Kefauver Committee, Las Vegas session (15 November 1950)

This is the Las Vegas session in Part 10 of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, held “in Las Vegas, Nev., at 10 a.m.” on Wednesday, November 15, 1950, with Senators Kefauver, Tobey and Wiley present, and printed at pages 1 to 104. The session is headed as a confidential executive session. The printed record names the city but not the building. The quotations below come from the Internet Archive’s uncorrected OCR text. They have not been compared with the page images.

The race wire. William J. Moore of the Nevada Tax Commission and the Hotel Last Frontier described the commission’s hearings that led to Nevada’s race-wire law of 1949. He testified that Las Vegas race-book operators told him “Mr. Siegel said who was to get race-book service and who was not to get it” (printed p. 3). He said that Sedway had been in Las Vegas “practically ever since the inception of the race wire in Las Vegas.” Asked what other interests Siegel had in Nevada, Moore said: “To my knowledge, he owned an interest in the race book in the Golden Nugget, and several other race books in the community” (p. 3). Sedway later named the holders of the Golden Nugget book as “I, Siegel, and Soloway and Houssels,” and said that “Siegel had the balance” after the others’ shares (p. 77). The record gives no street for the Golden Nugget.

The Flamingo. Louis Wiener, a Las Vegas attorney, was asked about the ownership of Nevada Projects Corporation, the Flamingo’s owner. He testified that “Siegel held the largest percentage. I think he held about 22 percent” (pp. 46-47), naming others as shareholders. Clifford Jones, Lieutenant Governor, testified that the executor of Siegel’s estate was Siegel’s brother, a doctor in Los Angeles (p. 30). The corporation’s articles, as the FBI summarized them in August 1946, are on another page.

The Desert Inn. Wilbur Ivern Clark, president of the Desert Inn, testified that the corporation’s other shareholders included “Kleinman & Co.,” which “got 74 percent” (p. 55), and named Morris Kleinman and Morris Dalitz among the directors. Dalitz’s own testimony of February 28, 1951 is filed separately.

Moe Sedway. Sedway, who gave his occupation as vice president of the Flamingo Hotel, testified that he came to Las Vegas “at the request of Ben Siegel” (pp. 64-77), that after Siegel’s death he assembled a group that “bought the Flamingo for $3,900,000” (p. 85), that Greenbaum was among the El Cortez Hotel owners about 1945 along with Siegel and Meyer Lansky (p. 89), and that Siegel “was killed in Beverly Hills, in the home of Virginia Hill” (p. 91).

Statements about who controlled a business are the witnesses’ own accounts under oath, and some are secondhand. The record does not state that any of the witnesses committed an offense.