Reclaiming History (376 page)

^*
I had Rabbi Hillel Silverman waiting in the wings in London to call as a rebuttal witness, if needed. But he wasn’t, and I wanted to save time so we’d have more time for our final summations. The rabbi took his not being called to the stand graciously.

†The “Four Days in November” section covered in a fair amount of detail Ruby’s conduct and activities on the three days leading up to his killing of Oswald, on the premise that, as the Warren Commission said, “if Jack Ruby were involved in a conspiracy, his activities and associations during this period would, in some way, have reflected the conspiratorial relationship” (WR, p.333). Not just with his sandwiches, but with everything else he said and did, it couldn’t be more clear that Ruby wasn’t involved with organized crime or anyone else in his killing of Oswald. Indeed, as previously indicated, on the afternoon of the assassination he was so distraught that he wanted to fly back to Chicago that night to be with his sister, Eileen Kaminsky, but she talked him out of it, telling him that their infirm sister, Eva, needed him in Dallas (15 H 283, WCT Eileen Kaminsky).

^*
The latest Gallup Poll (November 10–12, 2003) showed that 37 percent of Americans believed the Mafia was involved in Kennedy’s assassination, and 34 percent believed the CIA was. Among other leading people or entities believed to be involved in the assassination were Lyndon Johnson, 18 percent; Castro’s Cuba, 15 percent; and the Soviet Union, 15 percent. The reason these numbers add up to more than 100 percent is that many people believed that more than one of these persons or groups were involved in the assassination. As noted earlier in the book, the Gallup Poll showed that 75 percent of all Americans believed there was a conspiracy in the assassination, only 19 percent believed that the assassin acted alone, and 6 percent had no opinion.

†The letters refer to an old Sicilian death slogan,
Morte Alla Francia Italia Anala
—“Death to the French Is Italy’s Cry”—which arose out of the French invasion of Sicily in 1282, although the word
Mafia
would later come to mean “manly” in Sicily.

^*
Capone rose to power in Chicago through gang wars with his rivals, during which upwards of five hundred murders took place in the last half of the 1920s, the most famous being the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929, when Capone’s killers, dressed as policemen, lined seven members of rival Bugsy Moran’s North Side gang up against a garage wall and machine-gunned them down.

^*
Other cardinal commandments of the Mafia have come to light through the years, two of which are that “a mafioso must obey implicitly the orders of a council of brothers senior to him,” and “a mafioso may never, under any circumstances, appeal to the police, the courts, or any other governmental authority for redress” (Sondern,
Brotherhood of Evil
, p.54).

†Once nationwide, it is believed that today only one “Outfit” in Chicago and New York City’s five organized-crime families remain. They are “about all that’s left,” says mob historian Selwyn Raab. However, as recently as 2002, federal court records show that the Bonanno family in New York City, still with about one hundred members (about half their traditional strength), was considering whether to induct ten new mob wannabes. Joseph Coffee, who pursued the mob as a New York City police detective for over thirty years, believes the aura and lifestyle of the Mafia will continue to attract new members irrespective of how many mob leaders are convicted and imprisoned. “It’s the high life, the nightclubs, the bimbos, the easy money,” he says. “It’s always been that.” (Richard Willing, “The Sopranos, the Mafia,”
USA Today
, March 10–12, 2006, pp.1A–2A)

^*
According to an obituary on Mario Puzo, the term
godfather
, the title of his book, which became one of the biggest-selling novels of all time, is not a Mafia term. “In fact, the term ‘godfather’ as a synonym for a Mafia don did not exist before Puzo made it up.” (Obituary of Puzo,
Newsday
, July 3, 1999, p.A3) However, it apparently was a Mafia term but not a synonym for a Mafia don. Rather, new Mafia members were assigned to someone who was designated as their “godfather,” a person who was “responsible” for the new member and was his “
gombah
.” (
New York Times
, October 2, 1963, p.28; Maas,
Valachi Papers
, p.96)
Goombah
or
compare
is also a term for a mobster’s buddy, who isn’t necessarily a mob member (
USA Today
, March 10, 2006, p.4A).

^*
The boss of bosses, Luciano, got his start in major crime by importing narcotics under Arnold (“A. R.”) Rothstein, the most influential figure in the New York underworld before his murder in 1928. Rothstein was famous for fixing the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. Indeed, Luciano’s first criminal arrest was for selling opium to an undercover agent in 1916. (Sciacca,
Luciano
, pp.7–8, 23, 45)

†The Bureau of Internal Revenue (later, Internal Revenue Service) estimated Capone’s annual income in the late 1920s, mostly from the sale of alcohol, as being close to $100 million—$50 million from bootlegging, $25 million from gambling, $10 million from organized prostitution, and about the same from narcotics distribution (Sondern,
Brotherhood of Evil
, pp.76–77). While many Americans know that the still-legendary mob figure (whose name to this day is identified with the Windy City probably more than even Michael Jordan’s) was convicted of federal income tax evasion, effectively ending his criminal career, what most don’t know is that the man who is credited with his downfall, Elliot Ness, had very little to do with it, not even participating in Capone’s trial. Ness, whose greatly exaggerated exploits were chronicled in
The Untouchables
, a book and TV series based thereon, was a federal Prohibition agent in the Department of Justice, and he did, indeed, lead successful (though not debilitating) raids on Capone’s breweries. He was also, by all accounts, honest and incorruptible. But it was the accountants of the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the Treasury Department, led by Frank J. Wilson, an agent in the intelligence unit of the bureau, whose investigation of Capone for not paying taxes on the income derived from his sale of alcohol, who finally brought Capone down. Capone was convicted in 1931 and sentenced to eleven years in the federal penitentiary. He served eight years and was paroled in 1939, suffering from syphilis. Al Capone died from a brain hemorrhage at his Palm Island, Florida, home in 1947 at the age of forty-eight after suffering a stroke followed by a bout of pneumonia. (Bergreen,
Capone
, pp.44, 272, 484, 486, 571, 604–605)

^*
Though never confirmed, it is believed by many that Luciano (together, some say, with Vito Genovese, Luciano’s underling at the time) had a hand in both Maranzano’s and Masseria’s deaths, guiding his then boss, Masseria (whom he was unable to stop fighting with Maranzano), to an Italian restaurant on Coney Island on April 15, 1931, where he was ambushed and murdered by men believed to be from his own gang. Luciano had excused himself to go to the restroom just before the murder took place. When Maranzano, who viewed himself as the new “boss of bosses,” felt that he also could not coexist with Luciano, who had taken over Masseria’s gang, or Vito Genovese, on September 10, 1931, he lured Luciano and Genovese to his office to be murdered by Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, who at age twenty-two was already a notorious executioner, but Luciano learned what was in store for him, and instead Maranzano was met by four of Meyer Lansky’s gunmen, who shot him to death. (
New York Times
, October 3, 1963, p.24; Nelli,
Business of Crime
, pp.203–206) Whether or not Luciano was behind the murders of Masseria and Maranzano, mob historians believe that their deaths marked the end of the dominance of the Mafia by old-time, tradition-beholden mafiosi, to whom the town one came from in Sicily was just as important, or more, than making money, which was the
only
concern of Luciano and Lansky.

†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)