Buzzy at Princeton
The deep roots of Apollo Global's Jeffrey Epstein problem--Part 3
This is the third part of a story about Apollo Global—the source of many NBA billions. Apollo Global has long been run by Leon Black who paid pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a reported $158 million.
Part 1: Apollo’s conflicts committee included a CIA figure named A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard.
Part 2: fortunes made in the early days of Sears Roebuck, and the CIA-infused company United Fruit.
Part 4: Epstein wasn’t the only one of his kind, especially in Beverly Hills of a certain era.
Here in part three, we will try to understand why this private equity firm with deep NBA ties might have a CIA figure named “Buzzy” on its board, overseeing an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, of all people.
One clue: Buzzy went to college with Carl Icahn. Icahn worked closely with Black at Drexel Burnham Lambert. In different ways, they have all made fortunes together. (Icahn and Black are now among the richest men on the planet.)
Icahn grew up in Brooklyn, and likes to tell the story of how his dad said he would pay for Icahn’s Princeton tuition, but not his room and board. So Icahn says he got himself a job at the Malibu Shore Club, where—after reading a few books on poker and applying his mathematical mind—he spent the summer cleaning up at Shore Club poker games. His parents never asked where he got the money, but he paid his own room and board.
Icahn has a certain intense style that doesn’t win charm awards. Often he brags about it, but it has an edge that bothers even him at times. From a 2006 Ken Auletta profile in The New Yorker:
“I sometimes scare myself I’m so obsessive.” Once, getting into a fight with a boy who spit in his face, Carl became so enraged that he started banging his opponent’s head on a staircase. “If I go over a certain line, I’m like another person,” he said.
Icahn says he never felt much like he fit in anywhere at Princeton, so he didn’t join a top supper club like the storied Ivy Club. He graduated in 1957.
Buzzy and his brother Howard (“Cookie”) went to Princeton too, at about the same time. Buzzy played lacrosse, belonged to the Ivy Club, and graduated in 1958.
Whatever happened, it’s a lock that Krongard and Icahn have been close for a long time. Their business lives are inseparable. Krongard is now on the board of Icahn’s own company and several of the businesses Icahn invests in. In SEC filings, it’s clear to see Buzzy and his wife Cheryl buying and selling stocks like Xerox where Icahn has been central. Over the last couple of years, Krongard and Icahn both moved to Florida, a few miles from each other.
And then there’s a weird, possibly irrelevant, CIA detour to this part of the story. …
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