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\tDoug J. Swanson\u2019s \u201cBlood Aces\u201d documents the colorful, violent life of Benny Binion, the gangster who made his bones in Depression-era Dallas before moving to Las Vegas (with the law in hot pursuit). In the desert, he opened the Horseshoe casino and introduced the World Series of Poker. The book also tells the story of Binion\u2019s rivals, like Herbert Noble, nicknamed the Cat because he survived 11 attempts on his life \u2014 but alas, not the 12th. In a recent email interview, Mr. Swanson discussed Binion\u2019s penchant for danger, the difficulties in researching his life and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tWhat do you think drew Binion to trouble by such a young age? Was it the lure of money, or something else in his character?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tBinion was a product of his time and place. He was born in 1904 in a Texas backwater, had a bad second-grade education and spent his formative years traveling with horse traders and gamblers. Benny liked to say, \u201cTough times make tough people.\u201d As a racketeer in Depression-era Dallas he swam in the same sea of violence and desperation as everyone else. He wasn\u2019t consumed by bloodlust \u2014 far from it. He was a canny, shrewd and pragmatic businessman, though he could barely read or write. He either controlled his rivals or had them killed. And after a tough day of being a crime boss, which might include ordering someone\u2019s execution, he\u2019d make it home in time to have dinner with his wife and kids.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tWhat was the most difficult thing about researching the book?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tTracking down records was my biggest challenge. Over the course of 80 years, many of them have been destroyed, and others are hidden somewhere in the archival bureaucracy. Binion spent time in Leavenworth for tax evasion, and it took nearly a year for me to procure his inmate file from the Bureau of Prisons. It was 300 pages, and full of great details, such as his IQ (89) and number of missing teeth (four).<\/p>\n
\tThe F.B.I. released its Binion file to me fairly quickly, but only part of it. The rest of it I found in the records of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations. I still haven\u2019t received the complete F.B.I. file for Ted Binion, Benny\u2019s son. It runs to more than 12,000 pages, and the bureau will not be hurried on these matters.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tDid you have trouble separating tall tales from fact? Or accepting that certain facts were true when they seemed so outlandish?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tLots of myths and tall tales surround Benny Binion. The family used to tell one in which Binion had a traffic accident in Dallas and was set upon by no less than a dozen thugs. That\u2019s when Binion supposedly ripped a bumper from his car and used it to fell each and every savage attacker. He\u2019s like Russell Crowe in \u201cGladiator.\u201d The truth is he hit one person, a middle-aged woman.<\/p>\n
\tI spent a lot of time trying to verify stories like that. An old friend of his told me that Benny once settled a dispute with his upstairs neighbors by firing his gun into the ceiling until they hastily moved out. There was no way to prove that, but when I asked Benny\u2019s daughter Brenda Michael about it, she said, \u201cThat sounds like something Daddy would do.\u201d So I went with it.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tWhat surprised you most while investigating his life?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tThat the effort to put Binion away for tax evasion extended not only to F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover but to President Harry Truman as well. I found memos that showed Truman giving the U.S. Attorney General tips on pursuing Binion. There had been a series of scandals in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and the Truman administration was eager to look upright and tough. After that came the biggest shocker: once he was out of prison and back in Vegas, Binion flipped and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. That apparently made Hoover very happy. You try to tell Benny\u2019s friends today that he was an F.B.I. stooge and they refuse to believe it.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tWere there moments while writing the book when you felt sympathy for Binion? He seems a difficult character for that.<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tThere are plenty of people who are still deeply loyal to Benny. They loved him. You couldn\u2019t have a better friend, they would say, or a tougher enemy. There\u2019s no doubt that people who crossed him wound up dead. But he could be warm and generous, and had real sympathy for hard-luck cases. There\u2019s a reason 18,000 people were chanting his name at his 83rd birthday party, and it\u2019s not just because the beer was free.<\/p>\n
\tBeyond that, I came to admire the man\u2019s arc. He went from street thug to top gangster to respected businessman to revered civic pillar, which I believe is unmatched in the history of American criminal justice. He started the World Series of Poker from nothing, and look where it is today. And he would say things like, \u201cReligion is too strong a mystery to doubt.\u201d By the time I finished writing the book, I was surprised at how much I liked the guy.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tYou write in the acknowledgments that two of Binion\u2019s three surviving children wouldn\u2019t speak to you for the book. Do you think they weren\u2019t interested in revisiting a troubling past, or protective of their father?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tBenny\u2019s son Jack and I had a couple of phone conversations, early and late in the writing process. He was cordial, but he said he was unhappy with some of what had been written about his father previously, and he didn\u2019t want to go through it again. I\u2019m told that Benny\u2019s daughter Becky Behnen is writing a book of her own. Her husband informed me she had absolutely no interest in talking with me. But Benny\u2019s daughter Brenda, who lives on a ranch outside Amarillo, was wonderful. Brenda knows, of course, that there were many unseemly parts to her father\u2019s story. She also recognized that he did a lot of good \u2014 and was a doting and devoted father \u2014 and I think she cooperated with me in the hope that I would convey that.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tYou\u2019ve written five previous books, mystery novels featuring a private eye named Jack Flippo. But you\u2019re an investigative reporter as well. What inspired you to write your first book-length work of nonfiction?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tI had been working on another novel, but it stalled out. Some of my friends and co-workers were writing nonfiction books, including S. C. (Sam) Gwynne, who had a big hit with \u201cEmpire of the Summer Moon.\u201d So I thought I might give nonfiction a try, and I loved it from day one. I\u2019m itching to do another. But while I wait for the next project to come together, I\u2019m trying to jump-start that novel. Some mornings it cranks, and some mornings it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tDo you have a favorite book about Vegas that you would recommend to people?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tSeveral. The best books on the World Series of Poker are \u201cPositively Fifth Street\u201d by James McManus and \u201cThe Biggest Game in Town\u201d by Al Alvarez. Those guys can write. Colson Whitehead just did one on the poker series, \u201cThe Noble Hustle,\u201d that\u2019s really funny. To understand how Vegas works, I turned many times to \u201cThe Money and the Power,\u201d by Sally Denton and Roger Morris. And for flavor and color, I had fun with a collection called \u201cFade Sag Crumble: Ten Las Vegas Writers Confront Decay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThen there are the classics. Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s \u201cFear and Loathing in Las Vegas\u201d has one of the great opening lines in American literature: \u201cWe were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.\u201d If I have to name an absolute favorite, it\u2019s \u201cVegas,\u201d written by John Gregory Dunne in 1974. I think I\u2019ve read that book 20 times over the last 40 years, and it cracks me up every time.<\/p>\n
\tQ.
\n\tYou work in Dallas, where some of Binion\u2019s earliest exploits took place. What echo of his time do you still see in the city today, if any?<\/p>\n
\tA.
\n\tDallas is fairly efficient at obliterating its past, so most of the places where Binion operated were torn down long ago. There are still a few people around town who worked with Binion. One of them, who was in his 90s and retired, was alleged to have been Benny\u2019s prized hit man. Hit men must have had a pretty good pension plan because he lived in a beautiful house in North Dallas with a big swimming pool. He was full of great stories about Dallas in Benny\u2019s day.<\/p>\n
\tBinion left Dallas in 1946 for Las Vegas, where he opened the famous Horseshoe casino. Dallas has, of course, changed enormously since then. But Benny was a very successful businessman in his day, and modern Dallas still has a deep reverence for people who make money. I\u2019m guessing if Benny were here now, he would be a real estate developer. He\u2019d probably be building malls in the suburbs \u2014 The Shoppes at Horseshoe Village Estates.<\/p>\n
Posted by:<\/strong> Dr Crapology on August 15, 2014, 11:52 am<\/p>\n \tDoc<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doug J. Swanson\u2019s \u201cBlood Aces\u201d documents the colorful, violent life of Benny Binion, the gangster who made his bones in Depression-era Dallas before moving to Las Vegas (with the law in hot pursuit). In the desert, he opened the Horseshoe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Great read. Most interesting. Loved these things that you put i n this section.<\/p>\n