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Follow the link in the show notes to find out more. Hello and welcome to The Bunker, your need to know on news and politics.

I'm Seth Teville. As the saying goes, the secret ingredient is crime.

Gangsters and organised crime have always made for fascinating stories, as the prevalence

of true crime podcasts attests. And politicians are no exception, particularly in the US,

the tales and manifold of John F. Kennedy's Faustian pact with the mafia to win the 1960 election.

But a much wider look at this can be found in Eric Dazenhall's time-the-new book,

Wise Guys and the White House, gangsters, presidents, and the deals they made.

It tells the story of the many colourful mafia links of US presidents over the last 90 years,

from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Donald Trump.

We're very lucky to be joined by Eric Dazen Hall. Welcome to the bunker, Eric. Thanks for having me. This is fun.

No, it's great. Your background is in crisis communications. So what first interested you

about this topic? Well, my career, my day job for 40 years was running a crisis management firm,

but that was somewhat separate from my literary interests. I mean, I grew up in New Jersey

around organized crime. It was not unusual to have a family member, a neighbor, a little league

coach, somebody who was tied to that world.

And I always was very interested in the presidency.

The first book I remember my mother ordering for me at my request was a book about the presidents.

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