Charles Keating Jr., key figure in '80s savings and loan scandal, dies

[JHB]

21. You are correct. The "morality" campaigning provided cover,...

...letting him cultivate a reputation as an "upstanding citizen" and "Mr. Clean" even as his financial dealings were rather less upstanding and clean.

In 1952, along with his brother, William, and a mutual friend from law school, he became a founding partner of the Cincinnati law firm Keating, Muething & Keating.[21] Beginning in the late 1950s they took on Carl Lindner, Jr. as a client. Lindner was rapidly accumulating ice cream stores, supermarkets, real estate, and savings and loans, and soon essentially became Keating's sole client.[22] In 1956, he filed requests for Q clearances on behalf of a small company of former Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory scientists with an office in Newtown, Ohio; unknown to Keating, the FBI suspected the application was fradulent and launched an investigation of him, but no charges were made.[23][24] Keating was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar in 1958.[25]

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In 1956, Keating joined a priest leading a group of concerned Catholics in Cincinnati who were concerned about the dangers of pornography, and he began giving fervent talks on the subject to parents and other groups.[25] In 1958, Keating went to Washington, D.C. and testified before the House Judiciary Committee on mail-order pornography, saying that it was "capable of poisoning any mind at any age and of perverting our entire younger generation", that it was closely tied to juvenile delinquency, and that it was "part of the Communist conspiracy".[25]

Keating founded Citizens for Decent Literature in 1958, (later renamed a number of times, the best known of which is Citizens for Decency through Law),[14] which advocated reading classics not "smut."[28] It would grow to 300 chapters and 100,000 members nationwide and become the largest anti-pornography organization in the nation.[28] Over the next two decades the organization mailed some 40 million letters on behalf of its position and had filed amicus curiae briefs.[29] Keating gained the moniker "Mr. Clean".[30] During the early 1960s, Keating twice requested FBI assistance on behalf of his anti-pornography campaign but the bureau, still skeptical regarding Keating due to its early investigation, declined.[23][24] In 1964–65, Keating produced Perversion for Profit, a film featuring announcer George Putnam. It was a survey of then-available pornography, and asserted that pornography was linked to juvenile delinquency and decline in culture.[citation needed]

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While officially an outside lawyer, Keating functioned as a public face for Carl Lindner and American Financial Corporation and the two were close associates on business as well as legal matters;[41] Lindner would sometimes refer to Keating as a "founder" of American Financial.[27] The company had easy access to credit lines, which allowed it to continually grow.[26] The web of transactions involving the company and its subsidiaries was large and complex, and one stock analyst stated in 1977 that he had "never come across a company that has so much strange paper on its books."[41]

Keating left his law practice in 1972 and formally joined American Financial Corporation, by now a $1 billion enterprise, as executive vice president.[48] Keating became Lindner's hatchet man, in charge of firing employees from newly acquired companies.[49] Within business circles Keating gained a reputation for aggressiveness and arrogance.[41] He took on an operational involvement in The Cincinnati Enquirer, the town's only morning newspaper.[37] He interfered in editorial decisions, such as adding coverage to high school sports that he or Lindner's sons were involved in. The paper was then sold to a group including his brother, William,[41] who had been a Republican congressman from Ohio's 1st congressional district in the early 1970s. Charles Keating was involved in American Financial's 1974 sale of Bantam Books,[50] and its decision that year not to enter the investment banking field.[51]

In 1975 and 1976, several stockholder lawsuits were filed against American Financial, and Keating was under fire for aspects involving unsecured loans, stock warrants, and the sale of the Enquirer.[41] The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a major investigation of the company and charged Lindner, Keating, and others with having defrauded investors and filing false SEC reports.[27][52] At particular issue was a $14 million loan that the SEC said was made on preferential terms.[10] Keating resigned from American Financial in August 1976, with conflicting stories regarding the reason and whether he remained close to Lindner or had a falling out with him.[8] [41][53]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating#Anti-pornography_activism