25. WHO’S WHO IN MOBOCRACY

For two books and for the hundreds of newspaper stories we have done on American gangsters and their maze of intertwining organization we got enough to be publicly proclaimed America’s top experts in the field.

We have been offered lectures and speaking engagements before bodies of bankers, merchants, criminologists, police conventions and on radio programs. But we have saved some new names and some newly-discovered secrets for this book, because a “confidential” without that factor would be regarded as a gold brick; and because our publisher knows us and trusts us and hasn’t the rabbit in him that the owners of other media display, when they say:

“But you just can’t publish that kind of stuff. You’ll get us all killed!”

One magazine which paid for the rights to do a digest of Chicago Confidential weakened and, instead, did a piece speculating on our chances of surviving our tenure on the bestseller lists!

We have our own ways of getting this material, which so many think is so dangerous. It comes from many sources, all confidential. Some of it is right from the racketeers, themselves, for they have vendettas and jealousies and hatreds on which they don’t dare to act in the open. The widow of a murdered hoodlum drove hundreds of miles and met us in a car in Central Park and gave us the tale of who rubbed him out and why. This was a woman who had told the cops and the prosecutors that she knew nothing, had no idea how her husband made a living, had never met any one who was even “shady.”

Here and there a person who has been shaken down or shaken out, and thus knows a small angle which may be valuable as a tip-off on one or two people and authentic tactics gets to us and spills.

We don’t believe all we hear. But facts mesh up and patterns form and truths evolve.

We have sketched for you the process whereby the pennies, dimes and dollars of the numbers-players, horse-bettors, hookers and junkies are harvested in Washington and funneled to the satraps who live in penthouses and mansions in New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills and Rome. They are big industry, our biggest. And while the principals hide in their drawing-rooms even if they pass through Washington, to or from Florida, they must maintain here high-powered lawyers, tax experts who study and report every decision of the Treasury, lobbyists, press agents and spies. Many of the vast legal businesses into which they channel their cash have branch stores and offices here. The Syndicate is an international conspiracy, as potent as that other international conspiracy, Communism, and as dirty and dangerous, with its great wealth and the same policy—to conquer everything and take over everything, with no scruples as to how.

This gigantic money trust has assets of billions, exceeding the combined wealth of Morgan, Rockefeller and all the Wall Street freebooters of old.

It owns, through legitimate sources of trade, incalculable commercial, residential, hotel and investment real estate, surpassing the holdings of insurance companies. Through its purchase of stocks and bonds it controls some and is attempting to control other transportation companies, as well as railroads, hotel chains, distilleries and breweries, department stores and chain stores, clothing and dress manufacturers, steel and iron works, franchised automobile distributors, trans-Atlantic steamship lines, a movie producer, a radio chain, a big-league ball team, phonograph recording companies, insurance corporations, banks, theatres, night clubs, laundries, oil wells; it has been buying into even newspapers. This is only a condensed catalog of its dishonest interests in once-honest enterprises.

A thief is always a thief. These modern pirates could not go straight. As soon as they dip their sticky hands into something legitimate, it goes crooked.

One of their favorite tactics is to buy in the open market enough stock of a company, to create a nuisance value. They organize a minority stockholders’ committee and dig up proxies. They have no real intention of trying to get control, but some time before the stockholders’ meeting, they approach the management and offer to sell at a premium, usually three or four times above the market listing. This is cold blackmail.

Another tactic, employed when they secure control of a transportation company, is to use their political connections to get a fare raise. That enhances the stock on the market, then they unload.

They buy into some companies to get enough stock to rig the price, a felony. In at least one instance with which we are familiar, the underworld put a representative in as an officer of a transportation company. He then sold company stock short on the securities exchanges. This is a violation of SEC law. When a complaint was made by other stockholders to the SEC, the man they talked to shrugged his shoulders and said, “Forget it. They have a fix.”

Operators with such tremendous financial interests know their way around Washington. One of their chief sources of contact is through Democratic county, state and national committeemen, who are beholden for campaign contributions. Sometimes cash is handed over to sweeten the kitty. The committeemen and political bosses pass the orders along through their Congressmen in Washington, or, when the fix is important enough, directly to a specialist at such affairs right in the White House.

The Tammany and Flynn interests in New York and Jake Arvey’s tight Chicago combine are powers. The Rhode Island organization of Senator Pastore and Attorney General McGrath, the crooked Connecticut machine that made Senator Brien McMahon, and the Maryland organization, about which more later, get whatever they want. Senator Herbert O’Conor is the godfather of the Maryland outfit, and he is a member of the Kefauver Committee.

The Colorado machine handles the loot for the Mountain States. The errand-boy for the West Coast gamblers, dope runners and procurers is the California Democratic organization, of which at this writing, Jimmy Roosevelt is the chairman, but the mobsters don’t stick long with losers.

In Chicago Confidential we gave an outline of the organization and chain of command of the international underworld Syndicate.

The Mafia, an age-old institution, has existed in Sicily since before the beginning of written history. Sicily always has been, and to this day is, subject territory. It was owned by ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Imperial France, Italy and even Britain. The Sicilian peasants always worked for absentee owners.

In prehistoric times, the Mafia began as a patriotic terrorist society, somewhat like the Irish Republican Army. Venal leaders sold out, offered protection to some estates while they sacked others. They anticipated the protection racket by centuries.

The Mafia and the dread Black Hand are the same thing. The black hand was the sign over which the Mafia’s threats were delivered. During several thousand years it came about that almost every native of Sicily had to have some tie or connection with the Mafia. Some were members, others were relatives of members, or partners, hired killers and spies. Others did business with it; still others were the terrorized unattached who dared not refuse its bidding.

Sicilians vie with Cantonese as the most migrating people in the world. Sicily, like Canton, is overpopulated and poverty-ridden. Another, more important factor, appears to be that at every change of government, Mafistas were forced into flight and exile in droves. They settled and colonized all over the earth. There are huge Sicilian colonies spread around Europe, in England, South America, North Africa, the Orient and the United States.

Every Sicilian colony had a hard core of black-handers, who set up an invisible government and preyed first on the other colonizers. The various groups were in correspondence with each other, cooperated in business deals, provided places for other fugitives and expatriates.

The first great influx arrived in this country exactly a hundred years ago, about the time Napoleon 3rd extended his influence to Sicily. Thereafter, every ten or twenty years found other large groups on their way here, especially after such periods of uncertainty as the unification of Italy, World War I, the Mussolini ascendancy, and after World War II. From time to time the Italian government tried to wipe out the Mafia, and after each attempt thousands more came to wink and leer at the Statue of Liberty.

Though the Italian government never could exterminate the Mafia, it did wipe out similar terroristic societies on the mainland, such as the Camorra, of Naples. The members of these other secret societies who could escape fled to Sicily, where they were welcomed and integrated as brothers by the Mafistas.

Their overseas affiliates were absorbed by local Mafia units. This process took place also among outlawed Greek secret societies, and the dread Black Hand of Serbia, which was akin in purpose to Sicily’s Black Hand. Meanwhile, as Mafia bosses got fat and rich, they smuggled in new killers, many from Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The American Black Hand was content to operate exclusively in Italian circles for years. All Italians had to pay tribute, a tithe of their earnings, from the dollar-a-week of the corner bootblack to five thousand a night of Enrico Caruso. Failure to pay meant the Black Hand letter, and continued failure, death. Now the Mafia is smoother. It “owns” acts on a ten-per cent business deal. Frank Sinatra was discovered by Willie Moretti and is the pet of the Fischettis. He gave a gold cigarette case to Charlie Luciano, inscribed “To my friend.”

Recent developments in New York again demonstrate how this works. A $4,000-a-year city fireman, an Italian who had changed his name, testified he was operating a $200,000 talent agency, which, in theatrical parlance, “stole” acts from other agencies. Two were “thefted” from agent Lou Perry: Alan Dale, another Italian who is the hottest crooning find of the year, and Toni Arden. The fireman, whose name is Gerry Purcell, booked these two and another, Terri Stevens, into the Copacabana, where all three “clicked” and started their climbs to fame.

In Chicago Confidential, we described how Big Jim Colosimo, then the local Mafia leader, set up the organization which under Al Capone and Johnny Torrio, was able to drive out of Chicago all the competing non-Italian and sectional mobs. Prohibition made them fabulously rich and potent.

The same thing happened in New York. While Colosimo was the head of the Chicago chapter, Lupo “the Wolf” Saietta headed the New York branch. After he went to prison, Joe “The Boss” Masseria took over, after a lot of mayhem.

They began to call the Mafia the Unione Siciliano then. At times it tried to pretend it was a respectable Italian-American benevolent society. Joe “The Boss” reigned at the top of the Unione for nine years, until he was murdered in 1931. His chief lieutenants were “Lucky” Luciano and Frank Costello. When Masseria was killed they moved in.

The Irish and Jewish mobs were being driven to the wall. The same thing happened in every important city. By the middle 1930s, the Unione Siciliano was dominant in every racket. Wherever there were non-Italians left, the only way they could do business was to accept the overlordship of the Mafia. If they were good boys they were allowed to come in and get rich. If they tried any monkey-business, they were assassinated, like Bugsy Siegel, or turned over to the law, like Lepke and Gurrah.

No one knows whether the top Italian hoodlums like Capone, Luciano and Costello took over the Mafia, or whether the Mafia took them over. That is an academic conjecture, as they are now one and the same thing, with the worldwide facilities of the Unione Siciliano the nucleus on which all organized vice, crime and corruption, not only in the United States but all over the world, has been built.

In Chicago Confidential, we stated in passing that since the exile of Luciano in Italy the American “president” or executive head of the Unione Siciliano is Frank Costello, and the vice-president is Capone’s cousin, Charles Fischetti, in Chicago.

The worldwide Mafia is composed of a supreme head in Palermo, Sicily, a Grand Council consisting of high-ranking executives, subordinate officers, and a global membership.

Luciano, following his deportation in 1947, has been installed as the Supreme Head of the International Mafia. Members are divided into two distinct groups, inner circle and outer circle. The latter includes members of ordinary rank and standards. The former consists of those who command wealth, influence or proven underworld power. Membership in this group is kept at a minimum, since it derives a major portion of all proceeds from its general diverse illegal enterprises.

Members of the elite few are almost invariably, through ancestry or direct birth, from Palermo and its adjoining areas. A very few non-Italians have been taken into the ruling circle. According to the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, American members of the Mafia are necessarily members of the over-all group, which therefore has continued to include former American gangsters who left the U.S. by deportation or voluntary flight. Prominently mentioned among these are John Schillochi (International List 298); Dominic Petrelli (International List 259); and Nicola Gentile (International List 133), all of whom were in Italy when last heard of, though informants tell us they have since been seen around New York again.

Other important members of the Mafia, such as Francisco Paolo Coppola and Sylvestro Carrolla, found their way to Mexico, where they took over the local Mafia. Other lesser figures represent the fearsome fraternity in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, France, and England.

The Bureau of Narcotics has compiled what is believed to be the only master list of the inner circle of the Mafia. It is based on documentary evidence in the form of address books, papers, interstate telephone calls, police records, screened informants, etc. During the recent Kefauver Committee hearings, Commissioner Anslinger supplied the document under oath to the committee. Extracts from this list are printed in the back of the book.

Even before the Mafia had organized the entire American underworld, it had strong communication lines into Washington. These were first built up during Prohibition, when the boys passed money back to the capital for their own protection. They also made liberal contributions to the campaign funds of dry Congressmen, without whose votes, for whatever cause, the racket was worthless. During the insane days of Prohibition, the underworld began the process of undermining the honesty and probity of federal officials, which has since been carried to an extreme.

Until the 18th Amendment, law-breakers feared Uncle Whiskers. There were few federal criminal laws. Most criminals didn’t want to tangle with Washington. Only nuts got themselves mixed up with the postal inspectors or the Secret Service. After the wholesale bribery and corruption of the 1920s, all respect for national law enforcement had gone into the ashcan.

Now, due largely to the example of the F.B.I., the Bureau of Narcotics and the Treasury Intelligence, the public’s faith in federal law-enforcement and investigative agencies has been revived, but the prosecuting and judicial ends have never come back. Most felons would rather be arrested by federal than state or city cops, because they know they can make a better deal with the prosecutors, and if everything fails, federal sentences are light and the prisons are soft.

Before the underworld was completely organized, Washington was a “neutral” city, where mob meetings and conventions were held. In such cities the delegates must not pack guns. Rough stuff is out by common consent. Other such open cities are Saratoga, Hot Springs, Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Miami. These were and are important resort centers, and are kept neutral because machine-gunning might scare tourists away. Washington was no-man’s-land for obvious reasons; they knew tommy-guns wouldn’t be tolerated in the Capitol’s shadow.

Commissioner Anslinger recalls such a gangster convention in the Shoreham Hotel, two decades ago. The Commissioner dropped into the Blue Room for dinner and saw Luciano, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Frank Nitti, “the Enforcer” of the Chicago mob, Izzie Bernstein of Detroit’s Purple Gang, and three other hoods, each with a bejeweled blonde. They were registered at the Shoreham under assumed names and spent a week there holding meetings.

When Anslinger lamped the boys, he went to the lobby and had Lucky called out. Luciano was offended, beefed about the interruption of his party. He said, “You can’t do anything to me. We got Constitutional rights. We’re only sight-seeing.”

Anslinger said, “That’s all you’d better do,” then glancing at the blondes, he added, “remember the Mann Act.”

A few weeks later, Jack McGurn was knocked off. It developed that this meeting was called for his trial. He had been getting out of line. So he was summoned from Chicago to meet his peers from the other cities.

The organized underworld’s influence in official Washington is incalculable. Its direct ties, even to the top, are so firm that in many instances even a political revolution will not dislodge them. They succeeded in doing that which the Communists failed to do; they infiltrated and took over the government. They are the true subversives, though that never comes out in Congress.

The Mafia’s power is built around these factors: