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TANGENTS is one of America's most interesting "open forums'' for the reporting of events and the expression of individual viewpoints on the subject of sexual orientation and behavior. But it depends on YOU, the reader, for clippings, reports and letters which can be used for its columns. KEEP THEM COMING to 2256 Venice Boulevard by consulting your local news sources regularly, being sure to include NAME and DATE of publication with each clipping. UNDATED, UNIDENTIFIED CLIPPINGS MUST BE DISCARDED.

THE MOBSTER THREAT

During early June, 1965, NEWSDAY, one of Long Island's foremost newspapers, ran lurid reports concerning the Magic Touch Club of Island Park. The reports, if true, indicate that the homosexual community of Long Island (in predictable succession to that of Manhattan) is being exploited by Mafiatype operations. In this case, members of New York's "Cosa Nostra" were cited as operating the Magic Touch Club "catering to sex deviates," in addition to a large number of similar bars in the Greenwich Village district. In Long Island, establishments protected by the mobsters flourished, while others not "cleared" by the underworld syndicate were mysteriously

burned to the ground. First evidence of mob encroachments into this area were uncovered by Nassau County's Arson Squad investigating suspicious blazes which razed two cocktail lounges on the South Shore. When it was learned that both of these were gay bars, investigators zeroed in on other questionable fires which within the preceding year had destroyed three other bars of the same type; and in the course of these investigations a number of underworld names came to light.

Nassau District Attorney Cahn himself led the 2:00 A.M. raid on the Magic Touch Club, which had to be conducted an hour earlier than planned, as the plainclothes agents which had been sent in

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