The Mafia Encyclopedia (31 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 78
In fact, there is little doubt Capone actually made a nice profit from his public spiritedness. In December 1930 the price of Capone beer to the speakeasiesproduced at about $4 a barrelwas hiked from $55 to $60 a barrel, all to help the poor. Capone salesmen told speakeasy operators: "The Big Fellow says we've all got to tighten our belts a little to help those poor guys who haven't got any jobs."
In more recent years it has become common for crime leaders to attend charity balls and banquets as a method of achieving what has been called innocence by association. In 1949 a famous newspaper flap developed over the vice chairman of the Salvation Army's fund-raising drive. He was the notorious Frank Costello, who promoted a $100-a-plate dinner and entertainment at the Copacabana with tickets that read in part:
Dinner and Entertainment
Sponsored by Vice-Chairman of Men's Division
Salvation Army Campaign
Costello demonstrated how readily crime figures can move large blocks of tickets. The party was a full house featuring leading politicians, judges and other worthy individuals, including even Dr. Richard Huffman, Costello's psychiatrist, who wanted his patient to associate with good people, presumably as a form of therapy.
That year Costello presented the Salvation Army with $10,000$3,500 from the Copa affair and $6,500 of his own. Inquiring journalists also discovered that Costello was active in a number of other charities. He turned up in fact as a member of the Men's Committee of the Legal Aid Society.
New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello also is known for his lavish giving, albeit lavish giving with a twist. He once gave $10,000 to the Girl Scouts of America, informing the wealthy society woman soliciting the funds not to reveal his name because he wanted no publicity on the matter. Naturally that ploy had the desired effect as news of Marcello's great philanthropy was all over town in no time.
Ralph Salerno, a former member of the Central Intelligence Bureau of the New York City Police Department, declares in
The Crime Confederation
(which he wrote with John S. Tompkins), that there is "a general pattern" of many charitable, religious and fraternal groups "knowingly inviting people of questionable reputation to be honored at fund-raising dinners because of their known ability to dispose of large blocks of expensive tickets." At one time three Mafia dons in New YorkTommy Lucchese, Joe Bonanno and Joe Profaciwere all members of the Knights of Columbus, even though that group screens applicants for good moral character.
Page 79
Many top mafiosi are big donors to churches. It is doubtful they hope for expiation for their sins but rather seek to pay homage to their wives, the piousness of Mafia wives being both legendary and understandable. Chicago don Sam Giancana fit this churchman category. Whenever he was in church the collection box on his side of the aisle would outproduce the other side by at least $500 or $600, that being the amount Sam would drop in.
Joe Profaci was an especially big giver to the church, so big that when a young thief stole a jeweled crown from his local parish, the angry Profaci forced the thief to return the crown and had him murdered anyway. It made sense from Profaci's viewpoint. If he gave a lot to the church and somebody stole from the church, it meant that somebody was stealing Profaci's money. Profaci did not take a charitable view of that.
Chauffeurs: Mafia road to success
Chauffeur becomes power brokera plausible Mafia rags to riches story.
The chauffeur is in a unique position, often knowing more about mob activities than the too highly touted
consigliere
. Mafiosi, it seems, turn loquacious in Cadillacs. Chauffeurs privy to closely held secrets often become a boss's confidant, even his appointment ecretary, and, of course, a trusted bodyguard.
Perhaps the best case in point is the Chicago Outfit's John "Jackie the Lackey" Cerone, for years the driver for top boss Tony Accardo. By the 1970s when Accardo was in semi-retirement (although always consulted on important business), Cerone was viewed by law enforcement officials as being the day-to-day head of the mob. Al Capone himself was first recruited to Chicago by Johnny Torrio to act as his trusted driver (although when Torrio did not need him Al went to work as a shill or barker outside one of the mob's whorehouses).
The late informer Joe Valachi would have had far less interesting or informative testimony to provide had he not served as the chauffeur for Salvatore Maranzano. At the conclusion of the Mafia War of 1930-1931, which put Maranzano in position to proclaim himself the boss of bosses, chauffeur Valachi learned Maranzano's intention to go back to war. Maranzano told Valachi he was planning to wipe out such nationwide crime leaders as Capone, Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Willie Moretti, Dutch Schultz and others. Unfortunately for Maranzano his foes got him first. It was also unfortunate for Valachi for he would, as a trusted chauffeur, have moved much higher in crimedom than he did as just an ordinary soldier in Luciano's family. Maranzano had already rewarded a previous driver, Joe Bonanno, with an important position within his own family, and when Maranzano died, Bonanno became the "father" of the Maranzano family.
Not all chauffeurs rise to the top, especially if their boss is marked for extinction. Richard Cain, driver for Sam Giancana, had been a former Chicago police officer, having been assigned to infiltrate law enforcement. He even became chief investigator of the Cook County sheriff's office. Finally discredited by the force, he openly joined the Chicago Outfit and became Giancana's driver and aide. He also served as negotiator, interpreter (Spanish, to help Giancana in his Latin gambling enterprises), as well as keeper of Sam's personal secrets. Giancana trusted him to drive around his problem daughter, Antoinette, who later wrote the best-selling
Mafia Princess
. Cain was shotgunned to death in December 1973, a year and a half before Giancana was murdered. They had both offended the Chicago Outfit, and especially the powerful Joe Aiuppa, by refusing to share the profits they made setting up cruise-ship casino gambling. After Cain's death Dominic "Butch" Blasi took over as Giancana's chauffeur as well as performing Cain's other duties. He was with Giancana the night he was murdered, but neither the FBI nor Giancana's daughter ever believed he was involved in the killing. He was considered too loyal.
Not all of Giancana's drivers were as highly thought of by their boss. Sal Moretti was murdered on Giancana's orders after the driver carried out a hit contract for Sam on Leon Marcus, a banker-land developer. Unfortunately, Moretti had failed to remove from Marcus's body a document that linked Giancana to Marcus in a secret motel deal. On Giancana's orders Moretti did not die easy. He was viciously tortured before he was shot and stuffed in a dry-cleaning bag in the trunk of an abandoned car.
Crime boss Carmine Galante was another chauffeur who made good, but in the end his former boss acquiesced to his murder. In the old days Galante had served as a driver for Joe Bonanno who, it was said, in later years still "felt paternalistic toward him." Galante later went to prison for narcotics violations and when he came out he moved to take over the Bonanno family, with his old patron in a sort of retirement in Arizona. Galante then moved to take over the other New York families, and a nationwide decision was made to eliminate him. It was considered prudent by the other crime bosses to obtain Bonanno's okay to the contract, knowing the esteem in which he had held Galante. Since at the time, despite all indications to the contrary, Bonanno still clung to the idea that his son Bill might be able to take over the crime family or perhaps a portion of it, Bonanno was said to have given his approval
Page 80
some say with considerable enthusiasm. It would seem blood runs thicker than chauffeurs.
Chicago Amnesia: Mob intimidation of witnesses
The term
Chicago amnesia
, born more than six decades ago, is still used by police and federal authorities all over the country to describe the reticence of witnesses in testifying against organized crime. In Chicago in the 1920s, law enforcement officials found it virtually impossible to prosecute gangsters because of the fear they instilled in potential witnesses. Even eyewitnesses who eagerly came forward on seeing a crime suddenly developed a startling loss of memory when they learned the identities of the culprits.
Gang leader Dion O'Banion, a practiced expert at witness discouragement, once observed with quaint humor: "We have a new disease in town. It's called Chicago amnesia." And Chicago amnesia was contagious, often contracted through bribes, but quite often through threats or even murder attempts.
The Capone mob and mafiosi all over the country picked up the term, even though they certainly had known and used the tactic previously. Case after case has been lost by the prosecution in court after a crime boss's order went out to "give them amnesia."
CIA-Mafia Connection
The link between U.S. intelligence agencies and the Mafia dates to the Lucky Luciano era. It is now generally accepted as fact that, from his prison cell, Luciano aided the U.S. Navy in maintaining security on New York's wartime waterfrontafter first victimizing U.S. Intelligence by having the S.S.
Normandie
burned in its berth on the East River in 1942 while it was being refurbished as a troop transport. Later, Luciano provided intelligence and Mafia operators in Sicily who aided the invasion of the island. And, according to a secret "informal" study by Department of Justice officials some 15 years after World War II, he was also instrumental in getting Vito Genovese in Italy to "turn" in 1944 and work for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Previously, Genovese, who had fled to Italy with a huge amount of money to avoid prosecution for murder in America, had been close to Mussolini and had contributed mightily to the Fascist effort. However, when the order from Luciano reached him, Genovese dutifully switched sides, goaded on not only by Luciano, but also by the firm belief that it is never right to be on the losing side.
The CIA in later years actively courted the aid of the underworld when needed. They apparently thought there was a genuine need for the Mafia in the infamous Operation Mongoose plot to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro. Names that float about in that incredible operation include those of Mafia boss Sam Giancana, Meyer Lansky, flamboyant mobster Johnny Roselli, Tampa crime boss Santo Trafficante, Howard Hughes and Hughes's executive officer Robert Maheu, and a cast of thousands.
In retrospect, it is obvious that only the CIA and Hughes thought there was a real plot to get Castro. Most of the mobsters involved, and Maheu as well, were more interested in ripping off the agency and utilizing it to keep other agenciessuch as the FBIoff their backs and out of underworld activities. It has been said that no one but the CIA would have believed such hair-raising tales as boats being shot out from under potential Castro assassins just as they were about to reach the island. The poison the CIA master chemists concocted for mafiosi to plant was simply flushed down mafioso toilets and never put to use. There is also no evidence that any CIA funds to be paid to Cubans on the island ever left the United States.
The CIA eventually discovered it was duped and there were many observers in and outside the underworld who are still uncertain whether the 1975 murder of Giancana and the 1976 erasure of Roselli was the work of the mob or of a CIA determined at the time to keep the fact that it had been toyed with, robbed and abused by the Mafia a secret.
Other scandals involving the CIA have since surfaced, including charges the agency obstructed efforts to probe the drug trade, that traffickers may have escaped prosecution because of other activities with the CIA. August Bequai, adjunct professor of criminal law at American University, declares in his study,
Organized Crime
: "The agency has also been linked to narcotics deals and prostitution rings within this country. Federal investigators have speculated that some CIA employees may have been running their own narcotics operations for personal gain or even to raise funds for the agency's more clandestine operations."
See also:
Giancana, Sam "Momo'; Operation Mongoose; Roselli, John; Trafficante, Santo, Jr
.
Cicero, Illinois: Mob-controlled Chicago suburb
During the Capone era of the 1920s, Cicero, Illinois, was a veritable armed camp. An estimated 850 gunmen were there800 of them Capone men, and 50 of them cops. Mathematics indicate to whom Cicero belonged. Through a process of intimidation and bribery, the Capone forces controlled, it was believed, every official position in the town "from mayor down to dogcatcher."

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