The point I want to make is this:
If we do not on a national scale attack organized criminals
with weapons and techniques as effective as their own,
they will destroy us.
~ RFK
THE ENEMY WITHIN
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
~ Thomas Jefferson, 1800
THE ENEMY WITHIN, by Robert Kennedy
Chapter 12: Organized Crime
pages 228 to 253:
In November, 1957, at least fifty-eight men met on an estate in upper New York. They had come from all over the United States. Joseph Francis Civillo came from Texas; James Coletti, from Colorado; the Falcone brothers, from New York; Vito Genovese, from New Jersey; Russell Bufalino, from Pennsylvania; Santos Trafficante, from Tampa, Florida.
Fifty of the fifty-eight had arrest records, thirty-five had convictions. Eighteen had been arrested or questioned in connection with murders, fifteen in connection with narcotics, twenty-three for illegal use of firearms. The host, Joseph Barbara, had been the chief suspect in two murders.
They were also active in many so-called legitimate enterprises. Nineteen were involved in garment manufacturing; seven, in trucking; nine were or had been in the coin-machine business; seventeen owned taverns or restaurants; eleven were in the olive oil-cheese importing or exporting business. Others were involved in automotive agencies, coal companies, entertainment; four in funeral homes; one was a conductor of a band; and twenty-two were involved in labor or labor-management relations.
It was not a chance meeting. It had been well organized before-hand. Subpoenaed telephone toll tickets proved that they had been in close contact with each other for weeks before. Reservations had been made at the neighboring motels and lodges; huge amounts of food had been ordered.
This was the now famous Apalachin conclave at the home of Joseph Barbara, where some of the elect of the underworld met to plan strategy in the fields of gambling, narcotics and labor racketeering.
Subsequent testimony before the Committee revealed that the underworld was increasing its effort to seize control of legitimate businesses and unions, which they often used as "fronts" for their illegal activities. In some industries they actually had gained a monopoly control.
The results of the underworld inflitration into labor-management affairs form a shocking pattern across the country. We found and duly proved that the gansters of today work in a highly organized fashion and are far more powerful now than at any time in the history of the country. They control political figures and threaten whole commmunities. They have stretched their tentacles of corruption and fear into industries both large and small. They grow stronger every day.
We have seen how the Dio-Hoffa operation worked in New York, and how ex-convict Harry Gross shook down some of the country's leading newspapers; but let us look at a few further examples, of the many that the Committee examined, of how these people operate and how some businessmen work with them to give them their power.
...Garbage removal is used by gangsters as a vehicle of extortion. When there is a monopoly control, the refusal to remove garbage or waste can put a company out of business. Garbage which has not been removed will bring swift action from the Sanitary Commission.
Because it is comparatively easy to gain and maintain control, gangsters and racketeers have been attracted to the multimillion-dollar industry. Important in their organization is a friendly labor union which can act as an enforcing arm.
Gangster inflitration of the garbage industry is not confined to Westchester. In 1955 the various garbage companies in the New York area formed an employer association. Soon afterward, the Senators learned, the underworld took control of this association and with the help of Adelstein's new union, Teamster Local 813, maneuvered to monopolize the industry.
The men behind the move were an interesting group. The top man was Jimmy Squillante, described as "a major source of supply for narcotics, as well as being prominent racketeer." Squillante, a short, thin man with glasses, described himself as the godson of Albert Anastasia, the lord high executioner of Murder, Inc.
... He spoke of setting up the big gangsters in business -- Meyer Lansky on the East Coast; Buster Wortman, in St Louis; "Greasy Thumb" Guzik and Tony Accardo (the remnants of the Capone gang) in Chicago. Once in control of the operation, the gangsters are able to put pressure on local owners of taverns and bars to install their merchandise. When an outsider tries to compete with this more refined operation, the employers association has its union send pickets to any tavern or bar that accepts the competitor's juke-box machines. When any member of the association gets out of line, the same thing happens. If this does not work -- violence.
...The underworld set up the same kind of association-union operation in the coin-machine industry in Chicago. We discovered that even Al Capone's brother Ralph was active in it. The union in this case was Local 134 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, run by "Jukebox" Smitty.
Investigations soon showed that Mooney Giancanna, the gunman for the remnants of the Capone mob (with the help of his two chief lieutenants -- "Potatoes" Daddano and "Crackers" Medino) was the motivating force here behind the underworld's infiltration of the union and the association. We searched for him for fifteen months and finally located him in Las Vegas. Giancanna told a reporter, Sandy Smith of the Chicago Tribune, how much he had enjoyed dodging the Committee's subpoena servers.
When Smith asked him how he had managed to stay out of the service during World War II, Giancanna said: "Who wouldn't pretend he was a nut to stay out of the Army? When they called me to the board they asked me what kind of work I did. I told them I steal for a living. They thought I was crazy, but I wasn't. I was telling the truth."
Concerning the alleged crime syndicate, Giancanna said: "What's wrong with the syndicate? Two or three of us get together on a deal and everybody says it's a bad thing. Businessmen do it all the time and nobody squawks."
About investigations in general he said: "There's going to be a lot of crime if these investigations keep up. It will be worse than Capone."
What was the effect of this man and his lieutenants on legitimate businessmen?
Bernard Poss comes from Aurora, Illinois, just outside Chicago. He had been in the juke-box business since 1947. In 1955, Rocco Pranno, another of Giancanna's lieutenants, approached him about distributing gambling equipment. Poss turned him down, but after several worrying visits, agreed to go with Pranno to see "the boss."
...Once safely back, Poss told Pranno the whole thing was off. Pranno answered: "The boss wouldn't like this."
Poss's telephone began to ring. They told him to get out of business - to sell out.
"One telephone call said, 'Now, I am telling you for your own good,' he says, 'we will take you out and beat you up with a ball bat and break your legs, and if you live you will be crippled for life.'"
They began wrecking his machines. Two men would enter his locations, one with a gun, the other with an ax. While the man with the gun held the people at bay, the other man chopped up the pinball and game machines.
...Poss still refused.
Then his wife began getting telephone calls. With tears rolling down his cheeks, Poss said: "She was so nervous that I was fearful that she was going to go insane."
Mr. Poss went out of business.
...Certain elements of law enforcement, the judiciary and big business have combined to permit these underworld businessmen to continue to operate.
Sometimes, as we have seen, the racketeers find a fertile field in the labor movement. Sometimes elements of the labor movement find a fertile field in racketeering, and sometimes it is mutual. In a majority of cases there is a breakdown of local law enforcement. That is what happened in Portland, Oregon, where the various elements joined forces to organize the vice rackets.
In our investigation there we had the invaluable help of the Portland Oregonian and two of the best and most courageous reporters I have ever seen, Wally Turner and William Lambert. For their work in exposing this sordid situation they both were honored with the Pulitzer Prize. The case there centered around a key figure in the city's underworld: a racketeer named Jim Elkin, a slim, rugged-looking man with a rather kindly face and a very attractive and devoted wife. Elkins was one of the most interesting and controversial witnesses that appeared before the McClellan Committee... Once he made up his mind that he was going to co-operate, he went the whole way. He told me later that he had "checked me out", to see if I could be trusted.
I checked him out also. I learned that he had manufactured illicit whisky during prohibition, been given a twenty-to-thirty-year sentence for assault with intent to kill, a one-year sentence for possession of narcotics, and had been arrested several times on gambling charges (I also learned that he had performed some valuable services for the Army during the war).
Nevertheless, Jim Elkins was one of the three or four best witnesses the Committee ever had. Because his background was so unsavory, we checked his story up and down, backward and forward, inside and out. We found he didn't lie, and that he didn't exaggerate... He was bright. He had a native intelligence. He was highly suspicious - and a fund of information. He never once misled me. He never once tried.
I never approved of what he had done and, perhaps, I would not approve of what he is doing now. However, I believed him when he said he had never participated in prostitution, or dealt in the peddling of narcotics.
...The syndicate next planned their move into the field of prostitution. The "houses" were to be operated by a woman named Ann Thompson and two "madams" known as Big Helen and Little Helen.
At this juncture, Elkins balked. When he refused to have anything to do with prostitution, the syndicate's carefully laid plans began to fall apart.
Elkin's break touched off a no-holds barred underworld struggle in Portland. He told the Committee he realized that, because of his reputation, he was up against all the power of the Teamsters, gangsters, and the District Attorney's office.
At one point, he testified, he was threatened by Frank Brewster when he went up to Seattle to complain about what McLaughlin and Maloney were doing in Portland. Brewster got mad because Elkins was interfering. As Elkins told it: "...He talked a little more and he got red in the face and he said, "If you bother my two boys, you will find yourself wading across Lake Washington with a pair of concrete boots.'"
Brewster, when he testified, denied that he had said this.
After he broke with the syndicate and the Teamsters, Elkins and his wife were constantly harassed. There were anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night. One time an unknown voice informed them. "We are just a minute away and we are coming over to break both arms and both legs."
...Elkins knew he needed protection. He realized that if he were to tell the story of how the vice operations had started and who was involved he would not be believed. His record was against him. He had to have corroboration.
So he began making tape recordings of his conversations with Maloney, Crosby and others with whom he was involved. These recordings, which he turned over to Wally Turner, and Bill Lambert, were played for the Committee during the hearing. They were extremely informative (and in parts unprintable) and proved beyond all question that Elkins was telling the truth.
...William Langely, the District Attorney from Portland, took the Fifth Amendment on all quesitons. The tape recordings, the strong circumstantial evidence and Jim Elkin's testimony all involved him deeply in the operation of the Portland vice ring. When he returned to Portland from our hearings he was convicted of a misdemeanor and removed from office.
...The Committee also heard some controversial testimony that involved Mayor Terry Shurnk of Portland. He himself appeared as a witness. Following our hearings he returned home and was indicted on a bribery charge, tried and acquited.
These stories only touch upon the problem. Evidence developed by the Committee showed that gangsters today control steel companies, laundry and dry-cleaning establishments, frozen food operations, and many other kinds of businesses. Hoodlums living reputable lives in Los Angeles have major vice and gambling holdings in the Midwest. They seek to corrupt and do corrupt public officials to an alarming extent.
...There can be no question that these operations are profitable. Our investigation and hearings show that Mickey Cohen spent $275 for his silk lounging pajamas, $25,000 for a specially built bulletproof car and at one time had 300 different suits, 1,500 pairs of socks and 60 pairs of $60 shoes. His tax returns, however, showed a total income of $1,200 in 1956 and $1,500 in 1957. When asked where his money came from, Cohen said he borrowed it from his friends and thus it was not necessary to declare it. Tony Accardo has a twenty-two-room house with an indoor swimming pool, two bowling alleys and a pipe organ; three of his bathrooms have gold-plated fixtures and one has a bathtub that was cut from a solid block of Mexican onyx which cost $10,000. The house is estimated to be worth a half-million dollars.
What steps are we going to take to deal with this problem? A great number of the people whom our Committee proved were involved in these operations are still active. With the Committee out of existence, it would appear that they now have almost nothing to fear. James Squillante and the Gallo brothers are still flourishing in New York, Giancanna and his lieutenant, Rocco Pranno, are still doing business in Chicago.
The methods of our law enforcement agencies have not kept pace with the improved techniques of today's criminals. We are still trying to fight the modern Al Capone with the weapons that we used twenty-five years ago. They simply are not effective. And the result is that within ten years our whole economy will be drastically affected. I think that there are steps that can and should be taken to deal with the problem.
...The point I want to make is this: If we do not on a national scale attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us. ~ Robert Kennedy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
THE ENEMY WITHIN
By Robert F Kennedy
(formerly Chief Counsel of the Senate Select Committee
on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field)
ROBERT F KENNEDY, in 35 short years, has crammed Harvard, Navy war service, foreign reporting in Palestine, law school, numerous govenment posts, and management of his brother John's Senatorial and Presidential campaigns. In 1957 he became Chief Counsel for the famed McClellan Committee. Here, told in full for the first time, is his inside account of that investigation and of its shocking revelations.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
This book is a report on the work of the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, high-lighting some of the typical problems and abuses that were discovered. It is based on the record of the investigations conducted by the Committee's professional staff, the sworn testimony taken before the Committee, and the official reports of the Committee to the United States Senate. ~ Robert F Kennedy
"Mr Kennedy exposed himself and his family to terrible danger for three years... an example of courage that calls for more imitation if we are to delay our surrender to the mob." ~ New York Times
"An objective and thrilling account of national criminal activity which Bob Kennedy has already played a major part in disclosing." ~ from the forward by Arthur Krock
"Under Kennedy, the largest investigating team ever to work from Capitol Hill was assembled..." ~ Business Week
"The book's an adventure." ~ The Saturday Review
"Payoffs, beatings, blackmail, kept women, padded expense accounts... These are only a few of the subjects discussed by Robert Kennedy in this book covering the McClellan Committee and its investigations." ~ Fort Wayne News Sentinel
FRONT COVER:
THE ENEMY WITHIN is a crusading lawyer's personal story of a dramatic struggle with the ruthless enemies of clean unions and honest management.
"A powerful, documented indictment" ~ New York Herald Tribune
INSIDE COVER:
"An expose eclipsing the most sensational fiction in every way... a story of murder, arson, acid blindings, pitiless beatings, grand larceny, fraud, embezzlement and extortion, all exposed through exhaustive detective work and resulting in instances of heroic personal courage and shocking shame." ~ Baltimore Sun
BACK COVER:
"It turns over the rock, lets us see the snakes we must destroy and recommends the instruments with which to do it... Electrifying." ~ San Francisco Examiner
"Exciting, valuable and honest." ~ New York Times
"The findings are overwhelming, frightening, stunning in impact." ~ Pittsburg Press
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