riveted Jan. 6 on events at the U.S. Capitol, the FBI quietly released a trove of files from an "urgent" — yet seemingly controlled — investigation 60 years ago into Nancy Pelosi's father.
The files reveal the results of an intense two-month investigation into Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., a Maryland politician who served in a long career as a member of Congress and mayor of Baltimore.
John F. Kennedy's White House ordered the investigation after JFK planned to appoint D'Alesandro to a government post. A routine FBI name check revealed "allegations" against D'Alessandro, according to a Feb. 6, 1961 teletype from "FBI Director." The director at the time was J. Edgar Hoover.
The "urgent" teletype seemed to signal the goal of ensuring that D'Alesandro would be appointed to a government watchdog board that reviewed defense contracts.
"The White House has requested that we proceed with a special inquiry investigation but that if substantial derogatory information were developed, we should report this and discontinue any further inquiries because substantiation of any of the allegations would eliminate Mr. D'Alesandro," the FBI director wrote in the teletype that is located on page 19 of the trove.
"Assign immediately," Hoover wrote, instructing the Baltimore and Washington field offices to "afford continuous attention" to the investigation.
In sometimes illegible and heavily redacted reproductions, the 248-page collection shows that FBI agents were tasked with running down rumors and facts surrounding their man.
"There have been allegations that D'Alesandro has associated with the Baltimore criminal element and [redacted] and the son, Franklin Roosevelt D'Alesandro, had been arrested for rape," an agent wrote on page 14 of the trove. The allegations may have been rumor, the agent noted.
Elsewhere in the trove, agents wrote about the son, who was arrested and acquitted on charges that saw others convicted of raping two young girls, aged 11 and 13. The young D'Alesandro, who died in 2007, also was tried and acquitted of perjury in relation to that case.
In the 1961 inquiry into the senior D'Alesandro, the G-men delved decades into their subject's past.
"In 1945 it was alleged that one Charles F. Cammarata had been able to get away with all sorts of criminal activities in Baltimore, Maryland, and had operated almost unmolested due to his friendship with and the protection of Congressman D'Alesandro," one unnamed agent wrote in a Jan. 30, 1961 memo to the White House.
In the same memo, which begins on page 38 of the collection, the agent summarizes allegations that a powerful D'Alesandro took payoffs from applicants to the police force, and that he helped to hinder the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
Elsewhere, the memo cites a "confidential source, who has furnished reliable information in the past," reporting that D'Alesandro appeared onstage at a 1943 rally for the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, which was formed in 1943 by the Coummunist Party USA as a Soviet front group, according to the FBI…more
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