Word: buscetta
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Some U.S. Mafiosi believe that Buscetta may also be trying to get back at those who kept him out of the Mob's higher councils because he had abandoned his first wife, thereby showing disrespect for the institution of marriage Others see a simpler motive. "He's settling scores," says a former New York detective who has spent most of his ife studying the Mafia. "He's trying to get even with the people who killed his family...
Whatever his purpose, Buscetta has apparently been forthcoming. In a series of conversations lasting through the summer and covering 3,000 pages, he offered a history of the Sicilian Mafia's operations going back, in some cases, to 1950. He volunteered details that authorities had long suspected but never been able to prove. Not since Joseph Valachi, a soldier in New York's Lucky Luciano family, spilled what he knew to a U.S. Senate committee in 1963 has anyone provided such a comprehensive picture of the Mafia and its operations. Said Judge Schiacchitano: "Buscetta has offered confirmation...
Poor assassins too. Buscetta is reported to have named those involved in Dalla Chiesa's murder and in other killings. He has also drawn a detailed picture of the entire structure of the Sicilian Mafia and explained how its elements relate to each other. The picture surprised some authorities, because it shows an organization that is more collegial than they had imagined...
According to Buscetta, the Mafia structure resembles a pyramid, whose base is composed of cosche, families or clans whose territorial and operational boundaries are strictly defined but whose chiefs bear little resemblance to the almost feudal Mafiosi depicted in The Godfather. In a startling statement, Buscetta disclosed that the capifamiglia, or family bosses, are elected and sometimes even fired by a vote of family members. He asserted that few such men were oldtime "men of honor," the occasionally benevolent criminals who were fully initiated into the codes and rituals of the Mafia. Only 8% to 10%, he said, met these...
...Buscetta explained it, the second tier of the pyramid is made up of provincial commissions throughout Sicily. These, he said, play a mediating and coordinating role among the families. The Palermo commission used to be the most important, Buscetta went on, but in recent years, the Corleone commission has displaced...