Word: nostra
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...Godfather and Peter Maas's The Valachi Papers). Organized crime is no longer quite the mystery that it was. It is a vast, sprawling underground domain impossible to trace fully; but there is no longer any doubt that its most important part, its very nucleus, is La Cosa Nostra (LCN), otherwise known as the Mafia...
Nobody will listen. Nobody will believe. You know what I mean? This Cosa Nostra, it's like a second government...
...outside was sure of what it was. Yet, almost unnoticed, it exerted a profound impact on American life. It still does. Small wonder that Valachi, the thug-turned-informer, doubted that anybody would believe or care when he talked about an organization called La Cosa Nostra...
There are bits of truth in all the impressions, but all fall short. The biggest and most important truth is that La Cosa Nostra and the many satellite elements that constitute organized crime are big and powerful enough to affect the quality of American life. LCN generates corruption on a frightening scale. It touches small firms as well as large, reaches into city halls and statehouses, taints facets of show business and labor relations, and periodically sheds blood. It has a multiplier effect on crime; narcotics, a mob monopoly, drives the addicted to burglaries and other felonies to finance...
...Cosa Nostra itself, the Italian core of organized crime, consists of only 3,000 to 5,000 individuals scattered around the nation in 24 "families," or regional gangs, each headed by a boss and organized loosely along military lines. There is no national dictator or omnipotent unit giving precise direction on all operations. Rather, the families constitute a relatively loose confederation under a board of directors