100 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
work of pinball machines and girlie joints, the Colacurcios had faced
racketeering charges for years. The Italian community in Seattle was
close-knit. The Colacurcio and Rosellini families were longtime friends.
Rosellini, in fact, had defended Frank Colacurcio Sr. in 1943 on a charge
of “carnal knowledge” of an underage girl. As recently as 1969 he had put
in a good word for the family with police higher-ups in connection with
bingo parlors. Rosellini, ironically, had made his name as a young state
senator in 1951, emulating the celebrated U.S. Senate Kefauver Commit-
tee by investigating organized crime in Washington State.^11
The Dysart caper not only had the politicians in a dither, Seattle’s two
daily papers and the best TV station in town, KING, were instantly em-
broiled, looking for new angles and swapping thinly veiled insults. The
Times was angry that Dysart had gone to the P-I with the Rosellini-Cola-
curcio story and the P-I was annoyed that the Times wanted to know what
it knew and when.
Dysart was exploring an anonymous tip that Rosellini had helped
Frank Colacurcio’s brother and a nephew with a liquor license in Ha-
waii in 1971. He passed along the information to the Evans campaign,
which sent a private eye to Honolulu for more sniffing. Dysart had
shopped the story to KING Broadcasting as well as the Post-Intelligencer.
Don McGaffin, KING-TV’s ace investigative reporter—a Mickey Spill-
ane character come to life, trench coat and all—loved afflicting the
comfortable. He was skeptical, though, that Rosellini would be dumb
enough to be the Colacurcios’ consigliere and incredulous that Dysart
thought a newsman would accept an invitation to fly to Honolulu for an
investigation. “He offered to advance the money for plane fare,” McGaf-
fin said, adding that Dysart had assured him that Jim Dolliver and
Gummie Johnson, two of Evans’ most trusted confidants, knew he was
investigating Rosellini, as did Jay Gilmour, chairman of the Evans cam-
paign committee.^12
Station management shared McGaffin’s wariness and “urged caution
so that KING would not be manipulated to smear Rosellini.” McGaffin
checked out Dysart’s tip with reliable sources in Seattle and Hawaii and
concluded the evidence was too flimsy to warrant a story. Then he called
Gorton to ask why his chief deputy was busy trying to dig up dirt on
Rosellini. “Huh?” said Slade. “I don’t know anything about it!” He nosed
around that night and, with mounting anger, confirmed it was true. Sally
Gorton recalls her husband arriving home at 2 a.m., visibly shaken. He
rarely talked politics at home and invariably was in bed before 11, his nose
in a book. Dysart was called on the carpet the next morning and immedi-