Charles Keating
Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. was an American sportsman, lawyer, real estate developer, banker, financier, conservative activist, and convicted felon best known for his role in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s.
Keating was a champion swimmer for the University of Cincinnati in the 1940s. From the late 1950s through the 1970s, he was a noted anti-pornography activist, founding the organization Citizens for Decent Literature and serving as a member on the 1969 President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.
In the 1980s, Keating ran American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, and took advantage of loosened restrictions on banking investments. His enterprises began to suffer financial problems and were investigated by federal regulators. His financial contributions to, and requests for regulatory intervention from, five sitting U.S. senators led to those legislators being dubbed the "Keating Five".
When Lincoln failed in 1989 it cost the federal government over $3 billion and about 23,000 customers were left with worthless bonds. In the early 1990s, Keating was convicted in both federal and state courts of many counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. He served four and a half years in prison before those convictions were overturned in 1996. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to a more limited set of wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud counts, and was sentenced to the time he had already served. Keating spent his final years in low-profile real estate activities until his death in 2014.
Early life and military service
Keating was born on December 4, 1923, in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a devout Roman Catholic family. He was the son of Adele and Charles Humphrey Keating. He grew up in the Avondale and Clifton neighborhoods of that city.His younger brother William was born in 1927. Their father came from Kentucky and managed a dairy. Charles Keating Sr. lost a leg in a hunting accident, and then fell into a long decline from Parkinson's disease around 1931, and was nursed by his wife until his death in 1964.
Keating began swimming at a Catholic summer camp and became passionately involved in the sport. He attended St. Xavier High School, where he was a good student, was on the swimming team all four years, and also ran track and played football.
In swimming he led the team to three Greater Catholic League championships, set several school records, was named all-state, and was captain of the team in his senior year. Keating graduated from St Xavier in 1941.
After one semester at the University of Cincinnati in fall 1941, Keating left because of poor grades, although he advanced to the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in 1942, finishing sixth in the 200 yard breaststroke. He enlisted in the United States Navy. He trained in the Navy Air Corps to become a carrier-based pilot flying Grumman F6F Hellcats.
During World War II, Keating was stationed in the U.S., sometimes at Banana Creek in Florida, and flew Hellcats to armed services swimming meets. He was not injured at Naval Air Station Vero Beach when he failed to lower the landing gear on his Hellcat wrecking his plane in a belly landing. Due to squadron transfers and receiving additional training on new intercept methods, the war ended without his being engaged in combat.
Education and swimming
Keating was ready to return to college after finishing his Navy service in 1945. His abilities as a swimmer made him an attractive recruit, despite his having dropped out earlier. He cut a deal with the University of Cincinnati wherein it would accept for academic credit much of his Navy service, then he would take six months of liberal arts courses before entering its law school.Keating won the 200-yard breaststroke at the Ohio Intercollegiate Conference championship in 1945. On March 30, 1946, Keating competed in the 200-yard breaststroke at the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships at Yale University's Payne Whitney Gymnasium. In an exciting, back-and-forth contest with Paul Murray of Cornell University and future coaching legend James Counsilman of Ohio State University, he prevailed by a foot to win the championship with a time of 2:26.2.
This was the first ever national championship in any sport for the University of Cincinnati. He and teammate Roy Lagaly become the first-ever Bearcats to be named All-Americans. Keating was an imposing 6 feet 5 inches, a natural leader and co-captain of the team with Lagaly. Of Keating, Lagaly said, "You could tell even then he was going to be very successful. He was very ambitious. Whatever he did, he did all the way." Keating followed this by swimming for Cincinnati Gym, finishing second to future Olympic gold medalist Joseph Verdeur in the 220-yard breaststroke at the April 1946 national AAU championships.
Keating received his law degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1948, and would later be named a member of the university's Athletic Hall of Fame.
Charles Keating was a long-time supporter of U.S. swimming and beginning in 1969 he and his brother William donated $600,000 to St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati to build a state-of-the-art competition pool. The school's swimming team went on to win many state titles. St. Xavier named the Keating Natatorium after the brothers' father, and inducted Charles Keating into its initial Athletic Hall of Fame class in 1985. The University of Cincinnati's 2006 athletic building is named the Keating Aquatic Center, in honor of William Keating, and donations from the Keating family used to construct it. Charles Keating funded Cincinnati's Marlins swim club; six swimmers on the 1980 Summer Olympics squad were from its roster, including future Olympic champion Mary T. Meagher. When he later moved to Phoenix, Charles Keating built the Phoenix Swim Club, where Olympians also trained.
Marriage and family
Keating married Mary Elaine Fette in 1949. She was an athletically-minded Catholic from an established Cincinnati family. They had six children: daughters Kathleen, Mary, Maureen, Elaine, and Elizabeth, and a son, Charles Keating III.His daughter Mary married Gary Hall, who would go on to swim in the 1968, 1972, and 1976 Summer Olympics, winning a medal in each one. Charles Keating III swam in the 1976 Summer Olympics, finishing fifth in the 200-meter breaststroke. Keating's grandson Gary Hall Jr. competed in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Summer Olympics as a swimmer and won ten medals overall.
Another Keating grandson, Chief petty officer Charles Keating IV, a Navy SEAL, was killed at age 31 in combat with ISIS in Iraq in 2016. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in combat.
Early legal and business career
After law school graduation, Keating did spot legal work for the FBI, then joined a law firm doing corporate law. On the side, he entered the business world where his ventures involved selling life insurance, running a fruit stand, and working for Roto-Rooter.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 & Klekamp. 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. 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 fraudulent and launched an investigation of him, but no charges were made. Keating was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar in 1958.
In 1960, Lindner and Keating created American Financial Corporation, a holding company of Lindner's disparate businesses that created further subsidiaries and financial instruments, all doing business with each other. Keating was named to the board of directors of the company in 1963.
Anti-pornography activism
In 1956, Keating joined a priest leading a group of Catholics in Cincinnati who were concerned about the dangers of pornography, and he began giving talks on the subject to parents and other groups. In 1958, Keating 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", and that it was closely tied to juvenile delinquency, while also quoting a Senate Committee report that "part of the Communist conspiracy was to print ". Keating mentioned links between pornography and Communism at other times, but distanced himself from the more fervent anti-Communist groups of the early 1960s. He stated that 90 percent of obscene materials were produced for profit, not ideological reasons, and told Congress in 1960, "I had better say that I am not blaming obscenity in America on the Communists."Keating founded Citizens for Decent Literature in 1958, which advocated reading classics not "smut." It would grow to 300 chapters and 100,000 members nationwide and become the largest anti-pornography organization in the nation. It absorbed some other groups, such as National Citizens for Decent Literature and the Pittsburgh National Better Magazines Council. The structure of CDL was initially decentralized, but Keating grew frustrated with some local chapters taking aggressive actions he did not approve of, and so he gave it a more controlled focus with a national magazine, film production, and a greater role in legal actions.
Over the next two decades, CDL mailed some 40 million letters on behalf of its position and filed a series of amicus curiae briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. Keating gained the nickname "Mr. Clean".
In 1964–65, Keating produced Perversion for Profit, a film featuring announcer George Putnam. It was a survey of then-available prurient and obscene materials, and asserted that pornography led to moral decay. It, along with two lesser-known films produced or distributed by CDL, was screened frequently throughout the country and remained in print for a long time.
In 1969, Keating's national reputation on the issue led President Nixon to appoint him to the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which had been begun under Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson. The majority on the commission issued a report which concluded that pornography does not degrade the morals of adults or cause crime, and recommended that all federal, state, and local laws preventing consenting adults from obtaining pornographic materials be repealed. Keating, Nixon's only appointee on the 18-person commission, was the leading commission dissenter from the report.
In September 1970, Keating was granted a temporary restraining order from the D.C. Federal District Court to delay publication of the report, stating that he needed access to all the report's backing materials and time to write a dissent. Several days later, Keating was given the desired materials and two weeks to write his report by the committee.
Keating filed his dissent, saying, "At a time when the spread of pornography has reached epidemic proportions in our country and when the moral fiber of our nation seems to be rapidly unravelling, the desperate need is for enlightenment and intelligent control of the poisons which threaten us – not the declaration of moral bankruptcy inherent in the repeal of the laws which have been the defense of decent people against the pornographer for profit." Keating wrote, "One can consult all the experts he chooses, can write reports, make studies, etc., but the fact that obscenity corrupts lies within the common sense, the reason, and the logic of every man."
The Nixon administration tacitly supported Keating's legal efforts, and counsellor to the President John Ehrlichman assigned White House speechwriter Pat Buchanan to help draft the dissenting report. The commission's majority report was denounced by congressional leaders of both parties as well as by the administration.
The commission involvement earned Keating further national attention, which he used to push towards stringent behavior in Cincinnati. In 1969, Keating obtained an injunction preventing the showing in Cincinnati of softcore sexploitation master Russ Meyer's film Vixen!, claiming it was obscene, and the film was seized by the police the first day it opened. Showing of the film was successfully stopped in other parts of Ohio as well, and Meyer spent $250,000 in defense against Keating's legal actions. Keating said Meyer had done more to undermine morals in the nation than anyone else; Meyer responded that "I was glad to do it." The Cincinnati Vixen! case was appealed and in 1971 the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the prohibition.
In 1970, Keating tried to block a closed-circuit showing of the musical Oh! Calcutta! in Cincinnati, saying that "it appeals to a prurient interest in sex." During 1972, a Keating legal action kept a sex film theater shut as a "public nuisance". He tried to prevent newsstands near his office from selling Playboy and Oui magazines. He denounced the Ramada Inn chain for offering adult programming on cable television to guests. Other local actions involving shutting stores and removing books from public libraries were attributed by civil liberties advocates to the "oppressive" trend that Keating had set. Such was Keating and his organization's effectiveness that when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the 1973 Miller v. California decision establishing that obscenity definitions be based upon local community standards, every adult bookstore and movie house in Cincinnati was closed within hours.
Citizens for Decent Literature and Keating often warned about homosexuality as an example of what they saw as perverse behavior. The film Perversion for Profit had included a claim that homosexuals had a slogan saying that "today's conquest is tomorrow's competition"; in a 1977 speech in Miami, Keating repeated this phrase, concluding from it that homosexuality represented an endless "seduction of the innocent".
In 1975, Oui magazine gave Keating the top spot on its "Enemies of pornography" list. Hamilton County prosecutor Simon L. Leis Jr. put Ohio pornographer Larry Flynt on trial in 1976 for pandering obscenity and for engaging in a form of organized crime. Local public opinion ran against Flynt. Flynt was convicted on both counts and received the maximum sentence of 7 to 25 years in prison. While the conviction was later overturned on appeal, the verdict again established Cincinnati's community standards in this regard, and even after Keating left for Arizona, his influence remained in Cincinnati being a center of anti-pornography fervor. In the 1996 biopic, The People vs. Larry Flynt, which reportedly exaggerated Keating's role in the prosecution and trial, Keating was portrayed by actor James Cromwell. Attempts to show Vixen! in Cincinnati would continue, but by the late 1990s it was still illegal to do so. However, when in 1990, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie were prosecuted for obscenity for exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe's traveling solo show The Perfect Moment, they were found not guilty by a jury.