  The quasar remnant cores of nearby giant elliptical galaxies NGC 4486 (M87),
NGC 1399, NGC 4649 and NGC 4472 are the sites of supermassive (greater than one
billion solar masses) black holes. These objects are investigated as to the
viability of the conjecture that they could harbor compact dynamos capable of
generating the highest energy cosmic rays. For an accretion process involving
an equipartition magnetic field near the event horizons of the underlying
putative spun-up black holes, the energy achievable in accelerating protons
could well be greater or equal than 100 EeV for all these when only considering
the drag induced by curvature radiation. Estimates of the SED (spectral energy
distribution) of ambient core photons lead to the conclusion that the energy
losses arising from photo-pion production in proton collisions with these
target photons are relatively small for all but M87. For M87, the ambient
photon field is likely to be a limiting factor. Accretion rates on the order of
one solar mass per year, comparable to the Bondi rates and to the stellar mass
loss rates, are associated with (greater than 100 EeV) cosmic ray generation in
the other (electromagnetically dark) galactic core sites. If these sites are
found to be sources of such cosmic rays, it would suggest the presence of a
global inflow of interstellar gas all the way into the center of the host
galaxy.
