Word: nostra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Cheers for your exposure of the evil operations of the Cosa Nostra [Aug. 22], particularly drug traffic. As a former narcotics court news reporter in Chicago, I can tell you that educated estimates attribute 50% to 80% of all crime to narcotics. It is a cruel form of slavery, and those addicted to heroin can seldom afford it without resorting to crime...
Since crime on the streets is a smoldering political issue, the Cosa Nostra and its narcotics traffic should be included as a root cause...
Often, the Commission's chief function seems to be preservation of the balance of power, making sure that no one boss gains too much power. In Cosa Nostra's terms, as in nations', that is guns. Theoretically, at least, the 24 families have not been allowed to increase their numbers since the '30s. They vary greatly in size now, as they did then, from Carlo Gambino's army of 1,000 in New York to James Lanza's tiny, ineffectual squad of twelve in San Francisco. Currently, several families are open to recruits, offering...
EVICTED from the Mob's top hierarchy in 1964, Joe Bonanno of New York-one of the bloodiest killers in Cosa Nostra's history-eventually retired to Tucson, Ariz., where, amid his fig and orange trees, he now lives modestly, reflecting on his days of power and plotting his comeback. His life is not entirely normal, however. The FBI tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit his confidant and all-round handyman, David Hill, 21, as an informer. Once a bomb landed in Bonanno's backyard. He thinks that an FBI agent may have prompted two young thugs to throw...
...parents in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, home of so many American Mafiosi. The third, which he apparently does not tell young Hill about, is to return to power, and, like Napoleon at Elba, he still dreams of the day when he can march home and reclaim his Cosa Nostra family...