Hank Greenspun, Fiery Publisher of Las Vegas Sun, Dies

Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun who ran guns for Israel and public relations campaigns for mobster Bugsy Siegel before turning his combative talents to journalism, died Saturday. He was 79.

His last of many battles was with cancer and it lasted more than a year. Greenspun died at his home in Regency Towers at the Las Vegas Country Club.

In a career more colorful than many of the personalties his newspaper covered, Greenspun was, in turn, a decorated World War II officer, outspoken foe of Communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, ally-turned-adversary of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and champion of U.S. District Judge Harry E. Clairborne, the first federal jurist convicted of a felony while on the bench.

He also practiced law, was targeted by Watergate burglars, battled the Internal Revenue Service and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.

One of the first to see the potential of Las Vegas, Greenspun founded its first radio station, boosted its development possibilities and eventually capitalized on the real estate boom which followed the casinos and gamblers to the desert.

Journalist and author A.J. Liebling once described Greenspun as “an editor-publisher type supposed to have gone out with Derringer pistols and the Gold Rush.”

For all the controversy he generated in later life, Herman Milton Greenspun’s early years were ordinary enough. Born in Brooklyn on Aug. 27, 1909, he followed his mother’s wishes and became a lawyer, although the practice held little interest for him.

A life-long Republican, in the early 1930s he worked for the election of Fiorello H. LaGuardia as mayor of New York City against the bosses of Tammany Hall. Greenspun was drafted into the Army in World War II, rose to the rank of major and served with Gen. George C. Patton’s 3rd Army.

It was during the war, stationed in Ireland, that he met and married Barbara Ritchie. They had four children--Susan, Brian, Jane and Daniel.

Back in a seemingly unexciting New York law practice at war’s end, Greenspun jumped at the chance when a friend asked him to help start a horse racing track near the little known town of Las Vegas, Nev.

The track venture failed, but Greenspun was hooked. To make ends meet, he published a small-circulation magazine boosting the virtues of his new hometown. And he did publicity for the new Flamingo Hotel that Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel was just opening. When Siegel was gunned down in Los Angeles on June 20, 1947, Greenspun ended his public relations career and started anew in broadcasting, opening Las Vegas’ first radio station.

That career was interrupted by a brief stint as a gun-runner for the Israelis in the months before independence.

He purchased the Sun in 1950 for $104,000 using a $1,000 down payment, which he borrowed. Less than two weeks later, Greenspun made sure his newspaper got the scoop when he was convicted for his gun-running endeavor. Although he agreed to a guilty plea, he refused to enter the plea before the court until the deadlines for the Sun’s chief competition had passed. Then, he wrote his own bylined story on his case.

Greenspun explained his journalism philosophy in a 1982 interview with Harper’s magazine.

“I don’t believe in an objective press, a responsible press. I believe in a subjective press . . . I make my judgment of a guy, and it’s published in the Las Vegas Sun.”