John Philip Nichols is a mystery man whose connections ranged from Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan to former South Dakota Senator James Aboureszk, to intelligence operative and informer Michael Riconosciuto and finally to alleged hit man Jimmy Hughes.
John Philip Nichols was all these things, but he described himself as a radical and the only child of parents he described as dedicated advocates of union movements across the United States. He claims to have met John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers Union. Nichols said that Lewis taught him a great lesson “that he must be true to his family, the movement, the local union then God and maybe country….in that order”. In his early thirties Nichols became Secretary-Treasurer of the International Teamsters Union and got to know its President Jimmy Hoffa personally. The relationship was so close that when the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Racketeering was investigating Jimmy Hoffa, Nichols temporarily relocated to Washington D.C. to assist Hoffa's defense.
On Page 11 of John Philip Nichols resume (Read his resume) he describes his world wide travels while he was working as the Cabazon Manager. He claimed that while ” helping a small Native American tribe develop its own skills in breaking the poverty cycle” he traveled to Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Germany, England, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia in a three year period. Additionally, police reports show that John Philip Nichols also did business in South Africa, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Canada and France.
While in Brazil Nichols was sales and advertising manager for Refrescos Do Brasil (Coca Cola) bottling and later he worked in marketing for the Anderson Clayton Corporation.
The time span between Brazil and the Nichols family arrival at the Cabazon Reservation have not been widely covered in the media but it is essential to an understanding of the man that brought the bright sun of gambling riches to a small desert tribe at the cost of some of the tribal members lives.
The best description of these years is contained on pages 27 and 28 of a book published in 1995, commissioned by the youngest son, Mark Nichols and paid for by the Cabazon tribe.
Return of the Buffalo by Ambrose L. Lane Sr. is clearly a biased book but one that is invaluable to understanding what happened in the 70s and 80s in Indio, California. Lane’s interview with Nichols Sr. recounted the Latin American years of Nichols’ career:
Nichols then returned to the United States for a short period. While waiting to return to Latin America, he took a temporary assignment as Executive Director of the Lower Eastside Neighborhood Association in New York City. Securing a position with Church World Service as staff representative, Nichols was assigned to Ayuda Christiana Evangelica (ACE) and the Concilio Evangelica de Chile. He would be based in Santiago and would be supervised by Obispo Enrique Chavez.
For more than four years, Nichols worked with health and social welfare treatment facilities and on economic-development projects of Chile's almost 900 local committees, covering a 2,300-mile area serving 2,000,000 Chilean Evangelicals. Among these projects were setting up and working small mines for precious stones such as lapis lazuli and various kinds of metals, deep-sea diving, the collection of abalone, the cultivation and gathering of seaweed for the Far East market, sawmills, millwork factories and native crafts work centers.
From that operations base, Nichols did consultation work for evangelical groups in Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, Bolivia and similar economic-development work with COMBASE, a group representing Protestant, Evangelical, Mennonite and Pentecostal churches in Bolivia.
In 1967, 10 years before contracting with the Cabazon's in California, Nichols was a consultant to the Chilean Council of Churches delegation to the World Congress of Pentecostalism in Rio de Janeiro. He was also a delegate from Chile to the World Congress of Evangelicals held in Berlin, West Germany, in 1966. Assisted by his wife, Joann, he was ACE’s official coordinator for disaster relief within Chile and throughout Latin America. While serving in that position in 1965, 80 percent of the country was declared a disaster because of the devastation from nationwide earthquakes and tidal waves produced by another mammoth earthquake. During this time, he and Joann coordinated the feeding of 3,000,000 people, the rebuilding of thousands of houses, the distribution of planeloads of clothing and blankets and the establishment of post-disaster cooperative economic-development enterprises.
Before returning to the United States, Nichols made several trips to countries in Africa as an economic-development consultant after the Declaration of Rancaqua was drafted. The Declaration was a faith statement for Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Nichols, Obispo Chavez Pentecostal Church of Chile, the Reverndo Coelho Ferraz Presbyterian Church of Brazil, and Reverndo Geraldo Valdevia were among the drafters of the Declaration. To raise money for Evangelical economic and social-health-development projects, Bishop Chavez, Nichols and other staff made multiple trips to the Orient and throughout Europe. In late 1967, Nichols sought and was granted a five-year leave of absence by the board of ACE so he could return to the United States for his children’s education. The leave was twice extended so that he could represent ACE with resource-development activities in the United States and Europe.
Upon his return to America, Nichols, Joann, and Dr. William Willner formed Pro Plan International Ltd. Inc. in Tallahassee, Florida. Willner was a lawyer, the retired Director of Grants and Contract Management of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, and a professor of public administration. Together Nichols and Willner wrote and published two major training books: Revenue Sharing in 1973, and Handbook of Grants and Contracts for Nonprofit Organizations in 1976. Included in the latter book were the Federal Register regulations, published November 4, 1975, governing the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, Public Law 93-638. The year it was published, Joe Benitez and Nichols met for the first time, and one year later Benitez, Welmas, Nichols and the Cabazon Band’s Business Committee had reached a meeting of the minds. Given Nichol’s broad-reaching experience, all that needed to be done was to formalize an agreement on paper and secure the money to pay for his services [at the Cabazon reservation].
A Western Union Telegram dated July 3, 1979 addressed to Mr. David E. DeSerio of St. Petersburg, Florida and copied to John Philip Nichols on behalf of all parties discussed the transfer of over 57 tons of gold
(Click to Gold Telex). The hard copy of this telegram was recovered from the remaining possessions of Fred Alvarez by his parents following the assassination of their son and two of his friends in June of 1981. The telegram was given to this reporter by the Alvarez parents in October of 1991. The motive behind the gold transfer and the reason John Philip Nichols was handling the transaction remains unknown.
In 1978 John Philip Nichols and his family’s company Pro Plan International Ltd. took control of the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California. Assisted by his close friend, the former Senator from South Dakota James Aboureszk, Nichols exercised absolute control over the tribe’s powerful business committee. Working hand in iron glove with Aboureszk and using powerful political connections the two men pushed through the “Cabazon Decision” that made gaming on Indian Reservations legal.
That historic Supreme Court decision was handed down on February 25, 1987. Nichols second oldest son John Paul Nichols described the impact of this decision on the Cabazon tribe and the Nichols family:
When we won the Supreme Court decision, we all of a sudden were legitimatized. We were legitimatized in the view of Indian tribes nationwide. We, all of a sudden, became a political
force in and of itselfbecause the Cabazon Decision became the law of the land, if you will, and so, this small little tribe of 25 members, voting members, all of a sudden had the influence of 25,000 members. We became, in fact,
one of the most influential tribes in the nation. It was an amazing turnaround from going to tribal meetings before that decision to going to tribal meetings after that decision. It was almost like being ostracized
and then treated overly with respect, if you will.
