Word: sicilianism
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Court-approved wiretaps turned up other names, including that of Pietro Alfano, the Sicilian-born owner of an Oregon, Ill., pizzeria whose uncle, Gaetano Badalamenti, was suspected of smuggling heroin into the U.S. from Brazil...
...southern district of New York, said that as a result of Buscetta's disclosures, "we have a whole new area of intelligence that wasn't available to us before." U.S. and Italian authorities hope to use that information to round up even more Mafiosi and crack the Sicilian connection that has smuggled billions of dollars' worth of heroin into the U.S. in the past few years...
Many Mafia leaders are clearly worried. Late last week Leonardo Rimi, a mid-level Sicilian mobster and ally of Buscetta's, was gunned down as he hid in a farmhouse 30 miles from Palermo. Some Italian law enforcement officials interpreted the murder as a warning to Buscetta and to anyone else who might be tempted to talk. There was anxious speculation that the upheaval caused by Buscetta's revelations could produce a new round of all-out bloodletting...
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...