The Mob & America: 1932-1946 by Sonny Girard

Lately there has been a lot of focus on Italy’s government and its links to the Mafia, Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta, and, to a lesser extent, Sacre Corona Unita, the Pugliese organized crime group. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of having dealt with the Mafia, as well as his close associate, Senator Marcello Dell’Utri. Given the centuries old relationship of the Mafia to Italian authorities, it’s not surprising. What is a surprise is that so many have forgotten that in the short history of the United States, there has been a comparable one at the top level too: the Presidency.

In 1932, representatives of New York’s newly re-organized crime attended the Democrats’ Presidential Convention in the city most infamous for corruption, Chicago, Illinois. They had made untold millions as a result of Prohibition that they’d used to put law enforcers, judges, and politicians in their pocket. Now, they were going for the biggest prize of all. They would own the next President of the United States.

The three main contenders for the office were Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Texan John Nance Garner, and Al Smith, a former Governor of New York and failed Presidential candidate four years earlier, in 1928. It was supposed to be an easy win for FDR, but it didn’t work out that way. He wasn’t able to muster the two-thirds he needed on the first and second votes, and back room deals went full force. One of those deals was with the mob.

FDR

A number of years ago, I got a message from Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo. As a lifelong mobster myself, Jimmy Blue Eyes was one of my early heroes. What he wanted to possibly do was write a book strictly about the 1920s and 1930s, when he, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky controlled the Democrat machine in New York, known as “Tammany Hall.” They were able to make mayors, judges, and councilmen, and had their way with any legal question, from criminal charges to licenses. One of those was the Presidency, in 1932. We never did the book because Jimmy, ever the loyal soldier, asked the boss of his family, the Genovese Family, for permission…and was denied. That denial came directly from Vincent Gigante. Though I was disappointed (I would have given anything just to hear the details), I was impressed that Chin had stuck to the letter of the law…mob law…without exceptions or excuses. That being said, it didn’t change the fact that those who controlled Tammany were at the Convention, and that they had a hand in electing the President.

Jimmy Blue Eyes

In true Machiavellian fashion, the New York contingent of organized crime split up and infiltrated the camps of both FDR and Al Smith. They never really had any confidence that Garner would be anything more than a spoiler, and, in true Texas Congressional manner, would cut a deal with one of the other two (he wound up as FDR’s Vice President). The mob had an earth shaking decision to make, and they wanted to make it right.

Al Smith

Luciano assigned himself to Al Smith, while Costello, a big fan of FDR’s, kept close to the candidate and actually got a brief audience with him to discuss support. Both offered the candidates not only money, but votes in key areas around the country. All Lucky and his guys had to do was send a message to Santo Trafficante in Tampa, Nig Rosen in Philadelphia, Waxey Gordon in Jersey, Nick Civella in Kansas City, or any of the bosses of major cities from coast to coast to get their troops out to pile up votes for their candidate. They negotiated directly with the candidates and finally decided, with no doubt swayed by Costello’s admiration, to throw their full and unified weight behind Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The news shattered Al Smith. He practically cried when he was told of their decision. He also told them that they’d made a huge mistake; that he came from the same kind of background they did, including being part of the Tammany machine, and could be trusted to keep any word he gave them, while the patrician Roosevelt would promise them anything but betray them in the end. The decision had been made. FDR won, and immediately empowered Samuel Seabury to investigate organized crime and its political connections, especially Tammany Hall, which had spawned his former rival, Al Smith. For all their dreams, efforts, and thoughtfulness, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello had made a mistake; they’d picked the wrong horse and would be trampled by their choice. Oddly enough, mobsters repeated their error in 1960, when their support helped their fellow bootlegger’s son, John F. Kennedy, attain the Presidency. He also turned on them once in office, and had his brother, Robert, as Attorney General, go after organized crime with a vengeance. In fact, the R.I.C.O. Act, so effective in recent mob prosecutions, was written during RFK’s reign as A.G.

Lucky Luciano

It was only ten years later, in February of 1942, with the United States embroiled in World War II for only two months, that the superliner Normandie burned and capsized at its dock in New York Harbor. It wasn’t just that it was one of the fastest luxury liners ever built, but it was to be refitted to carry Allied troops. There was not a U-boat of the Fuhrer’s that could keep up with the Normandie. It wasn’t just a fire. The Government saw it as an act of wartime sabotage.

At that time, many of those who worked the New York piers were of Italian descent, and we were at war with Mussolini’s Italy. Control of the piers was also commonly known to be in the hands of organized crime. After intense discussions, it was decided by the Office of Naval Intelligence officials that they would approach the alleged Luciano boss of the piers, Joseph “Socks” Lanza, and appeal to his patriotism to help protect the docks from further sabotage. (Albert Anastastia and his brother, Anthony “Tough Tony” Anastasia, controlled waterfront interests for what would eventually become the Gambino Family)

“Socks” Lanza

Ever the loyal soldier, Lanza, through Meyer Lansky, contacted his boss, Lucky Luciano, who was serving a multi-decade sentence on a trumped up prostitution charge in Dannamora maximum security state prison in Clinton, New York. Lansky met with Lucky in the comfort of his decked out cell and worked a deal to have stevedores guard the piers against further sabotage. For his part, Luciano might get some kind of consideration once the war was over, but would immediately be moved from the Canadian border to Sing Sing prison, just outside New York City, in Ossining, where he could have an enhanced visitation life. Later, before his death, Lucky claimed that he had ordered the Normandie burned in order to get the Navy to come to him for help. Since there had never been an instance that would lead him to believe that at the time, the statement should be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, mobsters happen to be extremely patriotic. Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel led their thugs to disrupt Nazi Bund meetings in Yorkville, Manhattan, not for any consideration, but just to break the asses of Jew haters. In fact, patriotism ran through the Lanskys’ blood, with one of Meyer’s nephews later becoming an Army Intelligence Officer.

Meyer Lansky

Luciano’s reputation among the United States war machine brass was golden. A year later, when the Allies were preparing to invade Sicily in the final push to defeat Hitler, Lucky was again approached; this time by the United States Army Military Intelligence. They were unsure how they would be greeted when they hit the shores of Sicily. Would they be given up to German troops? Would diehard believers in the now dead Il Duce engage them in battle? They knew he was well connected with Sicilian Mafia bosses, and assumed he could pave the way for an invasion unimpeded by Sicilian paisani. A firm promise was given that when the war ended, he would be released from prison and deported to Italy. Luciano, loyal to both Sicily and the United States, and very pleased with the promise, assured them that it was a done deal.

Italian WWII Campaign

As the invasion was launched, Luciano had a yellow handkerchief with his crest dropped from a U.S. plane over Sicily. That signaled underground Sicilian partisans to come forward and join the Americans to expel Hitler’s troops from their soil. For Mafiosi, who had been brutalized by Mussolini, which included the imprisonment of the most revered don in the history of the country, Don Vito Cascio Ferro, it meant a return of influence and power once Luciano’s Americans cleared the island of Nazis.  In fact, once the Germans had been routed with Sicilian support, at Luciano’s recommendation, American officials in charge installed many Mafiosi as mayors of various towns and in other top political positions.

Don Vito Cascio Ferro

In this case, Army Intelligence kept its word, and Luciano, who had been railroaded by future Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey (it is inconceivable that Luciano, the most powerful mobster in America at the time, confided his interests in a prostitution business to a druggie hooker named “Cokie Flo,” whose testimony convicted him), was released from prison in January, 1946, and deported to Italy. Since Sicily didn’t want him, Lucky was exiled to Naples, where he resided, with intermittent trips for mob meetings in Sicily and Cuba, until his death in January, 1962.

Luciano exiled in Naples

Those twelve years, from 1932, when mobsters participated in a Presidential convention, and 1946, when Luciano was released from prison and deported, were unique in that they covered two major upheavals in American history: the Great Depression and World War II. However, the U.S. Government using mob figures when they weren’t trying to lock them away, continued during America’s crises in the following decades, usually with the mobsters getting the short end of the stick. Chicago mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam “Momo” Giancana were both enlisted to work with the CIA during the Kennedy years to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. Both Roselli and Giancana were murdered. Roselli washed ashore in an oil drum on the California coast; Momo was mysteriously shot to death in his basement apartment while under 24 hour FBI surveillance.

More successful in his dealing with the Government was Colombo mobster turned rat, Greg Scarpa, who was conscripted by the FBI to find the bodies of three freedom marchers who had disappeared in Mississippi. Scarpa grabbed a general store owner who the FBI was sure knew where the three men had been buried. He tied the storeowner up and tortured him until he revealed where the graves were. Scarpa earned himself an FBI “license to kill” until his death from AIDs.

The Government and the mob have been more interrelated than most people realize. The Government has always found organized crime an easy target when it needs more funding or a diversion from other problems. In between, they have no compunction about using mobster crackdowns to achieve its goals. Now that the mob is in its final throes, it won’t be able to do either much longer.

Sonny Girard is a former mobster who has published three novels based on his experiences, and is an internationally recognized expert on organized crime. He has appeared on many TV shows as such, including The O’Reilly Factor, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, WABC Nightline, and RAI-TV in Rome, Italy.

www.SonnysMobCafe.com

© 2009 R.I.C.O. Entertainment, Inc.

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