by PolackTony » Tue Jun 03, 2025 4:18 pm
Camo wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 3:35 pm
Chicago is a mess because while there were CI's there weren't many CW's whose deal was tied to their testimony making it difficult to parse through the information and come to a conclusion on what was happening. Especially on issues like official positions which likely weren't spelled out as much as we'd hope.
More to the point, Chicago had *no* member CWs who actually testified until Nick Calabrese did so in 2007, and few of the associate CWs who did testify over the years were either in the position to clarify substantive questions about the organization of the Family, per se, or provided testimony that would have been relevant to these questions anyway (as opposed to testimony that largely focused on specific criminal acts and operations). A (partial) exception was Lenny Patrick, though the most that he really gave us with respect to the organization itself was confirming that Carlisi was boss. Gerry Scarpelli flipped and, of course, died before he could testify, but he he was only made for a short time before he began cooperating and the 302 that we have from him mostly deals with murders rather than organizational matters (though Scarpelli also, again, confirmed that Carlisi succeeded Aiuppa as boss, and not Ferriola, as LE and the press had incorrectly theorized at the time, a point that Nick Calabrese later reiterated on the stand).
And while the CI accounts that we otherwise have to rely on from FBI files leave much to be desired (as only some were members or associates in the position to have any real insight into the organization itself and even these often were vague and sparse in the intel that they provided), the period when we actually have the most insight into Chicago is the ~30 year window stretching from Giancana’s tenure through that of Aiuppa. And even here, many questions remain unanswered and unanswerable. We have little solid intel for the period after the Carlisi case, while the period before the mid-1950s, when Giancana was installed as boss, is shrouded in accounts composed of layers of myth, hearsay, and outsider speculation/confabulation such that much of what people think they “know” about Chicago ranges from outright BS to, at best, garbled distortions of fact.
Things could be worse. Other Families, such as the STL outfit, had no member CIs that we are aware of. Springfield, IL, the Feds basically just had some vague wiretaps and a smattering of accounts from CIs from other cities to go on.
[quote=Camo post_id=295015 time=1748990126 user_id=398]
Chicago is a mess because while there were CI's there weren't many CW's whose deal was tied to their testimony making it difficult to parse through the information and come to a conclusion on what was happening. Especially on issues like official positions which likely weren't spelled out as much as we'd hope.
[/quote]
More to the point, Chicago had *no* member CWs who actually testified until Nick Calabrese did so in 2007, and few of the associate CWs who did testify over the years were either in the position to clarify substantive questions about the organization of the Family, per se, or provided testimony that would have been relevant to these questions anyway (as opposed to testimony that largely focused on specific criminal acts and operations). A (partial) exception was Lenny Patrick, though the most that he really gave us with respect to the organization itself was confirming that Carlisi was boss. Gerry Scarpelli flipped and, of course, died before he could testify, but he he was only made for a short time before he began cooperating and the 302 that we have from him mostly deals with murders rather than organizational matters (though Scarpelli also, again, confirmed that Carlisi succeeded Aiuppa as boss, and not Ferriola, as LE and the press had incorrectly theorized at the time, a point that Nick Calabrese later reiterated on the stand).
And while the CI accounts that we otherwise have to rely on from FBI files leave much to be desired (as only some were members or associates in the position to have any real insight into the organization itself and even these often were vague and sparse in the intel that they provided), the period when we actually have the most insight into Chicago is the ~30 year window stretching from Giancana’s tenure through that of Aiuppa. And even here, many questions remain unanswered and unanswerable. We have little solid intel for the period after the Carlisi case, while the period before the mid-1950s, when Giancana was installed as boss, is shrouded in accounts composed of layers of myth, hearsay, and outsider speculation/confabulation such that much of what people think they “know” about Chicago ranges from outright BS to, at best, garbled distortions of fact.
Things could be worse. Other Families, such as the STL outfit, had no member CIs that we are aware of. Springfield, IL, the Feds basically just had some vague wiretaps and a smattering of accounts from CIs from other cities to go on.