Reclaiming History

Home > Nonfiction > Reclaiming History > Page 301
Reclaiming History Page 301

by Vincent Bugliosi


  †If it was Luciano, credited by mob historian Frederic Sondern as being “second only to Al Capone in organizational genius,” who created the corporate-like structure of the Mafia with rules and by-laws, it was, by common consensus, his boyhood friend Meyer Lansky who, as mob writer Nicholas Gage said, “developed the worldwide network of couriers, middlemen, bankers, and frontmen that [allowed] the underworld to take profits from illegal enterprises, send them halfway around the world, and then have the money come back laundered clean to be invested in legitimate businesses” (Gage, “Little Big Man Who Laughs at the Law,” p.65). Lansky was called the “Little Man,” and Luciano would always tell his followers to “listen to him.” Luciano once said, “I learned…that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost better than I did…I used to tell Meyer that he may’ve had a Jewish mother, but someplace he must’ve been wet-nursed by a Sicilian.” An FBI agent who pursued Lansky said, “He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he’d gone into legitimate business.” (Court TV Crime Library, Criminal Minds and Methods, http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/mob_bosses/index.html; New York Times, January 16, 1983, p.29) The five-foot four-inch Lansky, who led a very quiet, unpretentious family life in Miami, sent one of his sons to West Point, made contributions to charitable causes, and never had bodyguards—relying for protection instead on the FBI agents who followed him everywhere, even slowing his car down when they fell too far behind—had a personal net worth estimated between $100 and $300 million in the early 1970s. Unlike most of his mob friends, who were either murdered, deported, or deposed, Lansky died in 1983 of natural causes at the age of eighty-one in Miami Beach, Florida. (Gage, “Little Big Man Who Laughs at the Law,” pp.62–65; death of Lansky: New York Times, January 16, 1983, p.29)

  Lansky’s earlier counterpart was Jacob “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, who was Al Capone’s minister of finance for his Chicago mob in the 1920s. Though Jews were common mob associates in the early years, by the 1960s and 1970s there were few Jews (or any non-Italians) high up in organized crime. New Jersey mobster Angelo DeCarlo, in an FBI wired phone conversation in the 1960s, referred to Lansky as the most respected non-Italian in the underworld. “There’s only two Jews recognized in the whole country today,” he said. “That’s Meyer and…Moe Dalitz [the head of the so-called Cleveland syndicate], but Dalitz ain’t got much recognition.” (Gage, “Little Big Man Who Laughs at the Law,” p.65)

  As big as Lansky was in the underworld, he was, after all, not Italian, and mob historian Selwyn Raab puts Lansky’s stature in perspective when he notes that although “Lansky accompanied Luciano to Mafia conventions, [he] was never allowed to sit in on discussions” (Raab, Five Families, p.40).

  *Although the power and influence of the American Mafia has been in steady decline, the nation’s fascination with the Mafia continues. As Joanne Weintraub of the Milwaukee Journal writes, “Unlike many of our cultural preoccupations which come and go, America’s interest in the Mafia seems to be as constant and nearly as voracious as our appetite for lasagna, linguine, and biscotti.” Mario Puzo, whose book The Godfather sold an incredible 21 million copies, observed, “Just because a guy’s a murderer, he can’t have endearing traits?” I guess I’d have to agree. I mean, while the furnaces were blazing in places like Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Chelmno, the smell of burning human flesh permeating the countryside, Adolf Hitler, in the rarefied atmosphere of Berchtesgaden high in the Bavarian Alps, was, historians tell us, very concerned about the health of his dog Blondi. All sarcasm aside, the interesting and arguably revealing thing is that Americans are apparently not even turned off by the non-endearing traits of the Mafia, like killing people who don’t want to die. I haven’t seen The Sopranos, but I assume the killings are for the most part internecine (killing other mafiosi, and never killing innocent people outside the Mafia, which would never go over well) and probably always have an element of revenge, which at its core is a raw form of justice, not a pejorative notion. So it’s all fun and games. As USA Today reported on viewers’ enthrallment with the show, making murder fun, “Who gets whacked in Sopranos? Is Adriana really dead? Will Christopher get whacked? Or is crazy Tony B. next? Fans have been debating possible murders and floating plot lines for HBO’s hit Mob show, The Sopranos”(USA Today, June 4, 2004, p.9E).

  *The first published rumor about Hoover’s sexual orientation was a Collier’s magazine article of August 19, 1933, that only vaguely alluded to his sexuality: “In appearance,” the article read, “Mr. Hoover looks utterly unlike the storybook sleuth…He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favored color for the matched shades of his tie, handkerchief and socks…He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with a mincing step” (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, pp.158–159). For years the rumor was rampant in Washington, D.C., social circles.

  *Many of Hoover’s defenders say that his life was so consumed by the FBI that he was asexual. Even someone like William Turner, a ten-year veteran of the FBI who definitely was not a Hoover apologist, wrote, “My impression is that Hoover was a misanthrope devoid of erotic impulses, that he was frigid, and that he felt no passion either way” (Turner, Rearview Mirror, p.8).

  * And, indeed, in New York, local prosecutor Thomas Dewey had temporarily broken up Lucky Luciano’s Mafia family in 1936. But Hoover had to know that in Chicago it took a federal counterpart of his, the Treasury Department, to end Al Capone’s career in 1931.

  That DeLoach was correct about Hoover’s state of mind is supported by Hoover’s testimony under oath before the House Appropriations Subcommittee in 1961. Addressing himself to the issue of his bureau’s not giving as much assistance to fighting organized crime as some people would like, Hoover criticized those who sought “fantastic panaceas as to how to solve local crimes.” (Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p.264)

  * In particular, RFK led the assault on Jimmy Hoffa, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ president since 1957, and his union, the nation’s largest and most powerful union at the time, establishing that organized crime had helped Hoffa control and dominate the Teamsters, being complicit in the beatings and perhaps murders of Hoffa’s opponents in the union. RFK’s Justice Department ultimately convicted Hoffa in 1964 of jury tampering and defrauding the union’s pension fund out of almost $2 million. His thirteen-year prison sentence, which he started to serve in 1967, ended four years later when President Nixon signed an Executive Grant of Clemency. Actually, the Teamsters had been the subject of scrutiny by the Senate’s Permanent Investigations Subcommittee as early as December of 1956, when the committee’s chief accountant, Carmine Bellino, and chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy, looked into the misuse of Teamster funds by Hoffa’s predecessor, Dave Beck, resulting in Beck’s conviction and removal from office. (McClellan, Crime without Punishment, pp.3, 13, 14; Kennedy, Enemy Within, pp.3–4, 24; Sheridan, Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, pp.3, 7, 32–33, 210)

  * It was common knowledge that Joseph Kennedy was spending whatever was necessary out of his fortune to get his son into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and JFK would facetiously deflect criticism about this. For instance, during his campaign for the presidency in 1960, he told the press at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C., that “I have just received the following wire from my generous daddy: ‘Dear Jack—Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.’” (Parmet, Jack, p.439)

  * The HSCA added, however, that “an individual organized crime leader who was planning an assassination conspiracy against President Kennedy might well have avoided making the plan known to the commission or seeking approval for it from commission members. Such a course of unilateral action seemed to the committee to have been particularly possible in the case of powerful organized crime leaders who were well established, with firm control over their jurisdictions” (HSCA Report, p.167). But all of this is not only pure speculation, but extremely unreasonable speculation at that. The HSCA came
up with only one leader in the history of organized crime subsequent to the establishment of the national commission in the early 1930s who acted in matters of murder without first seeking commission approval. In 1957, New York mob leader Vito Genovese engineered the assassination of fellow mafioso Albert Anastasia while he was seated in a barber’s chair near Central Park, and six months earlier a Genovese hit man had shot at and attempted to murder Mafia leader Frank Costello without the knowledge or consent of the commission. (Genovese did seek and obtain commission approval for the murder and attempted murder after the fact.) (HSCA Report, pp.167–168) But this clearly was highly exceptional behavior—by just one leader in one year. More importantly, one can’t begin to compare (as the HSCA did without appropriate comment) killing a fellow mafioso without commission approval, an act that would not bring any retribution by the U.S. government against organized crime, with killing the president of the United States, which, as previously indicated, would bring a retaliation against them by the federal government of an unprecedented magnitude.

  In any event, the only two mob leaders the HSCA could think of who might possibly act unilaterally were Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, and the committee proceeded to say that it was unlikely that either had done so in this case (see later discussion).

  * Not that there weren’t loose and meaningless ventings before the assassination by individual mafiosi—the type you could expect to hear from thousands of everyday Americans who have a deep hostility for a particular president. On October 31, 1963, an FBI bug picked up the following conversation between Peter Magaddino and his brother Stefano, the mob boss in upstate New York. Peter: “President Kennedy, he should drop dead.” Stefano: “They should kill the whole family, the mother and father, too.” And on May 2, 1962, an FBI bug picked up Michelino Clemente, a member of the Vito Genovese family in New York City, saying, “Bob Kennedy won’t stop today until he puts us all in jail all over the country. Until the commission meets and puts its foot down, things will be at a standstill.” Around this same time, an unidentified Genovese family member is heard saying, “I want the President indicted because I know he was whacking all those broads. Sinatra brought them out. I’d like to hit Kennedy. I would gladly go to the penitentiary for the rest of my life, believe me.” (Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pp.315–316)

  * The author of a book on the Sicilian Mafia said that the list of political figures mobsters have killed “is staggering” (Pantaleone, Mafia and Politics, p.202).

  * One conspiracy theorist is not satisfied having Marcello merely being “behind” the assassination. In his book The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK, and MLK, author Robert Gaylon Ross writes that there were eleven members of the “death squad” at Dealey Plaza, but the “control point” was on the second floor of the Book Depository Building, where he says Carlos Marcello was one of three gunmen firing at Kennedy (Ross, Elite Serial Killers, p.103).

  †As just one example of the help I received from so many people in the writing of this book, I knew I couldn’t write intelligently about Becker without talking to him personally. But how would I go about locating someone like him? If anyone knew how, I knew who it would be—Chicago’s Jim Agnew, the former publisher of Real Crime Book Digest who had helped me many times in the past. Jim is almost a character out of fiction who looks exactly like you would expect an Irish cop walking the beat on a New York street in an old Bing Crosby movie to look. Whatever is going on in this country that’s being written about, particularly in the area of crime, Jim somehow knows about it. And he has many contacts who can get him all types of information. I called Jim and asked him if he could locate Becker for me. A half hour later, Jim called back with Becker’s unlisted home phone number, no less, in Las Vegas.

  * The U.S. government had been seeking to deport Marcello (true name, Calogero Minacore), who was born in Tunis, North Africa, to Sicilian-born parents and had never become a naturalized American citizen, since 1953. But a 1953 order to deport Marcello as an “undesirable alien” wasn’t implemented until Attorney General Robert Kennedy did so on April 4, 1961, the INS arresting Marcello when he walked into an INS office in New Orleans on a regular visit to report as an alien, and flying him in an INS airplane to Guatemala, from which he illegally reentered the United States less than two weeks later. (9 HSCA 62, 71–72; 1953 deportation order: Davis, Mafia Kingfish, p.176)

  † Inasmuch as the sequence is so critical here, it was reassuring to me when I later played an old Frontline documentary in which Becker was one of several people interviewed by host Jack Newfield. Newfield: “Did he [Marcello] actually say that he was going to get a nut to do the assassination so it can’t be traced to him?” Becker: “Yeah, yeah. Well, I said to him [that if Kennedy were killed] ‘right away they know it’s you. I mean, you’ve got everything going for you. The one that hates him. Everybody knows it.’ He said ‘Don’t worry, you get a nut to do this thing and nobody’s looking at you.’” (“JFK, Hoffa and the Mob,” Frontline, PBS, November 17, 1992)

  ‡ One step conspiracy theorists say Marcello would not have had to take is to get permission from the national commission of the Mafia to kill the president. As indicated earlier, the first “family” of the Mafia came from Sicily and settled in New Orleans in 1875. A “highly reliable source” told the FBI in 1972 that “inasmuch as this ‘family’ was the predecessor of all subsequent ‘families,’ it has been afforded the highest respect and esteem, and because of its exalted position, the New Orleans ‘family’ could make decisions on its own without going to the ‘Commission’” (FBI report, October 24, 1972, La Cosa Nostra file, Bureau No. 92-6054-3176; HSCA Report, p.172). Patrick Collins, an FBI agent who investigated Marcello and his organization in the 1960s, formed the same view, telling the HSCA that the New Orleans Mafia family “was unique among all the mobs” in that it “didn’t have to consult the commission in the same way as the other families did. There was a unique independence of sorts” (9 HSCA 66; HSCA staff interview of Patrick J. Collins on November 15, 1978). However, on a crime of the monumental magnitude of murdering the president, I think we can assume that Marcello, if he had had such thoughts, would know that his privileged exemption from reporting to the commission would not apply.

  * Even assuming Becker is telling the truth, he has made contradictory statements—probably out of confusion or lack of memory—about one point. He told HSCA investigators that he never told the FBI about Marcello’s Kennedy threats because he was “afraid” Marcello or his associates might learn he had done so (9 HSCA 83). This makes sense. And in my first conversation with him on August 13, 1999, he told me the first time he had ever told the authorities about Marcello’s threats was to the HSCA in 1978. But in a later conversation he said he did start to tell the FBI about the threats, “but they weren’t interested. They were agents who were only working on the Billie Sol Estes case.” In any event, none of the FBI reports of interviews with or about Becker make any reference to Marcello’s threats against Kennedy, and all deal with the Billie Sol Estes case.

  * An example of “mob talk,” from a federal wiretap of a telephone conversation between gangster Johnny Formosa and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana over the failure of Giancana’s friend Frank Sinatra to have President Kennedy stop the authorities from prosecuting Giancana: Formosa: “Let’s show ’em. Let’s show those [obscenity] Hollywood fruitcakes that they can’t get away with it as if nothing’s happened. Let’s hit Sinatra. Or I could whack out a couple of those other guys. [Peter] Lawford and that [Dean] Martin, and I could take the nigger [Sammy Davis Jr.] and put his other eye out.” Giancana: “No…I’ve got other plans for them.” (Kelley, His Way, pp.296, 531)

  †The other mob boss the FBI found difficult to penetrate was Santo Trafficante, but the bureau was able to conduct some electronic eavesdropping on him (HSCA Report, p.175). A Cuban exile, José Aleman, claimed that Trafficante (who admitted, in his testimony before the HSCA, to participating in the unsuccessful CIA conspiracy to assass
inate Fidel Castro) told him that Kennedy was “going to be hit.” The HSCA investigated the claim and concluded that “the relationship between Trafficante and Aleman, a business acquaintance, does not seem to have been close enough for Trafficante to have mentioned or alluded to such a murder plot.” In addition to there being no evidence that Trafficante, or Marcello, or any other mob figure, had actually had the president killed—as opposed to uncorroborated allegations that they talked about doing it—the HSCA said that “as with Marcello, the committee noted that Trafficante’s cautious character is inconsistent with his taking the risk of being involved in an assassination plot against the President.” (HSCA Report, p.175) For a more in-depth discussion of the Aleman-Trafficante issue, see the FBI conspiracy section.

 

‹ Prev