Thread by @FalunJimmy

I have some really top-tier content planned for the future, but today it'll be a thread about more interesting tidbits gleaned from two mediocre books. there's still value, even if most mafia books are like reading adult coloring books.

I wonder how many organized crime books are written by the criminals' kids. I've read at least three recently; it seems like they're usually the weaker ones too, lol. in this case, this guy's grandfather died in the gang warfare of Chicago's Prohibition era

so, the Mafia Summit book talks about Carlo Tresca, who was a really interesting figure in the IWW. I didn't know he dated Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, for instance

Tresca, born in Italy, moved to the US. he agitated as a socialist and increasingly identified as an anarchist. he ran newspapers like Il Proletario, la Plebe, and L'Avvenire for the radical Italian immigrants in mining and mill towns

Tresca got involved in several strikes in the 1910's, which was a hardcore time to be organizing. he was in and out of jail and also had ties to the Irish war of independence

he agitated in defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, and in favor of birth control in his other newspaper, Il Martello, and went back to prison because of his advocacy of birth control

Tresca was a vocal, vociferous critic of Benito Mussolini in an era where most Americans were like "who? oh, he seems cool"

Mussolini was especially worried that Tresca's attacks would hurt his relationship with US banks

the DOJ wanted to deport Tresca, but the public supported him, so Calvin Coolidge commuted his deportation sentence.

Tresca was also on the Dewey Commission which "cleared Leon Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials"

Tresca was an out-and-out anarchist at this point, and made all sorts of enemies. he had the unhealthy habit of also attacking the mafia, in Italy and the US

Tresca made enemies of Vito Genovese, in particular.

Genovese "wanted to open a fascist-friendly club for Italian seamen in New York City. Tresca, an avowed antifascist, put the kibosh on the plan"

second, "when he heard of Genovese’s activities in Italy, Tresca reasoned that the only way the gangster could be accepted by higher-ups was through ignorance of his past. He fired off a series of letters to the government, detailing Vito’s unsavory background in America."

Vito Genovese, head of the Genovese crime family, had been deported to Italy, where he bought up a bunch of companies and cozied up to Mussolini, and here was Tresca trying to blow up his spot.

"According to an anonymous informant, Genovese had the following conversation with Il Duce at a 1942 Christmas party in Rome.

“Carlo Tresca is an archenemy of mine,” Mussolini said to Genovese.

“Mine, too,” Genovese said, agreeing with the dictator that Tresca had bothered too many powerful people for too long.

“If there is anything you can do to rid us of him,” Mussolini said, “I would do anything in the world for you.”

only an anarchist would be allowed to get assassinated while under police surveillance. Tresca was gunned down on January 9, 1943, by Carmine Galante, future boss of the Bonanno crime family

so, while most people who remember Carlo Tresca know he was murdered by the US mafia on behalf of Mussolini, it was also because Tresca angered the US mafia as well

but history has an interesting, circuitous logic to it, and Tresca got his revenge in several ways

for example, during the First Red Scare, during WWI and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the US freaked the fuck out, and saw the general strike in Seattle as a sign of an impending revolution here in the US

Italian-American anarchists, followers of Luigi Galleani, went on a bombing campaign

this, in turn, led to the Palmer Raids, which consisted of mass illegal deportations of Italians and other foreign radicals; Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were deported at this time, for example

the book Mafia Summit says "In an odd bit of historical synchronicity, the bomb attack on Palmer’s house that triggered the Red Scare raids would eventually be traced to the Galliani anarchist group in Massachusetts. Heading the group was Carlo Tresca"

a young J. Edgar Hoover rode the Palmer Raids to prominence and the creation of the FBI, which would eventually get around to crushing the people who killed Carlo Tresca

back to Tresca's murder, the cops fucking knew who murdered Tresca: they even arrested Carmine Galante for it.

but get this,

"The assistant district attorney assigned to prosecuting Galante, Louis Pagnucco, had a history of fascist sympathies and was presumably no great admirer of Tresca (Pagnucco’s college thesis extolled the “courageous leadership of Mussolini”)."

"An FBI agent in the New York field office memo’d Hoover that, even with solid evidence of Galante’s guilt, political pressure had evidently derailed the prosecution.

In December 1944, the New York authorities released Galante from jail."

again, Tresca struck his enemies from beyond the grave, because it was the memory of Tresca's murder that got Sgt. Edgar Croswell to track Carmine Galante

Croswell tracking Galante eventually culminated in the arrests at Apalachin, which, if not taking down the mafia, at least took out that generation of mafia leaders.

Tresca's revenge

so, Apalachin was one of those grand mafia summits where the heads of every crime family meet every few years to bbq and iron out all the things you imagine they'd talk about.

but remember, there can never be a conspiracy of over 50 people, according to math, right? ;)

the mafia picked Joseph Barbara's estate out in Apalachin because they thought it would be quiet and secluded. when the local cops (Croswell especially) started poking around, they were told that they were having a “convention of Canada Dry men”

that's true, inasmuch as Canada Dry was the Bronfman crime family, the source of all the Canadian liquor flowing over the border during Prohibition. after Prohibition, many mafiosi got into the beverage business.

Joseph Barbara himself was an area distributor for Canada Dry

as a sidenote, it's funny to read about Santo Volpe, the Scranton crime boss, known as the "king of the night". he ran corn sugar liquor tills during Prohibition and had a hand in gambling and labor racketeering around the coal mines and mills

back to Vito Genovese, he laid "the groundwork for the Marseilles-Cuba-Montreal “triangle trade” in heroin smuggling."

hmm where did I read about that, again?

the book talks about the "enormous dope profits flowing through thoroughly corrupt Montreal. By the mid-fifties, the five New York Mafia families had a Rockefeller-level monopoly on dope, controlling 90 percent of the heroin sold in the United States."

at Apalachin, they even referred to the Corsicans as the “sixth family” based in Montreal.

another sidenote, Joe Profaci of the Colombo crime family almost got knighted by Pope Pius XII before Brooklyn DA Miles McDonald wrote the Vatican and described all the many, many crimes Profaci was involved in, lmao

another sidenote, I found out that Meyer Lansky "once hired his own private math tutor to help him brush up on the finer points of high finance"

which is fascinating, but also sounds in keeping with what I already know about him

yes, I'm doing a bad job just talking about what happened at Apalachin, but basically the cops busted up a mafia summit and found all kinds of interesting people there. one guy was John C. Montana, who nobody knew was involved with organized crime

"Well known in his hometown as owner of a taxi company and a liquor dealership, a pillar of the community who volunteered on the boards of multiple charity organizations, Montana’s 1956 Buffalo “Man of the Year” award, “for outstanding contributions to the city,”

he was also associated with the Buffalo crime family.

“I’m very embarrassed at being here,” Montana said when Croswell approached him. He told the first of many lies, maintaining that he “was not invited to the party.”

Montana began dropping names. Richard Nixon, he said, then VP, was “a personal friend.” Governor W. Averell Harriman had him and his wife to dinner at the governor’s mansion in Albany.

sidenote, Norman Mailer once said that Robert Kennedy was “the sheriff who could have been an outlaw", which is such a hack, kiss-ass thing to say, hahahahahah

also, who says he wasn't an outlaw?

the author of Mafia Summit flatly states that there's no evidence of a blackmail photo showing Hoover blowing Tolson, apart from it being the word on the street.

he even quotes Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

oh yeah, man, absolutely. the top law enforcement officer ignoring a national crime syndicate for decades? definitely no reason to think there was any particular reason for that

still, to speak on Hoover for a second, the book talks about Hoover's early years:

"When Hoover first moved to Justice in the Alien Enemy Bureau, he brought the Library of Congress card index method along with him..."

"Utilizing it, he instituted a classification system not for books but for people, taking the first steps in creating his infamous secret files on radicals, celebrities, politicians, adversaries—everyone, it seemed, except mobsters."

"50k entries in the fall of 1919, after Hoover had been at Justice two months, 100k within a year, 200k by 1920 and 450k by 1921. The system represented a precomputer database compiled by hand. By the Director’s death in 1972, he had personal cards on twenty-five million people."

“After the meeting at Apalachin,” Bobby recalled later, “which seventy people attended, I asked for files from them on each of the seventy, and [the FBI] didn’t have any information, I think, on forty out of the seventy.* Not even the slightest piece of information.”

also, always a sucker for good RFK-Hoffa fighting stories:

"Some of the antics were indeed straight out of prep school. Kennedy would engage in staring contests with Hoffa, who disconcerted him by holding the stare for several beats before giving him a broad wink."

more obnoxious RFK facts:

"he brought his dog to work. Kennedy was Silicon Valley before the style was created. Brumus howled inconsolably if left alone at the Kennedy house at Hickory Hill, Virginia, so Bobby took him into the DOJ"

what a fucking asshole hahahahahah

"Bobby in the aftermath of Dallas began reading Greek tragedy and meditating on the vagaries of fate and destiny."

hahahahahah

"Robert Kennedy believed that the Mafia in general and Marcello in particular was to blame for Jack’s assassination. A morose RFK told his aide Richard Goodwin that he thought “that guy from New Orleans,” meaning Marcello, had murdered his brother."

the author of this book quoted Jaws and the Big Lebowski unironically and referred to the Godfather movies multiple times, it was A+ writing

I'm gonna switch gears; this book had less in it, but it was still fascinating because it focused on the independent Jewish gangsters and the transition to Jewish gangsters consolidated under citywide (and therefore national) syndicate control

"The story of the Italian American gangster in Chicago is shaped like Italian bread, narrow and straight with knife marks scarring the length of it. The story of the Jewish gangster is shaped more like challah, with different strands braiding together to create a softer whole."

"In the case of Chicago’s Jewish community, never as substantial as New York Jewry nor as long-settled as Chicago’s Italian community, the center of gravity never remained in one place long enough to establish a multigenerational organization..."

"Jewish OC persisted, and it was carried on in a clear succession, but it never had the attachment to a geographically defined space. Because Chicago Jews migrated in dramatic fashion within the city, they were less tied to the neighborhoods that bred traditional OC."

"That early, wide-open gang warfare gave way gradually to a model of confederation, where gangs across the city and within the Jewish underworld agreed to respect the territorial lines as Johnny Torrio, boss of what would become the Capone gang, drew them."

an interesting early figure in Jewish OC in Chicago was Davey Miller, a boxer who "once boasted to a national magazine that while he never carried a gun, “I could always lick any five boys or men in a sidewalk free-for-all.”"

"Miller was best known, though, for being a “Samson” or “Judah Maccabee of the West Side.”" with the book describing many street battles where they took bats to fight off the Polish gangs

"Roosevelt Road wasn’t Poland, and Jews didn’t have to hide"

Davey Miller was mostly a legitimate businessman, and a high-profile boxing referee, ref'ing for multiple title fights with boxers like Jack Dempsey, Jake La Motta, and Joe Louis

one of the top gangsters, Benny "Zukie the Bookie" Zuckerman, famously slugged another Jew who was canvassing for the KKK in Chicago, hahahah

for a book explicitly about Jewish organized crime, there was almost nothing about the Canadian liquor connection, which was disappointing. I'm just gonna have to find a book about Montreal OC, because that's what I really want/need, I guess.

still, this book helped me understand the whole crooked Chicago politics thing better, because man, Chicago politics is and has been crooked for a long time (an observation that will come as no surprise to anyone hahah)

the whole alderman system is fascinating, because in the old days (idk, maybe now still too?) the alderman was literally the local neighborhood bookie/crime boss

reputed Outfit figure Sidney Korshak, waxed lyrical when he declared, “The precinct captain is the unsung and unheralded hero of our democracy.”

I've got much, much more on Korshak in future threads

also, I was unaware that a man, Anton Cermak, was shot while shaking hands with Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

I guess there's disagreement as to whether the gunman was trying to kill Roosevelt or Cermak

the gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, said he was trying to kill Roosevelt, not Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, but the Kosher Capones book (among others) suggests that it was a Syndicate hit on the mayor

the Warren Commission spent a lot of time investigating Jack Ruby's connections to the "Davey Miller gang" instead of, you know, following up any more pertinent leads, lol

interestingly, Lenny Yaras of the Chicago syndicate did a shakedown on Allen Dorfman, the Teamsters official in charge of the pension funds, funds that were used by the mafia to buy Las Vegas

"Early in 1974, after claiming to get the go-ahead from Gus Alex, Patrick dispatched his lieutenant Lenny Yaras, son of his longtime partner, David Yaras, to demand a large sum from Dorfman."

"Dorfman coughed up $300k, not bad for just the asking. Yaras kept only a quarter of the take, passing $225,000 onto their Syndicate bosses."

also, to return to Anton Cermak and finish up, his run as mayor was very interesting, because he seemed to have tried to use Jewish organized crime as a hammer to smash down Italian OC

"Cermak seemed to think, he could push forward a group of gangsters more sympathetic to his interests. He could, that is, take control of organized crime the way no mayor before him ever had. So Cermak took a shot."

"He established what he called a “Hoodlum Squad” responsible for taking down Capone’s successors, chief among them Frank Nitti [head of the Chicago mafia]. He named as its leaders a pair of Jewish policemen with purported ties to organized crime, Harry Lang and Harry Miller"

"Cermak promised to “drive the hoodlums out of business,” and he unleashed his police to harass Capone’s one time followers across the city, arresting them sometimes simply for gathering together. "

"in 1932, Lang and Miller burst into Nitti’s office. Lang shot Nitti three times, then shot himself in the arm to make it look as if he’d killed the gang boss in self-defense."

yeah, it makes a lot of sense that the mafia would kill Anton Cermak; he literally had the police kill the head of the Chicago outfit, hahahaha

anyway, not enough about the Canadian connection, not enough about Dalitz and Korshak, but what are you gonna do, I guess, since Gus Russo already exists?

anyway, I have a lot of stuff in the pipeline that'll draw these threads together better, but thanks for reading, god bless