Explore the dark underbelly of Portland, Oregon — a city built not just on roses, but rackets, corruption, and buried secrets.

In Rose City Vice: Expanded Edition, veteran journalist Phil Stanford pulls back the curtain on a Northwest city once teeming with graft, organized crime, and political scandal. From the post–Civil War frontier swindles to the infamous Portland Vice Scandal of 1956–57—which led to Senate hearings and national headlines—this gripping nonfiction narrative details a shocking history of prostitution, drugs, murder, and coverups in the City of Roses.

This expanded edition includes Stanford’s explosive true crime short story “Wheeler Dealer,” a chilling tale of murder, betrayal, and conspiracy within Portland’s tight-knit criminal underworld. First published in Portland Monthly, “Wheeler Dealer” has been praised for its meticulous detail and narrative power—blurring the line between investigative journalism and noir storytelling.

By the 1970s, as Portland’s reputation slid from clean-cut to corrupt, Rose City Vice reveals a police narcotics squad gone rogue, a city council high on cocaine, and a mayor embroiled in a disturbing underage scandal—all as the local vice squad watched from the shadows. Stanford’s insider knowledge and razor-sharp prose make this one of the most compelling true crime accounts of citywide moral collapse ever written.

Perfect for fans of David Simon, James Ellroy, and classic noir journalism, this is Portland as you’ve never seen it—raw, dirty, and unforgettable.

Heidi Rikan was an ex-stripper, working for the mob in Washington D.C.  White House Call Girl tells how a call girl operation she was running at the time led to the Watergate break-in, which brought down Tricky Dick Nixon himself. If soft curves and round, plump nipples offend your sense of historical propriety, just take a deep breath and think of this book as documentary evidence – because that’s what it is. Needless to say, this is not part of the Watergate story that has come down to us over the decades. It is also only fair to point out that most of the more conventional Watergate histories — especially the designated official version as propounded by the Washington Post — dismiss this out of hand as dangerous “revisionist” history. If you’re not careful, you might end up being called a “conspiracy theorist.” You can also be called crazy – which is what happened to a young lawyer named Phillip Bailley, one of the principal witnesses to this ignored bit of American history. When he was foolish enough to blow the whistle on Heidi and her call girl ring, he was locked up at St. Elizabeth’s, the District of Columbia’s mental hospital, in the ward for the criminally insane.

For forty years we’ve only heard the Woodward and Bernstein perspective on Watergate. Finally we get to hear (and see) the other version. We’ve got the photos. What’s more, we’ve got Heidi’s little black book.

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Dirty secrets lurk behind the locked doors of every city…In the 1950’s, Portland, Oregon forgot to lock the doors.

It may come as a shock, especially to anyone who has come to regard Portland as a haven for enlightened progressive thought, light rail, and lattes for all, not that long ago — in fact as recently as the 1950s — Portland was known throughout the country as a Mecca of vice and sin. Portland Confidential rips the covers from Portland’s biggest dirty little secret.

It was a side-open town, with purveyors of all the traditional vices operating openly under the noses of the local police. All they had to do was pay off the cops and, of course, their bosses in City Hall. One day in the spring of 1956, it all blew up in everyone’s faces with newspaper exposés, indictments of public officials?including the chief of police, the district attorney, and the Mayor?and shameful national headlines. Things got so bad that Bobby Kennedy, then a young lawyer for the Senate Rackets Committee, hauled two dozen or so of the town’s more colorful characters back to Washington, DC and grilled them before a national television audience. It couldn’t have been more embarrassing. So naturally, when it was all over, everyone came back to town and pretended it never happened. For decades, it’s been Portland’s dirty little secret. Not any more, though?it’s all right here in Portland Confidential.

Author Phil Stanford has worked as a columnist for both the Oregonian and the Portland Tribune and has written for a number of national publications including the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and the Columbia Journalism Review on defense and intelligence matters.

***Companion book to Rose City Vice: Portland in the ‘70s, Dirty Cops and Dirty Robbers***