I take a few days off to observe Independence Day and the thread goes wild!
I’ll try to answer questions as best I can going through the thread - if I miss something please don’t take offense.
cmikes wrote:
My understanding has always been that the American Mafia, especially at that time, had very strict rules when dealing with the authorities. I had always heard that to even kill off a beat cop or a low level judge was something that had to be approved at the highest levels of their organization, since something like that could easily bring down a world of hurt on them, that the authorities would be all over them in order to avenge "one of their own". So why would they jump immediately from "we have to be really careful about taking out a beat cop that won't play ball with us" to "let's kill the President of the United States"? Has anyone else ever heard this line of thought?
For a good primer on LCN I heartily recommend Thomas Reppetto’s book American Mafia
Reppetto is an ex-CPD detective and ended up a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. By his name I believe he’s Genovese, not Sicilian, but he certainly knows his subject matter from a practical viewpoint.
The chance that the hypothetical “beat cop” could actually pose a threat real enough to warrant being injured or killed by an LCN member or associate (from here on I’ll refer to LCN associates simply as KA’s – Known Associates) is more fiction than fact. The chance that a street cop would run into the situation where they’d encounter a LCN or KA doing serious business is pretty much slim to none, and the types of bad actors a street cop might encounter at all would at best be the lowest level of LCN operator one could find – some guy moving a car, running errands, that type of thing, and issuing a citation isn’t something that’s going to merit Big Guy involvement and violence.
The Mafia and how they operate here in the U.S can be best viewed and explained by dividing it into two parts chronologically – before the establishment of The Commission and after.
Look, I hate to blow off this rather immense history and explanation of normal mafia tactics in such a brief manner, but this was not a typical, mafia hit. It was a personal vendetta by Carlos Marcello, who suffered the greatest humiliation of his life, when he was the butt of Bobby Kennedy's joke, of literally kidnapping Marcello, dragging him out of his home in the middle of the night and dumping him in the jungles of Guatemala with little more than the shirt on his back.
Bobby's act was probably illegal and certainly, a joke at Marcello's expense, since everyone knew that he lied when he claimed citizenship in Guatemala. It would have been surprising if Marcello
hadn't attempted to seek revenge.
Marcello was heard to swear that he would kill JFK (not Bobby) as he explained in his infamous "tail of the dog" rant. Later, he confessed to ordering the assassination, to an FBI informant as well as Frank Ragano, who was also told by Trafficante, that Marcello was behind the assassination.
The bottom line here is, that this was a totally different and unique situation. It is irrelevant what the mob "usually" did in the past. And it wouldn't matter anyway, so long as the killers didn't get caught.
Have you seen this article, by the Pulitzer prize winning editor of Rolling Stone, Howard Kohn? Kohn had developed contacts with investigators for the HSCA, and made the the amazing discovery that within 24 hours after they had been calling mafia contacts, trying to subpoena Charles Nicoletti, the man was murdered.
http://jfkhistory.com/mobsters/Nicoletti.html
Did you also know that Sam Giancana was murdered exactly five days before he was to testify before the Church committee, investigating connections between the CIA and the mob?
And did you know that shortly after testifying about the mob's connection to the JFK case, and telling the Washington Post that the mob ordered Ruby to kill Oswald, Johnny Roselli's dismembered body was found floating in an oil drum off the coast of Miami?
Marcello told the FBI informant that David Ferrie was an accomplice who introduced him to Oswald in a meeting at his brother's restaurant in New Orleans.
Isn't it an amazing coincidence that almost immediately following newspaper stories that Ferrie was being investigated by Garrison, he was found dead? Yes, the coroner claimed it was by "natural causes", but Marcello is well known to have had public officials in his pocket and in fact, they finally got him convicted for bribing a public official.
Tell me, in his like of work, who would be the
FIRST one on his shopping list?
As for the rest of your article, please break it into smaller parts. Taking on the entire forum, I just don't have time to deal with that much data in one sitting.
