-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Breaking of a President 1974 - The Nixon Connection Marvin Miller, Compiler Therapy Productions, Inc.©1975 LCCCN 7481547 --[3]-- THE NATIONAL CRIME SYNDICATE Organized crime as we know it today began exactly forty years ago with a meeting of criminals from all over the country in 1934. This meeting marked an end to the constant gang warfare which had characterized the prohibition period of the 1920's. Delegates from Cleveland, Minneapolis. Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, New Jersey and other cities gathered at New York's WaldorfAstoria Hotel to hear Lucky Luciano, Joe Adonis, Johnny Torrio, Moe Dalitz, Abner Zwillman and Meyer Lansky speak of actually implementing the plans for a national crime syndicate first formulated at a national gathering of criminals in Atlantic City during 1929. In 1929 the delegates had taken a map of the United States and divided it up into a number of territories. Luciano then proposed a twelve-member commission made up of the heads of the regional Mafia families to settle all jurisdictional disputes. Although the Italians were thus given a central position in the new organization, the real importance of the conference was that all the major ethnic mobs were represented, whether they were Italian, Irish, Jewish, etc. There was no attempt to set up an Italian "boss of bosses", which had previously led to renewed gang warfare and the non-implementation of most of the 1929 decisions. TWO MAJOR CRIME GROUPS In reality, as Senator Kefauver's 1951 investigation into organized crime showed, the 1934 decisions eventually resulted in the formation of two major crime syndicates led by Jewish and Italian gangsters: "The Accardo-Guzik-fischetti syndicate, whose headquarters are Chicago, and the Costello-Adonis-Lansky syndicate based in New York." The Kefauver committee stated that the Accardo-Guzik-Fischetti syndicate apparently was operating in Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Miami, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. The Costello-Adonis-Lansky operation was found in New Jersey, New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas, Tampa, Saratoga and also on the West Coast. Florida, the West Coast, and Nevada were apparently open territory with some kind of working arrangement between the two major syndicates and the Cleveland syndicate of Dalitz, Tucker, Kleinman and Rothkopf. The 1934 crime convention also reaffirmed the principle established in 1929 that each regional czar was guaranteed protection for his life and loot as long as he did not violate agreed upon policy. Also a racket boss was no longer allowed to order murders on his own authority. Even within each area a hearing would have to be held before a disciplinary death penalty was levied on a member; on a national level the twelve-member commission would have to decide the fate of any top racketeer Another decision resulted in the formation of a national group of enforcers upon which each regional crime lord could call when killings were permitted. Each region had its own enforcers but a local leader could avoid suspicion falling on himself by using imported killers. A NATIONAL INVESTMENT FUND Informers say that two financial funds were also established at Atlantic City. One was a multi-million dollar corruption fund to be used nationally to bribe law enforcement officials and elect influential politicians who would do the mob's bidding. An "educational" fund was also established to provide for the training of future crime executives. No one outside the ruling echelon of crime really knows if these funds have actually been functioning since 1934 but there is evidence to suggest that at least on an informal basis, there is a sharing of money to accomplish overall national objectives. And it would not be out of character for a man like Lansky to plan in advance for the turnover of his multi-million dollar crime empire to heirs who would have degrees in accounting and law and have no troublesome record of arrests for petty crimes. But perhaps even more important than the two funds established in 1929, is the information that by 1934 another large financial fund was set up, an investiment[sic] fund in which the crime leaders pooled some portion of their money in a return for a definite percentage of the profits. According to two investigators into the early history of organized crime, Lucky Luciano owned 7.5 percent of this investment fund, with other crime leaders having differing percentages. The existence of this fund would clarify the ability of the National Crime Syndicate to coordinate the multi-million dollar investments required in gambling casinos and other larger operations throughout the world from Las Vegas to the Bahamas. Also such an investment fund would provide stability and an orderly succession of leadership on the top levels of organized crime, with the younger elements "inheriting" definite percentages of the fund. Organized crime figures rarely leave personal estates with large amounts of money despite the huge sums they are known to handle. This is to be expected of people who spend a good part of their time figuring out how to avoid the tax collector, whether they are handling legitimately earned money or not. The existence of a well-organized investiment[sic] fund which has successfully operated for forty years suggests the possibility that the estate problems of deceased leaders, including provisions for the remaining family, may also be efficiently provided for as a matter of course. pps 253-254 ===== AMERICANIZATION OF THE MAFIA Many threads of development combined. to create this organization of crime by 1934. One major constituency was the Italian Mafia which, according to legend, was born on March 3, 1282 in Palermo, Sicily: Easter Monday. The Sicilians had rebelled against their French rulers when a Sicilian bride-to-be was attacked by a drunken French soldier, Pierre Druet. The story has it that either the girl, before dying of a concussion, or her grief stricken bridegroom while beating up the rapist, cried out: "Morte alla Francia!" (Death to all the French). To which was added by the rebelling Sicilians, "Italia anela"—Italy cries. From the first Italian letters of "Death to the French is Italy's cry!" came the word, Mafia. Another, simpler explanation of the word "Mafia" is that it comes from the identical word in Arabic meaning, "Place of refuge." While the actual origin of the secret Sicilian organization called the Mafia is shrouded in legend, it is known that the name was applied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to private armies formed by the landowners to eliminate bandits. These private armies, however, began to recruit the bandits they were supposed to suppress, and permitted them to raid other landowners with sanctuary available inside their own estate. These private armies actually formed the basis of an emergent middle class in feudal Sicily. When the feudal system collapsed in 1812 with the victory of Napoleon, the Mafia mercenaries would often rent land from the impoverished landowners and re-rent to the peasants. While at first the Mafia sold the landowners protection against the resentful peasant masses, the peasants eventually began to seek out the Mafia middle-men to protect themselves from the landowners as they could not get justice from the regular police. Ultimately, the Mafia was more feared than the police and effectively acted as judges for the inter-personal conflicts of the peasantry. In Sicily, the Mafia in time absorbed other secret societies, notably the Camorra, an organization of criminals, and the Carbonari, a nationalistic sect who supported Giuseppe Garibaldi in his successful fight to drive the Bourbon invaders out of Sicily. NEW ORLEANS The Mafia first surfaced in the United States in New Orleans on January 24, 1889 when an Italian immigrant named Vincenzo Ottumvo had his throat slashed and was dropped into the 16th Street Canal. One month later the mangled body of Giuseppe Mataino was found burning in a fireplace in his home. Insiders knew that two factions of the Mafia had come to New Orleans in the very first wave of Italian immigrants brought to the United States and were fighting over control of the Mississippi River docks. New Orleans was already becoming the major gateway to Latin America. The waterfront gang of Antonio and Carlo Matranga had enough control over the Negro and Italian longshoremen to prevent the unloading of banana freighters unless tribute was paid to the Matranga brothers. But the Matranga control of the docks was being challenged by the Provenzano brothers and war had broken out over the loot. The growing number of murders and the fact that all witnesses in the Italian community were terrified to speak convinced New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessey that he was facing a unique crime wave. However, after months of patient investigation, Hennessey was ambushed by four men with shotguns on the evening of October 15, 1890. He died ten hours later after muttering just one word—"Dagoes." A Grand Jury scheduled to meet several days later heard testimony from some of Hennessey's assistants about the Mafia feud. But as the witnesses to the murders would still not come forward to testify, out of fear of the personal consequences, the Grand Jury was unable to indict anyone. In explaining their failure, the Jury said: "The range of our researches has developed the existence of the secret organization styled "Mafia." The evidence comes from several sources fully competent in themselves to attest its truth. While the fact is supported by the long record of blood-curdling crimes, it is strangely difficult, almost impossible to discover the perpetrators of these crimes and to secure witnesses." The public was outraged. Up to this point even the Italian members of the New Orleans Police Force had not co-operated with the investigation but a second grand jury was scheduled. Finally some sixty witnesses were located, including a few who could identify the four slayers of Police Chief Hennessey. The grand jury then returned nineteen indictments against Sicilian members of the Mafia. Even at this early stage of its development in the United States the Mafia began to demonstrate the power which results from its solidarity. A large defense fund I was established. Money evidently came from outside New Orleans. A team of experienced Anglo-Saxon criminal lawyers from Philadelphia, New York and Boston including Thomas J. Semmes, an attorney with a spectacular reputation, was hired to represent the defendants. A campaign of threats of violence and offer of bribes began against individual jurors. The campaign evidently succeeded. Although there was positive identification of all nineteen defendants by eyewitnesses, the jurors acquitted sixteen of the defendants of the charges of murder and could not decide on the innocence or guilt of the other three. Two days later, after a protest meeting organized by Mayor Joseph A. Shakespeare and New Orleans' two leading newspapers, the Picayune and the Times-Democrat, a mob of several thousands of citizens marched to the parish prison where the defendants were still being held on a technicality pending release. The mob forced its way into the jail and the deputy sheriffs guarding the nineteen left for safer parts. Two of the Sicilians were hung from lamp posts in front of the prison and then shot. Nine others were lined up against a prison wall and executed with rifles, pistols and shotguns. President Grover Cleveland was eventually obliged to officially apologize to the Italian government for the lynching after the Italian ambassador was withdrawn from Washington. And President Harrison authorized the payment of $30,000 as an indemnity. Newspaper headlines bannered the word "Mafia," and the Mafiosi in New Orleans went undercover until the headlines stopped and the public forgot. ST. LOUIS AND NEW YORK In the next few years Mafia activity began to be visible in St. Louis and New York. In both these cities, as previously in New Orleans, the primary activity of the Mafia gangs was to terrorize the residents of the Italian ghetto. They would venture outside the ghetto only into extortion of businesses which employed Italian workers. In St. Louis the Mafia gang was led by Vito Giannola, his brother John, and Alphonse Palizzola. In 1908 in New York City, the Sicilian population of Brooklyn festively welcomed a relative of Alphonse, Raffaele Palizzola at the docks when he arrived from Palermo. It was rumored that Raffaele was "King" of the Mafia in his native land. Immediately following Palizzola's arrival there began a series of several dozen murders of persons who had testified against Palizzola in a murder trial in Sicily. A special Italian squad under Police Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino began to compile records of Mafia membership to try to halt the crime wave. In one year Petrosino personally made 700 arrests and hundreds of Italians were deported to their native country. The success of Petrosino can be seen in that he arranged for the deportation of the local chief of the Camorra, Enrico Alfano and had also identified (without being able to convict) the secret leader of the Mafia, Ignazio Lupo, whose alias was "Lupo the Wolf." However, Petrosino was discouraged by the fact that almost no one except his own men believed in the existence of a wide spread criminal conspiracy. New York Police Commissioner Theodore Dingham finally agreed to let Petrosino go to Italy to investigate the Mafia on its own ground. In January 1909, Petrosino went to Italy traveling under a false name for protection and spoke to law enforcement officials in Naples and Rome to set up an international exchange of information about criminals. He is said to have obtained in these meetings the police records of 600 criminals who emigrated to the United States to escape the clutches of the Italian police. Petrosino then traveled to Sicily. On the evening of March 13, 1909 he was shot in the back and head while walking toward his hotel. It is now known that Lupo the Wolf knew of Petrosino's trip almost as soon as the detective left New York and had informed the Mafia in Sicily. Many years later it was discovered that the murder of Lieutenant Petrosino had been accomplished by the head of the Sicilian Mafia, Don Vito Cascio Ferro. Don Vito, who had himself previously been in the United States, bragged that on the evening of the murder he was having dinner with a government official. During the meal he slipped out of the house and borrowed the private carriage of the official. Don Vito claimed that he fired at Petrosino, escaped in the carriage and returned to his host's home in time to enjoy the wine. When suspicion fell upon Don Vito, the government official was ready to swear in court that his guest had never left the house on the night of the killing. MUSSOLINI DRIVES MAFIA OUT OF ITALY But even though the Mafia was obviously well-organized on the New Orleans waterfront and a few other Italian ghettos in the U.S. before the turn of the century, Mafia-watchers here point out that the really important and substantial emigration of mafiosi from Italy took place at the end of the 1920's and especially in 1931. Furthermore, given the circumstances of that emigration, they doubt the existence of a Sicilian Mafia plot to export criminality to the U.S., a recurring theme of sensational journalism. Considering the large wave of poor Italian immigrants at the end of the last century, experts point out the high statistical probability of some individual mafiosi coming to the United States to escape Italian circumstances of the police-and possibly to escape the Mafia itself, as in the case of the short-lived witnesses against Rallaele Palizzola. That some of the criminals would set up their extortion schemes here in the Italian ghetto could be expected. But it is believed that only starting in 1926, when Mussolini began his war of extermination against the Mafia, a war which peaked in 1931 with the totalitarian techniques of mass arrests and mass trials to accomplish the destruction of all non-fascist organizations, did thousands of mafiosi flee to the United States. And it was in 1931 that Salvatore Maranzano, head at that time of all the New York Mafia families, offered sanctuary to all mafiosi who had to leave Italy in a Hurry—and could afford to pay the fee. In April 1931, Maranzano had come out on top in a gang war with the old Mafia leader, Giuseppe Masseria. Maranzano was a highly educated European who spoke many languages and was an authority on Julius Caesar. Patterning his crime empire on Caesar's plans for world conquest, Maranzano tried to set himself up as "boss of all bosses" over all the Italian-American Mafia families, a goal which really had not been accomplished by any American Mafia leader up to that time. "Little Caesar" took a major step in this direction by planning the murder of some of his own sub-leaders, those who were more interested in a national syndicate of all ethnic gangs than an exclusively Italian organization. Perhaps in furtherance of his aim, but perhaps as just another racket, Maranzano became the biggest alien-smuggler in all of American history. In a short time, he smuggled approximately 8000 Italians into the United States without immigration formalities, collecting millions of dollars from his freight. Many of the illegal aliens went to work as "soldiers" for the Maranzano mob, while others went to work in his many legitimate businesses. Perhaps Maranzano felt he needed the additional troops for the consolidation of his power after the planned murders of Lucky Luciano and eleven other of his sub-leaders on September 11, 1931. LUCIANO KILLS THE MUSTACHE PETES However, in a fast-moving plot more like a film than reality, Luciano and Company killed Maranzano only a few minutes before he planned to kill them, using three Jewish gunmen loaned by Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky—an anticipation of the cooperation between the major ethnic mobs which Luciano had advocated in Atlantic City in 1929. The death of Maranzano was the signal for a coast-to-coast massacre of the old-time Mafia leaders who believed in Maranzano's plans for a Sicilian hierarchy in American crime. During the next 48 hours, at least 40 such Mafia dons were eliminated. And, strangely, there was a simultaneous federal roundup for deportation of more than 1000 of the Italians with criminal records whom Maranzano had illegally imported as soldiers. As it is known that illegal aliens with allegiance to Luciano were not picked up in this mass raid, (including Carlo Gambino, still one of the most important Mafia leaders in the United States), it is quite possible that the Luciano-Lansky group did some fingering for the authorities. This is not inconceivable since in 1957, Lansky was again suspected of having successfully made life unpleasant for criminal associates of his by letting the authorities know where a crime conference was geing[sic] held. In any case, the rubout of Maranzano and the other "mustache Pete" Mafia dons (a descriptive term for the old-timers who were totally involved in Sicilian ways), plus the deportation of a large number of possibly hostile "Mustache Pete" soldiers, paved the way for Luciano, Torrio and other mafiosi to form, with gangster elements nurtured by the Democratic Party, a multi-ethnic Americanized national crime syndicate the likes of which had never been seen in the world before, and which would obviously not subordinate itself to any old world plans of the Sicilian Mafia. It is this national organization of crime which was as much on the scene during the Nixon campaign of 1972 as the Milk Industry and the Special Oil Interests. pps. 255-258 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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