From Suppression by Mussolini to Revival by ‘Liberation,’ 1926-1946
By James
Joseph Martin
Published: 1977-01-01
Conservatives
and liberals alike yield to florid raving when writing of Benito Mussolini and
Italian Fascism. In their books and articles and reviews of one another’s
books, there is usually cheerful agreement on the horrid sinfulness of „Il
Duce,“ and unconcealed gloating at his overthrow (Winston Churchill rushed
in to his dinner party, upon hearing of Mussolini’s murder, exclaiming with
gratification, „Ah, the bloody beast is dead!“), with an occasional murmur of
unhappiness later on from those who realize how close Italy came to becoming,
by default, a Stalinist client state.
In recent decades there has
been much moaning about the incredibly bad condition of Italy’s government
since the eclipse of Fascism. At the same time it is conventional to make
contemptuous references to any efforts asserting that Mussolini was responsible
for anything good or valuable. Few commentators overcome the shams of modern
ideological fuzz-sorting, and most Mussolini detractors end up producing a
literature which resembles what might have been fished from the wastebaskets of
the old US Communist party’s Daily Worker.
Murder, Not Execution
The bias in favor of Communist
explanations is perhaps best revealed in the established account concerning
Mussolini’s end. Invariably we read of him being „executed by partisans,“
though all should know better. Bushwhackers prowling behind the battle lines
and self-appointed political opponents with foreign allegiance exploiting the
disorder caused by war are not empowered to „execute“ anyone. Mussolini was
murdered by Italian Communists operating under Stalinist discipline.[1]
One of the consequences of the
destruction of Mussolini and his regime was a prodigious rise in criminal
activities in Italy, engineered by traditional organized criminal gangs which
returned to their established activities when released from the confines of
Mussolini’s prisons. Dominating this development was the revivified Mafia,
effectively subdued for over a decade before the arrival in 1943-44 of the
Anglo-American armies, and suddenly back in business everywhere with the
achievement of „liberation.“
Distorted History
For a time, wounded ideologues
were offended by the assertion that the Mafia had returned to former power and
influence as a consequence of „Allied“ policies. They sought to minimize the
achievement of Mussolini’s police in earlier decades by suggesting that the
Mafia had been little disturbed in those days, thus managing to ignore all the
substantive and widely available evidence to the contrary. How they explain the
sudden prominence of the „Honored Society“ immediately upon the scene
coincident with the 1943 invasion of Sicily by Mussolini’s enemies is
substantially an essay in utter awkwardness. All the same, the literature which
contradicts this line has been growing continually, and a steady re-adjustment
has been taking place, despite repeated efforts to divert attention from the
central importance of the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 in making the
Mafia a power once more.
If the Mafia came ashore only
figuratively in the landing craft and the tanks of the Anglo-American „liberators,“
there surely was much direct communication and supporting action between the
Allied forces and the remnants of the Mafia in the path of the invasion during
the first two weeks or so of the assault on the island.
With the passage of time and
the publication of more realistic appraisals, it is ever more evident that this
aspect of the story has been gravely exaggerated. What remains obscured is the
story of how this all began, an embarrassment to most writers on the subject,
who prefer to substitute for facts their ex post facto value judgments
in harmony with a generation of liberal fixations.
While the authors of modern
accounts of the Mafia are not all inclined to gloss over the vicious homicidal
greed of the contemporary „Brotherhood,“ a note of plaintive wistfulness creeps
into some of their narratives at the point where they deal with the collision
between the Mussolini regime and the Mafia in Italy. The arrest and conviction
of Mafiosi for hundreds of murders, among thousands of other crimes,
becomes a bagatelle and an incidental. In their view, the central fact is the
jostling of their „civil rights and liberties.“ It is unimportant that this
large contingent of the world’s most depraved criminals was locked up.
Forgotten Victims
Fascist Italy’s police draw
not a single word of commendation, but are cast as the villain in their effort
to clear Sicily and southern Italy of the most deeply entrenched criminal
enterprises in Europe. The real forgotten persons in these quasi-apologies for
the Mafia are their noncriminal victims; it is almost impossible to read
anything about them. Whatever the mawkish sentimentality aroused in behalf of
the gangsters, one can generally be assured that their prey will remain
nameless, the multitudes from whom they have robbed and extorted vast sums
blithely ignored, and the legion they have slain effectively lost from the
record.
The campaign of the Mussolini
regime to extirpate the Mafia from Sicily began abruptly, though there is much
doubt as to the motivation for it, and many details still evade students of
this matter. September 25, 1926, is the date assigned for the formal initiation
of the anti-Mafia program by the Encyclopedia of World History, which
describes the Mafia as „a loose criminal organization which had dominated
Sicilian politics for 50 years.“[2] It was significant that
the editors should make direct reference to the relationship between crime and
politics; any kind of basic understanding of the former without a solid
awareness of the realities of the latter, anywhere in the world, is unlikely.
Mussolini Cracks Down
However,
September 25, 1926, is just the occasion when a bill was introduced in the
Italian Chamber of Deputies for the suppression of the Mafia in Sicily.[3] The drive had actually begun almost five months earlier.
On April 30, Mussolini’s police had arrested 450 suspected Mafia in raids
conducted simultaneously in a dozen cities and towns, fighting what were
reported in the American newspapers as „pitched battles.“[4]
A New York Times
feature article two days later identified the „boss“ of the Mafia at that time
as one Gaetano Ferrarello.[5] But this account was somewhat
premature and innocent in announcing that Sicily was rid of these „bandits“ „after
50 years of terror.“ Mussolini was quoted as declaring that „the wound of
Sicilian criminality“ would be „cauterized“ „with iron and fire if necessary,“
and that his regime would „go to the very root of the matter regardless of
anyone’s feelings.“[6]
Hundreds Convicted
In
the year that followed, American newspapers gave little notice to this
campaign. Doubtless it was a period of intensive investigation and preparation.
But on October 22, 1927, the first result of the offensive was announced: a
mass trial of Mafiosi
began that followed a dragnet which scooped up more than 30 leaders at Termini
Imerese.[7] This resulted, on January 11, 1928, in the
conviction of 147 persons, seven of whom received life at hard labor, eight
receiving sentences of 30 years, and an additional five getting 25 years.[8]
Though
later writers conveniently overlooked the reported facts and tried to create
the impression that the defendants were the victims of „drumhead“ proceedings
which trampled on their „civil rights,“ these defendants apparently had the
opportunity and resources to hire a battery of 60 lawyers to head up their
defense. Reporters concluded that the organization had now surely received its „death
blow.“[9]
Actually,
Mussolini’s assault on the Mafia had barely begun. On February 8, a new trial
of 341 Mafia suspects began in Palermo,[10] followed by
the arrest and trial, also in Palermo, of an additional 379 persons from
Agrigento and Caltanisetto.[11] Some 500 police were
involved in the latter case, in which the defendants were charged with, among
other things, 500 major crimes, including 62 murders.
On
March 7, 1928, the court at Termini Imerese convicted 67 more persons for
various crimes, and sentenced them to terms of from two to 27 years.[12] Special penal farms were created on the Lipari Islands,
off the north coast of Sicily, where these sentences were to be served.[13]
New York Times Applauds Mussolini
From
this time on, feature articles on this sensational program crowded into the
press of the world, and no newspaper outside Italy exceeded The New York Times in
breadth of coverage. A column and a half story on January 16, 1928, trumpeted, „Breaking
the backbone of the Mafia is one of Premier Mussolini’s great achievements.“[14] A Times
editorial the following day praised the police executive responsible for
directing this drive, Prefect Cesare Mori of Palermo, a veteran of almost 40
years of service in the Italian police. Said the Times, „Prefect Mori of Palermo, who has
broken the back of the Mafia in Sicily, will go down in history as a deliverer
and superman.“[15]
The
New York Times
ultimately ran three commendatory profiles of Mori, probably the most admiring
written by the paper’s own correspondent, Arnaldo Cortesi, on March 4, 1928,[16] which also included a photograph of Mori and a picture
of a group of alleged Mafia on trial, enclosed in a large cage. This tactic,
employed a number of times during mass trials, was intended to protect the
judge, witnesses and jury from personal attack from one or another of the
defendants. Correspondent Cortesi concluded that police working under Prefect
Mori had made arrests in 79 of 361 municipalities, totaling 1,086 men belonging
to five gangs, and accused, among hundreds of serious crimes, of 357 murders
alone. Between May 1926 and the end of March 1928 eleven policemen had been
killed and another 350 wounded in what amounted to virtual battles with the
Mafia.
Some
narratives concerned with the suppression of the Mafia tend to be exclusively
concerned with Sicily, and dream up fanciful reasons for this campaign,[17] Actually, it was part of a three-pronged effort to
subdue organized crime as well on the island of Sardinia, and in Calabria, the
three provinces in the „toe“ of the Italian mainland „boot.“ A Times survey in early
1928 reported that Italian authorities considered the Sardinian crime rate to
be double that of Sicily, with a murder rate of 24 per 100,000 population, as
against Sicily’s 16. As for Calabria, it was officially considered to have a
crime rate higher than either Sicily or Sardinia, and observers were wondering
when Mussolini would stretch the anti-crime drive there.[18]
Finding Refuge in America
Some
social and political realities of the time during which this anti-Mafia onslaught
took place have to be kept in mind, as well as some of the international
implications. The swiftness and comprehensiveness of the drive headed by
Prefect Mori caused grave disturbances among the Mafiosi, who responded not only in major
gun battles with the police but also in flight to the Italian mainland and to
the United States. Though the major Sicilian figures in the American branch of
the Mafia had arrived well before 1926, as a result of Mussolini’s drive the
American gangs accumulated a considerable number of lesser hoodlums who found
refuge in the United States from Italian police pursuit. The large number of
Italians in the United States also made this country a convenient hiding place
for this migrating criminal element.
The
adoption in 1919 of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting
alcoholic beverages had spawned a fantastic increase in opportunities to make a
living by breaking the law.[19] Even though criminal gangs
had been a part of urban America since the 1860s, the new opportunities
presented by supplying the parched American appetite with illegal alcohol, and
everything that went with it in the field of legally enjoined pleasures and
diversions, gave organized crime a stimulus in the 1920s that could hardly have
even been imagined earlier.
With
Americans spending $100,000,000 a year abroad on alcohol by 1925,[20] it can be understood that those who decided they should
spend such money on hard liquor at home knew what they were doing in developing
the massive smuggling system that evolved in the 1923-1933 decade. The Mafia
was just one part of the entire „bootlegging“ scene, competing with other
ethnic gangs of Irish, Jewish and assorted lesser organizations of different
ancestry,[21] let alone the immense domestic group of
native birth engaged in home manufacture and distribution of high voltage
drink.[22]
In
any case, the Mussolini effort to stamp out the Mafia contributed to the
mobilization of Sicilian gangsters in the US. In a significant way these new
arrivals also brought long-standing feuds and competition with them. Law
enforcement authorities reported 527 gangster killings in the state of Illinois
alone in 1928, part of this sharp rise traceable to the importation of ancient
rivalries from Sicily.[23]
Though
the criminals fleeing from Sicily did not make recourse to the ploy of claiming
to be „political“ persecutees, a claim so dear to killers and armed robbery and
mayhem artists in the United States 50 years later, they did not shrink from
involvement in political affairs if there was gain to be made from it. A number
of Mafia „refugees“ were known even to return to Italy early in 1927 to build a
system to smuggle „anti-fascists“ to France.[24]
No Death Penalty for Mafia Crimes
It
has been seen that many of the convictions of Mafia in Sicilian courts were for
homicide, but that no death sentences were handed down. During the first few
years of Fascist rule, Italy had no capital punishment for any offense. This
changed in November 1926 following the third assassination attempt on Mussolini
in that same year. The regime proposed its reestablishment on November 5, and
the Italian Senate approved it 15 days later.[25]
However,
the death penalty was severely restricted to a very limited number of offenses:
treason, espionage, armed rebellion, and attempts on the life of the head of
state by an Italian native.[26] So no death penalty
attached to Mafia criminals subsequently convicted of murder, and there were
quite a few.
A
remarkable decrease in crime in Italy and Sicily was reported by early 1929,[27] even as Prefect Mori’s offensive bore on. As a
consequence of an extended proceeding, 154 members of a Palermo gang were sent
to prison on February 28, 1929.[28] Another major trial at
Termini Imerese concluded after nine months, with a jury mulling over 7,000
questions. Part of the problem here was a consequence of the voluminous
documentation supplied by the prosecution, which involved the vast captured
correspondence of the Mafia chief in this case. This material not only
demonstrated a serious involvement of Sicilian governmental authorities, but
also revealed significant ties with Mafia in the United States. It ended on May
1, 1929, with a verdict of guilty for 150 of the 161 defendants.[29]
In
1930 another major trial took place in Sicily at Sciacca, involving 241 alleged
Mafia accused of several hundred crimes, including 43 homicides. The
prosecution eventually produced a small mountain of documentary evidence, which
filled 69 boxes. Beginning in July 1930,[30] the trial
dragged on until June 22, 1931, when it concluded with the conviction of 124
Mafia (the number of the defendants had shrunk from 241 to 178), 15 of the
convicted receiving life sentences, and the 109 others receiving a total of
1,200 years in prison. The jury was out four days, and considered a total of
3,000 questions.[31] This Sciacca trial was considered the
most sensational of the entire series, with the defendants sitting in three
iron-barred cages throughout the court proceedings. It is worth noting that in
this case as well, the defendants were hardly poverty-stricken peasants, but
were represented by a substantial contingent of what were reputed to be highly
paid lawyers.[32]
More US Praise for Anti-Mafia Campaign
Readers
in the United States were treated in December 1930 to an eyewitness report on
an Italian Mafia trial written by a well-known American magazine publisher, S.
S. McClure, who was present at the beginning of a new Palermo trial. In a
report that appeared in the New
York Times, he mentioned that Prefect Mori had received four gold
medals for his work in prosecuting the Mafia since 1926, and that during one
recent year there had been 1,750 murders in Palermo alone. The Mori campaign
had thus far resulted in roughly 2,000 arrests, and about half as many
convictions, with the result, McClure stated, that „Today, in Sicily and
Naples, and in all the regions heretofore plagued by the racketeer, there is
absolute freedom from any form of extortion.“[33]
By
the end of 1931 Mussolini’s drive to wipe out the Mafia was entering its final
stages. Another big Palermo trial started on November 29 of that year, with the
public prosecutor seeking jail sentences for between 165 and 200 of a somewhat
larger group of defendants.[34] The trial lasted into
Christmas week, and of an eventual 245 persons brought before the court, 141
were convicted on December 29, 1931.[35]
Only
one trial drew attention in 1932, but it was another on the scale previously
conducted at Sciacca. This one began in the early spring, at Agrigento. It was
held in an improvised courtroom in the former monastery of Santo Spirito, with
the defendants once more confined in a large barred cage. It concluded on May
2, 1932, with the sentencing of another 244 Mafia members to a total of 1,200
years in prison.[36] Six weeks later a special piece in The New York Times
praised Italy as a country among the world’s leaders in instituting penal
reforms.[37]
Simultaneous
with the campaign in Sicily, authorities were carrying out an anti-Mafia drive
on the neighboring island of Sardinia as well as on the Italian mainland. On
June 22, 1934, an electrifying raid took place on the mainland, largely in the
towns of Cadeto, Gallino, Arno and Pellaro, all located on the „sole“ of the
Italian peninsular „boot.“ Some 400 Mafiosi
were arrested in this swoop, the majority of whom, it turned out, had fled
there from Sicily.[38] They had, as might be expected,
returned to traditional „protection rackets,“ reported to be very heavy in
Reggio Calabria as they had once been in Sicily. At the conclusion of their
year-long trial, during which 1,000 witnesses appeared for the prosecution, an
unspecified number of the defendants were given long prison terms.
By
mid-1935, it may be assumed, the Mafia had been reduced to a thin shadow of its
former self. By this time, priorities in Italy had profoundly shifted as
Mussolini had begun Italy’s quest for big-power status and a prominent position
in the Mediterranean, as well as a belated role as an African colonial power.
As a result of the growing hostility toward Mussolini and the Italian Fascist
state in the English-speaking world, commendation of anything in Italy was no
longer fashionable, and most of what was reported in the United States about
domestic affairs in Italy concerned matters discreditable to the regime.[39]
The
last mention in the New
York Times of Italian prosecution of the Mafia prior to the
outbreak of World War II was in November 1937. It reported on the arrest of 80 Mafiosi in Trapani and
the contiguous areas of mountainous and relatively inaccessible western Sicily,
who were subsequently arraigned in Messina.[40] Little
background information was provided, other than a mention that the drive was a
response to a „revival of Mafia activities.“ Nothing appeared subsequently in
the Times on
the outcome of this newest police move against the Sicilian Mafia.
Wartime Salvation for the Mafia
Since
the central theme of this narrative concerns the Mafia in Sicily and Italy,
with only incidental reference to various international relationships growing
out of it, the history of the Mafia in America is not included here except where
the interlocking consequences of their joint existence becomes obvious.
Therefore the latter aspect has so far been treated only peripherally.
This
changed with the Second World War, which brought the two together to an even
greater degree than during the 1920s and 1930s, at least in their connection to
international politics. As a consequence of the war, the Mafia became something
more than a domestic phenomenon in both Italy and the United States. In Italy,
what looked like extinction was turned around by the fortunes of the war, which
became the salvation of the Mafia as a force in Italian affairs.
How
this came about requires a summary of Mafia experiences in the United States in
the decade between 1933, when Prohibition ended, and the 1943 Anglo-American
invasion of Sicily as a phase of World War II. The re-legalization in 1933 of
the manufacture, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages ended the
phase of Mafia criminal opulence that resulted from violation of the previous
legal prohibition of such enterprises. Undoubtedly things had begun to change
in the relationships between the Mafia and the conventional world, and one of
the major aspects of this was the steady penetration of legitimate business by
Mafia money, influence and management, resulting in a degree of prosaic
respectability which has grown steadily ever since.
Labor Union Corruption
Organized
crime continued to make the bulk of its money from control of gambling,
prostitution and the ever-expanding extortion or „protection“ rackets, the
latter much aided by the corruption of labor unions. None of this was affected
adversely by the end of Prohibition. In fact, one of the new adjustments made
by the Mafia was its substantial penetration of the new legitimate businesses
supplying Americans with beer, wine and whiskey. Much of the latter two were
imported, and the infiltration of the waterfront of the large port cities –
originally a minor enterprise of organized crime – became a very large one.
Port facilities, some longshoremen’s unions, and all other functional aspects
ultimately came under Mafia control. The preposterous incidents related to the
extension of the war to Italy in the early 1940s came as a result of this
situation.
There
were two phases in the process whereby the Mafia achieved respectability
through „cooperation“ with the military and naval intelligence branches of the
US war machine after American involvement in the war following the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
One
was recruitment by the famous wartime spy agency, the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS) – ancestor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – and the
alleged supply of information about Sicily deemed crucial to the invasion
planners prior to this event in July 1943.
The
other concerned alleged Mafia cooperation with US naval intelligence in
alerting them as to the existence of German and Italian spies on the New York
waterfront, and in preventing such enemy espionage from penetrating the dock
areas and destroying ships or facilities, or perpetrating related sabotage.
‘Operation Underworld’ US Government-Mafia Liaison
It
now appears that such fears about enemy spies and saboteurs were assiduously
encouraged by American Mafiosi,
especially after the big French luxury liner Normandie
burned and capsized at its pier in New York harbor in February 1942. The
subsequent nervousness of US counterintelligence, and the fear that a series of
such calamities might be in the offing led to establishing links with the
Mafia, and the creation of something called „Operation Underworld,“ a loose
liaison between US Naval Counter-Intelligence and various Mafiosi employed on or
frequenting the wharves, in the interest of preventing anything else of this
kind.
Actually,
the Mafia itself may have purposely created the problem by destroying the
French liner, as one of the two most notorious Mafia hoodlums in American
history, Charles „Lucky“ Luciano, charges in his memoir.[41]
In any case, Italian or German agents had nothing to do with the calamity. In
an exaggerated way, the Mafia had simply expanded its „protection“ racket: in
return for guarantees that no more such marine disasters would occur, they
managed to provide themselves with an entree into the national defense area.
The next step would be the groundwork for subsequent promises of extensive
information and assistance in the American invasion of Sicily, which also came
with a price. But to this day there is a thick shroud of official mystery over „Operation
Underworld,“ and no government or service spokesmen have come forth to deny the
substance of Luciano’s allegations.
Wartime Mafia Enterprise
Another
mystery is the effect of the Mafia’s „cooperation“ pose on political decisions
within the Roosevelt regime, and whether this collaboration led to official
disregard of domestic Mafia lawlessness, particularly its gambling activities
and its tireless and expansive evasion of price controls, rationing and other
wartime national and local economic restraints. The sums made by the Mafia
through corrupting the ration stamp programs for gasoline, clothing and food,
and the similar fortunes made providing scarce, forbidden or rationed products,
have never been determined. This entire episode was largely papered over by New
Deal economists and historians, who sought to sell the public the legend about
how honestly and efficiently wartime price control and rationing had worked.[42]
Of
a somewhat different nature is the story of US recruitment of the Mafia in
preparing for the invasion of Sicily. This involved the actual placement of
hoodlums in US intelligence services, and related soliciting of information
from others who remained outside. In his revealing book, OSS, ex-CIA man R.
Harris Smith discusses the selection of „Mafia types“ for work with OSS
operations in Italy, in what it called its „Operational Group Command.“[43] Smith also pointed out that the OSS assembled rather
formidable criminal muscle from two of the land’s most notorious killer gangs: „Murder,
Incorporated“ of New York City, and the equally lethal „Purple Gang“ of
Detroit.[44]
Recruiting ‘Lucky’ Luciano
One
aspect of this US government information-gathering from the Mafia in advance of
the assault on Sicily is as shrouded in mystery as the aspect involving the
mobilization of Mafia help in policing the New York docks. There are half a
dozen differing accounts relating how US intelligence services went about
seeking the favor of „Lucky“ Luciano, with various henchmen emerging as the
supposed key figure in the negotiations. In one account it is Frank Costello,
in another Meyer Lansky. Still other criminal luminaries appear to have been
the person responsible.
But
in all the accounts two individuals always appear: Moses Polakoff, Luciano’s
principal legal advisor, and Murray R. Gurfein, a vigorous member of the team
of prosecutors led by Thomas E. Dewey that brought about Luciano’s conviction
and jailing in 1936. Before the war Gurfein had been an assistant district
attorney for the State of New York. After the war began, he was (according to
some sources) affiliated with US Military Intelligence, and later in the war
was reportedly an OSS Colonel.[45]
A Cultivated Legend
As
time has passed, the secretive or embarrassing aspects of the Luciano case have
gradually surfaced, along with a growing suspicion that there never was much of
substance to stories of help provided by the Mafia to the US invasion forces.
Far more important than any such help, it appears, was some labyrinthine
proceeding related to Luciano’s 1936 conviction.
In
his own memoir, Luciano – in two separate and vehement scatological commentaries
– denied having been of any assistance whatever to any branch of the armed
services in the preparation or conduct of the Sicilian invasion.[46] He goes on to confess that he went along with the
creation of this legend, knowing all the time that he was telling nothing but
lies. (On one occasion, recalling a particularly spirited but fictitious
retelling of the tale, in 1954, Luciano remarked in an aside that his theatrics
in inventing imaginary details connected with his bogus part in the Sicilian
invasion should have earned him an Academy Award.) In retrospect. the most
lugubrious aspect of the entire Luciano/Sicily affair was the ludicrous patina
of patriotism and related sentiments which it gradually acquired.
What
Luciano knew about Sicily probably could have been supplied to US intelligence
officials by anyone familiar with a library. As he protested later, he had been
about nine years old when he emigrated from the island, and had no contacts
there of any significance. In the large book that included his verbatim memoirs
he mentioned only a single Mafia figure known to have survived the Mussolini
suppression campaign in Italy or Sicily. This was Vito Genovese, an equally
notorious American Mafia associate who had returned to Italy in 1937 to escape prosecution
after Luciano’s conviction, and for whom Luciano expressed unbounded distaste.
Luciano
asserted that the entire thing had been fabricated to provide a cover for his
pardon by Thomas Dewey – who was elected governor of New York in 1942 after his
sensational career as a prosecuting district attorney proceeding against
organized crime. Luciano maintained that he had been framed by Dewey’s office,
that the prostitution ring that flourished under his aegis was a „moonlighting“
operation carried out by underlings, about which he knew nothing, and that his
conviction had been made possible by perjured testimony on the part of women
who claimed relationships with him that were totally imaginary. Luciano further
stated that after his conviction his lawyers patiently went about confronting
these witnesses, and secured from each of them an affidavit admitting that they
had been encouraged to lie about Luciano in return for promises of luxurious
vacations and other „fringe benefits,“ most of which never had been made good,
thus embittering them against the prosecution.
When
Luciano was convicted in 1936, a stipulation in his sentence provided that he
was to be deported upon completion of serving his sentence,[47]
originally 30 to 50 years, to be served in the bleakest of the New York state
penitentiaries, Dannemora. So his ultimate deportation was not in question; it
was only a question of when this might happen. Luciano and Polakoff contended
that even before the war was well along they had sufficient new evidence and
affidavits of relapsed witnesses to begin proceedings against Dewey and his
cooperating staff for a gigantic rigging of his case, based on subornation
involving all key witnesses. With Dewey, who was now Governor of New York, and
those connected with him knowing all this, of course, the next step therefore
was an effort to hurry along a pardon so that deportation proceedings could be
swiftly pursued and the whole impending scandal averted.[48]
At
this point the blending of the keep-the-waterfront-free-from-saboteurs and the
aid-the-invasion-of-Sicily enterprises involving the Mafia took place, and
Luciano’s underworld friends with high political and other connections began
the measures that were to lead to Luciano’s pardon and deportation shortly
after the end of World War II. The sudden change in Luciano’s domicile from
Dannemora to the somewhat more salubrious circumstances of Great Meadow prison
at Comstock (near Albany) was the most instructive indication that an
understanding between organized crime and US armed forces intelligence
operatives had been fleshed out. From 1942 on, secret meetings between Luciano
and youthful Lieut. Commander Charles R. Haffenden took place at Comstock
prison. At the same time a stream of Mafia underworld figures also appeared
regularly for audiences with Luciano, appropriately explained as part of the „Operation
Underworld“ operations to keep the New York waterfront free of Axis
subversives.
In
the meantime the Office of Strategic Services went about creating its own team
of spies and assistance elements for work in Sicily,[49]
though Allied Intelligence in North Africa was not entranced with the quality
of information it had been receiving in the period immediately preceding the
invasion. According to one authoritative account, during that crucial time all
native informers were ignored except those with Sicilian Mafia associates.[50]
Fables of Mafia Assistance
The
literature and stories concerning the fabled assistance furnished by the Mafia
in the Anglo-American assault on Sicily is confusing and contradictory. The
failure of anyone ever to put on the record any convincing facts, and the
persisting vague and mock-mysterious abstruseness about it all has encouraged
the suspicion that much of the episode was fabricated. This further strengthens
the belief that not only was Luciano telling the truth when he disclaimed
having the slightest thing to do with providing information helpful to the
Sicilian operation, but that little if any help was received from any other
Mafia figure either, whether living in the USA or Sicily.
It
took the Allies only 39 days to overrun Sicily – July 10 to August 18, 1943.
The part taken easiest was the western half of the island, reputedly that area
where the vestiges of the Mafia survived underground. But in what was
essentially a military operation undertaken with overwhelming force, one must
assume that the help supplied by a ragtag band of criminals infiltrated in the
civilian population would of necessity be nominal, if perceptible.
Some
recent sources still assert that Luciano supplied invasion officers with
contacts with Sicily’s only unjailed Mafia chief of any substance, Don Calogero
Vizzini, as well as with Genco Russo, overseer of the immense land holdings in
western Sicily of Prince Raimondo Lanza di Trabia. (Di Trabia was the personal
aide to Major General Giacomo Carboni, one-time chief of the Italian Military
Intelligence Service, and one of the chief plotters behind the original
deposition of Mussolini. Carboni was put in command of the mobile defense force
for the city of Rome on July 14, 1943.)[51]
Luciano’s
repudiation of any involvement of this kind, as well as the failure of him and
his literary collaborators, Gosch and Hammer, even to mention Vizzini’s name in
a book of almost 500 pages, must be viewed as corroborating support for Luciano’s
insistence on total non-participation.
At
any rate, a plethora of fantastic stories connecting Luciano with one aspect or
another of the Sicilian campaign is still with us. World War II British army
officer Norman Lewis, in his book The
Honored Society: A Searching Look at the Mafia, asserted that
Allied tanks went ashore actually flying yellow flags bearing the black letter „L,“
which purportedly stood for Luciano.[52] Probably the most
astounding of these fables alleges that Luciano himself was part of the
invasion forces, despite unchallengeable evidence that the influential Mafia
chief was ensconced in his cell at Great Meadows penitentiary throughout the
operation.[53]
Allied ‘New Order’ in Sicily
In
contrast to the opaque evanescence attending the alleged intelligence and
strategic genius of the Mafia prior to the attack on Sicily, we have more solid
information about the political new order established in the wake of the Allied
military operations. Allied military and occupation leaders were soon emptying
the prisons and labor camps of the Mussolini regime,[54]
eventually turning loose upon Sicily and southern Italy a legion of convicted
murderers, robbers and extortionists, as well as setting them up in business as
the mayors of a long string of Sicilian communities – „Mafiosi to a man,“ as
Lewis puts it. To justify loosing the Mafia from jail, the Allied policy makers
invented the notion that they were „victims of fascist tyranny,“[55] thus converting them into instant political prisoners,
though what they really accomplished was the rebuilding of the Mafia’s „state
within a state,“ as Lewis described their pre-1926 enclave.[56]
It
should thus have come as no surprise to anyone, least of all the Anglo-American
forces, that intricately integrated organized crime was flourishing in Sicily
within a few weeks of „liberation.“[57]
The
„liberators“ brought something else in their train besides the Mafia: a
rocketing inflation and an accompanying black market which dwarfed that which
prevailed under Mussolini. The predecessor of each had already been seen in
North Africa, where they had achieved memorable dimensions. The monetary
disorder resulting from Anglo-American policies there had even brought a
scolding in Business Week:
„The US and British have yet to learn what the Germans have taught; occupation
is made easier if money rates are unchanged or altered in favor of the local
people.“[58]
‘Liberation’ Realities
Given
that the American branch of the Mafia had squirreled away a vast fortune
through their major hand in the stateside black market, it was not out of
character that the revivified Sicilian and Italian Mafia, when given the
chance, would promptly follow in their steps. A foundation was provided by the
combination of ridiculous debasement of the money system and the mountain of
desirable products brought to the Mediterranean by the occupation forces. The
stealing of supplies from the Anglo-American forces or the bribing of personnel
to supply them became a major Mafia industry.[59]
After
a period of innocent wonderment, occupation police began to react. In general,
though, it might have been easier to bail out the Mediterranean with a sieve
than to eliminate the black market flourishing on all sides. Nevertheless a
brave attempt was made. On September 9, 1943, authorities reported the arrest
in Sicily of two Mafia chiefs, Domenico Tomaselli and Giuseppe Piraino, in a
coup that allegedly smashed black market operations there.[60]
Mafia Revival Blamed on Fascism
In
an effort to divert responsibility it was also alleged that the Fascists had
mobilized the Mafia in its own aid,[61] though this
sharply contradicted the program of release from Mussolini’s prisons and penal
camps of the very people who were supposed to be in Fascism’s employ. This
convenient line appealed to liberals, however, and was still being repeated
decades later.
But
blaming Mussolini did nothing to slow the sustained progress of the Mafia and
the black market. A year later a succession of dispatches from Sicily reported
that the Mafia were rampant in Sicily.[62] The gang system
had reappeared, and Palermo was once more the scene of numerous holdups and
kidnappings, while repeated press commentaries outlined the scope of the
familiar outrages.[63] By the end of October 1944, most
Sicilian communities were so insecure that virtually no one could be found to
travel outside their perimeters at night, a situation that repeated, under far
different circumstances, the realities of Europe’s walled towns of the 12th
century.
In
early 1945 the Mafia was reported affluent and flourishing on the crest of a
major Sicilian crime wave,[64] while a succession of
sensational New York Times
reports[65] told of the spread of gangsterism to Rome –
another accompaniment to the advance of the „liberation“ up the Italian
mainland.
Vito Genovese and the Allies
During
these expectable developments came the announcement in November 1944 that one
of the most elusive and secretive of all of America’s Mafia leaders, Vito
Genovese, had been arrested by Army occupation police.[66]
They had been working in collaboration with stateside authorities in connection
with the unsolved murder in Brooklyn some years earlier of a minor Mafia
hoodlum named Boccia. Genovese was „discovered“ living in a luxurious apartment
in Naples, and working as an interpreter for and advisor to the US Military
Government, with high-level clearance and passes authorizing him to travel
anywhere in Allied-controlled Italy.[67]
Local
authorities had instituted the search for Genovese, who had quietly left the
USA for Italy in 1937 in the wake of the conviction of Luciano, expecting to be
next on the Dewey prosecution list.[68]
In
Naples, where local authorities were cooperating with the US Military
Government, Genovese was under investigation for his role in running a
formidable black market operation since at least the „Allied“ occupation of the
area.[69] He had been operating right under the noses of
the naive military governors with whom he worked in close collaboration almost
daily, and who considered his aid and service indispensable.[70]
It is probably as a reaction to the embarrassment that followed that an effort
was made to try to conceal the realities of the moment by implying that
Genovese had shady political ties with the overthrown Fascists, and that he had
done the same things under Fascist aegis that were being uncovered under the
new „liberation“ regime. One energetic Army counterintelligence bloodhound even
tried to portray Genovese as a German spy.
Still
unexplained is the agonizingly slow movement of the extradition proceedings,
and the discreet burying of the whole matter for many months after his arrest.
Six months after his apprehension Genovese was still in Italy, and he did not
arrive in America until June 2, 1945.[71] During his
arraignment on a charge of complicity in the 1934 murder of Boccia, Genovese
pleaded innocent. (His attorney was Hyman Barshay, counsel years earlier for
the sinister killer Louis „Lepke“ Buchalter, a key figure in the „Murder, Incorporated“
gang.)[72]
The
dismissal of the charges against Genovese (on grounds of insufficient evidence,
following the death while in jail of a key prosecution witness), is incidental
to this account.[73] In the years that followed, an
immense tale grew up around Genovese and what he had been doing in Italy
between 1937 and 1944, much of it based on not very credible assertions by
hostile fellow gangsters, and his estranged wife during her testimony in
divorce proceedings in 1952.
These
versions tried to portray Genovese as a celebrity in Fascist regime during the
years between his return to Italy in 1937 and his arrest in 1944. While all
manner of wondrous involvements were attributed to him, none of these accounts
alleged that he had anything to do with the Sicilian Mafia vestiges in those
years, or that he was the spark behind the rebirth of organized crime all
through the region which fell to the Anglo-American armed forces beginning in
midsummer of 1943.[74]
Clemency for Luciano
In
May 1945, just as hostilities were ceasing in Europe, attorneys for „Lucky“
Luciano entered his petition for clemency before Governor Dewey.[75] Another tangled tale is connected with the events
related to the eventual pardon and deportation of Luciano. His lawyer,
Polakoff, was the first to tell the story to the press of Luciano’s alleged
assistance to the Mediterranean warriors, and naming Gurfein as the key person
who had suggested that Luciano’s aid be recruited. Polakoff was quoted as
saying: „Through information the convict [Luciano] furnished the military from
his cell in Great Meadows prison in 1942, many Sicilian-born Italians furnished
information regarding the conditions in Sicily that was helpful to the armed
forces in the invasion.“[76]
Governor
Dewey was ambivalent about the case. On January 3, 1946, in a comment on
Luciano’s cooperation with the armed forces, he added, „the actual value of the
information procured is not clear.“[77] Dewey’s attitude
was somewhat more positive a few weeks later. He cited Luciano’s usefulness to
the US Army in the Sicilian invasion as the reason for the pardon[78] – a measure that many continued to think was far too
hasty and precipitate.
For
some time the responsibility for the action was traded back and forth between
Dewey and the New York State Parole Board, and the subject was to become an
issue of fitful significance for years thereafter. Luciano was deported a few
days after his pardon. The story of his return to Italy on a small ship, and
arrival in Naples on the last day of February 1946 has been retold many times.[79]
Luciano’s
reappearance in the Western Hemisphere the following year, culminating in a
gathering in Cuba of major Mafia figures, led to another round of unhappy
commentaries on Dewey’s action in his behalf. Once again the press interviewed
Gurfein and Haffenden about Luciano’s wartime role in furnishing
counterintelligence and other aid.[80] Now his role was
being designated as „alleged,“ and the more hyperthyroid sentiments that had been
expressed in 1945 and 1946 were no longer heard. Observations about Luciano in
February 1947 were drastically subdued and discounted compared to those a year
earlier.[81]
Governor
Thomas Dewey remained under clouds of suspicion for years, with persistent
charges of having made enigmatic deals. His troubles over the Luciano pardon
accelerated. When Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee began to assemble his
machine for the much-publicized investigation of organized crime in America in
1951, he contributed to the tangle of allegations with the charge that Dewey’s
commutation of Luciano’s sentence was not justified.[82]
Postwar ‘Banditry’ in Sicily
While
military and political figures, and the press, were trying to decide whether or
not Luciano should be enshrined by history as a patriot, the Italian mainland
and Sicily were putting up with the mixed blessings of the new order brought to
their midst by the Occupation. Another big crime wave swept both in January and
February 1946,[83] while in Sicily the term „banditry“
became the common euphemism for renewed Mafia labors.[84]
Ultimately the mixture of liberal leftists (notably in the Christian Democratic
Party) and social democrats that US occupation policy decreed should be Italy’s
new leadership found they were obliged to use the same strategy Mussolini had
employed in putting down widespread organized crime. Ultimately, though, they
used far more force in doing so than „Il
Duce“ ever employed in supporting the campaigns of Prefect Mori.
Though
Mori had engaged in open warfare with the Mafia and fought encounters that
involved enough men to rate as battles if they had taken place between rival
States, the situation facing post-1945 Italy turned out to be considerably
worse. It mainly revolved around the celebrated Salvatore Giuliani and his
followers. Between 1946 and 1950, he became the best known Sicilian „bandit“ of
the entire modern era, and he and his followers earned as much space in the
newspapers of the world as many of the global politicians in those first few
years of the burgeoning Cold War.
To
suppress Giuliani and his „bandits,“ the postwar Italian government dedicated
considerable resources. By the spring of 1949, 8,000 heavily armed paramilitary
carabinieri
police were fighting Giuliani’s small band in virtual guerilla warfare that
dragged on for months, and on a scale that made Mussolini’s efforts of
1926-1934 look like mere outings by comparison.[85]
In
the meantime the Mafia went about its quiet and diligent mending of fences,
reestablishing control and influence and amassing substance on a scale again
which outdid anything enjoyed before 1926 by many magnitudes, a total program
that dovetailed with the conventional world of business and politics to the
point where only experts could distinguish the component parts of the total
situation.[86]
In
both Europe and the United States, the approach to social order that has
evolved in liberal circles looks upon a certain level of mayhem as an endurable
price to pay for a „free society.“ This novel view is supposed to explain and
rationalize whatever may be prevailing in a culture that makes it incapable of
controlling murder, aggravated assault and rape. After demonstrating ineptitude
in law enforcement long enough, those in power offer plausible excuses to
convince the unhappy that what prevails should be considered the „normal“ or „moderate“
response. In a cultural environment where such a climate of opinion prevails,
it can be taken almost for granted that law enforcement such as that exemplified
by Mussolini in reducing the Sicilian Mafia will always be deplored and reasons
found to denounce it as infamous.
Notes
|
The
best description of this sordid affair is by two collaborators with the Reds
in northern Italy, Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle and Urbano Lazzaro, in
their book Dongo: The Last Act,
first published in Italy in 1962, and in London two years later. The role
played by Italy’s loyal Stalinists in the Mussolini murder has been a part of
the public record since the Rome newspaper l’Unita
in 1945, and in greater detail in 1947, revealed that the Italian Communist
Party leader Palmiro ‘Ibgliatti, brought back to Italy by Americans late in
1944, issued orders through party headquarters to shoot Mussolini and other
Fascist leaders immediately upon capture. New
York Times, March 9, 1947, p. 18. Two weeks later, Walter
Audisio, using the wartime pseudonym „Colonel Valerio,“ was identified as
Mussolini’s „executioner.“ He tried to implicate US Military Governor Charles
Poletti, a one-time lieutenant governor of the state of New York, as having
approved in advance the murder of Mussolini and the Fascist party chief, Achille
Starace. Poletti heatedly denied Audisio’s allegation. New York Times, March 23, 1947,
p. 5, March 31,1947, p. 5, April 1, 1947, p. 18. Audisio was subsequently
rewarded with a seat in the postwar Italian chamber of deputies, remaining
until his death on October 11, 1973 at the age of 64. See obituarial note in New York Times, Oct. 13, 1973, p.
38, and Associated Press report on his part in Mussolini’s murder in Colorado
Springs Gazette Telegraph,
Oct. 12, 1973, p. 3-C. Especially useful for other aspects of the above
matters is Luigi Villari, The
Liberation of Italy, 1943-1947 (Appleton, Wisc.: C. C. Nelson,
1959.)
Partisan fighter Urbano Lazzaro, who helped capture Mussolini and was supposedly involved in his „execution,“ provides a different account in an April 1995 article in the Italian magazine Panorama. Lazzaro writes that the Duce was accidentally killed several hours before his staged „execution.“ See „Mussolini’s execution staged, partisan says,“ (Reuter’s dispatch) in Orange County Register (Calif.), April 29, 1995. |
|
|
Rev.
ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948, p. 989.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Sept. 26, 1926, p. 24.
|
|
|
New
York Times, May 1, 1926, p. 1.
|
|
|
5\.
New York Times, May 2, 1926, see. IX, p. 11.
|
|
|
6\.
New York Times, May 1, 1926, p. 1.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Oct. 23, 1927, sec. III, p. 1.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Jan. 12, 1928, p. 3. 10.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Jan. 22, 1928, see. IX, p. 2.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Feb. 9, 1928, p. 1.
|
|
|
New
York Times, March 7, 1928, p. 6.
|
|
|
New
York Times, March 8, 1928, p. 6.
|
|
|
One
finds an occasional account which seeks to describe the Lipari Islands penal
camps as versions of Devil’s Island, but they were resorts compared to those
already long established in the Soviet Union. The Italian camps were far from
escape-proof, nor were all those sentenced to serve time there kept for their
full time. Escapes and reduction of sentences were hardly unknown as the
program was expanded.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Jan. 16, 1928, p. 5.
|
|
|
„Mori’s
War on the Mafia,“ New
York Times, Jan. 17, 1928, p.28.
|
|
|
A.
Cortesi, „The Mafia Dead, A New Sicily Born,“ New York Times, March 4, 1928, sec. V. pp. 10-11. See
also the major stories on Mori in New
York Times, Jan. 22, 1928, sec. IX, p. 2 and March 11, 1928, sec.
III, p. 5. Many times decorated for his campaign against the Mafia, Mori died
in 1942.
|
|
|
Gay
Talese, in his extremely popular best-seller, Honor Thy Father (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Books,
1971), alleges that Mussolini began the drive to wipe out the Mafia because
on a visit there his hat had been stolen, and that he was outraged later by
the patronizing attitude of a local official who was also a member of the
Mafia. Talese perhaps more than any other recent writer on the Mafia has been
most offended by the Mussolini anti-Mafia program, and has sought to pose
them as heroes of a sort, rationalizing their resistance as some kind of
political guerrilla warfare and ultimately seeking to elevate them to a kind
of patriot status on the basis of their behavior in World War II.
The effort to attribute patriotic and politically ideologic qualities to the Mafia in World War II does not wash. Talese admits (p. 488) that no Mafia can survive without government collusion and support. Mussolini put it out of business in a short time, and even in a Cuba which rivaled Sicily in poverty, the Mafia was swiftly run out of its entrenched positionin a matter of days by the Castro revolution. The Mafia’s willingness to cooperate with the USA to do in the Communist Castro was barely distinguishable from its calculated readiness earlier to work with the same USA to do in the Fascist Mussolini. Ideology was a light year away from the central core of the issue, which was the hope of overturning a non-cooperating political establishment and the expectation of having it replaced by one which would tolerate at least some attenuated level of mutual existence with organized crime. |
|
|
„Mussolini
Aims Drive on Sardinian Bandits,“ New
York Times, Feb. 19. 1928, p. 5. This aspect of the program is
the worst-reported of all, and the record is badly documented. It may be
assumed to have been as successful as the others, however. The veteran writer
on Italian affairs, Melton S. Davis, in his Who Defends Rome? The Forty-five Days, July 25 to September
8, 1943 (New York: Dial Press, 1972), mentioned specifically that at the time
of the 1943 invasion of Sicily, „there was no Mafia in Sardinia“ (p. 258).
With respect to the acljoining island of Corsica, a French department north of Sardinia, it was fully as notorious as Sicily and Sardinia as a sanctuary of organized crime, and in the eyes of criminals themselves, perhaps even more formidable. Charles „Lucky“ Luciano, referring to the consequences of the opening up of Cuba to Mafia-Syndicate gambling via the ministrations of Meyer Lansky, to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1933, and the subsequent spread to Nassau and other Caribbean locations, felt that Mafia operations would soon expand to European sites as well. However he shrank from the thought of a „war“ with the Corsicans, whom he characterized as „real cannibals“ compared to anything the American-based organized crime rings had come up with when it came to the application of violence. That anyone could impress Luciano concerning the revolting conditions that attended their murderous enterprise is indeed an impressive tribute to the Corsican underworld, if distinctions of this sort can be deemed worthy of notice. See Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano (New York: Dell paperback edition, 1976), pp. 172-173. On collaboration between the Corsican criminal element and the American intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), see note 49. |
|
|
In
the 1920s it took on an average of 60 columns of tiny print just to list the
articles dealing with Prohibition and its violation and enforcement in the
annual issues of the New
York Times Index. It is to be understood that the local press of
the nation covered a prodigious number of stories on the same subject which
never found their way into the Times.
It is probable that a full history of Prohibition would be so bulky it might
take a fork lift to get it off the ground.
|
|
|
New
York Times, May 31, 1925.
|
|
|
Organized
crime related to Prohibition was a m!\ior factor in the land prior to public
awareness of the big gangs involved in profiting from its evasion, an
awareness probably taking place at about the time the gang leader Dion O’Banion
was murdered in Chicago on November 10, 1924. The ferocious stand-off between
and ultimate cooperation among the Mafia and the m!\ior Jewish racketeers,
the gangwars of the 1920s and 1930s and the emergence of what has been known
for years as the „Kosher Nostra“ are well described by Hank Messick in his
absorbing book Lansky
(rev. ed., Berkley Medallion Books, 1973); they are examined in their recent
activities by the columnist Jack Anderson in his report ‘„Kosher N ostra’ in
the Promised Land,“ published in most newspapers carrying his column on
December 31, 1971, largely concerned with the efforts of „a disturbing number
of Jewish racketeers“ to turn Israel into „a criminal sanctuary.“
|
|
|
Not
to be identified with the independent Midwestern and Southern bootleggers of
the first decade of Prohibition are the bank robbers and kidnappers of the
early 1930s, from the same regions, in the main, memorialized in the book by
Lew Louderback, The
Bad Ones (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Books, 1968). One can grasp
the obviously superior effectiveness of crime working with sympathetic police
and politicians, as in the case of the Mafia/Syndicate, as compared with the
defiant loners against the world, in the persons of John Dillinger, „Pretty
Boy“ Floyd, Clyde Barrow, „Machine Gun“ Kelly, „Ma“ Barker, Alvin Karpis and „Baby
Face“ N elson.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Dec. 25, 1928, p. 10.
|
|
|
On
the arrest of five returned bootleggers in Naples engaged in this enterprise
see New York Times,
Feb. 15, 1927, p. 5. Most of the plots against Mussolini were hatched by
Italian refugees in France, which was also the destination of some ‘ of the
Mafia escaping from the Lipari Islands penal camps. On the recapture of
Lipari Islands escapees and their retrial see New York Times, Jan. 23, 1930, p. 4.
A related aspect of Mafia undertakings which has almost disappeared from the record in recent accounts is aliensmuggling. When the big Mafia capo Salvatore Maranzano was murdered in New York on September 10, 1931 there were two separate investigations which followed: one by local authorities seeking his killers, estimated to be from four to six men, depending upon which account one reads, and the other by the federal government exploring his aliensmuggling business. An illegal alien himself, Maranzano had built a rather wide-ranging operation and the New York Times in the fall of 1931 boiled with stories on the big aliensmuggling apparatus uncovered, tendrils of which were traced to Canada and as far away as Germany. It was revealed that Maranzano had corresponded with U.S. immigration officials earlier on the subject, and for awhile at least the latter were more interested in this matter than they were in finding who had killed him. One witness interviewed by the federal investigators declared that there had been twelve witnesses to his murder. New York Times, September 26, 1931, p. 4. |
|
|
New
York Times , Nov. 6, 1926, p. 1; Nov. 21, 1926, p. 16.
|
|
|
Mussolini
was shot and slightly wounded on April 6, 1926, as he emerged from a
speech-making appearance in a public building in Rome. New York Times, April 7, 1926, p.
1.
|
|
|
New
York Times, Jan. 14, 1929, p. 7.
|
|
|
New
York Times, March I, 1929, p. 10. Four members of the gang were
repqrted to have died while awaiting the outcome of the trial.
|
|
|
New
York Times, May 2, 1929, p. 2. On the significance of the
revelations that the convicted had cooperated with the Mafia inAmerica, see New York Times, May 5,1929, sec.
III, p. 3.
|
|
|
New
York Times, July 5, 1930, p. 7; July 8, 1930, p. 4.
|
|
|
New
York Times, June 23, 1931, p. 1; „Mafia is Further Weakened by
Many New Convictions,“ New
York Times, June 28, 1931, see. VIII, p. 15. It was stated in the
latter account that there had been 450 convictions since mid-1928.
|
|
|
One
would never know from reading Talese’s Honor
Thy Father that the Mafia were subject to formal trial before
traditional courts under Italian law and were represented by substantial
entourages of defense lawyers. He dismisses the crackdown on the Mafia as a
mere „campaign of terror“ which consisted mainly of „torturing“ suspects and
of killing a great many of them „without a fair trial.“ In view of the heavy
coverage of the entire campaign in the New
York Times, Talese’s employer when he wrote the above book, it
appears that he effectively avoided consulting the record in the press
contemporary with the events.
Mario Puzo, in his novel The Godfather (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Books, 1969), another immensely popular volume built around the Mafia, preceded Talese in suggesting that the Mussolini drive starting in 1926 simply authorized the arbitrary arrest of anyone suspected of being a mafioso, while alleging that many „innocent families“ were „brought ruin“ as a result. Prefect Mori is honestly represented as „a high police official,“ but one would also never know from this book that at least halfofthe persons brought to trial between 1926 and 1934 were found innocent: they hardly were all thrown into jail or deported to penal work colonies without exception (pp. 277-278). |
|
|
New
York Times, Dec. 7, 1930, sec. III, p. 2. In Honor Thy Father, Talese impugns
Mori, and conveys the impression he was an ex-policeman, and, by inference,
nothing but a coarse goon hired by „fascist thugs,“ rather than a career
policeman who had served under several regimes prior to that of Mussolini,
who, after all, was the recognized chief of state. Talese’s cavalier
brush-off of Mori stands in strange comparison to the numerous contemporary
tributes to the latter’s competence and devotion to duty while in serious
danger to his own life from Mafia killers. These accolades, such as that of
McClure, made their way into the press of the world outside of Italy on a
substantial scale, the most flattering perhaps appearing in the pages of the New York Times. Talese also
delicately avoids mentioning the substantial number of Italian police who
were killed or injured by Mafia gunmen during this virtual civil war in
Sicily.
An earlier writer, Frederic Sondern, was somewhat more fair in his estimate. He identified Mori correctly and described him as „able“ and „energetic,“ admitting he had a difficult job, yet Sondern also called the trials in Sicily „drumhead“ affairs. But he concludes that Mafia activities „ceased almost entirely,“ and that the „extortion rackets, robberies, smuggling, feuds and murders dipped sharply.“ In addition to the Lipari Islands, Sondern stated that some of the convicted Mafia were sent to Ustica, a small volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, 40 miles north-northwest of Palermo, and administered by Palermo province. Sondern, „How the Mafia Came to America,“ in Nicholas Gage, ed., Mafia, U.S.A. (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1972), pp. 78-79. |
|
|
New
York Times, Nov. 30, 1931, p. 4.
|
|
|
Delayed
commentary on the convictions appeared in the New York Times, May 3, 1932, p. 10.
|
|
|
New
York Times, above.
|
|
|
New
York Times, June 26, 1932, sec. II, p. 4. In the year ending in
March 1932, New York City police reported 489 murders; there were seven
murderers executed in the same time. New
York Times. April 11, 1932, p. 7.
|
|
|
New
York Times, June 23,1934, p. 30; June 25,1934, p. 14.
|
|
|
Mussolini’s
success in challenging the British in the Mediterranean and his overpowering
of Ethiopia in 1935-1936, as well as flouting the League of Nations „sanction,“
infuriated a large sector of British opinion, and the reaction to him in most
quarters was in the class with the incredulous stupefaction of the admiral of
the fleet upon having soup poured down his back by a clumsy waiter. The
systematic defamation of Italians was an outgrowth of the continuous
detraction of Mussolini as an oaf and clown which grew in volume and
intensity throughout the war. The universal character assassination of
Italians probably reached a peak with the publication of Field Marshal Montgomery’s
memoirs in London in 1958, in which his imputation of cowardice on the part
of Italian troops in North Africa during World War II so enraged nationalists
that the leader of an Italian veterans’ organization, Vincenzo Caputo,
challenged him to a duel. Montgomery declined to take him up on it, and after
a number of diplomatic and other protests from the Italian government and
much mumbling from London, Montgomery „reappraised“ his estimate of the
Italian soldier and heaped belated approval upon him. New York Times, Nov. 7, 1958, p.
8; Nov. 12, 1958, p. 3. A recent book published in England seeks to reduce
some of the misconceptions about Mussolini among the British, Roy
MacGregor-Hastie’s The
Day of the Lion (London: MacDonald, 1963.)
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New
York Times, Nov. 20, 1937, p. 5.
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Gosch
and Hammer, The Last Testament of Lucky
Luciano, pp. 260-262. Luciano went into detail as to his
involvement in it from the start, along with Frank Costello and the Anastasia
brothers, Albert, a major gunman in „Murder, Incorporated,“ and Anthony („Tough
Tony“), the latter a Mafia power controlling the International Longshoremen’s
Association. From Luciano’s description the actual sabotage was engineered by
the latter, with his brother Albert directing the overall strategy to
maximize Navy fears of coming widespread destruction all along the New York
waterfront. Luciano’s explanation of what happened to the Normandie makes more sense than
the opaque and evasive official excuses and explanations.
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On
the substantial fortune Joe Valachi amassed just through manipulation of
gasoline ration stamps see his brief admissions in Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York:
Putnam, 1969). Others whom Valachi implicated as becoming wealthy on criminal
misuse of ration stamps alone, during World War II, included Carlo and Paul
Gambino, who were estimated to have made well over a million dollars via this
route, and the New Jersey gangster Sam Accardi. It was customary to obtain
the stamps by theft from Office of Price Administration vaults or by bribing
OPA personnel. See also chapter 9 in the symposium Mafia, U.S.A., „Carlo Gambino –
Mafia Patriarch,“ by the editor, Nicholas Gage. In 1944 the national director
of the Office of Price Administration, Chester Bowles, admitted that five
percent of all gasoline sales was a black market operation, a figure which
can be assumed to have been deliberately reduced to allay home front
criticism and maximize cooperation with the „war effort.“ Since Valachi was a
very minor participant in this aspect of organized crime’s fortune-building
via mass violation of the various economic restraints under the
administration and surveillance of the OPA (among whose employees at one time
were the famed economist Milton Friedman and former president Richard M.
Nixon), it must be assumed that vastly larger sums were amassed by others.
Just how much money was skimmed off during the war by the Mafia will never be
known, since the beneficiaries of such operations rarely are known to betray
themselves and provide the basic facts, but some estimates have been as high
as $30 billion. As Ralph Salerno and John Tompkins put it, „World War II came
as a godsend to the Mafia.“ Salerno and Tompkins, „After Luciano,“ in Cage,
ed., Mafia, U.S.A.,
p. 100. For an expectable apologia alleging the efficient working of wartime
price control, rationing and related apportionment of scarce goods see
Marshall B. Clinard, The
Black Market (New York: Rinehart, 1952).
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Smith,
OSS: The Secret History of
America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), p. 105.
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Smith
apparently knew nothing about organized crime, and identified the „Purple
Gang“ as from Philadelphia, though this sinister group was from Detroit.
According to Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano (pp. 99, 110), the leader of this lot was one Abe
Bernstein, and they originally specialized in smuggling quality whiskey
across from Canada during Prohibition, purchased mainly from distilleries
there headed by Samuel Bronfman and Louis Rosenstiel, later the presidents of
Seagram Corporation and Schenley Corporation, respectively. The illegal
operations of Bronfman and Rosenstiel and their gang connections are briefly
described by Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, pp. 48, 65, 69, 174.
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Probably
the first identification of Gurfein as a major in US Military Intelligence
was made by Polakoff, a former US Attorney, in The New York Times, May 23, 1945, p. 7. For
contradictory accounts of the entire complicated business involving the armed
forces intelligence organizations, Luciano and various other underworld
kingpins see H. Messick, Lansky,
pp. 115-122, and Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, 262-272. Another aspect of the Gurfein-Luciano affair is
briefly examined in Anthony Cave Brown, ed., The Secret War Report of the OSS (New York: Berkley
Medallion Books, 1976), pp. 191-192, and Smith, OSS, p. 84. On Gurfein and the „Pentagon Papers“
incident described below, see the footnote to the same page of Smith, OSS, above. Gurfein, elevated to
a federal judgeship in June 1971, became famous for his first decision, in
favor of The New York Times
when the federal government sought to prevent that newspaper from printing
the famed „Pentagon Papers,“ a decision which was later upheld by the US
Supreme Court.
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Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, pp. 267, 369-370. One can
understand in retrospect why those connected with Governor Dewey could
contribute to the legend of „Lucky“ Luciano as a decisive factor in the 1943
Sicily invasion, that is, to provide an excuse for his commuted sentence, but
why any officer in the armed forces, any political figure either on the home
front or in the Italian occupation, or any other person in mass
communication, journalism or independent writing, could contribute to the
promotion of this incredible fabrication, remains an imponderable.
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New
York Times, April 24, 1937, p. 4. Luciano was so little known
in New York that the Times
spelled his name „Luciana“ after police started looking for him in connection
with the murder of „Dutch Schultz“ (born Arthur Flegenheimer) in Newark,
N.J., October 23, 1935. The Times
got it right the following year, however, when he became front page news as
the Dewey prosecution escalated. It might be pointed out that the police were
not too far off in the first place, since Luciano’s original name was
Salvatore Lucania.
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For
an extended exposition of the Luciano explanation of his situation as
summarized above see Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, Chapters 19 and 20.
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Smith,
OSS, pp. 83-86.
Among other criminal elements recruited by the OSS in the Mediterranean
theater were the ferocious underworld of Corsica, principally engaged in the
narcotics trade by tradition. But the skills of many Corsican thugs were
polished by OSS agents, mainly to aid in the bringing of weapons and
ammunition to the preponderantly Stalinist French underground. The Corsican
drug suppliers were still in business 30 years later, the main target of
their supply now being the heroin addicts in the USA. On this repelling
sidelight of World War II see the book by the former OSS agent Edward Hymoff,
The OSS in World War II
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1974.)
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Davis,
Who Defends Rome?,
p. 257.
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Davis,
Who Defends Rome?,
pp. 257-258. Davis deprecates the entire Sicily operation, insisting that all
it did was to return the Mafia to control there even stronger than they had
been before their suppression. He thought that a landing on the Italian
peninsula north of Rome, or General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s plan, an invasion
of Corsica and Sardinia, instead of Sicily, would have been somewhat superior
tactics. Davis did not identify Russo as a member of the Mafia, but
apparently meant that this was to be assumed since he declares that Russo
replaced Vizzini as the chief of the Sicilian Mafia scene upon the latter’s
death, in Palermo, on May 13, 1954 (Vizzini’s demise noted in New York Times, May 14, 1954, p.
12). Davis in an earlier book alleged that Vizzini helped to finance
Mussolini’s „March on Rome“ in 1922 which preceded the taking over of Italy
by the Fascisti. His
views on the Mafia as an intelligence assistance to the invasion by the „Allies“
in this book do not tally with his reconsiderations in the later one,
however. See Melton S. Davis, All
Rome Trembled: The Strange Affair of Wilma Montesi (New York:
Putnam, 1957), pp. 23-24.
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New
York: Putnam, 1964. Lewis’ book is one of the most quoted works dealing with
the alleged influence of Mafia aid in the Sicilian invasion. A portion of
this book was published as „The Mafia in Sicily,“ chapter 3 in Gage, ed., Mafia, U.S.A.
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Gosch
and Hammer, Lucky Luciano,
chapter 23.
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The
same thing was done in Germany in 1945, under the impression that all inmates
were (1) political prisoners, (2) Jews innocent of ever having done anything,
or (3) prisoners of war, not realizing, or not being interested in knowing,
that sections of these camps housed some of the most dangerous desperadoes in
Europe. There was the same simpleminded shock over the sensational rise of
murder and other violent crime in the countryside within a 20-mile radius of
these camps shortly after.
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See
especially in this instance the books by Michele Pantaleoni, The Mafia and Politics, first
published in Italy in 1962, and in an English translation in New York by
CowardMcCann in 1966, and From
Caesar to the Mafia by Luigi Barzini (New York: Library Press,
1971). These writers, though anything but friendly to Mussolini, are
understandably perturbed by the breathtaking ignorance and innocence of the „liberators.“
Others have made comical efforts to portray the Mafia as a righteous clan of
freedom-lovers, veritable Angel Michaels destroying the many-headed serpent
of Fascism. Their release from Mussolini’s jails and penal camps is hailed in
tones recalling the victories of Garibaldi, Mazzini and Cavour, and righteous
lower lips tremble as the British and American authorities covered themselves
with clown mantles in describing this lot of systematic murderers as
terrorized martyrs. One may imagine the gales of raucous laughter sweeping
through all levels of the „Brotherhood“ upon the posting of this preposterous
dictum.
Talese in Honor Thy Father (p. 60) innocently declares that the Mafia who became mayors of Sicilian communities were former „intelligence agents“ of the Americans and „underground organizers“ against the Fascist and Nazi forces, and were simply „rewarded with lawful authority.“ He also ascribes profound political beliefs to these Mafiosi mayors, who took these jobs not because it was essential to their reconstruction of the pre-1926 status quo but out of pure and zealous „anti-fascism“ and „hatred of Mussolini.“ In these respects they should be bracketed with the Communists, therefore, since these were also their reasons for belonging in the armed opposition. Talese relates that Joe Bonanno and his Mafia friends gloated upon learning of Mussolini’s murder by Communists in Milan. In many ways it was as grisly a horror as numerous sensational Mafia murders. In the killers of the Stalinist Italian Communist Party they probably recognized birds of a feather, having resembled a Mafia „hit“ team in the way they took on this assignment. Puzo in The Godfather (p. 328) repeated the story of the release of the Mafia from prison on the grounds that being imprisoned they must be „democrats.“ He calls this the Mafia’s „good fortune“ and the basic step which preceded their reconstruction and return to even more formidable power than that demonstrated down to 1926. |
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It
might be argued that the Occupation authorities had few choices when it came
to replacing the Fascists in domestic political posts and power. In Sicily
the Mafia were by far the overwhelming candidates, once they had been
released from jail. In other parts of Italy, later, the Communists were the
logical inheritors. Though there had been a towering volume of talk and print
about a „democratic socialist“ element which presumably bulked high as an
anti-Mussolini adversary, it did not show very strongly in the 1943--45
period of political chaos in Italy. Though America was the home of several
very voluble leftist refugees who strove to demonstrate that there was a vast
„difference between their plans for Italy and those of the Reds,“ there is
little evidence that the Anglo-American occupation decision-makers wanted
much to do with them. Such castigators of Mussolini and postwar planners as
Salvemini, Sforza, and Borghese were not brought back to Italy in triumph and
political power, nor were the spiritual associates of Benedetto Croce,
another great liberal hero.
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One
of the most mischievous contributors to Sicily’s political woes in the early
years after its conquest was a Scottish pedagogue, George Robert Gayre. As an
Occupation bureaucrat there he was one of the first to condemn Mussolini’s
campaign against the Mafia, though he also was one of the first to admit that
within weeks they had returned to influence in Sicily equal in scope to the
time prior to 1926. Liberal writers for a quarter of a century echoed his
indignation at Mussolini’s anti-Mafia procedures, as incorporated in his book
Italy in Transition
(London: Faber and Faber, 1946), a volume made up of quotations from his private
diary. As a lieutenant-colonel in the British forces he had authored another
contentious work, Teuton
and Slav on the Polish Frontier (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1944), a study which pretended to be the long-awaited solution to the ancient
and tangled ethnic claims in that region. On his return from Italy to Britain
he devoted himself to writing on British heraldry and anthropology, and
ultimately adopted the name „Robert Gayre of Gayre and Nigg.“
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Business
Week, March 13, 1943, p. 48. The situation which
prevailed after the Germans moved in, following the eclipse of Mussolini in
the summer of 1943, is instructive. The late Bruno Leoni, a postwar free
market economist of international repute, told this writer in California in
the summer of 1957 that in the summer of 1943 he became an intelligence
operative for the „Allies,“ but that he periodically sneaked into
German-occupied Bari, on Italy’s East coast, for the purpose of obtaining an
economical dinner. German price controls were rigidly enforced there, while
in the areas in „Allied“ hands where he had to function, a sky-high inflation
made such an achievement quite impossible. Only purist zealots who have never
been hungry and who do not know that their precious „laws“ are almost
entirely suspended in wartime fail to understand the substance of the above
action.
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The
equivalent in areas of France and Belgium occupied by US forces a year later
was the comprehensive theft of Army supplies by American deserters for the
supply of the black market in these regions. Steven Linakis incorporated
material concerning such affairs in his novel In the Spring the War Ended (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1965).
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New
York Times, Sept. 10, 1943, p. 4.
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Editorial,
New York Times,
Sept. 11, 1943, p. 12.
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New
York Times, Nov. 19, 1944, sec. VI, p. 50.
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New
York Times, Oct. 31, 1944, p. 8.
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New
York Times, Jan. 5, 1945, p. 4.
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For
example, New York Times,
Feb. I, 1945, p. 8.
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New
York Times, Nov. 25, 1944, p. 5.
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Frank
J. Prial, „Vito Genovese – Power to Spare,“ in Cage, ed., Mafia, U.S.A., pp. 147-148.
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This
was Genovese’s second trip to Italy in the 1930s. The first had occurred in
1933, a honeymoon vacation to Naples with his wife, Anna. Valachi is the
source for an allegation that Genovese on this first voyage took three
quarters of a million dollars with him to bribe functionaries of the
Mussolini regime. Though there are several who insist that Dewey was about to
concentrate on the prosecution of Genovese after Luciano’s jailing, there is
no mention of Genovese in the New
York Times for either 1936 or 1937, at which time press coverage
of the Dewey crime hunt was voluminous.
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Early
in 1944 Army Criminal Investigation (CID) operatives began picking up black
marketeers in Italy who named Genovese as the mastermind of their operations.
Genovese came under the personal scrutiny of Sergeant Orange C. Dickey of the
Army CID, who gradually put together the material which revealed the true
scope of his multimillion dollar ring based on the theft of products from the
base at which he worked as an advisor and interpreter. It is quite likely
that theArmy would have dropped the charges against Genovese had not Sgt.
Dickey learned that the Boccia case had been reopened as a result of new
testimony, and that the Brooklyn authorities were again looking for Genovese.
See Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, pp. 273-274, and F. Prial, „Vito Genovese,“ in N. Gage,
ed., Mafia, U.S.A.,
pp. 147-148.
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See
the embarrassing testimonials to Genovese’s sterling qualities by his
superiors, Captain Charles L. Dunn, Major E. N. Holmgren, and Major Stephen
Young, reproduced in Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, p. 273.
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New
York Times, June 3, 1945, p. 26; For more about the Boccia
slaying, see Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, pp. 177-178,274; James Mills, „The Hit,“ in Gage, ed., Mafia, U.S.A., pp. 25-55, and
Prial, „Vito Genovese,“ same work, pp. 147-148.
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Genovese’s
trial was delayed in about the same way as his extradition. New York Times, Oct. 19, 1945, p.
19. This story retold his exploits as an interpreter for American Military
Government and „boss of a gang of Italian black market operators.“
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See
New York Times,
May 7, 1946, p. 11; June 8, 1946, p. 38; June 11, 1946, p. 46; July 16, 1946,
p. 15; Sept. 17, 1946, p. 2. See also the works cited in note 71.
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One
of the most wearily-repeated yarns among Mafia chroniclers is the allegation
concerning Genovese following his return to Italy in 1937 to evade
prosecution for various major crimes committed in the USA. How he obtained II
passport so easily and so quickly under these pending circumstances is
unexplained by anyone, and is not mentioned in a single source consulted in
the preparation of this study. The federal government did try to deport him
in 1952, however, for concealing his criminal record when he applied for
citizenship in 1936. (New
York Times, Nov. 22, 1952, p. 12.)
The assertions of Luciano and Valachi and the second hand testimony of a wronged wife appear to be the main evidence that he became a person of substance in Mussolini Italy and an intimate with persons high in the regime. (On Anna Genovese’s suit, first for separate maintenance, then divorce, her testimony before a New Jersey grand jury, Vito Genovese’s counter-divorce suit and the dismissal of both by the court, see New York Times, Dec. 10, 1952, p. 55; March 3, 1953, p. 19; March 20, 1953, p. 20; August 20, 1953, p. 29.) No one alleges that he created a criminal empire there in the six years prior to the overthrow of Mussolini and the entry upon the scene of the Anglo-American „liberators“ in 1943. What is evident however is that within a few months of the latter event Genovese organized an impressive ring of professional criminality in Italy in some areas occupied by Mussolini’s conquerors, at the same time penetrating the latter to the point of becoming a part of the Military Government. This is a disconcerting fact, and all accounts of the Mafia cover this over quickly and heavily, concentrating on a narrative of his pursuit by Army CID. But nothing is said about how a man as notorious as Genovese was able to achieve this status and at the same time conceal his incredible crime operation, which he managed simultaneously in the same area where he performed his chores for Military Government. Though his alleged eminence in the Mussolini social court is subject to serious question (nothing is said of it in contemporary accounts), his taking on of a cover job in American Military Government to mask a lucrative criminal operation in the American-occupied sector of Italy is well documented. The reason for the glacial slowness with which extradition proceedings back to the USA were transacted is another episode in the Genovese saga which is almost entirely lacking from the conventional accounts. The attempt to build up Genovese as someone of influence among the Fascisti has a hollow sound. But if it were true, then allowing him to obtain a confidential post in the Military Government so quickly would indicate a level of serious incompetence in „Allied“ counterintelligence. |
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Gosch and Hammer, Lucky
Luciano, p. 275.
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New
York Times, May 23, 1945, p. 7.
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New
York Times, Jan. 4, 1946, p. 38.
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New
York Times, Feb. 9, 1946, p. 15; Feb. 10, 1946, p. 12; Feb. 11,
1946, p. 31; Feb. 21, 1946,p.24.
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New
York Times, March 1, 1946, p. 11. Luciano’s own colorful story
of the trip back to Italy and his reception is in chapter 24 of Gosch and
Hammer, Lucky Luciano.
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On
Lt. Col. Gurfein’s later comments on Luciano’s involvement in contacting
Mafia leaders for help in counter-espionage during the war, see New York Times , Feb. 23, 1947,
pp. 1, 9; On Haffenden’s later comment on Luciano’s assistance, see New York Times, Feb. 27, 1947, p.
46.
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By
this time Haffenden was himself in a big scandal (actually two separate ones)
related to deals with outlawed stevedoring companies on the New York docks,
and New York’s Mayor O’Dwyer had already removed him from his post as
commander of the City Marine and Aviation Department. Haffenden was dismissed
by O’Dwyer on May 24, 1946. See New
York Times, May 25, 1946 p. 30, and May 26, 1946, p. 0. This
rancorous incident was still being churned over by all concerned in 1949.
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Sen.
Kefauver’s comment on Gov. Dewey’s handling of the Luciano case in New York Times, May 15, 1951, p.
27. See also one of the contemporary books on the Mafia, Edward Reid’s Mafia (New York: Random House,
1952).
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New
York Times, Jan. 31, 1946, p. 2; Feb. 5, 1946, p. 7.
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See
especially New York Times,
Oct. 27, 1946, p. 23; Oct. 31, 1946, p. 2.
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On
the drive against Salvatore Giuliani, see New
York Times, June 13, 1950, p. 12; Sept. 21, 1946, p. 4; June 24,
1947, p. 14; Sept. 22, 1947, p. 3; See also New York Times, June 25, 1947, p. 16; June 26, 1947,
p. 4; June 28, 1947, p. 4; Nov. 22, 1947, p. 2; Sept. 24, 1948, p. 8; May 16,
1949, p. 11.
On the killing of Giuliani in July 1950, see New York Times, July 6,1950, p. 1; On the repercussions of the killing, and the buildup of the scandal see New York Times, March 19, 1954, p. 2, and Melton S. Davis, All Rome Trembled: The Strange Affair of Wilma Montesi (New York: Putnam, 1957), pp. 137-139. On the trial of 63 members of Giuliani’s gang, see New York Times, May 14, 1954, p. 5. The Wilma Montesi scandal was brewing simultaneously with the closing stages of the Giuliani business, and in some respects overlapped. The closing chapters of Davis, All Rome Trembled, contain the most extended examination of the ramifications of the Montesi matter. His study unfortunately lacks an index, and one must wade through much extraneous material in getting at the core of the issue involved. |
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On
the persistence of the Mafia in Sicily in recent times, see Danilo Dolci, The Man Who Plays Alone (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1969), and Gaia Servadio, Mafioso: A History of the Mafia from Its Origins to the Present
Day (New York: Stein and Day, 1976).
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