What a photo op: Goodman, FBI playing nice

Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

The FBI will cut the ribbon on its new Las Vegas office this morning during a ceremony that should provide a remarkable image: Standing next to guys with guns in shoulder holsters and mirrored sun glasses will be Mayor Oscar Goodman.

That's Goodman, as in the former attorney for Tony "The Ant" Spilotro and other mob figures over three decades, as in the guy who was once quoted as saying he "never met an FBI agent who told the truth," as in the father who once said he would prefer to have his daughter date Spilotro to an FBI agent.

Yeah, that Goodman.

Perhaps he has made up with the newer crop of FBI agents in Las Vegas, although no one from the agency could be reached for comment Monday. But how about the former agents who squared off against the mayor and his clients ?

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" was the response of Dennis Arnoldy, an ex-agent who helped roll mobster Frank Cullota.

"You know, what can I say about that?" Arnoldy said. Long pause. "I honestly don't know what to say. It does seem a little odd."

Then there's Joe Yablonsky, who led the Las Vegas field office from 1980 to '83.

"Boy, that's a strange one," said Yablonsky, now living in a retirement community in Lady Lake, Fla. "Oh , wow. What an incongruity." (Yablonsky, however, saved many of his cutting remarks for the Sun, a paper that went hard after him during his short tenure here.)

For his part, Goodman doesn't deny the quotes about lying agents and preferring mobsters to FBI agents for his daughter. "Sure I said it," Goodman said. "I wanted to eat (Yablonsky's) heart out."

Then again, on his watch as mayor, Las Vegas donated the land for the new FBI office, in Enterprise Park, near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards. And he said he worked hard to keep the FBI in Las Vegas.

"They were moving to Henderson and I urged them to keep it in my city," he said. "I'm completely supportive of their presence in Las Vegas. Right now, I think I'm their best friend."

Will the FBI return the favor? It's not out of the realm of possibility, even if the city is converting the old Post Office, on Stewart Avenue west of City Hall, into what's being called the Mob Museum.

In the words of Mark Kaspar, who investigated Spilotro for the FBI and met Goodman many times over the years: "I always did fine with him. He was always on the up and up."