How Organized Crime Infiltrated American Business After WW II and Corrupted
National Politics from Truman to Trump
By
Jeremy Kuzmarov Covert Magazine
-
June 10, 2021
Harry S. Truman and Kansas City mafia boss Tom Pendergast in 1919. [Source:
cafnr.missouri.edu]
Provocative new book documents the unsavory alliance between the Mafia, the
CIA, and the corporate establishment that transformed America into the
worlds most dangerous nation
During the years of the Trump presidency, popular and scholarly discussions
of the erosion of U.S. political and legal norms frequently contrasted the
Trump era with a supposed golden age of U.S. democracy in the mid-20th
century.
Jonathan Marshalls new book, Dark Quadrant: Organized Crime, Big Business,
and the Corruption of American Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
effectively challenges this narrative and the myth of the greatest
generation.
The book details the largely neglected story of how well-protected criminals
organized the corruption of U.S. politics and business at a national level
after World War II.
[Source: amazon.com]
Traditional U.S. historians, according to Marshall, have treated corruption
as a barely detectable eddy in the large current of events, with no lasting
political or even moral significance.
They ignore the ties between organized crime and dominant political figures,
ranging from Harry S. Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson to Richard M. Nixon, along
with the role of the mafia and CIA in subverting Third World nations.
As such, they present an incomplete picture, which plays into belief in
American exceptionalismthat the countrys politics are more morally pure
than other countries.
Americans, Marshall writes, must arm themselves with greater knowledge of
the long-neglected dark quadrant of our national politics in order to
shrink its power and strengthen our democracy.
Harry Truman: The Pendergasts Man
Marshall begins his story with Harry S. Truman, a failed businessman and law
school student whose political rise was fueled by his backing by the
mafia-linked Pendergast political machine in Kansas City.
Kansas City in the 1920s was a center for vice. Thomas J. Pendergastwho was
convicted in 1939 on federal tax evasion chargeswas the ruling spirit
behind the roaring business of gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, the
sale of narcotics and racketeering, in partnership with political boss John
Lazia, an ally of Al Capones Chicago outfit.
Tom Pendergast [Source: socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu]
John Lazia [Source: ganglandwire.com]
Trumans political career began in 1922 when he was elected county court
judge in Eastern Missouri as Pendergasts hand-picked candidate.
Young Truman recorded in his diary how he let a former saloon keeper and
murderer who was a friend of the big boss, as he termed Pendergast, steal
about $10,000 from the general revenues of the county, though he
rationalized the decision by claiming that it kept the crooks from getting
a million or more from public bond issues.
Political advertisement for Truman when he was running for county judge in
Eastern Missouri with the backing of the Pendergast political machine.
[Source: pendergastkc.org]
With Pendergasts help, Truman won election to the Senate in 1934, just
before the indictment of senior police officials in Kansas City for perjury
after they had protected criminal mobs and racketeers. Within a few years,
Truman was doing everything in his power to block a threatened federal
investigation of rampant vote fraud in Kansas City during the 1936 election.
Truman, far left, with Pendergast to his left, at the Democratic Party
national convention in Philadelphia in 1936. [Source: flatlandkc.org]
In return for this and other political favors, Pendergast allies, such as
Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Robert Hannegan, secured
Trumans nomination as Roosevelts running mate at the 1944 Democratic Party
Convention in Chicago over Henry Wallace, an anti-fascist progressive who
had the overwhelming support of the delegates.
Robert Hannegan opening the 1944 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago.
Hannegan was allied with the Pendergast political machine and played a key
role in Trumans nomination over Henry Wallace for Vice President, a turning
point in modern U.S. history. [Source: wikiwand.com]
When Roosevelt died nine months later and Truman became president, he issued
pardons to 15 members of the Pendergast machine who had been convicted of
vote fraud in the 1936 election. Three weeks into his term, Truman further
fired the U.S. attorney in Missouri who had prosecuted vote fraud in Kansas
City and sent Pendergast to prison along with 250 members of his
organization.
According to Marshall, these were the first of many acts of favoritism,
influence peddling, and outright corruption that plagued the Truman
administration until voters repudiated the Democratic Party in the 1952
election.
In a major roundup of Trumans record published in 1951, two veteran
national political reporters at Look magazine condemned the friendships,
favoritism and frauds that had fostered immorality and corruption under
Trumans auspices. Political morality in Washington had sunk to the lowest
depths in a quarter of a century, they charged, citing four members of the
White House staff and fourteen high Federal officials among the nearly
900 Federal employees who had been caught trying to improve their private
fortunes through their positions on the public payroll.
This assessment contradicts the attempt by noted historians like David
McCullough and Alonzo Hamby to elevate Trumans reputation and present him
as one of the nations great presidents.
Look magazine reported that the Truman administrations alcohol tax unit
granted scores of liquor licenses to known hoodlums and mobsters. The
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) under Truman further privileged
issuing loans to political donors who included mob-connected business
owners.
When Trumans Attorney General, Tom Clark, protected Pendergasts successor,
the racketeer and famed bootlegger Charles Binaggio, by restricting an FBI
investigation into the blatant theft of ballots during the 1946 Democratic
congressional primary on behalf of Trumans favored candidate, Truman wrote
to his wife Bess that everybody was elated.
Binaggio went on to help Truman raise $150,000 during his hard-fought 1948
presidential campaign.
Charles Binaggio [Source: mafia.wikia.org]
Tom Clark [Source: nara.getarchive.net]
Clark meanwhile was appointed by Truman to the Supreme Courtdespite calls
for his impeachment as Attorney General for ordering the parole of half a
dozen leaders of the Chicago crime syndicate barely a third of their way
into ten-year sentences for extorting over a million dollars from Hollywood
studios as a favor for Chicagos Democratic machine.
Politics of Anti-Communism
During the 1940s and 1950s, corrupt politicians championed the politics of
anti-communism in order to divert attention from the growing nexus between
organized crime, big business and government.
At the center of this nexus stood FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972),
who cultivated mob connected businessmen in his war against communism, while
refusing to cooperate with the Kefauver Committees landmark investigation
of organized crime in 1950-1951.
J. Edgar Hoover. He maintained that communism is the major menace of our
time and insisted that fighting crime syndicates was a matter for local law
enforcement. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Before being known as an anti-communist red hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy
(R-MN) had earned the moniker the Pepsi-Cola kid after pushing through a
bill lifting federal controls for sugar that benefited Pepsi.
Senator Joseph McCarthy [Source: tvtropes.org]
McCarthy also received donations and stock tips from East Texas oil
billionaire Clint Murchison, Sr., prompting him to vote with the oil
interests on every piece of legislation of that era, including the 27.5% oil
depletion allowance, the Tidelands oil bill, which provided for state rather
than federal control of submerged oil lands, and the Kerr-Thomas gas bill,
which exempted the sale of natural gas from Federal Power Commission rate
regulations.
In 1954, McCarthy was censured by the Senate not only because of his
infamous communist smear campaign, but also because he had attempted to
obstruct an investigation into his finances, which would have revealed
improper payoffs by Lustron, an Ohio manufacturer of prefabricated steel
houses, in return for its receipt of a generous RFC loan.
China and Dominican Lobbies
Pat McCarran [Source: pbs.org]
Besides McCarthy, one of the leading sponsors of anticommunist legislation
in the 1950s was Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), who was known as the gamblers
Senator and became the model for the corrupt Nevada Senator Pat Geary in
Francis Ford Coppolas film, The Godfather: Part II.
McCarran was a devoted member of the China lobby, introducing a bill to
provide $1.5 billion in loans to the faltering government of Chiang Kai-Shek
in China.
The U.S. government supported Chiang in the Chinese Civil War against the
Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. By the late 1940s, however,
Chiang was hopelessly corrupt and had lost the mandate to rule in China,
which had fallen to the communists.
Harry Truman meets with Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in 1945. [Source:
torontopubliclibrary.ca]
Chiang and his top supporters established an effective lobby in the United
States, funded in part through proceeds from the drug trade and other
illicit commercial activities, which controlled the media and paid off
influential politicians extending to the ranks of Defense Secretary Louis
Johnson.
Louis Johnson [Source: trumanlibrary.gov]
The China lobbys intimidation tactics decimated the ranks of independent
Asia experts to the extent that, by the mid-1950s, no one who knew anything
about that part of the world remained in the State Departments Far Eastern
Division. The disastrous wars in Korea and Vietnam were a major result,
along with U.S. backing of regressive governments and opium warlords in
Southeast Asia.
Police General Phao Sinyanon, a Thai opium warlord supported by the CIA in
the 1950s at the behest of the China lobby. [Source: wikipedia.org]
The China lobby set the standard for other influential lobbies, such as the
Dominican lobby promoting dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), who made
tactical alliances with U.S. mobsters, politicians, and U.S. intelligence
officials.
Like Chiang, Trujillo was effective at using the politics of anti-communism
and bribed U.S. congressmen with cash and prostitutes to secure their
support for a large sugar quota and arms sales.
The highest-ranking recipient of Trujillos cash was Vice President Richard
Nixon, who allegedly pocketed $25,000 from him in September 1956 for his
reelection campaign.
Photo of Vice President Nixon and Rafael Trujillo featured in Life magazine
in 1955. [Source: latinamericanstudies.org]
CIA-Mafia Alliance
Trujillos network helped to direct counter-revolutionary operations against
Cuba following the Castroist revolution in alliance with the CIA and
mobsters like Meyer Lansky who had been kicked out of Havana by Castro.
Tourists and Cubans gamble at the casino in the Hotel Nacional in Havana,
1957. Meyer Lansky who led the U.S. mobs exploitation of Cuba in the 1950s,
set up a famous meeting of crime bosses at the hotel in 1946. [Source:
smithsonianmag.com]
The CIA at this time hired mob bosses Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante
Jr., to kill Castro.
Sam Giancana [Source: wikipedia.org]
Santos Trafficante, Jr. [Source: pinterest.co.uk]
The agencys mob liaison, Johnny Rosselli, had served hard time for labor
racketeering and extortion of the movie industry and was later stuffed into
a 55-gallon drum and dumped into the waters off Florida after he testified
before Congress about the JFK assassination.
Johnny Rosselli [Source: themobmuseum.org]
JFK and his brother Robert had signed their death warrants when they had
decided to go after the mob. They were both probably assassinated by
professional criminals that had infiltrated the U.S. government and were
able to operate with impunity above the law.
Mob-Connected Fixers
The corruption of the Washington political elite was enabled by the work of
mob-connected fixers whose names Marshall helps resuscitate. One Henry
Grunewald, who donated $1,600 to Trumans 1948 election campaign, installed
a telephone trunk line directly from his home to the Bureau of Internal
Revenue so he could fix tax cases more efficiently.
Henry Grunewald. His mob connections originated with his work as a corrupt
prohibition agent. [Source: vintageimagephotos]
Another, I. Irving Davidson, was described as the representative of all
that Jack and Bobby [Kennedy] fought againstDominican dictator Rafael
Trujillo, Hoffas Teamsters, the Somozas Nicaragua, the Texas rich, the
CIA, Castro, Nixon, the mob.
I. Irving Davidson [Source: spartacus-educational.com]
Lyndon Johnsons closest political aide, Bobby Baker, reported a personal
net worth of more than $2 million in 1963 despite receiving a salary of less
than $20,000 per year, and was sued for influencing a defense contractor to
hire a vending machine company, Serv-U, in which Baker had a hidden
interest.
According to columnist Drew Pearson, Baker served as the pimp for Johnson
along with President Kennedy and Senator George Smathers. He would introduce
them and other congressmen to beautiful women at the plush Carousel resort
motel he owned in Maryland and Quorum club he helped establish across from
the Senate office building, where they could relax with party girls.
Bobby Baker, left, with Lyndon B. Johnson in an undated photo. [Source:
nytimes.com]
One of Johnsons first calls after returning to Washington following the
assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was to get an update
from Abe Fortas, his crisis adviser and Bakers attorney, on burgeoning
congressional investigations into Bakers influence peddling, sweetheart
business deals and Washington sexsomething that Johnson was very
apprehensive about.
Part of Bakers fortune was made in consort with some of the Kennedy Justice
Departments top targets for prosecution. Among them was Edward Levinson, a
senior associate of Meyer Lansky, who headed casino operations at the Havana
Riviera before the Cuban revolution, and then invested with Lansky and Frank
Sinatra in the Sands hotel in Las Vegas.
Edward Levinson [Source: wikipedia.org]
Meyer Lansky [Source: wikipedia.org]
An FBI bug overheard Levinson arranging with Baker to fix the award of a
federal architectural contract on behalf of a Las Vegas firm in return for
its owners purchasing eight $1,000 tickets to a Democratic fundraising
dinner hosted by President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson in January
1963.[1]
According to Jack Halfen, a partner of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello,
Johnson accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from syndicate-backed
businesses over the span of a decade, and in return helped kill
anti-racketeering legislation in the Senate, including that which banned
interstate transportation of slot machines, regulated racing wires, [and]
aimed to rewrite the tax laws to make it tougher on gamblers.
Don B. Reynolds [Source: spartacus-educational.com]
A Maryland insurance broker, Don Reynolds, testified before the Senate that
Johnson also had demanded illegal kickbacks in exchange for political gifts.
Murchisons
One of Johnsons primary financiers dating back to the beginning of his
political career in the early 1940s was Clint Murchison Sr. (1895-1969), an
East Texas oil millionaire and Baker associate who had connections to the
Genovese crime family, the Chicago Al Capone outfit, Las Vegas gamblers and
the Teamsters.
Clint Murchison, Sr. [Source: theconservativeincomeinvestor.com]
For years, Johnson would attend breakfasts at Murchisons home to collect
campaign cash and returned the favor by ensuring generous subsidies to the
oil and gas industry.
After World War II, Johnson campaigned to overturn the regulation of natural
gas prices by the Federal Power Commission and launched a red-baiting
campaign against a progressive member of the commission, Leland Olds.
Leland Olds [Source: pixels.com]
The latters removal exemplified the emergence of a bullying political
culture in Washington in which advocates of the public interest were branded
as traitors.
The TFX Scandal
In November 1962, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Navy Secretary Fred
Korth and Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert overruled four previous
Pentagon evaluation panels and awarded General Dynamics and its main
partner, Northrop Grumman, a $7 billion contract for the Tactical Fighter
(Experimental) TFX, which became known as the F-111.
The General Dynamics F-111 [Source: aircraftcompare.com
A month before the announcement, the Fort Worth Press published a story
citing top government sources, which warned of a political fix.
It noted that General Dynamics largest shareholder, Henry Crown, would have
been well-positioned to nudge the selection process in his favor as
President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson owed their 1960 victory in part
to the Democratic machines of Jacob Arvey in Illinois and Arveys protégé
Paul Ziffren in California, along with their hidden patrons in the Chicago
outfit, all of whom were tight with Crown.
Henry Crown [Source: horatioalger.org]
On November 20th, a member of the Senate investigations subcommittee
strongly hinted that Vice President Johnson might have wielded his influence
to steer the TFX award to his home state contractor (General Dynamics, based
in Fort Worth). Inside the Pentagon, the TFX was known as the LBJ.
On November 22nd, the day of Kennedys assassination, Drew Pearson had
prepared an explosive column alleging that Johnson had intervened with Air
Force Secretary Zuckert to swing the contract to General Dynamics. It also
implicated Henry Crownwho had put $1,000 into LBJs campaign for the
Democratic Party nomination in 1960and raised questions about links to
Bobby Baker and his infamous Quorum Club.
Drew Pearson [Source: findagrave.com]
When Kennedy was killed, it conveniently blotted the TFX scandal out of the
nations consciousness. Pearson was forced to cancel his column and TFX
hearings planned by anti-corruption crusader John McClellans subcommittee
were called off, resuming only in 1969 after Johnson had left the Oval
Office.
In secret testimony before the Rules Committee on December 1, 1964, Don
Reynolds testified that, one day when he was in Bobby Bakers office, Baker
showed him $100,000 worth of hundred dollar bills that Roy Evans, the
President of Grumman Aircraft, had left in a paper bag for the TFX
contract.
Reynolds also stated that the leader (Johnson) had interceded to make
sure that the TFX was awarded to General Dynamics Corporation.
The committee referred the matter to the FBI for investigation, though with
little apparent follow-through.
Heres to the State of Richard Nixon
Besides Johnson, Henry Crown had contributed generously to Richard Nixon,
prompting Nixon to visit Fort Worth in the final days of the 1968
presidential campaign where he declared that the F-111 would be made into
one of the foundations of our air supremacy.
In January 1972, President Nixon approved a controversial $5.5 billion space
shuttle development program with General Dynamics as a prime subcontractor
to North American Rockwell (successor to North American Aviation), while
Henry Crown handed over a $25,000 contribution to the Committee to Re-Elect
the President.
Nixons relationship with Crown fit a pattern that dated back to his first
race for Congress in 1946 against liberal incumbent Jerry Voorhis.
The young Nixon at that time amassed tens of thousands of dollars in
unreported contributions from southern California oil companies, banks and
movie moguls, whose favor he returned by supporting legislation to curb
unions, exempt key industries from anti-trust action, promote oil drilling,
and cut funding for public housing and education.
[Source: nixonfoundation.org]
Nixons 1946 campaign was also critical because it began his career-long
partnership with his ruthless political consultant, Murray Chotiner, a
Beverly Hills lawyer whose clients were mostly bookmakers and gamblers.
Chotiner had one word of advice for Nixon: attack. Nixons successful House
and Senate campaigns in 1946 and 1950 were notoriously ugly, full of
insinuations that his opponents were soft on communism and crime.
Murray Chotiner at Senate hearing in 1956. Warren Olney, head of the
Justice Departments criminal division in the 1950s, called him a two-bit
crook. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Chotiner introduced Nixon to Jewish mobster Mickey Cohen, who ended up in
Alcatraz after being convicted of tax evasion in 1951 and again in 1961.
Cohen donated $5,000 to Nixons 1946 congressional campaign (about $50,000
in todays dollars) and squeezed other colleagues in the underworld for more
contributions.
Mobster Mickey Cohen, who raised money for Nixon in his first congressional
campaign in 1946. [Source: themobmuseum.org]
After Nixon came back to win the 1968 presidential election on a
law-and-order platform, Cohen wrote to columnist Jack Anderson: In my
wildest dreams (never) could I ever have visualized or imagined 17 or 18
years ago that the likes of Richard Nixon could possibly become president of
the United States. Lets hope that he isnt the same guy that I knew: a
rough hustler (and) a goddamn small-time ward politician. (p. 178)
Of course, Nixon remained always the same.
While signing into law the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 as president,
most of his Justice Departments organized crime targets were allies of
big-city Democratic Party politicians.
Robert M. Morgenthau talks on a phone in his office in the late 1960s.
[Source: time.com]
President Nixon also fired one of the countrys most effective organized
crime prosecutors, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
Robert Morgenthau, who just before had directed a grand jury to investigate
Cosmos Bank of Zurich, where Nixon was suspected of having a secret
account.[2]
Ed Miller [Source: patch.com]
Additionally, Nixon fired U.S. Attorney in San Diego Ed Miller, one of the
citys true battlers against entrenched corruption, who prosecuted the
brother of the business partner of one of Nixons closest personal
associates and biggest campaign contributors, C. Arnholt Smith, the owner of
the San Diego Padres, who had raised $1 million for Nixons 1968 election.
When an IRS investigator handed Millers replacement, Harry Steward, a
report on illegal campaign contributions by Smith and acts of bribery that
violated the Corrupt Practices Act, Steward allegedly told him to knock it
off and refused to issue a grand jury subpoena.
Nixons close ties to the mob emerged from his long political alliance with
the Teamsters Union, which was a prime ally of the Chicago outfit along with
the Hollywood studios as they crushed a militant Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) and supported the anti-communist purge of the motion
picture industry.
First page of Ramparts article exposing alliance between C. Arnholt Smith
and Richard Nixon, with a photo of the two embracing. [Source: jfk.hood.edu]
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was investigated by the Justice Department
in 1957 for involvement in a fraudulent Florida venture (Sun Valley) that
sold boggy land to unsuspecting Teamster members as retirement property.
Jimmy Hoffa [Source: pinterest.com]
He gave generously to Nixons 1960 presidential campaign and encouraged
other Teamsters to do the same in 1968 when Hoffa was behind bars after
being convicted of mail and wire fraud for improper use of Teamsters pension
funds.
Once in the Oval Office, Nixon got the Justice Department to indict the key
federal witness against Hoffa twice, and instructed Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst to derail any further investigations against Hoffa or his
allies.
Nixon shakes hands with Richard Kleindienst. [Source:
uspresidentialhistory.com]
Former Teamsters President James Hoffa leaves the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,
penitentiary on December 23, 1971, after having his sentence commuted by
Nixon. [Source: nydailynews.com]
Nixon further helped secure Hoffas release from prison while plans were
being developed to recruit Teamster thugs to beat up anti-war
demonstrators.[3]
Nixons moral turpitude was exposed on a wide scale during the Watergate
hearings, which were prompted by Nixons illegal spying on his Democratic
Party rivals during the 1972 election.
The burglars who broke into the Watergate Hotel were globe-trotting CIA
officers who had been involved in the 1954 Guatemalan coup, the Bay of Pigs
and CIA-mafia plots against Castro, which Nixon championed.
[Source: twitter.com]
According to ringleader G, Gordon Liddy, the purpose of the break-in was to
determine what dirty secrets the DNCs boss, Lawrence OBrien, had learned
about Nixon while working as the Howard Hughes organizations top Washington
political adviser after the 1968 election.
Howard Hughes [Source: onlinenevada.org]
Lawrence OBrien [Source: wikipedia.org]
These secrets included $100,000 in cash payoffs made by Hughes, owner of a
major aerospace company, via Nixons close friend, Charles Bebe Rebozo, in
1969 and 1970, and Nixons treasonous sabotage of Lyndon B. Johnsons
proposed peace talks with North Vietnam in 1968, which would have benefitted
Nixons adversary, Hubert Humphrey, in the election.
Up to no good: Nixon and Bebe Rebozo in Key Biscayne, Florida, in 1969.
[Source: nydailynews.com]
Triumph of the Deep State
Donald J. Trump was a direct heir of Nixon: Both were mentored by Joe
McCarthys mob-connected lawyer, Roy Cohn, and ruthlessly attacked their
opponents.
Trumps ties to organized crime dated back to his years as a New York real
estate mogul when he hired demolition workers controlled by the Genovese
crime family and purchased concrete from companies owned by mafia families.
Donald Trump with Roy Cohn in the late 1980s. Journalist Wayne Barrett
described Cohn as a walking advertisement for every form of graft.
[Source: cnbc.com]
Though Trumps supporters were convinced that Trump was a victim of a deep
state conspiracy against him, Trumps election was in fact a culmination of
the triumph of deep politics, which Marshall defines as a form of
organized and systematic corruption, or covert influencing of policy and
administration, on a scale that subverts national democratic norms.
The organized and systemic corruption was briefly exposed in the 1950s
Kefauver hearings on organized crime and as a result of the Watergate
scandal and Church Committee investigations into the CIA, but never
effectively contained.
Estes Kefauver (D-TN), standing in center, led hearings that exposed the
deep reach of organized crime in the early 1950s. [Source: themobmuseum.org]
The presidents featured in Dark Quadrant were able to pass some progressive
legislationranging from the desegregation of the armed forces under Truman
to the Civil Rights Act, Medicaid and anti-poverty initiatives under
Johnson, to Nixons establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA)and presided over a period of economic prosperity.
However, they ultimately governed in the interests of their corporate and
mob-linked donors, betrayed democratic values, and corroded the nations
moral fabric.
With a new Cold War heating up, U.S. leaders now strive to present U.S.
global leadership as necessary to save the world from Russian and Chinese
autocracy.
Marshalls study reminds us, however, that the United States evolved after
World War II as a corrupted dollarocracy. Its rhetoric about promoting
democracy around the world as such rings hollow.