Selwyn Raab: Omertà May Be Dead; the Mafia Isn’t
[Selwyn Raab, a former reporter for The Times, is the author of “Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.”]
QUITE a coincidence: In January 1961, Robert F. Kennedy, newly appointed as attorney general of the United States, orchestrated the first concentrated attack on the American Mafia. Almost to the day 50 years later, the government swept up more than 120 people in a smorgasbord of racketeering indictments, mainly in the New York area.
It was described as the largest single-day assemblage of Mafiosi defendants in America. The arrests, however, underline a sobering message: despite half a century of law enforcement campaigns, New York’s Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”) continues to prosper. This is often because some change — usually either shifting priorities for law enforcement or improved strategy on the part of the new criminal bosses — gives the mob breathing space to rebuild.
Since the birth of the American Mafia in 1931, New York has been its crown jewel. While other major cities and regions were limited to one family, or borgata, New York was afflicted with five powerful ones, now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese groups. (There is also a satellite unit, the DeCavalcantes, in New Jersey.)...
Federal officials, as recently as five years ago, boasted that the New York Mafia had been expelled from its main bastions: private garbage carting, the garment center, the construction industry, waterfront cargo and control of key unions. But the current indictments tell a different tale — most allege that the mob was behind corrupt construction deals and waterfront shakedowns through infiltration of unions....
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QUITE a coincidence: In January 1961, Robert F. Kennedy, newly appointed as attorney general of the United States, orchestrated the first concentrated attack on the American Mafia. Almost to the day 50 years later, the government swept up more than 120 people in a smorgasbord of racketeering indictments, mainly in the New York area.
It was described as the largest single-day assemblage of Mafiosi defendants in America. The arrests, however, underline a sobering message: despite half a century of law enforcement campaigns, New York’s Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”) continues to prosper. This is often because some change — usually either shifting priorities for law enforcement or improved strategy on the part of the new criminal bosses — gives the mob breathing space to rebuild.
Since the birth of the American Mafia in 1931, New York has been its crown jewel. While other major cities and regions were limited to one family, or borgata, New York was afflicted with five powerful ones, now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese groups. (There is also a satellite unit, the DeCavalcantes, in New Jersey.)...
Federal officials, as recently as five years ago, boasted that the New York Mafia had been expelled from its main bastions: private garbage carting, the garment center, the construction industry, waterfront cargo and control of key unions. But the current indictments tell a different tale — most allege that the mob was behind corrupt construction deals and waterfront shakedowns through infiltration of unions....