Starting in late 2023, a collection of startling and unsettling allegations in opposition to Sean Combs –– a document government and rapper identified through the years by stage names like “Puff Daddy,” “P. Diddy” and presently “Diddy” –– have emerged. Because the allegations and lawsuits dealing with Combs have snowballed, so, too, has public curiosity within the case. The sheer quantity of accusations means that Combs, along with being very sexually and bodily violent, filmed many assault encounters and orgies that occurred at his now infamous “Freak Off” events, typically with hidden or safety cameras. He additionally now stands accused of “working an empire of sexual crimes,” with federal brokers having alleged that a number of of Combs’ victims had been of “barely authorized” or “barely unlawful” age on the time of their abuse. Combs’ obvious documentation of those occasions strongly means that he was fascinated by retaining these data for greater than his perverse enjoyment, as both a type of a safety or as a way to manage those that appeared in these movies, i.e. blackmail.
Consequently, hypothesis has grown about who’s allegedly on the “checklist” of individuals filmed by Combs on this manner, prompting comparisons to the alleged “checklist” of intercourse trafficker, pedophile and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein. The comparisons between Epstein and Combs have solely grown, with even the homeland safety brokers who raided Combs’ Miami dwelling suggesting that Combs was “as unhealthy as Epstein.”
Nevertheless, as has lengthy been a theme of Limitless Hangout’s Epstein-related reporting, together with the ebook One Nation Below Blackmail, the Jeffrey Epstein case has been poorly explored by the federal authorities, mainstream media retailers, and even many unbiased media retailers. A deeper examination of the Epstein case makes it clear that Epstein was not the only real mastermind or sole beneficiary of the intercourse trafficking and blackmail operation wherein he engaged. As an alternative, Epstein served as an operator for a bigger, monied community of oligarchs with intensive organized crime connections along with vital affiliations with intelligence businesses. He was additionally greater than a intercourse trafficker for this group, having aided this community extensively in arms trafficking, cash laundering and different crimes (many monetary) that fall outdoors of the deal with his sex-related offenses.
It ought to come as no shock upon nearer examination of Sean Combs that, like Epstein, he was working on behalf of a bigger community that he didn’t finally management. As an alternative, it arguably managed him. As this three-part collection from Limitless Hangout will endeavor to point out, Combs was appearing on behalf of an oligarch community that immediately overlaps with that of Epstein. Nevertheless, Combs used to affect a distinct {industry} and a distinct neighborhood for the good thing about these intelligence and arranged crime-connected oligarchs.
In Half I of this collection, we’ll look at the customarily neglected early years of Combs and his entrance into the music {industry}. Whereas Combs’ personal rise (from beginning to the founding of Dangerous Boy Information in 1993) is definitely chronicled, a significant focus of this piece is on the mentors and figures who facilitated his rise into the higher echelons of hip hop superstar, particularly Andre Harrell and Clive Davis, in addition to different figures who had a major affect on Combs’ early profession into the music {industry}, like Russell Simmons. Not solely did these figures carry Combs into the music {industry}, in addition they stand accused of initiating Combs into the kinds of actions he’s now in jail for, awaiting trial.
Additionally explored on this piece are the firms behind the success of Combs’ mentors and later Combs himself, specifically the Music Company of America (MCA) and Arista Information. When taken along with different claims from the interval, specifically about efforts to govern hip hop for the good thing about the personal jail {industry} within the early to mid-Nineties, it seems that this community’s curiosity in Combs, in addition to his mentors, was a part of one thing a lot bigger that sought to focus on not simply the hip hop {industry} itself, however the African-American neighborhood at massive.
Subsequent installments of this collection will look at Combs’ actions –– in music, in retail and past –– and the way the identical community detailed in Half I additionally enabled these actions, which notably parallel Combs’ deeper descent into acts of sexual violence and abuse. One other installment will look at how one shut affiliate of Combs additionally connects very immediately with the intercourse trafficking actions of Jeffrey Epstein, indicating that the overlap between the 2 instances is extra vital than earlier reporting and the present instances in opposition to Combs have recommended.
Sean Combs was born in Harlem, NY on November 4, 1969 to a schoolteacher and ex-model named Janice Combs (née Smalls) and Melvin Earl Combs, an Air Pressure serviceman and typically affiliate of American Gangster heroin kingpin Frank Lucas. Melvin Combs helped make ends meet by working quite a few authorized and less-than-legal operations; together with a cab and limousine chauffeuring firm, a number of bars Combs owned, and a portion of Harlem drug site visitors.i A toddler-aged Combs tagged together with Melvin on visits to Lucas’ dwelling, even enjoying along with his daughter. In accordance to an interview previous to his dying, the aged gangster alleged that Combs didn’t share his toys.
A Dangerous Boy from Start
“I discovered early in life that there’s solely two methods out of that [lifestyle]: lifeless or in jail,” defined Combs in 2013, talking of his father’s life-style. “It made me work even tougher… I’ve his hustler’s mentality.” Based on contemporaries, Melvin was an immaculate dresser. Whereas much less flashy than Lucas, who as soon as attracted the eye of the feds by sitting ringside at a Muhammad Ali –Joe Frazier bout in a $100,000 fur coat, Melvin nonetheless pulled out sufficient stops to be granted the road nickname “Fairly Melvin.”
When Sean Combs was 3 years previous, Melvin Combs was gunned down whereas sitting in a loitering automobile close to Central Park West. Per Susan Traugh, Melvin was shot within the head, seemingly at level clean vary contemplating he was seated in his Mercedes-Benz—this way of a success is in line with an enforcer killing.ii Based on an interview carried out by creator Zack O’Malley-Greenburg, somebody in Melvin Combs’ circle believed he was about to tell on a delicate enterprise deal to regulation enforcement and that that is what precipitated his homicide.iii From this, former associates and regulation enforcement have speculated that Melvin Combs was a federal informant. If allegations from incarcerated contemporaneous label heads like Suge Knight and former bodyguards are to believed, Sean Combs could have finished the identical, allegedly informing for the FBI over the course of his profession.
A latest article from journalist Legs McNeil lays out the Lucas-Combs legal enterprise in better element than beforehand reported. It additionally reveals that Melvin Combs, along with his dealings with Lucas, had an arguably deeper affiliation with the Gambino crime household close to the top of his life. The Gambinos could have even put out his hit. McNeil writes:
Melvin Combs, a small-time hustler, was launched to promoting heroin when Lucas fronted him a number of kilos from his Golden Triangle connection. He joined the crew of Willie Abraham, the 42-year-old proprietor of the Harlem Gold Lounge and a convicted heroin vendor who’d already spent 5 years in jail. Not like Lucas, Abraham was getting his heroin from the Mafia—particularly, the Gambino crime household.
In 1971, Melvin was arrested for possession of heroin and $45,000 in money. When Abraham’s heroin‐reducing mill was raided later that 12 months, and Abraham was charged with taking part in an intensive conspiracy to distribute $5 million a 12 months in heroin on the wholesale stage in Harlem, the Bronx, and Westchester County, Melvin was suspected by Alphonse “Funzi” Sisca, head of the Gambinos’ New Jersey crew, of being a rat.
McNeil additionally famous that “The New York Occasions reported that the prosecutor within the Abraham case advised the choose that regulation enforcement believed Melvin’s homicide ‘may finally be traced to members of the heroin‐distributing conspiracy.’” A newspaper clipping from the Saturday, February twenty fourth, 1973 version of the New York Day by day Information reveals that the Gambino-backed Willie Abraham crew had a lot or cause to suspect Combs of informing or no less than blamed him for the arrests. The article notes that their relationship to Combs seems to have led on to Abraham and his collaborators’ convictionson conspiracy prices, together with Gambino man Alphonso Sisca of New Jersey:
Willie Abraham […] was discovered responsible in Manhattan Federal Court docket yesterday of being a kingpin narcotics wholesaler whose ring flooded the metropolitan space with greater than 1,000 kilos of medication in 2 1/2 years.
A job drive of federal, state and native cops smashed the ring in a collection of raids in December 1971 as the results of data obtained by means of the court docket accepted wiretaps on one other massive time narcotics vendor’s cellphone. The vendor, Melvin Combs, 31, of 1853 Central Ave., Yonkers, was discovered shot to dying in January 1972 on Manhattan’s West Aspect.
This proof of a reported “wiretap” helps the declare that Abraham and his Gambino Household backers had Combs murdered as a result of they blamed him for the arrests, no matter whether or not Combs had truly been an informant. All through this text, connections to the Gambino crime household, in addition to the Genovese crime household, are a recurring theme.
NY Day by day Information article “Discover an Common Joe Responsible As Dope King” That Particulars the Supposed “Wiretap” on Combs’ Telephone that Led to the Abraham-Gambino Drug Bust – Supply
Within the earliest years of his life, Sean Combs lived in Esplanade Gardens. His mom Janice acknowledged the performative, attention-hungry character her son possessed early on. This led to Combs’ first promoting gig on the age of two, when he starred in a Baskin-Robbins TV business. Later, Combs modeled alongside The Wiz actress Stephanie Mills in Essence journal. Following in his mom’s footsteps, these early modeling jobs presaged Combs’ lifelong relationship with the modeling {industry}, which in comparable vogue to Jeffrey Epstein, would finally grow to be the searching grounds which Combs would scour for victims for his orgiastic sexual blackmail events and pathological predation.iv
Throughout his center college years, Combs’ mom Janice relocated the household to Westchester, a middle-class suburb of Mount Vernon. Combs enrolled within the prestigious Mount Saint Michael Academy (MSMA), a Catholic college situated within the Bronx, the place his recognition finally soared as a consequence of his exploits on the varsity soccer crew, which gained a division title throughout his time there. Combs’ hopes of receiving a scholarship to play D1 in school got here crashing down when he broke his leg throughout his senior 12 months. But, it was already too late for his confidence. He was reportedly given the nickname “Puffy” as a result of manner he strutted round along with his chest puffed out.v
All through his center and highschool years, Combs additionally exhibited an entrepreneurial streak, reportedly promoting T-shirts and ties at Macy’s whereas working a number of newspaper routes concurrently. This early relationship with Macy’s prefigures each his later merchandising offers with the division retailer, which noticed his perfume line Sean John inventory the cabinets nationwide, and the latest lawsuit filed by a John Doe from Ohio who alleges that Combs “orally raped” him within the stockroom of the flagship Macy’s in New York in 2008. His accuser alleges that Macy’s even endeavored to cowl up the crime in an effort to protect their profitable enterprise relationship. Whereas speculative, there’s a chance that this will have even been the identical Macy’s that had employed Combs as a minor.
A yearbook photograph of Combs (left) with buddies at MSMA – Supply
Notably, whereas Combs attended the all-boys Mount Saint Michael’s Academy, a significant intercourse abuse case involving minor victims that led to the indictments of two school members was brewing on the establishment. Marist Brother Timothy Brady –– the principal of MSMA for everything of Combs’ highschool profession — was arrested, charged, and sentenced to jail in 1988 for the abuse of three minor boys on the Catholic Academy within the Bronx over the course of 1987, Combs’ senior 12 months. Following the ‘86/’87 educational 12 months, Br. Brady was quietly faraway from his place and shipped off to a Marist retreat in Arizona. Regardless of his crimes, Brady was reinstated as a hockey moderator at a separate Marist Brothers establishment within the Nineties, as soon as once more offering him entry to minors, and was listed on the Marist Brothers web site till 2010. For some inexplicable cause, the court docket data pertaining to Brady’s conviction and incarceration stay sealed.
Accusations of sexual impropriety seem to have been a continuing in MSMA’s historical past. In 2011, a former assistant principal acquired a sweetheart no-jail sentence after pleading responsible to possession of kid porn on an digital system on the college. From 2009 to 2012, a lawsuit filed by Brian Elliott sought financial damages for the routine abuse and rape he alleges he suffered by the hands of an MSMA worker named Br. Galligan between the ages of 8 and 13 through the years of 1977 by means of 1983. The case wound its manner by means of numerous Delaware, New York, and appellate courts. If factual, Elliott’s victimization by Galligan would have ended across the time of Combs’ freshman 12 months in highschool, which means Elliott and Combs had been shut in age.
Extra not too long ago, a number of instances searching for redress of kid sexual abuse suffered by the hands of the MSMA school have been filed pursuant to New York’s Baby Victims Act and the “look-back window” that has enabled previous victims beforehand barred from submitting complaints by the statute of limitations to now pursue them. These embody a torts CVA grievance filed on behalf of a John Doe suing the Academy & the Marist Brothers of the Colleges for having enabled his abuse by the hands of Principal Brady, who allegedly fondled the plaintiff within the nurse’s workplace in 1985 when Doe was 16. It seems this unnamed potential sufferer would have been in the identical class as Combs. Quoting from the grievance, “Upon data and perception, in any respect related occasions, Defendants knew that clergymen and brothers of the Catholic Church and throughout the Marist Brothers, beneath their supervision and management, had been grooming and sexually molesting kids with whom the clergymen and brothers would have contact of their ministry and pastoral capabilities.”
One other lawsuit accusing the Marist Brothers of defending a pedophile school member named Brother Lee superior within the Supreme Court docket of Bronx County in 2023, surviving a number of motions for dismissal & abstract judgment, seemingly indicating that a number of members of the varsity’s school –– together with its principal –– had been perpetrating intercourse crimes in opposition to minors throughout Combs’ highschool profession. And as soon as once more, the complainant alleges that he was abused by Brother Lee between the years of 1984 and 1985, when he was 15-16 years of age, conclusively indicating that he additionally would have been in Combs’ class of 1987. Taking all of this data into consideration, it seems that sexual abuse was endemic and widespread at MSMA throughout Combs’ time there. Whereas inconceivable to substantiate, there’s a chance that Combs was groomed or among the many victims or else someway linked to those aforementioned instances. Actually, these kind of experiences early in life are statistically related to an individual offending in related methods later in life.
Principal Brady’s Yearbook Picture – Mount Saint Michael’s Academy, 1987 – Supply
Additionally, as an apart, the FBI and DA’s workplace seem to have used the fraught local weather at MSMA to provoke a COINTELPRO-inspired smear and lawfare marketing campaign in opposition to Fr. Bernard Lynch, the primary homosexual married priest and Fordham-trained Irish psychotherapist, who impressed a “witch-hunt” organized by the Vatican, archdiocese, and the FBI in retaliation to his outspoken advocacy for homosexual rights. Extra particularly, Lynch had based Dignity NY, the primary homosexual ministry in New York Metropolis in 1982, bringing him to the eye of Mayor Ed Koch, who drafted him onto his AIDS Activity Pressure.vi
Whereas attending Mount St. Michael’s, a teenage Combs started frequenting a number of New York nightclubs, which reportedly led to his first encounter with the music {industry} and well-known musicians like Michael Jackson. As detailed in an interview, given in 1994 shortly after launching Dangerous Boy Information, Combs seemingly claimed he was solid as a background dancer in one in every of Jackson’s movies as a teen:
“Across the age of 16 or 17, I began dancing, going to the assorted golf equipment, and that was in the course of the time when someone—(if) an enormous artist like Diana Ross, Wonderful Younger Cannibals, and even Michael Jackson had a video—the administrators would come into the golf equipment and see all the youngsters that had been dancing and decide numerous dancers to be within the movies. So I received picked to be in a few of these movies, and, um, as I used to be dancing in movies and stuff like that, I’d see the behind the scenes. I used to be about to go to varsity at Howard College and I didn’t know what I wished to do. So I noticed the folks behind the scenes, and I used to be like, ‘that’s possibly one thing I wished to do’, so I began like asking questions and getting data on the music {industry}…”
Following his commencement from Mount St. Michael Academy, Combs enrolled on the prestigious Howard College in Washington, DC to check enterprise in 1987. He promptly set about additional inflating his road cred as he expanded his horizons into a brand new popularity-maximizing enterprise –– celebration planning and promotion. His events had been described by classmates as providing a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of vibe” and Combs spared no expense in spreading the phrase, driving round campus in his convertible to cross out fliers for occasions. Creator Susan Traugh wrote that a few of Combs’ collegiate events attracted hundreds of friends.
Combs poses at Howard College in 2023 after making a $1 million donation the varsity, introduced in the course of the college’s homecoming – Supply
Comb’s entrance onto the hip hop scene started throughout his freshman 12 months when Combs scored a side-gig as rapper-beatboxer Doug E. Contemporary’s valet, the place he “shuttl[ed] Contemporary’s garments to and from the dry cleaner in his Volkswagen Rabbit convertible.”vii All of the whereas, Combs organized events in and across the Beltway in addition to again dwelling in New York Metropolis on the weekends. He was additionally a background dancer in one in every of Contemporary’s music movies round this time.
Whereas at Howard, the darker, predatory aspect of Combs’ repute additionally started to take form, with accusations of belligerence, sexual harassment, and home violence following in his wake. Contemporaneous accounts offered by sources to Rolling Stone inform of Combs beating a girlfriend along with his belt in full view of the general public on the Howard quad. One other time, he tapped on the glass window of an English class in session to try to coax a lady into skipping. On one other event, he non-consensually caressed a lady’s again and requested her if he may introduce her to “one in every of his buddies.”
By age 20, Combs had begun focusing extra of his consideration on his nascent internship and profession at Uptown Information, a job he had first secured in 1990 by way of his Mount Vernon neighbor, the rapper Heavy D. Combs’ initiative quickly noticed him grow to be former Def Jam recordman Andre Harrell’s intern. He commuted from Howard to NYC by way of Amtrak within the mornings, stowing away within the toilet to keep away from paying fare. He additionally shadowed celebration promoter Jessica Rosenblum in the course of the planning phases for Heavy D’s platinum-album celebration. Rosenblum “obliged his requests to take him to all of the ‘freaky’ nightspots on the Decrease East Aspect.”viii Rosenblum takes credit score for having launched Combs to a few of the largest names amongst NY scenesters and membership youngsters — in addition to updating his eyewear vogue. Rosenblum graduated from her hip hop celebration promoter profession to grow to be a NYC inside designer wedded to Steve Younger, head of worldwide litigation for one of many Massive 4 Accounting companies, Ernst & Younger.
Within the late Eighties, whereas nonetheless a pupil at Howard, Combs discovered that Uptown Information’ A&R (artists and repertoire) government had vacated the corporate. Combs took his boss Andre Harrell out to lunch to press for the job and, after a profitable schmooze, quickly remodeled himself into one of many youngest expertise scouts within the {industry}.ix Combs later advised Rolling Stone that, after becoming a member of Uptown, “Andre grew to become like my massive brother. He purchased a mansion, gave me a room [. . .] Not a mansion, an enormous home. It was a mansion to me, although, and he had gave [sic] me a room in the home.”
Uptown’s Secret to Success: Andre Harrell & MCA
Previous to his mentorship of Sean Combs, Uptown’s Andre Harrell first broke into the nascent hip hop {industry} by means of his rap duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, which he and a pal had fashioned in highschool. Harrell withdrew from Lehman Faculty in 1983 to deal with his profession as an account government promoting airtime for New York all-news AM station WINS. WINS was beforehand owned by radio pioneer J. Elroy McCaw, an ex-OSS agent and member of the Advisory Council to the US Nationwide Safety Council.x McCaw employed trailblazing disc jockey Allan Freed to man the mic on the station, a deal that was brokered by document government Morris Levy.xi
Per Potash, a US Assistant Legal professional later claimed that Levy’s jazz label Roulette Information, boosted by his relationship with WINS’ Freed –– the most well-liked DJ within the nation within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties –– was a “manner station for heroin trafficking.” Levy and Roulette had been additionally linked to organized crime, particularly the Genovese crime household. Levy was notably the primary financier behind the primary hip hop document label, Sugar Hill. The zenith of Freed’s superstar was exemplified by Paramount Photos hiring him at a price of $29,000 per day to make a teen film in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Freed was focused by a smear marketing campaign, leading to him being unceremoniously and inexplicably fired by McCaw in 1958. Freed was singled out by Orrin Hatch’s Congressional committee in the course of the first “payola” scandal involving the bribing of radio stations in return for singles performs. Consequently, Freed grew to become the face of the scandal, his profession in shambles. As Potash writes concerning Freed’s downfall, “Morris Levy, the supply of a lot of the payola bribe cash, was by no means referred to as to testify.”xii
Months after becoming a member of WINS, Harrell’s job prospects skilled a dramatic upswing when he met Russell Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam document label, who would later grow to be very near Sean Combs. Simmons quickly provided Harrell a job with Def Jam. Inside two quick years (a fast ascent mirroring Combs’ personal), Harrell labored his manner as much as VP and basic supervisor of the label. Def Jam’s early success was due partially to its 1984 distribution deal with CBS and its subsidiary Columbia Information. On the time, the label was run by Walter Yetnikoff, a detailed affiliate and pal of Clive Davis –– the person who would later grow to be Sean Combs’ second mentor after Harrell that could be a later focus of this piece. Appointed by Paley, Yetnikoff is closely implicated within the Payola scandals of the Eighties that concerned the “unbiased promotion” syndicate referred to as The Community, for which CBS Information was one of many largest purchasers.xiii Yetnikoff went to some ends to guard the established payola system, firing his deputy president Dick Asher in 1983 and, per UPI, even quashing an investigation by the Recording Trade Affiliation of America. By 1986, CBS Information had come beneath the management of Laurence Tisch, the billionaire head of Loews Company and a founding member of the Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman-brokered “Mega Group.”
Harrell’s success in administration, opposite to music-making, appeared to have clarified issues for Harrell, as his short-lived stint as a Profile Information artist got here to a detailed when his highschool rap duo with Alonzo Brown cut up up in 1986. That very same 12 months, Harrell struck out on his personal to create Uptown.
From left to proper: Lyor Cohen, Andre Harrell, Percy Sutton and Jam Grasp Jay on the Apollo Theater, 1986 – Supply
Nevertheless, earlier than leaving Def Jam, Harrell was accountable for Def Jam’s hiring of Israeli-American Lyor “Little Lansky” Cohen, who would later drive out Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin in an effort to co-run the label with Simmons. Years later, upon leaving Def Jam, Cohen would crew up with the household who had taken management of Def Jam within the Nineties, the Bronfmans, to grow to be the highest government at Warner Music, an occasion that will likely be revisited in Half II of this collection.
Not in contrast to Def Jam, Uptown’s early success (and the furtherance of Harrell’s profession within the {industry}) was as a consequence of its distribution deal with a significant leisure conglomerate. In Uptown’s case, the corporate in query was the Music Company of American (MCA), an leisure big that dominated the American music and film {industry} for a lot of many years. Uptown’s early distribution cope with MCA started in 1987 and shortly expanded right into a formal partnership with the corporate a 12 months later in 1988. Their ties grew even deeper in 1992, when MCA provided Uptown a $50 million deal whereby Uptown expanded into movie and tv.
In a Self-importance Truthful obituary for Andre Harrell, screenwriter and journalist Barry Michael Cooper describes an anecdote involving Harrell and a bust-up on the MCA Information Convention in Midtown Manhattan that demonstrates how Harrell employed road enforcers and drug sellers at Uptown, and that they even procured him a gun for cover:
There was a rumor going across the streets of New York that Teddy’s supervisor, former drug vendor and karate fanatic Gene Griffin, had smacked Andre within the convention of MCA Information in Midtown Manhattan. Journalist and creator Nelson George, gave me Andre’s phone quantity, so I may verify the story. I referred to as Andre and recognized myself, and requested him concerning the confrontation with Griffin. I additionally requested him concerning the story of two of his Uptown File executives—Jimmy “Luv” Jenkins and George Harrell (no relation), two of essentially the most revered road dudes from the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, and 116th Avenue in Harlem, respectively—giving him a .45 computerized to maintain for cover. Andre tried to put the gun behind his waistband. Nevertheless, the .45 slipped by means of and down his pants, and landed on the ground of the elevator. Andre, Jimmy, and George jumped again, however the gun didn’t discharge. Andre didn’t reply for nearly a minute, after which mentioned to me, “Who’re you speculated to be? Ed Bradley? Issues occur.” We cracked up laughing, and have become quick buddies after that.
Along with MCA being essential to Harrell’s profession and MCA’s success, Uptown’s relationship with MCA additionally seems to align with one in every of Combs’ earliest identified intercourse crimes. For example, one of many earliest allegations in opposition to Combs asserts that Combs sexually assaulted a sufferer after an MCA occasion in New York in 1990 or 1991, a time when Combs was nonetheless an Uptown worker.
As Strictly Enterprise scriptwriter Nelson George intimated in a Substack submit eulogizing his pal Andre Harrell, Harrell was a identified “celebration animal” who incessantly threw home events within the “work area/social membership/momentary housing” that served because the nascent Uptown Information’ workplaces. In actual fact, one in every of these events in 1990 served because the supply of inspiration for Strictly Enterprise, the movie that George co-wrote with Pam Gibson and which Andre Harrell government produced for Island World Photos (an organization then affiliated with Polygram, which took a major stake in Def Jam in 1992). It was Harrell’s position within the movie that reportedly led MCA to enter into its $50 million multimedia cope with Uptown in 1992 that noticed Harrell’s firm develop into movie. Strictly Enterprise considerations a younger mail room clerk organising a black center supervisor at an actual property agency with a membership chick performed by the rising starlet Halle Berry. Bobby the mail clerk is a celebration boy with aspirations of graduating from the trainee dealer program, and so he agrees to assist Waymon navigate seducing the enticing girl in return for his higher-up’s sponsorship of his candidacy. Whereas the plot could seem to be regular rom-com fare and comparatively benign, when considered throughout the context of the sorts of sexual quid professional quos that happen throughout the music {industry} and Harrell’s shut ties to figures like Combs, Simmons, and their broader social networks, it begins to tackle a distinctly completely different slant. Talking of sexual quid professional quos within the music {industry} and questionable label romances, Andre Harrell left an indelible affect on Combs’ love life. He employed Uptown R&B singer Al B. Positive’s mannequin girlfriend Kim Porter to work as a receptionist on the label. Combs’ was instantly smitten together with her, loving what he couldn’t have. They’d go on to have an on-and-off once more relationship spanning the years from 1994 to 2018, the time of her mysterious dying after contracting a virulent case of lobar pneumonia. We’ll return to Porter and Combs’ ties to the modeling {industry} in Half III of this collection.
Andre Harrell (proper) events in St. Barthes with the mom of Diddy’s kids, mannequin Kim Porter (second from left) – Supply
Andre Harrell was additionally a guide for the movie New Jack Metropolis. New Jack Metropolis’s screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper remembers how he and producer George Jackson referred to as his shut pal Andre Harrell into Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions compound to watch the dailies from New Jack Metropolis per week earlier than manufacturing wrapped. Cooper and Jackson wished to gauge Andre Harrell’s response to New Jack Metropolis’s narrative and the depictions of road life because it associated to the crack epidemic. Per Cooper’s retelling, apparently Harrell raved and affectionately referred to as the movie “The Black Godfather.”
New Jack Metropolis’s narrative revolves round a Harlem gang referred to as the Money Cash Brothers who ascend to the highest of the drug-dealing meals chain within the borough as soon as crack cocaine is launched to the streets. The movie featured gangster rap mainstay Ice-T in a distinguished position and christened the careers of Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock, seeing a wholesome return of almost $50 million on a price range of $8 million.
The controversial movie was developed by Warner Brothers, which was then run by Steve Ross. Ross was capable of construct up his enterprise empire, Kinney Nationwide Firm (which later grew to become Warner), largely by means of his affiliation with New York crime lords Manny Kimmel and Abner “Longy” Zwillman. Zwillman was a detailed affiliate of Meyer Lansky and Sam Bronfman. Ross, as a Warner government, later frequented Robert Maxwell’s yacht within the late Eighties, a time when Maxwell was deeply related to a litany of organized crime figures throughout the globe. As well as, prime Warner executives near Ross personally had been convicted for his or her roles in a mob-tied racketeering scheme that was additionally allegedly concerned Ross, although he someway evaded prices.
Contemplating his casual session on the movie and the truth that Harrell had underwritten “new jack swing” — Uptown’s declare to fame and the style from which the movie took its title, which fused streetwise hip hop beats and melodic R&B for the primary time — Harrell’s affect over the New Jack Metropolis manufacturing is evident. This is a vital level, because it pertains to mob-linked leisure firms (on this case Warner Brothers) financing the glorification of drug dealing round 1991, a subject that we’ll return to in a lot better element close to the top of this piece.
MCA: Mob Company of America
Whereas MCA undoubtedly dominated a lot of American leisure for many years, it was additionally deeply linked to organized crime and political energy. When it comes to MCA’s political energy, this arguably peaked beneath the Reagan administration, which boasted extraordinarily shut ties to the corporate. MCA even performed a job in covert operations that introduced collectively organized crime pursuits and intelligence businesses throughout this era.
Probably the most iconic government in MCA’s historical past, Lew Wasserman, joined the corporate in 1936. By that time, Wasserman had established longstanding, shut ties to Jewish mobster and Meyer Lansky-associate Moe Dalitz, having allegedly initiated these ties by having first served because the publicist for the Dalitz-controlled Mayfair On line casino. Nevertheless, some sources contend that Wasserman had joined Dalitz’s Mayfield Highway Gang earlier than working on the Mayfair. Wasserman later married the daughter of Dalitz’s long-time lawyer Henry Beckerman, who he had first met by means of his work on the on line casino.
Wasserman and MCA had been additionally the forces mainly chargeable for the political profession of former president Ronald Reagan. Reagan, beforehand an actor earlier than changing into a politician, had been represented by MCA since 1940. Quickly after, he grew to become Wasserman’s first “million greenback shopper.” Wasserman later engineered Reagan’s marketing campaign to steer the Display Actors Guild, the place Reagan made vital coverage adjustments designed to offer MCA an edge over different leisure firms. Wasserman and different prime MCA executives, similar to Taft Schreiber and Jules Stein, performed an intimate position in Reagan’s profitable gubernatorial bid, in addition to financing his later marketing campaign for president of the US. When Reagan was president, his Legal professional Common Edwin Meese notably quashed what had been an ongoing investigation into MCA’s organized crime ties. Meese later resigned following his involvement within the Bronx-based Wedtech scandal (see finish word vi).
MCA’s Lew Wasserman (left) speaks with Nancy and Ronald Reagan on the White Home in April 1988 – Supply
That probe was initiated when proof was discovered that MCA was engaged in enterprise relations with the Gambino crime household. Extra particularly, MCA had employed a high-ranking Gambino affiliate, Salvatore Pisello, as an official consultant of the corporate, although Pisello had no expertise within the music or film enterprise. On the time Pisello was doing enterprise with MCA, he was additionally concurrently a associate of Morris Levy, the Genovese family-linked document government behind Roulette Information who financed the early hip hop label Sugar Hill. Levy’s connection to Andre Harrell’s early employer WINS was famous earlier on this article.
MCA saved Pisello round although they misplaced cash on each deal the place Pisello had represented them and continued to work with him after his mob ties grew to become publicly identified. This was finished on the behest of Wasserman, then chairman of the board of MCA, and Sidney Sheinberg, then president of MCA Inc., regardless of protests from different board members. One of many primary MCA executives that had been intently concerned with the corporate’s Pisello dealings, Irving Azoff, was subsequently promoted to grow to be head of MCA’s Music Leisure Division, the division that –– shortly thereafter –– entered right into a distribution settlement with Andre Harrell’s Uptown Information. Azoff has lengthy publicly praised Harrell and later eulogized him at his 2020 funeral. Irving Azoff was additionally Combs’ neighbor within the unique Beverly Hills enclave referred to as “Billionaires’ Row” up till Combs put the $60 million property available on the market in September 2024, not lengthy after DHS raided the property.
The shuttered federal investigation into MCA additionally turned up proof that the corporate was tied to the Genovese crime household. As famous earlier, the Genovese crime household had additionally been linked to Morris Levy (Levy was additionally concerned with a few of Pisello’s dealings with MCA). As well as, throughout this identical interval, the mob-style homicide of retail billionaire Leslie Wexner’s then-tax lawyer, Arthur Shapiro, led Columbus police investigators to hyperlink each Shapiro’s dying and Wexner himself to Genovese legal pursuits. Shortly after Shapiro’s dying, Jeffrey Epstein entered into Wexner’s interior circle, “tasked with getting [Wexner’s] funds so as.”
MCA additionally has connections to a major, but largely forgotten scandal of the Eighties involving lots of the identical gamers from the Iran-Contra community, in addition to figures like Robert Maxwell. The scandal, referred to as the PROMIS software program scandal, noticed operatives tied to US and Israeli intelligence crew up with organized crime components to each steal after which repurpose PROMIS –– a then-revolutionary software program product for information administration –– as a back-door surveillance system that was marketed to different intelligence businesses, delicate authorities analysis laboratories, and a litany of banks across the globe. One in all MCA’s prime executives, Eugene Gianquinto, who then led MCA’s Dwelling Leisure Division, was intimately concerned in main features of the scandal and its unlawful actions. Gianquinto later took credit score for the closure of the Division of Justice’s investigation into MCA’s mob ties.
Extra particularly, MCA and Gianquinto had been linked to the weather of the PROMIS scandal primarily based throughout the mob-linked three way partnership between the Cabazon Indian Reservation and the Wackenhut Company to develop weapon programs –– a few of which had been supposed for the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Journalist Danny Casolaro, who died in connection along with his efforts to show the community finally behind the PROMIS scandal, had acknowledged earlier than his dying that he was writing a few community he referred to as “the Octopus,” which –– oddly sufficient –– was a longstanding nickname for MCA.
Between 1994 and 1995, MCA was acquired by the Bronfman household firm, Seagrams. Just a few years later, the Bronfmans additionally took management of Def Jam. The Bronfmans, like MCA itself, have an intensive historical past of organized crime connections, which date again to the mob-brokered bootlegging of American Prohibition within the Twenties. Wasserman, a long-time affiliate of Edgar Bronfman Sr., received a Seagrams board seat out of the deal and have become chairman emeritus of the corporate. Edgar Bronfman Jr. rapidly introduced on Hollywood powerbroker Michael Ovitz, who later grew to become president of Disney and a Jeffrey Epstein affiliate. Bronfman Jr. can also be listed in Epstein’s black ebook and his father’s alleged ties to Epstein’s Bear Stearns profession seemingly performed a job in Epstein’s ouster from the financial institution in 1981. Ovitz, on the time he teamed up with Bronfman Jr., was near Herbert Allen of Allen & Co, an organization with ties to organized crime in addition to the aforementioned PROMIS scandal. The Bronfmans, notably Edgar Bronfman Jr., will function prominently in Half II of this collection, with Bronfman negotiating main offers with Combs within the early 2000s.
In 1991, Edgar Jr.’s uncle, Charles Bronfman, teamed up with Leslie Wexner (then already very intimately tied to Epstein) in 1991 to create the “Examine Group” or “Mega Group,” an ostensibly philanthropic group that was mainly centered on ethno-philanthropy and philanthropy directed at selling Zionism and financing features of the state of Israel. But, this specific group introduced collectively a few of the most distinguished company billionaires in the US, the vast majority of whom share ties to organized crime. Wexner, as beforehand talked about was tied to Genovese crime pursuits by Columbus police, whereas the Bronfmans’ personal historical past with organized crime, particularly the Lansky-co-founded Nationwide Crime Syndicate, have been extensively documented. Different early members embody different organized crime-linked households like the Crowns of Chicago (by way of Lester Crown) and Laurence Tisch, proprietor of CBS together with its many influential document labels.
The Tisch household, talked about all through this text, has ties to organized crime as properly. For example, Laurence Tisch engaged in a suspicious sale of his shares within the struggling Franklin Nationwide Financial institution to Michele Sindona, the Italian mafia-linked businessman who performed a significant position in Operation Gladio, which introduced collectively the CIA, Italian Mafia and the Vatican. Sindona was additionally a member of the notorious Italian freemasonic lodge P2.
As well as, the Tisch household firm, Loews, did intensive enterprise with Resorts Worldwide. For example, Loews was the long-time operator of Resorts Worldwide-owned lodge Paradise Island Lodge and Villas within the Bahamas. Senate testimony later linked Paradise Island particularly to Meyer Lansky. Resorts Worldwide itself deserves an essential point out as properly, provided that it began as Mary Carter Paint Firm, a CIA entrance firm based by the Dulles brothers with intensive ties to Meyer Lansky and his associates, that centered on creating companies within the Bahamas. After the dying of the corporate’s long-time, mob-linked head James Crosby in 1986, Donald Trump took over the corporate, solely to lose management of it two years later.
One other member of this unique membership, the “Mega Group,” was director Steven Spielberg. A protégé of Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg, Spielberg would later play an uncommon position in king-making the long run movie profession of director Brett Ratner, an affiliate of Russell Simmons, Andre Harrell, and Sean Combs who boasts of his childhood ties to Meyer Lansky and to the alleged inheritor to Lansky’s legal enterprises, Al Malnik. Ratner’s significance is a spotlight of a later part of this piece.
A Historical past of Violence
After changing into the A&R man at Harrell’s Uptown, Combs dropped out of Howard to pursue his dream. He then actually made a reputation for himself along with his dealing with of the nascent careers of newcomers Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. His transforming of their sounds and re-styling of their photographs led to each debut data going multi-platinum. Combs’ success at Uptown, nonetheless, was marred by his position in planning occasions and events that turned violent. As well as, more moderen accusations of sexual violence, the filming of rapes and different crimes are alleged to have taken place throughout Combs’ later years at Uptown, making violence a noticeable and early theme in Combs’ early music {industry} profession.
In December 1991, the tragedy of the Group Faculty of New York superstar basketball sport stampede, which Combs had helped plan, compelled him and his mom to put low, resulting in them hiding out in a Manhattan lodge to keep away from scrutiny amid rumors of doable legal prices for Combs. The stampede finally left 9 lifeless. Combs had promoted this sport as a charity occasion supposed to boost funds for AIDS reduction over the radio and thru casual channels. The huge crowd, which had gathered to look at Heavy D (one in every of Uptown’s primary artists) and LL Cool J (one in every of Def Jam’s first massive acts) shoot hoops, ended up breaking right into a deadly stampede.
A 1992 New York Day by day Information article on the fall-out after the lethal stampede, with a deal with Sean Combs particularly – Supply
A report commissioned by the New York Mayor’s workplace condemned “virtually the entire people concerned within the occasion[, who] demonstrated a scarcity of duty” in addition to NYPD officers within the scene, who had been accused of “critical lapses in judgment.” The report blamed Combs particularly “for permitting two inexperienced subordinates to deal with a probably perilous occasion and for deceiving ticket consumers about [the event’s] charitable intent.” “Metropolis Faculty is one thing I cope with day by day of my life,” Combs later mentioned in 1998. “However the issues that I cope with can on no account measure as much as the ache that the households cope with. I simply pray for the households and pray for the youngsters who misplaced their lives day by day.”
Throughout this era, when Combs was nonetheless at Uptown, his penchant for throwing wild, and allegedly violent, events continued. Nevertheless, it quickly merged with new scenes, notably these of the music {industry} and the New York membership scene. In his memoir Infamous C.O.P., the previous head of the NYPD Rap Intelligence Unit Derrick Parker (a COINTELPRO legacy program that grew immediately out of interagency cooperation & the BOSS unitxiv) writes of his first introduction to Combs:
“Even earlier than the CCNY catastrophe, properly earlier than he was a tabloid fixture, I grew to become conscious of Puffy [i.e. Sean Combs]. He was arduous to overlook as he gallivanted round early ’90s hip-hop golf equipment and up the ladder of the music {industry}, proper from the underside rung. On the time, Puffy was little identified outdoors music biz circles: he wasn’t even a performer but, however a rising A&R government at Uptown Information who threw loopy, notoriously raucous events at a midtown membership referred to as Purple Zone. I knew about Puffy even then as a result of I’d at all times saved one foot within the music world. I’d been selling events and hitting the golf equipment, in addition to performing and recording demos as an R&B singer.”xv
Studio 54 co-owner Steve Rubell, proper, and his lawyer Roy Cohn, left, discuss to reporters outdoors US District Court docket in Manhattan, Friday, Nov. 2, 1979, after Rubell and his associate, Ian Schrager, pleaded responsible to tax evasion prices – Supply
Brahms and Addison had been finally pressured into pleading responsible. Brahms was sentenced to three years in jail in NYC. Maurice Brahms’ remaining membership was the aforementioned Purple Zone, the place Combs hosted his Uptown File-era mixers. Given Combs’ affiliation with these components of the New York nightclub scene, the more moderen revelation of Combs’ later bisexual “Freak Off” orgies turns into far much less surprising.
Whereas throwing “scary” events at venues with suspect homeowners, Combs is now alleged to have begun partaking in acts of sexual violence whereas at Uptown. Latest lawsuits moreover assert that different figures (and firms) tied to Uptown had been immediately associated to these crimes.
On November 23, 2023, simply earlier than the expiration of the NY State Grownup Survivor’s Act (which created a window freed from the statute of limitations throughout in order that grownup victims may pursue justice in opposition to their abusers), attorneys representing Liza Gardner filed a lawsuit alleging that, in 1990/1991, Combs and singer Aaron Corridor took turns raping her and a pal after an MCA Information occasion of their company workplaces. The sufferer was allegedly solely 16 years previous on the time, whereas Combs was nonetheless working as a expertise director at Uptown. Aaron Corridor, like Combs, had vital ties to the Bronx, having grown up there, and was a member of the Uptown Information-signed band Man with Teddy Riley, thus thought-about one of many architects of “new jack swing.” Additional illustrating the ties between New Jack Metropolis and Uptown Information, Man had a cameo as themselves within the movie.
Per the lawsuit, the alleged assault started one night time when Combs and Corridor had been flirtatious and handsy with the reported victims at an MCA Information occasion. After the fete, the pair invited the 2 women again to Corridor’s condo, the place the boys plied them with drinks and medicines earlier than taking turns having intercourse with each buddies. The lawsuit additionally alleges that Combs visited the house wherein she and her pal had been staying a number of days after the incident. The go to allegedly turned violent, with Combs choking out Jane Doe, bodily threatening her in order to impress upon her what may occur if she or her pal selected to not keep silent concerning their expertise. It’s been speculated following the announcement of Gardner’s grievance that the lyrics to Aaron Corridor’s tune “Don’t Be Afraid”, launched by MCA as one of many singles for the official soundtrack of Juice, could obliquely discuss with the rape of Gardner. It was not too long ago reported within the press that Aaron Corridor is all of the sudden lacking. Based on Gardner and her lawyer Tyrone Blackburn, they’ve exhausted all choices so far as reaching Corridor at his previous identified addresses, and can now must resort to serving him summons by way of publication in newspapers of word.
New proof additional suggests a tradition of crime at Uptown and the label’s obvious enabling of Gardner’s mistreatment. Gardner not too long ago amended her grievance after a sworn assertion by the opposite girl who was reportedly raped at Corridor’s New Jersey condo (additionally a minor on the time) was entered. The unnamed girl claimed that DeVanté Swing, a member of the Uptown act Jodeci (whose profession Combs was then managing) not solely voyeuristically appeared on as Gardner was raped by Combs, however that the 2 women had been lured from North Carolina and had been staying with Swing at his residence in NJ, which was allegedly “backed” by Uptown Information on the time. Swing was subsequently added to the lawsuit as a co-defendant. Moreover, Swing’s alleged voyeurism of Gardner’s rape by the hands of Combs is in step with an abiding sample of Combs’ sexual violence. Specifically that, repeatedly, associates both watch his crimes, take part in them immediately, or else view video footage of them after the actual fact.
In Gardner’s submitting, each MCA Information and Geffen Information are additionally named as co-defendants. David Geffen’s label had simply been bought to MCA the identical 12 months that the assaults allegedly passed off. Each Geffen and the now defunct MCA are owned by Common Music Group (UMG) at the moment, the most important label crafted by the Bronfman household that’s now overseen by Lucian Grainge, a former MCA and CBS Information government. Each Lucian Grainge and UMG had been initially named as co-defendants in Rodney Jones’ lawsuit in opposition to Sean Combs for enabling his intercourse trafficking actions.
Additionally in November 2023, Joi Dickerson-Neal filed the second of three sexual assault lawsuits that focused Combs within the span of that week. Dickerson-Neal had graced a music video reverse Combs in 1990. Dickerson-Neal has acknowledged that her proximity to Combs within the video spurred a warning from Sister Soulja, who had advised the younger girl to maintain her distance from Combs. Dickerson-Neal claims that she surrendered to Combs’ fixed advances in 1991, reluctantly agreeing to a dinner date. She insisted, nonetheless, that they meet at Wells Restaurant in Harlem, her place of employment on the time, as a consequence of considerations about Combs, hoping that the presence of coworkers would assist her really feel safer.
In the submitting, Dickerson-Neal contends that Combs spiked her beverage whereas she’d excused herself to the restroom. Once they left the premises, she claims he compelled her to take a success from a blunt, and that the mixed impacts of the drugging left her legs feeling “rubbery.” She alleges that Combs then drove her to a close-by “studio” (most probably affiliated with both Uptown/MCA) after which raped her at a residence within the neighborhood seemingly owned by an acquaintance of each people, throughout which he filmed her violation. Following these traumatic occasions, Jodeci singer DeVanté Swing allegedly revealed to the sufferer that Combs had filmed her rape and was enjoying the footage for everybody on the “studio” like some sort of perverse trophy. If true, this might imply that myriad Uptown workers noticed this video. This is among the earliest allegations that includes Combs and the non-consensual movies of sexual assault and rape crimes. It additionally alludes to the doable assortment of sexual blackmail compiled by Combs –– a sample that might repeat in subsequent allegations within the lead as much as his 2024 incarceration.
Clive Davis: The Hidden Energy Behind Combs’ Dangerous Boy Information
Finally, Andre Harrell felt Combs was getting too “cocky” in his place at Uptown and fired him in 1993. However, the 2 remained buddies, with Harrell changing into the godfather to Combs’ son Justin, who was born later that very same 12 months. Combs, shortly after leaving Uptown, created Dangerous Boy Information with Kirk Burrowes in 1993. Combs’ new label rapidly entered right into a distribution cope with Arista Information price $15 million. Davis says he met Combs when Combs was 23 years previous and that, quickly after assembly, Davis “helped introduce [Combs] to the correct music executives who may help him in ushering in ‘the forthcoming Hip Hop revolution.’”
Dangerous Boy Information’ extended success was ensured by its early cope with Arista (which later expanded into a three way partnership) in addition to the person who would grow to be Combs’ second document mentor within the music {industry}, Arista’s founder and president Clive Davis. Davis’ Arista was initially based as a part of Columbia Photos’ music label portfolio. On the time Arista entered into its three way partnership with Combs’ Dangerous Boys, the label had been bought by Columbia Photos to BMG, a German media firm. Nevertheless, Davis managed Arista as if it had been his personal private fiefdom till 2000, when he left the label as a consequence of BMG’s age restriction coverage for executives. Dangerous Boy Information ended what had then grow to be a three way partnership with Arista a number of years after Davis’ departure. Shortly thereafter, Dangerous Boy connected itself to Bronfman-controlled pursuits within the music {industry}, which will likely be revisited in Half II of this collection.
Clive Davis grew up in Crown Heights, the son of a middle-class Jewish electrician and salesman. He excelled at Erasmus Corridor Excessive College and was a member of the New York Metropolis department of the Nationwide Honor Society dubbed Arista, which might later function inspiration for the title of his label at Columbia Photos. His early educational success earned Davis a full scholarship to New York College. He then attended Harvard Legislation College, from which he graduated in 1956.
Two years following his commencement, Davis joined “…the massive, white-shoe agency, Rosenman, Colin, Kaye, Petschek, and Freund. Sam Rosenman was counsel to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman; Ralph Colin’s purchasers included William Paley and CBS.”xvi Different notable purchasers of Rosenman & Colin LLP embody two offshore banks owned by Bruce Rappaport that had served as “repositories of illicit funds from a number of unlawful operations,” particularly associated to drug trafficking. Rappaport, as famous in One Nation Below Blackmail, boasted shut ties to the CIA, notably by way of his shut pal William Casey, in addition to to Israeli intelligence and arranged crime. Rappaport was notably affiliated with organized crime networks that included Semion Mogilevich, an Japanese European mob boss who grew to become a detailed enterprise affiliate of Robert Maxwell within the late Eighties.
Clive Davis’ storied profession within the music {industry} started by way of his earlier profession at Rosenman & Colin. Whereas working on the agency (which –– as beforehand famous –– counted CBS as a shopper), Davis was employed to grow to be assistant counsel of the CBS subsidiary, Columbia Information. He grew to become the label’s basic counsel a 12 months later. Davis had been employed by Harvey Schein, a former colleague of Davis’ at Rosenman & Colin.
Schien was a protégé of William Paley, the long-time head of CBS and “father of recent broadcasting.” Paley, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, had labored build up CBS into the primary community of radio and primary document label in the US, having a profound impact on mass media and the shaping of People’ musical tastes and political perceptions. Throughout World Conflict II, Paley served in the Workplace of Conflict Info, changing into Chief of Radio of the U.S. navy’s Psychological Warfare Division. Paley developed a really shut relationship with scions of the Rockefeller dynasty, David and Nelson, in addition to others shut to the Rockefellers, like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. David Rockefeller and Kissinger each later eulogized Paley at his funeral in 1990, with Kissinger additionally serving as the chairman of Paley’s basis.
Within the mid-Eighties, Paley personally ensured that Laurence Tisch would take over CBS (together with its document labels). As famous earlier on this piece, Tisch, in 1991, served as a founding member of the so-called “Mega Group” alongside Leslie Wexner, Charles and Edgar Bronfman and Lew Wasserman protégé Steven Spielberg, amongst others.
Clive Davis’ notorious and undeniably “revolutionary” tenure as President of CBS Information (1967-1973) is most aptly characterised by the transition from the jazz, folks, and pop ethos of the Nineteen Fifties to the industry-wide embrace of rock within the Nineteen Seventies. Considerably akin to the careers of Andre Harrell or Combs, he was a comparatively younger label government well-placed to benefit from shifting cultural developments, successfully making his title synonymous with an emergent style for a time.
In Davis’s self-hagiographizing, he had an epiphany on the 1967 Monterey Pop Pageant and have become decided to pivot to rock music. “I sensed change. I don’t know, even now, how I knew”.xvii In fact, this was an exaggeration, as rock had already been dominating the singles charts for greater than a decade. Davis’ legacy on this interval because it pertains to rock music was basically ensured after he poached an meeting of Monterey acts from their minor labels together with those that had been nonetheless languishing in obscurity.xviii Throughout his tenure at Columbia Information, Davis managed and/or signed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Electrical Flag, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Chicago, Loggins & Messina, Aerosmith, Earth Wind & Hearth, and the Grateful Useless.
Whereas Davis had been profitable at CBS, he left the corporate beneath a cloud of scandal. Davis grew to become a spotlight of an investigation led by the US Legal professional’s Workplace in Newark, a probe that might later grow to be referred to as Venture Sound. As a part of the investigation, “allegations started to floor within the press that CBS Information had bribed black radio stations and finished enterprise with an organized crime determine.” The scandal finally led to Clive Davis’ resolution to make a deal in 1971 with two document producers tied to Motown Information, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.xix Davis had sought out Gamble and Huff as a consequence of a want to “conquer the R&B charts.” As a part of the negotiations, Davis allowed Gamble’s and Huff’s firm to advertise the music that, per the deal, was produced and distributed by CBS.
Maybe unknown to Davis on the time, Gamble’s and Huff’s firm and its promotional efforts engaged within the observe of payola, the unlawful observe whereby companies pay radio stations to play singles with out disclosing that funds had been made. CBS was implicated within the association by means of David Wynshaw, Clive Davis’ closest aide at CBS.xx Press reviews quickly acknowledged that CBS music subsidiaries had been being investigated for bribing radio stations, not simply with cash, but additionally medication and intercourse, so as “to extend use of its merchandise on black-oriented radio stations.”
CBS, in reference to the Venture Sound probe, uncovered that Davis had left a “path of phony invoices” totaling no less than $94,000 over six years that had been meant to cowl up Davis’ use of funds for private events and renovations to his properties.xxi Davis was finally fired by CBS because of this.
The connective tissue between CBS and this drug bust quickly grew to become obvious. A lady, not too long ago fired from CBS for being “doped up” at work, had been indicted after working for a meals stand that doubled as a entrance for the heroin ring in query. Patsy Falcone, aka Pasquale Falconio, an affiliate of the Genovese crime household, had additionally been indicted. Investigators discovered that Falcone additionally had a tie to CBS by means of his “friendship” with Davis’ protege David Wynshaw in addition to by way of Frank Campana, a former CBS A&R man with whom Falcone had began a administration firm. Falcone and Campana’s firm managed a number of acts signed to CBS. Investigators later acknowledged that Davis’ title had been talked about by Falcone in bugged phone conversations and that proof discovered on Falcone had listed Wynshaw as a “supply for prostitutes.”
Paperwork incriminating Wynshaw had been reportedly discovered on Falcone on the time of his arrest. It was later reported that, “with the assistance of Dave Wynshaw, Falcone bilked CBS Information. The 2 males arrange sham firms in… New Jersey… CBS unwittingly paid greater than $75,000 to those nonexistent operations.”xxii Wynshaw figured prominently into Davis’ downfall because it was Wynshaw who had each helped facilitate the cash funneled to Falcone and who had written up false invoices that obscured the funds that Davis had used for private enrichment. It was additionally believed that Wynshaw’s position concerned laundering cash that was used for “off-the-record” objects, like procuring medication and prostitutes for CBS events, conferences, & artists, main him to be colloquially referred to as “Clive’s pimp” on the label.
As a Rolling Stone article from the interval speculated primarily based on {industry} rumors on the time, Davis’ unceremonious firing by CBS over private enrichment and embezzlement of funds (of $94,000, then deemed paltry by {industry} insiders) could have been a strategic try and get forward of the bigger “Drugola” scandal and the chance that federal investigators may pursue prices in opposition to Davis, his trusted aide Wynshaw, and others on the firm.
Regardless of the scandal, Davis rapidly discovered his manner again into the {industry}. Slightly over a 12 months after having been fired from CBS/Columbia, in the summertime of 1974, Davis was employed as a guide for Bell Information, “a barely worthwhile subsidiary of Columbia Photos (no company relation to CBS).” Based on a 1977 New York Occasions article, “Davis’s consulting took the type of letting go most of [Bell’s] performers and the executives who had signed them, retaining solely a handful as the idea for a renamed firm, Arista, with himself within the president’s chair.”
Clive Davis indicators a younger Whitney Houston to Arista Information – Supply
Arista’s formation and success relied closely on Alan Hirschfield, a significant leisure government who had not too long ago grow to be CEO of Columbia Photos. Hirschfield was instrumental in bringing Davis on as a guide for Bell and who supported Davis’ formation of Arista. Davis, in addition to Hirschfield’s household, have framed Hirschfield as having basically co-founded the label with Davis.
Hirschfield had discovered himself serving within the prime submit in Columbia Photos because of the identical connection that noticed him grow to be at prime government at different leisure conglomerates, like Fox and Warner Brothers. That connection was to Allen & Firm, as Hirschfield’s father Norman was a detailed pal and affiliate of Charles and Herbert Allen, the founders of the corporate. Norman Hirschfield additionally labored for Allen & Co., notably in its pure gasoline division and likewise in scouting different “enterprise alternatives” for the agency. Later, within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, when Allen & Co. took a stake in a significant leisure agency, Columbia included, they ensured their pursuits had been represented by means of the set up of Norman’s son, Alan Hirschfield, in a prime government submit.
Charles and Herbert Allen and their agency Allen & Co. have documented ties to intelligence-linked figures and scandals, in addition to organized crime. As famous in One Nation Below Blackmail, the Allen brothers had vital organized crime connections, notably by way of firms primarily based within the Bahamas that had been run and developed by shut associates of Jewish mobster and co-founder of the Nationwide Crime Syndicate, Meyer Lansky. As well as, Allen & Co. was a shopper of the CIA-linked David Baird Basis and Charles and Allen and David Baird had a number of dealings with an affiliate of mob boss Moe Dalitz and Alexander Guterma, who was a key a part of the United Dye scandal that had additionally ensnared figures like Roy Cohn. Allen & Co. additionally financed Earl Brian’s efforts to purchase out Inslaw Inc. as a part of the PROMIS scandal (mentioned in better element shortly) and had different shut enterprise ties to Brian, together with being vital shareholders in Brian’s firm Hadron.
The Allen brothers additionally had vital ties to Leslie Wexner’s mentors, Max Fisher and Alfred Taubman. Taubman had been near the Allens because the Nineteen Fifties. For Fisher, the connection was solid on the time he was heading up United Manufacturers, the CIA-linked firm that Fisher took over the identical 12 months that its former prime government, Eli Black, suspiciously fell to his dying from the 44th ground of the Pan Am constructing in Manhattan. Black was the daddy of Leon Black, the Drexel Burnham Lambert government who would later discovered Apollo International Administration and grow to be a really shut and now infamous affiliate of Jeffrey Epstein. Whereas nonetheless at United Manufacturers, Fisher joined Taubman and the Allen brothers in a three way partnership that culminated within the takeover of the Irvine Ranch in California.
The overlap doesn’t finish there. Columbia Photos’ Alan Hirschfield was a detailed affiliate of lawyer Allen Tessler and served alongside Tessler as a prime government at Knowledge Broadcasting Company. Tessler was the household lawyer for the organized crime-linked Gouletas household and their actual property empire. Tessler additionally later joined the board of Leslie Wexner’s The Restricted in 1987. Evangeline Gouletas shared an workplace area with Epstein throughout this time, which additionally coincides with the event of the close-knit relationship between Wexner and Epstein.
One other key shopper of Tessler’s was the aforementioned Earl Brian, who had shut ties to Allen & Co. and was one of many masterminds of the PROMIS scandal that concerned MCA, organized crime, US intelligence and Israeli intelligence (with Robert Maxwell facilitating features of the scheme on behalf of Israel). Tessler’s regulation agency, Shea & Gould, additionally represented organized crime purchasers like Carmine de Sapio, a detailed pal of Roy Cohn’s, and likewise had vital connections to William Casey, Reagan’s CIA director. Tessler, who was chairman of Wexner’s The Restricted’s Finance Committee by 1990, got here into direct contact with Epstein a while round this era as properly. Tessler seems in Epstein’s notorious “black ebook” with two addresses and 4 completely different cellphone numbers listed. Among the many numbers listed is Tessler’s line at Knowledge Broadcasting, the place he and Hirschfield labored side-by-side. The corporate had been acquired by Earl Brian’s agency Infotechnology in 1987.
In different phrases, Clive Davis’ ascent to grow to be a significant music government was aided largely by figures tied to identical clandestine community composed of intelligence-linked and arranged crime components that additionally kinds the idea for the community that might additionally later determine prominently within the rise of Jeffrey Epstein. That is additionally evident in Davis’ shut friendship with the household of the Mega Group’s Laurence Tisch, notably his nephew Jonathan who took over the household enterprise Loews Corp in 1989. This connection later led Davis to donate a number of million to the Tisch College of the Arts at NYU, producing the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music beneath the Tisch College umbrella. Additionally it is notable that the “drugola” scandal linked to Davis had ties particularly to the Genovese crime household, an organized crime community additionally linked to MCA, Morris Levy, Roy Cohn and Leslie Wexner, as famous earlier on this piece.
Mentors in Crime
After the scandal round Combs started to interrupt, Clive Davis, in addition to Andre Harrell of Uptown and Russell Simmons of Def Jam/Rush Administration, have been accused of propelling Combs into the patterns of legal habits for which he’s now notorious. For example, one-time rival (and former pal of Combs) Suge Knight has claimed that Davis, Harrell and Simmons used “alcohol, medication” – particularly cocaine – to “compromise” Combs’ “manhood.” That is notably vital within the case of Davis’ ties to the “Drugola” scandal, which concerned utilizing intercourse, medication and bribes to particularly goal “black-oriented radio stations” and music. Claims just like these made by Knight have since been echoed by Combs’ former bodyguard Gene Deal.
It’s price noting right here that Davis’ protégé L.A. Reid, who took over Arista Information from Davis, has additionally been accused of sexual misconduct and assault. Reid, alongside Combs, had been each instrumental within the success of recording artists Justin Bieber and Usher. Knight has argued that Davis, Simmons and Harrell first “compromised” Combs after which Combs went on to make use of alcohol, medication, and homosexual intercourse to “management” youthful artists like Usher and Bieber. Notably, Combs’ entry into the world of Andre Harell, Simmons and, shortly thereafter, Clive Davis, coincides with the event of his obsessive drive to document the whole lot, presumably for blackmail-related functions. For example, music video director Cole Bennett asserted that Combs advised him that he’d begun recording “footage of the whole lot” in 1992 and even suggested Bennett to do the identical.
As well as, Kirk Burrowes, the co-founder of Dangerous Boy Information with Combs, has claimed that Combs sought to compromise him utilizing this identical methodology. Burrowes has filed a lawsuit in opposition to Combs, claiming Combs subjected him to “repeated sexual harassment, bodily aggression and compelled compliance with degrading sexual acts” all through the Nineties. Burrowes claims that Combs focused him with “undesirable sexual advances” together with acts of “nudity, sexual overtones, voyeurism and acts of exhibitionism,” a few of which allegedly passed off throughout enterprise conferences, and that this was half of a bigger “marketing campaign of management.” The result of this marketing campaign, per Burrowes, was the usage of “bodily violence, blackmail, profession sabotage and monetary extortion” to drive Burrowes out of his 25% stake in Dangerous Boy Information. Although Davis was a key a part of the early creation and formation of Dangerous Boy Information, he’s not named in Burrowes’ swimsuit.
Nevertheless, Combs could have been “managed” in an analogous manner by Davis, per some sources. Suge Knight, as an example, has alleged that he was advised by the previous head of Interscope Information, Jimmy Iovine, that Combs had commonly engaged in sexual acts with Davis, suggesting that his relationship with Davis and Davis’ early, essential involvement with Dangerous Boy had been constructed on the again of sexual favors. That is definitely doable given the well-known mechanism throughout the leisure {industry} of sexual favors as a method to safe profitable roles and offers –– e.g. the Harvey Weinstein scandal. As well as, Davis notably got here out publicly as bisexual in a memoir printed when he was 80 years previous, the place he writes that he started to overtly have interaction in intercourse with the identical gender within the Eighties. Combs’ alleged bisexuality has been a significant matter of debate in relation to the scandal main as much as his arrest final 12 months. Knight has additionally claimed that Russell Simmons and Andre Harrell had additionally engaged in related habits with one another. Notably, the community behind Clive Davis, which overlaps with that behind Epstein, additionally concerned related “sugar daddy”-style relationships. These embody rumors that Epstein and his long-time benefactor Leslie Wexner had been intimate, e.g. former State of Ohio Inspector Common David Sturtz telling journalist Bob Fitrakis that Epstein was Wexner’s “boyfriend.”
The Rat Pack
On condition that Russell Simmons is among the males alleged to have mentored Combs in any such legal habits, it’s price looking additionally at a few of the latest allegations which have been made in opposition to Simmons and a few of his associates, who – like Simmons – additionally boasted shut ties to Combs.
From left: Andre Harrell, Sean Combs, Russell Simmons – Supply
Starting in 2017, Russell Simmons was hit with a slew of rape and sexual harassment lawsuits and accusations. One in all Simmons’ earliest accusers, mannequin Keri Claussen Khalighi, alleged that Simmons raped her in full view of the director Brett Ratner in 1991. Earlier than the 2017 allegations, police had beforehand probed Simmons and Ratner for claims of collectively partaking in sexual battery again in 2001. Over a dozen girlshave since accused Simmons of sexual misconduct or crimes, whereas Ratner himself has been individually accused of comparable crimes, together with rape, by no less than 10 girls. Following the barrage of accusations, Simmons has laid low in Bali, Indonesia, embracing life as a “stateless” US citizen in a bid to evade the court docket’s jurisdiction. As will likely be defined in better element shortly, Ratner fled to Israel however is now planning a comeback, currying favor with the Trump household to that impact.
Ratner is a long-time shut affiliate of Simmons, with some reviews calling Ratner a “protégé” of Simmons. Simmons is credited with serving to begin Ratner’s profession, as the 2 met whereas Ratner was nonetheless in movie college (NYU’s Tisch College) and Ratner started filming music movies for Simmons-managed artists like Public Enemy quickly after their assembly. Ratner additionally filmed a music video for Combs’ longtime affiliate Heavy D, who had first gotten Combs his internship at Uptown, in 1994. Getty photographs alone hosts tons of of pictures of Ratner and Simmons partying collectively through the years.
Brett Ratner on the duvet of Hollywood Reporter – Supply
Ratner, like Simmons, was additionally a really shut affiliate of Combs, bringing Combs as his visitor to a number of premieres of his movies. Ratner was additionally a frequent attendee of quite a few Combs-hosted events in addition to charity fundraisers. Additionally they arrived collectively at distinguished award reveals and Ratner additionally filmed music movies for Combs, similar to his 2001 single “Diddy.” Combs chosen Brett Ratner and Ron Burkle, amongst others, to be his friends of honor when he delivered a graduation deal with to his alma mater Howard College in 2014.
Ratner’s shut affiliation with each Simmons and Combs is notable for a number of causes. First, there’s the truth that Ratner, as beforehand talked about, was accused by a number of actresses of sexual misconduct, leading to him being dropped from his company and the “canceling” of his Hollywood profession. As well as, Ratner took over directing the X-Males collection from Bryan Singer, with whom Ratner is reportedly shut. Singer has been accused of pedophilia and sordid affiliations with the Digital Leisure Community (DEN), which was run by pedophile Marc Collins-Rector and likewise concerned baby star turned crypto mogul Brock Piece. (For Limitless Hangout’s previous reporting on DEN and Pierce, see right here)
Second, there’s the person that Ratner considers his father –– Alvin Malnik. The sensation is seemingly mutual, with Malnik referring to Ratner as one in every of his sons. The close-knit tie is telling as Malnik has very vital organized crime ties, notably to Meyer Lansky. Not solely that, however based on a Forbes investigation cited by the LA Occasions, Malnik “invented the black artwork of money-laundering, taking mob cash and routing it to professional ventures.”
Within the Nineteen Sixties, Miami lawyer Alvin Malnik arrange the Financial institution of Commerce within the Bahamas. Mob cash flowed into its secret numbered accounts by the tons of of hundreds of thousands–[mob financier Meyer] Lansky cash, most of it–after which out once more into Tibor Rosenbaum’s Worldwide Credit score Financial institution of Switzerland earlier than returning to the US for funding.
For these conversant in One Nation Below Blackmail, each Lansky and Rosenbaum additionally had vital ties to the Israeli intelligence equipment, particularly Rosenbaum who helped finance keys features of Israeli intelligence, together with by way of the signifies that Malnik reportedly helped to develop.
As well as, Malnik’s different ties to Lansky had been appreciable. For example, Malnik had beforehand been banned from working in New Jersey casinos as a consequence of state regulators confirming his ties to Lansky and Sam Cohen, one other mobster. Malnik had even been named Lansky’s “inheritor obvious” by Reader’s Digest upon Lansky’s 1983 dying, whereas the Miami Information famous that Lansky had wished Malnik to take over all of his “professional enterprises” after this dying. That article additionally cited federal brokers that claimed that Malnik additionally stood to inherit “Lansky’s profitable playing, pornography, prostitution, labor racketeering and extortion operations.” Malnik additionally had a detailed affiliation with Joel Steinger, a infamous fraud that operated a large Ponzi scheme concentrating on the aged and terminally ailing. Steinger, like Malnik, had developed shut ties to Lansky personally by the Nineteen Seventies and married the daughter of a Miami banker alleged to be a detailed Lansky affiliate.
As well as, Malnik was concerned in unusual methods with Michael Jackson in his later years. As famous beforehand, billionaire Ron Burkle ––- who additionally cultivated shut ties to Invoice Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, together with Combs himself –– had vital connections to Jackson throughout this identical interval. The Malnik-Burkle-Jackson connection, in addition to Burkle’s vital ties to each Epstein and Combs, will likely be lined in Half II of this collection.
Ratner (left) with Michael Jackson and Sean Combs in an undated image at Ratner’s Beverly Hills dwelling – Supply
Malnik’s personal “protégé,” his adopted son Brett Ratner, claims to have additionally fostered a detailed relationship early on with Meyer Lansky himself. In a 2011 interview, Ratner acknowledged the next:
“I grew up on Miami Seaside. I lived on Collins Avenue on the Carriage Home on 54th Avenue. And two doorways down was the Imperial Home the place day by day after college I’d experience my bike and I’d stroll down the road with an previous man who would stroll his canine. We might stroll collectively and everybody on the retailer would kiss my ass after I was with him. He would take me to this restaurant referred to as the Villa Capri and everyone was at all times treating me so good. I didn’t notice it till I used to be in line on the grocery store with my mother and I opened up Rolling Stone and I noticed his image on the again. It was Meyer Lansky’s obituary. Everyone thought it was bizarre as a result of he was 80 and I used to be 12. He was the most important gangster on the earth and he was like my greatest pal as a child.”
Whereas some could low cost this declare as fantasy on Ratner’s half, his shut ties to Malnik –– Lanksy’s “inheritor” –– throughout the identical interval of his alleged affiliation with Lansky lends the story credence. As well as, it’s price noting that Ratner’s “massive break” that allowed him to grow to be a well-known director got here considerably unexpectedly in his “mediocre” movie college profession by way of Steven Spielberg. As beforehand famous, Spielberg was a protégé of Wasserman and Schienberg of MCA, an organization with vital mob (and intelligence) affiliations, whereas Wasserman himself was linked to Lansky’s community by way of his long-time tie to Lansky affiliate Moe Dalitz. Spielberg can also be a reported member of the beforehand talked about “Mega Group” that unites Spielberg with organized crime-linked oligarchs like Epstein’s primary benefactor Leslie Wexner, amongst others.
Ratner would later observe the Lansky mannequin of evading prices and scrutiny for unlawful actions by immigrating to Israel. After he was accused of utmost sexual misconduct, together with alongside Simmons, Ratner fled to Israel. Per week earlier than his escape, Ratner had been Benjamin Netanyahu’s particular visitor, together with former Epstein protection lawyer Alan Dershowitz, on the United Nations. Articles on Ratner’s journey to the UN with Netanyahu famous that Ratner is a former shut enterprise affiliate of Australian media tycoon James Packer, who has been intently linked to Netanyahu. Packer’s enterprise enterprise with Ratner, RatPac Leisure was notably partnered for a number of years with Dune Leisure, the movie enterprise of Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Mnuchin left the enterprise shortly after becoming a member of the primary Trump administration, which coincided with lots of the accusations in opposition to Ratner being made public, crippling the agency’s as soon as meteoric rise.
Packer, for his half, was a key a part of the corruption trial that continues to canine present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however has taken a backseat following the onset of the Israel-Gaza Conflict in October 2023. Packer’s ties to each Netanyahu in addition to former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen had been deemed so intensive that they had been thought-about a “nationwide danger” in court docket testimony. Packer additionally as soon as threatened to “sic” Mossad operatives on businessmen and was searching for to kind a cybersecurity enterprise with Mossad-linked people across the identical time he created RatPac with Brett Ratner. As well as, Packer was identified to have partied with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, together with on the yacht of Australian trucking magnate Lindsay Fox in 1995 when Epstein and Maxwell had been the “friends of honour” on the cruise. Moreover, Packer has additionally come beneath scrutiny for his ties to Stanley Ho, a on line casino magnate with ties to Chinese language organized crime and to the Clinton-era scandal “Chinagate,” which additionally concerned Epstein. Because it pertains to Epstein, a star in a lot of Ratner’s movies with shut social ties to the director, Chris Tucker, would later discover himself on notorious Epstein-brokered aircraft journeys alongside Invoice Clinton and Kevin Spacey.
Brett Ratner sits between Elon Musk and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in January 2025 – Supply
The Combs-Simmons-Ratner clique have a historical past of cultivating ties to Donald Trump. For example, one picture photographed by Getty reveals Ratner on stage with Combs at Russell Simmon’s “Artwork for Life Palm Seaside” occasion honoring Combs in 2005. The occasion was hosted at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and attended by the Trumps. The Trumps additionally attended some premieres of Ratner’s movies. Trump grew to become intently related to Combs starting within the Nineties. Whereas these ties will likely be mentioned intimately in Half II of this collection, it’s price noting that First Girl Melania Trump has teamed up with the self-exiled Ratner, who’s now directing a documentary about her life that is because of launch on Amazon Prime later this 12 months. The First Girl is an government producer of the movie, which started manufacturing shortly after her husband’s 2024 election win.
As well as, based on New York journal, Ratner was not too long ago seen visiting Mar-a-Lago together with the aforementioned James Packer, the place they had been photographed eating with Trump and Elon Musk earlier this 12 months. A month later, it was reported that Packer purchased a Trump-owned property neighboring each Mar-a-Lago’s personal membership and the Trump property there. The property was beforehand utilized by shut Trump associates visiting Mar-a-Lago and by the Secret Service throughout his first presidential time period. Ratner has reportedly been concerned in “fanning” the closeness between Trump and Packer that resulted within the property sale. Notably, Packer had beforehand purchased a property neighboring one other state chief, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, again in 2016. As well as, Ratner and the Trump household, in addition to Russell Simmons, had been among the many friends invited to the marriage of Al Malnik’s son, Jarod Malnik, in early 2024.
A Conspiracy Hiding in Plain Sight
Finally, in tracing the community wherein Combs had grow to be deeply enmeshed by the early and mid-Nineties, we’re left with deep connections to intelligence-linked components of organized crime. This identical community of organized criminals additionally performed a key half in enabling the actions of intercourse legal and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein, from no less than the Nineteen Seventies onward, as detailed within the ebook One Nation Below Blackmail.
With such connections established, the query then turns into –– what did this group search in somebody like Sean Combs, and extra broadly, in exerting its affect over the leisure {industry} and particularly African-American music?
Whereas speculative, it seems that numerous connections main again to MCA and its affect can assist us arrive at one unsettling chance. Throughout this era, not solely was MCA a dominant drive in leisure (and early hip-hop particularly), however Laurence Tisch –– by means of his 1985 takeover of CBS –– managed one other key department of the music {industry} by means of 1995. With the Bronfmans taking on MCA, and later Def Jam and Warner Music (as will likely be famous in Half II), the affect of the so-called “Mega Group” billionaires over the music {industry} grew to become extraordinarily vital in the course of the Nineties. With Combs teaming up with Clive Davis, with vital ties to this identical community, to kind his personal label Dangerous Boy Information in 1995, this tiny group of billionaires had the power to form hip-hop, the cultural engine of the African-American neighborhood, in main methods.
The identical 12 months that the Bronfman and Tisch clans formally joined forces with Leslie Wexner and others like MCA-linked Steven Spielberg by way of the “Mega Group,” American document labels had allegedly begun to conspire to advertise crime in hip-hop lyrics with the ostensible aim of facilitating the filling of personal prisons, as people who ran the document labels had been allegedly deeply linked to personal jail companies. An account from an nameless {industry} insider particulars how, in 1991, he was invited to a clandestine assembly the place he was compelled to signal a non-disclosure settlement. He recounted the occasions of that assembly as follows:
Shortly after the assembly started, one in every of my {industry} colleagues (who shall stay anonymous like everybody else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the ground to a person who solely launched himself by his first title and gave no additional particulars about his private background. I feel he was the proprietor of the residence nevertheless it was by no means confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our {industry} and congratulated us for being chosen as a part of this small group of “decision-makers”. At this level, I start to really feel barely uncomfortable on the strangeness of this gathering.
The topic rapidly modified because the speaker went on to inform us that the respective firms we represented had invested in a really worthwhile {industry} which may grow to be much more rewarding with our lively involvement. He defined that the businesses we work for had invested hundreds of thousands into the constructing of privately owned prisons and that our positions of affect within the music {industry} would truly affect the profitability of those investments. I bear in mind many people within the group instantly one another in confusion. On the time, I didn’t know what a personal jail was however I wasn’t the one one. Positive sufficient, somebody requested what these prisons had been and what any of this needed to do with us. We had been advised that these prisons had been constructed by privately-owned firms that acquired funding from the federal government primarily based on the variety of inmates. The extra inmates, the more cash the federal government would pay these prisons. It was additionally made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they grow to be publicly traded, we’d have the ability to purchase shares.
Most of us had been taken again by this. Once more, a few folks requested what this needed to do with us. At this level, my {industry} colleague who had first opened the assembly took the ground once more and answered our questions. He advised us that since our employers had grow to be silent traders on this jail enterprise, it was now of their curiosity to guarantee that these prisons remained stuffed. Our job can be to assist make this occur by advertising music that promotes legal habits, rap being the music of alternative. He assured us that this might be a terrific scenario for us as a result of rap music was changing into an more and more worthwhile marketplace for our firms, and as workers, we’d additionally have the ability to purchase private shares in these prisons. Instantly, silence came visiting the room. You might have heard a pin drop.
Whereas efforts have been made through the years to dismiss this account as fantasy and/or conspiracy (regardless of it being deemed credible and promoted by distinguished figures in hip-hop), different accounts from this era means that it shouldn’t be so simply discounted. For example, Portia Maultsby, Professor Emerita of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana College, has been quoted as stating that:
Within the early Nineties, a former graduate pupil, then keyboardist for Stevie Marvel, referred to as me upset that some document labels had been actively recruiting Black males with legal data to document rap. He believed that they had been encouraging legal acts amongst this group.
As well as, distinguished rappers have claimed, from the Nineties onward, that the music {industry} is financially entangled with the personal jail {industry} and encourages “legal habits” by means of hip-hop as a consequence of these entanglements.
Whereas some retailers have famous that personal jail firms and document labels share main index managers like Vanguard amongst their prime shareholders, the ties between the 2 industries are considerably deeper and immediately contain organizations talked about all through this text.
Clinton, not in contrast to Ronald Reagan, was very “beneath the thumb” of MCA’s Lew Wasserman. Wasserman started backing Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 1992, however had first met Clinton again when he was governor of Arkansas, the place his administration notoriously enabled illicit Iran-Contra-linked actions. Lew Wasserman would later dealer the shut ties between Clinton and his grandson, Casey Wasserman (who like Clinton, was an Epstein affiliate). This led to the Wasserman Basis changing into one of many primary donors to the controversial Clinton Basis. Wasserman, in addition to his protégé Steven Spielberg, had been main donors to Clinton’s 1996 re-election marketing campaign, a lot in order that it earned them in a single day stays within the White Home’s Lincoln bed room. As well as, different Mega Group figures like Edgar Bronfman had been additionally main donors to Clinton. Bronfman and Wasserman each acquired the Presidential Medal of Freedom throughout Clinton’s presidencies. Notably, firms tied to Bronfman and Wasserman, i.e. MCA/Common, performed a significant position in lobbying for the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which Clinton signed into regulation and which allowed excessive {industry} consolidation and the formation of de facto monopolies in leisure and past.
Lew and Edith Wasserman with Invoice Clinton in 1999 – Supply
Just a few years earlier, in 1994, Invoice Clinton had signed a controversial crime invoice which enacted a number of “funding incentives blamed for driving mass incarceration.” Although mass incarceration existed earlier than the 1994 crime invoice (largely starting within the administration of the MCA-controlled Ronald Reagan), that invoice is blamed with exacerbating the disaster, which has disproportionately impacted the African-American neighborhood and benefited two firms particularly. These two firms had been the most important personal jail firms in the US on the time, and so they nonetheless are at the moment. One was the Corrections Company of America (CCA), now referred to as CoreCivic, whereas the opposite was Geo Group, previously Wackenhut Corrections Company (WCC). Notably, WCC’s IPO passed off the identical 12 months because the passage of the crime invoice, 1994, which notably coincides with the account of the 1991 clandestine assembly the place it was claimed that the personal jail firms would go public as soon as the music {industry} had started to advertise violence and crime in hip-hop lyrics for the good thing about personal jail firms like Wackenhut.
WCC was fashioned in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Company. WCC’s guardian firm, Wackenhut, developed vital ties to MCA in the course of the Eighties. As detailed earlier, Wackenhut had entered right into a three way partnership with the Cabazon Reservation to covertly develop weapon programs for CIA-backed paramilitaries that additionally repurposed the PROMIS software program for espionage functions. High MCA government Eugene Gianquinto was immediately concerned with firms that later joined the Cabazon-Wackenhut operation and later took credit score for quashing the federal investigation into MCA’s mob ties. As well as, Allen & Firm and Earl Brian, who had been linked with the PROMIS scandal, had been additionally considerably tied to Alan Hirschfield, who is claimed to have co-founded Arista Information with Clive Davis, which spawned Combs’ Dangerous Boy Information in 1993.
Proof of MCA’s shut ties to the CIA, past these indicated by the PROMIS scandal, had been famous by Lew Wasserman biographer Dennis McDougal. McDougal acquired a response from the CIA, in response to a FOIA request, “that seventeen separate laptop searches revealed MCA did work with the CIA. The CIA refused to launch any of its MCA paperwork on grounds that it would endanger nationwide safety.” Melanie Carlson, writing for Covert Motion Journal, additionally totally detailed MCA’s ties to the mob, the CIA, the PROMIS scandal and the dying of journalist Danny Casolaro in a 2024 investigation.
Like MCA, Wackenhut additionally had ties to the CIA. Between that time and the passage of the 1994 crime invoice, figures like Frank Carlucci and Bobby Ray Inman, each former CIA deputy administrators, served on Wackenhut’s board. Carlucci additionally had uncommon connections to the community round Robert Sales space Nichols, the organized crime-linked determine who had introduced collectively Wackenhut, the Cabazon Indian reservation and MCA as a part of the PROMIS scandal. As well as, earlier than changing into Reagan’s CIA director William Casey, one of many October Shock/Iran-Contra architects, had been Wackenhut’s outdoors authorized counsel. In 1992, two years earlier than the Clinton crime invoice was handed, SPY Journal reported on intensive ties between Wackenhut and the CIA, citing CIA operatives and former Wackenhut executives who famous that Wackenhut allowed the CIA to make use of its workplaces as fronts for its actions. The SPY investigation additionally famous how lots of the figures who linked Wackenhut to the CIA had been additionally key cogs within the Iran-Contra affair, which can also be indicated by Wackenhut’s position within the PROMIS scandal.
That is vital as a few of those self same figures tied on to the CIA-Wackenhut connection, like Richard Secord, had been additionally tied to Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to relocate the Iran-Contra airline of infamy, the CIA-linked Southern Air transport, to Columbus, OH for the specific advantage of Wexner and his clothes empire. After Wexner and Epstein’s efforts had been profitable, the airline’s primary flights had been between Columbus and Hong Kong. As famous in One Nation Below Blackmail, that effort, which additionally coincides with Epstein’s most of his 17 visits to the Clinton White Home, was explicitly thought-about by some Ohio regulation enforcement officers to be tied to clandestine and legal actions, most probably arms trafficking given Epstein’s background in covert arms trafficking networks within the Eighties. As well as, Epstein’s primary contact on the White Home throughout that point, Mark Middleton, was a central a part of the “Chinagate” scandal, one main side of which concerned the smuggling of low cost Chinese language weapons into American city areas after Chinese language gun imports had been banned early on within the Clinton administration. Previous to that ban, the US had been China’s prime marketplace for weapons.
A major cache of weapons being smuggled by this community into Oakland, CA was intercepted by the FBI in what’s now remembered as Operation Dragon Hearth, which was – at that time – the biggest seizure of unlawful computerized assault weapons in US historical past. The principle people behind the illicit gun smuggling had been tipped off and managed to flee the US previous to the FBI’s deliberate sting operation. Nevertheless, the primary firm concerned – China’s Norinco – had notable ties, not simply to the “Chinagate” scandal itself, but additionally to Epstein’s former mentor and weapons vendor, Douglas Leese. The corporate was additionally allegedly concerned with previous arms offers that had concerned each Leese and Epstein. As well as, when Clinton was serving as governor of Arkansas, he had vital connections to Iran-Contra-linked arms and drug trafficking, which means he had a previous, documented historical past of enabling illicit arms smuggling operations whereas in public workplace and simply previous to changing into US president.
On the identical time that Wackenhut and CIA-connected figures had been apparently serving to repurpose Iran-Contra belongings for the sake of flooding the US black market with low cost but illicit weapons, the identical community was additionally littering US city areas with medication, particularly crack cocaine. As reported by the late Gary Webb in his iconic Darkish Alliance collection (and subsequent ebook of the identical title), a large drug ring in California was peddling crack cocaine particularly to Latino and African-American city communities in the course of the Nineties, with hundreds of thousands in earnings getting used to finance CIA-backed paramilitary teams in Nicaragua. It was argued on the time that this represented a continuation of the Iran-Contra nexus that got here beneath scrutiny within the Eighties and the CIA’s clandestine efforts to finance the Nicaraguan “Contras” by means of illicit means. After Webb’s Darkish Alliance collection concluded, the outlet that had run it –– the San Jose Mercury Information –– printed an editorial noting that Webb’s work “can solely feed longstanding rumors in black communities that the U.S. authorities ‘created’ the crack cocaine epidemic to kill and imprison African-People and in any other case wreak havoc in interior cities.”
Central to the CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine nexus had been Nicaraguan asset and eventual DEA informant Oscar Danilo Blandón, one of many largest importers and suppliers of cocaine on the peak of the crack epidemic, and his one-time enterprise associate Freeway Ricky Ross, who hailed from Compton and who grew to function an interstate crack ring that helped launder and finance the covert struggle on the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. In 1991, throughout one in every of his jail stints, Freeway Ricky Ross was cellmates with one of many different prime crack sellers in Los Angeles, Michael “Harry O” Harris. As investigative researcher John Potash particulars in The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur, Gary Webb asserted that Ross was successfully the nationwide level man for the trafficking operations that had been remotely manipulated by former Vice President Bush and CIA Director William Casey within the Eighties.xxiii His eventual cellmate Harry O was one in every of his prime understudies. Potash writes:
Different findings additional help the notion that Demise Row Information dually labored as a entrance firm for numerous U.S. Intelligence operations. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gary Webb was the primary to hyperlink Demise Row Information to the CIA from the document firm’s inception. Webb quoted the probation officer of nationwide crack trafficker Freeway Ricky Ross. That probation officer cited a silent associate of Demise Row, a Michael “Harry-O” Harris, as one in every of Ross’ two understudies.
New Yorker journal and different media retailers described how Vice-President George Bush helped run key elements of the CIA/Contra/Crack operations with CIA Director William Casey. Webb detailed the CIA cocaine trafficking community that went from Nicaraguan Contras, similar to Danilo Blandón, to Freeway Ricky Ross. A CIA Inspector Common backed these findings concerning the CIA trafficking cocaine in 1998. Webb claimed that Ross was their nationwide level man, trafficking “multimillion-dollar cocaine shipments throughout America.” This may have made Michael Harris and Demise Row Information essential belongings for the intelligence neighborhood.
Proof means that Ricky Ross labored intently with CIA-collaborating cocaine traffickers similar to Danilo Blandón and Ron Lister within the ’80s. Additionally, at the moment, Lister met commonly with former CIA Covert Operations director Invoice Nelson, who had labored beneath George H. W. Bush on the CIA.xxiv
Harry O would have grow to be a silent associate in Demise Row Information with Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, The D.O.C, and corrupt protection lawyer David Kenner.xxv That is vital to this story and the Sean “Diddy” Combs investigation at massive, as not solely was Demise Row an intelligence entrance, nevertheless it was additionally teeming with soiled cops and corrupt informants who’d been assigned to moonlight as safety guards on the label for medication/weapons dealing, informing, and COINTELPRO functions.xxvi This consists of the intentional sabotage of the Bloods and Crips gang truce (each gangs with which Harry O intimately collaborated in his crack distribution efforts, in addition to the Cali Cartel) and the fabrication and exploitation of the East vs. West rap feud that might finally result in the seemingly government-sanctioned murders of each activist rapper Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, operations wherein each Sean Combs and Suge Knight seemingly performed pivotal roles. In Half II of this collection, we’ll look at the East vs. West rap feud and the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, in addition to their relevance to the Sean Combs story, in better element.
Extra not too long ago, Freeway Ricky Ross — now as soon as once more free after he efficiently appealed his life imprisonment with out the potential for parole sentence on the grounds that the three strikes regulation had been misapplied — appeared on the podcast of hip hop journalist DJ Vlad and revealed that not solely had he and Demise Row silent associate Harry O been cellmates on the time that Michael Harris launched Suge Knight to lawyer David Kenner, however that Ross was initially going to be one other “silent associate” within the label. Based on Ross, this partnership solely dissolved when he was launched from jail previous to Harry O and received involved with Suge Knight. Seemingly in an effort to shield his personal drug-supplying stake within the Demise Row enterprise, Michael “Harry O” Harris warned Ross off from working with Suge. Ross, in deference to road codes, declined to go behind Harry O’s again and provide Knight. Per Ross, again in 1991 on the time that Demise Row was fashioned, he used to sit down in on the no-contact go to conferences between Knight, Kenner, and Harris whereas he and Harris had been incarcerated collectively. As soon as the label was up and working, it rapidly turned to cocaine trafficking, arguably a department or mutation of the identical CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine nexus for which belongings like Freeway Ricky Ross and Michael Harris had earlier been burned and for which journalist Gary Webb was excessively attacked (and as some consider, murdered) to cowl up.
These music {industry}, organized crime, intelligence, and federal regulation enforcement connections are additionally vastly vital as Demise Row –– at the side of Combs’ Dangerous Boy Information –– was one of many major Trojan horses by which “gangster rap” was injected into the tradition, typically on the expense of extra radical, activist or outright revolutionary hip hop acts who, in the event that they refused to cater to the whims of sure document executives, would see their business prospects undergo. One of many mechanisms for the dissemination of drug and crime glorifying tradition was the merciless and deliberate coercion and corruption of aware rappers (see: Potash’s FBI Conflict concerning Suge Knight’s pushing of medication on each Dr. Dre, who’d beforehand preached abstinence, and Tupac).xxvii
There may be additionally the case of movies like New Jack Metropolis, which concerned Combs’ mentor Andre Harrell and arguably romanticizes crack dealing. The movie was additionally made by Warner. Warner, as beforehand famous, was constructed out of the affiliation of its long-time head, Steve Ross, with Meyer Lansky associates. Ross himself had grow to be shut to Robert Maxwell, an intelligence asset tied to organized crime and a key determine within the Epstein community in addition to the PROMIS scandal, within the late Eighties and early Nineties, a time when Maxwell was making an attempt to achieve a foothold in New York Metropolis. This additional means that mob-linked or mob-adjacent leisure firms had been working to culturally engineer African-American tradition for the good thing about CIA-linked crack dealing and, finally, CIA-linked firms like Wackenhut that dominated the personal jail {industry}.
Given the above, all the weather of an ideal storm to perpetuate mass incarceration of African-People had been put into place alongside the identical timeline and by lots of the identical actors –– actors deeply tied to the CIA and arranged crime. Once we add the alleged efforts to stoke violence in hip-hop, as exemplified by Combs’ and his Dangerous Boy Information after he had grow to be enmeshed on this very community in addition to his West Coast rivals, now we have one more part that means this community used its affect over the hip-hop {industry} to socially engineer legal habits, whereas additionally guaranteeing that low cost, addictive medication and low cost weapons concurrently flooded city African-American communities.
The MCA and CIA-connected Wackenhut would have reaped mass earnings from this obvious operation, because the variety of prisoners in its personal prisons swelled. Nevertheless, different main multi-national companies who utilized inmate labor from these prisoners benefitted as properly. A litany of American firms, like WalMart and Microsoft, are amongst those that have an extended historical past of profiting handsomely from inmate labor. A number of of those companies embody firms run by the “Mega Group” billionaires, like Lester Crown’s Common Dynamics, a significant navy contractor, and Leslie Wexner’s Victoria’s Secret (although the lingerie agency claimed to have ended the contract after it grew to become public data within the late Nineties).
This context definitely zooms out considerably from the particular Combs scandal that started to unravel on the finish of 2023. Nevertheless, it additionally helps us perceive the case. Combs seems to have been introduced right into a community the place he was managed by means of intercourse and medicines, after which made a star. As a star, he used his personal music, his document label and his affect to manage different upcoming rappers and musicians whereas additionally serving to form the way forward for hip-hop towards that allegedly sought by music {industry} executives and their clandestine companions within the CIA, the mob and the personal jail {industry}.
Combs, from the early Nineties onward, seems to have been a key frontman for this community and its ambitions. He was seemingly not the only real mastermind or beneficiary of the entire scandalous events, sexual violence, public promotion of violence, and alleged blackmail wherein he engaged. He was a product of a community and a system that –– within the case of Combs –– was searching for to focus on and corrupt the broader African-American neighborhood in related methods. Finally, Combs, like another distinguished entertainers, was servile to his music {industry} masters. He labored inside a system these masters managed and tried to develop his personal affect and energy inside that system, however –– on the finish of the day –– he was by no means in cost.
Within the subsequent installment of this collection, we’ll discover Combs’ increasing affect in hip-hop and likewise in different industries, like retail, once more all courtesy of the exact same community outlined on this piece. Whereas Combs publicly projected energy and success, each of these issues had been conditional and, like Epstein, now uncovered, he is because of take the autumn in an effort to take the warmth off of the folks behind the scenes.
References:
i. Zack O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Hip-Hop’s Multibillion-Greenback Rise (Little, Brown and Firm, 2018), Ch. I
ii. David McGowan, Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Homicide (iUniverse, Inc., 2004), p. 101
iii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I
iv. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I
v. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I
vi. The abuse prices in opposition to Fr. Lynch stemmed from an FBI probe launched in July 1987 (the summer time previous to Combs departing for school) that was initiated after lay academics on the academy complained about Lynch’s and Brady’s habits with college students. Fr. Lynch was collectively indicted across the identical time as his boss Principal Brady, however was finally exonerated by the Hon. Justice Burton Roberts when a letter was produced throughout cross-examination that confirmed the FBI coerced pupil John Schaeffer into falsely accusing his former teacher beneath the false pretense that he wouldn’t be required to testify. There have been additionally clear contradictions within the dates of the alleged abuse in Schaeffer’s testimony.
Moreover, as contended by Fr. Lynch’s defenders, the case in opposition to him was probably politically motivated by his activism in addition to different on-going corruption investigations in NYC together with the Wedtech scandal, which first broke in 1986 and was named after a DOD-contractor primarily based within the Bronx who secured governmental contracts by means of fraud, bribery, and different unlawful means. The quite a few scandals that beset New York municipal politics within the late Eighties led to Rudy Giuliani’s profitable prosecution of Bronx Democratic Get together chief Stanley Friedman on federal corruption prices. Friedman was a regulation associate of Roy Cohn, a infamous mob lawyer additionally identified for having been Donald Trump’s mentor. Friedman’s protege, Bronx borough president Stanley Simon, resigned amid pending legal prices stemming from his involvement with Wedtech. In 1988, lengthy serving US Rep. Mario Biaggi of the Bronx was finally convicted by Giuliani on bribery, extortion, tax evasion, and obstruction prices in connection to Wedtech, proven to have accepted bribes from the Bronx firm in return for the procurement of federal contracts. Bronx congressman Robert Garcia additionally resigned after Giuliani convicted him on bribery and extortion prices associated to Wedtech in 1989—the ruling was later reversed on attraction. Notice that the Wedtech and MSMA intercourse abuse scandals each revolved across the Bronx and that their court docket proceedings overlapped. Whereas speculative, the FBI and DA workplace’s willingness to make use of soiled tips in pursuit of a conviction of Fr. Lynch could have meant to distract from Wedtech, which was starting to knock on the door of the Reagan administration, posing a hazard to press secretary Lyn Nofziger and finally resulting in AG Edwin Meese’s resignation in 1988.
vii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2
viii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2
ix. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2
x. John Potash, The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur: State Repression of Black Leaders From the Civil Rights Period to the Nineties (Microcosm Publishing, 2021), Ch. “CIA & Time Warner’s Grip on the Music Trade”
xi. Frederic Dannen, Hit Males: Powerbrokers and Quick Cash Contained in the Music Enterprise (Classic Books, 1990), pp. 37-8, 42-6, 53
xii. John Potash, The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “CIA & Time Warner’s Grip on the Music Trade”
xiii. Frederic Dannen, Hit Males, pp. 26-27
xiv. John Potash, The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Tupac’s FBI File, Republican Assaults, Harassment Arrests, & Specious Lawsuits”
xv. Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl, Infamous C.O.P. (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), Ch. “Jacking the Rapper: The ‘Puff Daddy’ Period—Rap Legends Born into Blood”
xvi. Frederic Dannen, Hit Males, p. 67
xvii. Ibid., p. 75
xviii. Ibid. p. 75
xix. Ibid., p. 87
xx. Ibid., p. 91
xxi. Ibid., p. 86
xxii. Ibid., p. 92
xxiii. John Potash, The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Demise Row Indicators Tupac”
xxiv. Ibid.
xxv. John Potash, The FBI Conflict on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Demise Row Police & Suge Knight Work to Finish Gang Truce”
xxvi. Ibid.
xxvii. Ibid.
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