The FBI's Sinatra Files

Thursday June 03, 1999 12:00 AM EDT

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The FBI opened the books on the late Frank Sinatra Tuesday. Spanning 40 years of trailing Ol' Blue Eyes, the 1,275 pages of records, pictures and reports by FBI agents sometimes portrayed Sinatra in an unflattering light but never seemed to prove he was directly involved in the Mafia or the Communist Party. "Sinatra enjoys surrounding himself with hoodlums and ... would give up his show business prominence to be a hoodlum himself if he had the courage to do so," one FBI document said. The files also show the FBI's accounts of Sinatra as the victim of threats to his life and the target of extortion schemes.

An example of Sinatra's quick temper surfaced in a memo dated Sept. 11, 1967, from the special agent-in-charge of the Las Vegas FBI office: "Sinatra went to Sands casino to apologize to pit dealers for unmentioned bad actions several nights earlier. Words were exchanged and when a security guard approached, Sinatra hit him over the head with a chair. The casino manager, Carl Cohen, came over, and in the words of our informant, 'really decked him.' According to our source, Sinatra had at least two front teeth knocked out." The reporting agent commented "that Cohen will be in real trouble now."

Sinatra's longtime spokeswoman Susan Reynolds says that Sinatra's widow, Barbara, and his son, Frank Sinatra, Jr. have no comment on the release of the FBI documents, and are instead busy planning for February's 11th Annual Frank Sinatra Celebrity Golf Tournament in Rancho Mirage CA.