Riesel worked several different jobs to support himself, and found employment in a hat factory, lace plant, steel mill, and saw mill. In 1956, Riesel began working with United States Attorney Paul Williams to rein in labor racketeering in the New York City garment and trucking industries. Portions of Riesel's face (see right photo, above, compared to left photo, particularly the left cheek, jaw line, and jowls; the eyebrows; and the forehead) were permanently scarred as well. Riesel wore dark glasses for the rest of his life to hide his damaged eyes, which many people found difficult to look at. On August 29, 1956, Genovese crime family
underboss Johnny Dio was arrested for conspiracy in the Riesel attack, pleaded not guilty, and was released on $100,000 bond even though prosecutors later publicly linked him to the Telvi murder. Joseph Carlino, a Dio associate who had hired Telvi to attack Riesel, pleaded guilty on October 22, and prosecutors severed Dio's trial from the others. Carlino later testified that Dio had ordered Genovese mob associate Gandolfo Miranti to find a hitman and identify Riesel, and that Miranti had contacted Dominick Bando to assist him in finding the hitman (Bando contacting Carlino, who sought out Telvi). Miranti and Bando were then found guilty (Bando pleading guilty at the last moment). Conspiracy charges against Dio were later dropped despite the convictions. Dio's attorney delayed the trial for nearly five months with motions. When the trial finally began, Carlino and Miranti recanted their pre-trial statements and courtroom testimony, claiming they did not know who had ordered the attack on Riesel. By September 1957, the government no longer sought to prosecute Dio for the attack. Miranti received 8 to 16 years in prison and Bando 2 to 5 years in prison for the acid attack and another five years for
contempt of court. Carlino received a suspended sentence for cooperating with the prosecution, and three other co-conspirators were freed after the judge in their case declared a
mistrial. The
Daily Mirror paid one witness $5,000 in 1961 for information leading to the identification of Abraham Telvi as the assailant. The attack on Riesel had significant implications for national American labor policy.
President Dwight Eisenhower (who had seen Riesel on
Meet the Press) told
AFL-CIO President
George Meany that he was so incensed by the attack on Riesel that he intended to introduce legislation designed to root out corruption in labor unions.
Clark R. Mollenhoff, editor of the
Des Moines Register, was so alarmed by the attack on Riesel that he ordered extensive investigations into trade union corruption. Mollenhoff's investigative efforts unearthed much evidence that
Teamsters President
Jimmy Hoffa was engaged in labor racketeering. This committee's investigations led directly to the passage of the
Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which imposed financial reporting requirements on labor unions, limited the power of trusteeships, established many member and employer rights. He continued to write his column, typing it himself while his wife read newspapers and
wire service articles to him. In 1941, he told the
Union for Democratic Action that Rep.
Martin Dies Jr. was intent on establishing a national fascist police force to suppress freedom of speech in the United States. Riesel's attacks on fascism lessened after victory in World War II, and he focused almost exclusively on communism after 1950. Riesel's attacks on communism extended beyond labor unions. He attacked folk musician
Vern Partlow for promoting communism and undermining American national security with his 1945
talking blues song "Atomic Talking Blues" (also known as "Talking Atom" and "Old Man Atom"). In 1949, he was named a director of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China, a part of the
China Lobby. At least one author alleges that Riesel even cooperated with the
Central Intelligence Agency beginning in the early 1950s, providing information on liberal politicians and union leaders. In the early 1950s, he supported a movement to stop the importation of goods from the
Soviet Union into the United States, and for a time
longshoremen on the
East Coast refused to unload Soviet ships due to Riesel's campaign. He publicly called for a "preventive war" with the Soviet Union in 1951, and demanded that President
Harry S. Truman drop the
atomic bomb on Russia and
China. Riesel was a member of the
Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, founded in 1963. He strongly criticized
Malcolm X for meeting with
Shirley Graham Du Bois and
Julian Mayfield in the mid-1960s, and accused Malcolm X of fomenting communist conspiracies. In the early 1970s, Riesel became an unofficial advisor to President
Richard Nixon. He supported Nixon in his column, discussed labor union issues and outreach to working-class voters with him personally over the phone, and occasionally met with
Cabinet members. Even as late as 1973, Riesel was defending
COINTELPRO, a series of
covert and often illegal projects conducted by the FBI aimed at investigating and disrupting
dissident political organizations in the U.S. suspected of disloyalty. Riesel was intimately involved in the
Hollywood blacklist of the late 1940s and 1950s. He strongly criticized
Samuel Fuller's 1951
Korean War film
The Steel Helmet for promoting communism and portraying American soldiers as murderers. He also attacked the 1954 pro-union film
Salt of the Earth as communistic, and implied that the production's on-location proximity to
Los Alamos National Laboratory and the
Nevada Test Site was a cover for Soviet spying on the American nuclear weapons program. Riesel saw it as his patriotic duty to publicize allegations of communist influence made against actors, directors, producers, and others (especially those claims made by conservative actors
Adolphe Menjou and
Ward Bond). As the blacklist lifted, Riesel agreed to allow his column to become a means for blacklisted individuals to admit their offenses, denounce communism, and become active in the motion picture industry again. Along with
Hedda Hopper and
Walter Winchell, he would meet privately with these individuals, assess the sincerity of their
penance, and then work with them to help rehabilitate their careers if he believed they were being honest with him.
Later life After the Daily Mirror ceased publication in October, 1963, Riesel continued to publish his syndicated column. Riesel was elected a director of the Overseas Press Club in 1962, and the organization's president in 1966 (he served a single one-year term). Riesel retired his column in 1990. == Personal life and death ==