Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Lansky is credited with having "controlled" compromising pictures of a sexual nature featuring former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover with his longtime aide, Clyde Tolson. In his book, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, biographer Anthony Summers cites

multiple primary sources regarding Lansky's use of blackmail to gain influence with politicians, policemen and judges. One such stage for the acquisition of blackmail materials were orgies held by late attorney and Lansky protégé Roy Cohn and liquor magnate Lewis Rosenstiel,

who had lasting ties with the Mafia from his bootleg operations during Prohibition.

Charles R. Haffenden of the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Third Naval District in New York to set up a special security unit. He sought the help of Joseph Lanza, who ran the Fulton Fish Market, to get intelligence about the New York waterfront, control the labor

unions, and identify possible refueling and resupply operations for German submarines with the help of the fishing industry along the Atlantic Coast.
To cover Lanza’s activities, he approached Meyer Lansky and solicited his help in reaching Charles Luciano who was an important

boss of the five New York Mafia crime families. Luciano agreed to cooperate with authorities in hopes of consideration for early release from prison. In 1936, Luciano had been tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket after years of

investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. He was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison, but during World War II an agreement was struck with the Department of the Navy through his associate Meyer Lansky to provide naval intelligence. In 1946, for his alleged wartime

cooperation, Luciano's sentence was commuted on the condition that he be deported to Italy.

PEPFAR began with President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, and their interests in AIDS, Africa, and what Bush termed “compassionate conservatism.”PEPFAR continues to be a cornerstone of U.S. global health efforts. On April 4, 2014, Ambassador Deborah L. Birx was sworn in as

United States Global AIDS Coordinator and currently holds the position

ONI grew in prominence under President Theodore Roosevelt, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and naval enthusiast. His expansionist foreign policy — and the central role the U.S. Navy played therein — made maritime intelligence more crucial. The sailing of the "Great

White Fleet" around the world between 1906 and 1907, which included sixteen newly constructed steel battleships, showcased new-found American seapower and validated ONI's efforts. In 1929, Chief of Naval Operations William D. Leahy made permanent ONI's functions as an

intelligence office, while in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted the office considerable authority on matters of domestic security. On December 28, 1941, he requested authority from the Bureau of Navigation to recruit men from the construction trades for assignment

to a Naval Construction Regiment composed of three Naval Construction Battalions; the Bureau granted the request on January 5, 1942.[3] On March 5, permission was granted for the construction battalions to use the name "Seabees".[8] Moreell coined the Seabees motto: Construimus,

Batuimus (Latin for "We Build, We Fight.").[9]
Moreell's Civil Engineer Corps was given command authority over what would become an organization of 250,000 people that built $10 billion worth of facilities to support the war effort.[2][4] In 1945, Moreell became the Chief of the

Navy's Material Division, and at the request of Vice President Truman, he negotiated a settlement to the national strike of oil refinery workers.

Moreell served as Chairman of the Task Force on Water Resources and Power of the Second Hoover Commission, directing a 26-man

committee from November 1953 through June 1955. Former President Herbert Hoover called the work of this Task Force "the most far-reaching and penetrating inquiry into our water problems ever made in our history."The company traces its origins to Zapata Petroleum Corporation,

founded in 1953 by future U.S. President George H. W. Bush, along with his business partners John Overbey, Hugh Liedtke, Bill Liedtke, and Thomas J. Devine. Overbey was a "landman" skilled in scouting oil fields and obtaining drilling rights cheaply. Bushand Thomas J. Devine were

oil-wildcatting associates. The initial $1 million investment for Zapata was provided by the Liedtke brothers and their circle of investors, by Bush's father Prescott Bush and his maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker, and their family's circle of friends. Hugh Liedtke was

named president, Bush was vice president; Overbey soon left.
According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975,[8] Zapata Petroleum began in 1953 through Bush's joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go

into private business, but who continued to work for the CIA under commercial cover. In 1954, Zapata Off-Shore Company was formed as a subsidiary of Zapata Oil, with Bush as president of the new company. He raised some startup money from Eugene Meyer, publisher of the

Washington Post, and his son-in-law, Philip Graham. In 1960, Jorge Díaz Serrano of Mexico was put in touch with Bush by Dresser Industries. Dresser was owned by Prescott Bush's Yale friends Roland and W. Averell Harriman, and had been George H.W. Bush's first employer upon his

graduation from Yale, giving him his start in both the oil business and the defense contractor business.[17][better source needed] Serrano and Bush created a new company, Perforaciones Marinas del Golfo, aka Permargo, in conjunction with Edwin Pauley of Pan American Petroleum,

with whom Zapata had a previous offshore contract.