The FBI Files

The Sun-Times has compiled a database of FBI records on notable people with ties to Chicago and Illinois — including politicians, gangsters and religious leaders.

Newly obtained records say sources told the FBI that the Machine Democrat, who died in 2001, “frequently associated with” top La Cosa Nostra figures and “is possibly an LCN member himself.”
The recently released records regarding the agency’s interest in the late William Dugan, who headed Operating Engineers Local 150, also touch on the union’s clout.
In a once-secret 2003 memo, the FBI said the company was secretly “controlled” by brothers John DiFronzo and Peter DiFronzo, reputed Chicago Outfit leaders who died in the past few years.
Newly obtained records show the FBI was investigating longtime Niles Mayor Nicholas Blase in 1979 and again in 1996 before embarking on the corruption probe in the early 2000s that led to a conviction and a prison stint.
But the once-secret records on John “No Nose” DiFronzo provide a window into a life of crime stretching from Al Capone’s time to the modern era — the latest from “The FBI Files.”
Rush, a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party, filed a bill mandating disclosure of secret FBI files. He also asked AG Merrick Garland to release unredacted documents.
Her father was U.S. ambassador to Germany as Hitler rose to power, and she was romantically involved with the Nazis’ secret police chief before embracing the Soviet Union.
Agents investigated an airport concession deal during Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure for which clout-heavy Oscar D’Angelo was paid nearly half a million dollars.
After violence at a scheduled Sly and the Family Stone concert in Grant Park in 1970, authorities feared violence at Joplin’s show days later at Highland Park’s Ravinia Festival.
Her conversations with federal agents started when she was a newspaper reporter and continued when the longtime Republican state office-holder moved into politics.
The folk singer and actor, who hailed from Illinois, was long a subject of interest for his leftist leanings during the Cold War, according to ‘The FBI Files’ Sun-Times database.
Meyer Lansky helped create a national crime ‘syndicate’ decades ago and he spent a lot of time in Chicago along the way, according to records in “The FBI Files” database by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The records on the cannibal killer who was beaten to death in prison 25 years ago are now part of the Sun-Times’ growing ‘The FBI Files’ database.