Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...many respects, says Ralph Salerno, who was the New York City police department's chief Mafia expert until his retirement in 1967, the leadership has always been a "happy marriage of Italians and Jews." Salerno adds: "It's the three Ms?moxie, muscle and money. The Jews provide the moxie, the Italians provide the muscle, and they both provide the money." In the public mind, however, Cosa Nostra is identified with the Italians, and about 22 million Italian-Americans are being hurt in reputation by the depredations of a very...
...Enforcement and Administration of Justice simply threw up its hands at the prospect of estimating the crime conglomerate's full penetration. "The cumulative effect of the infiltration of legitimate business in America cannot be measured," it said. Robert Kennedy, who began the first big push against the Mafia when he became Attorney General, warned that "if we do not on a national-scale attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us." No one now disputes its potential for destruction...
...ganster recently confided to another that $12,000 a month flows to police superiors for protection? which sometimes goes beyond a shield for illicit activities. When he vacationed on the West Coast last Spring, for example, Thomas Pecora, a boss of Teamsters Local 97 as well as a Mafia man, took along a Newark city detective as a bodyguard...
...there is no evidence that the Mafia has tried to penetrate the marijuana market. The source of supply in Mexico is too close, and the competition from travelers passing over the border too intense. One unforeseen byproduct of the Federal Government's crackdown on the marijuana trade, however, may be to create an LCN monopoly. If the "independents" are driven out, the mobsters might find pot as profitable as heroin. Just that happened in bookmaking, when police put many freelance operators out of business...
...good reason. If a man spends much more than he shows on his income tax return, the IRS can nail him for tax fraud. Few of the bosses thus claim or openly spend much more than would a moderately successful businessman. The ancient, somewhat puritanical code of the Mafia, which dislikes display, provides another reason for simple style. The late New York boss Vito Genovese, for example, used to drive a two-year-old Ford, spent little more than $100 for his suits, and lived in a modest house in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. When his children and grandchildren visited...