by Don Mosseria » Mon Apr 10, 2023 10:06 am
Sullycantwell wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 7:43 am
Angelo Santino wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 7:16 am
No idea. I'd have to look up the AC 29 meeting on wikipedia to freshen up. As far as I can tell it involved plenty of non-Italians so it was likely racket-based alliance related. If making connections and trying to dominate certain industries with non-members constitutes an informal "national crime syndicate" then yes. If it's arguing that this NCS is some "new organization" then no.
yeah this was my understanding as well. using your term, it clearly seems operational and people make it seem like Luciano created a new thing. not even sure if it's confirmed he was there though. we know Capone and Nucky Johnson were there.
Yeah, there is a whole bunch of info floating around out there about how a formal National Crime Syndicate was created, which, by some telling, began being organised at the 1929 AC Conference, and was fully formed some time in 1931. This allegedly included a formal “National Board of Directors of Organized Crime”. Carl Sifakis goes into great detail on this in his Encyclopaedia of Organised Crime (forgive my British spellings). I think J Robert Nash talks about it too. Sifakis tells you exactly who was apparently on this board of directors, and it included a mixture of mostly Italian and Jewish gangsters. He has Luciano as the Chairman of the Board, the overall big shot. But then he has Costello and Joe Adonis on it (where I believe Adonis was never administration level in Cosa Nostra). Then he has Lansky, plus Jake Guzik from Chicago, Longy Zwillman, I think Dutch Shultz, plus I think Purple Gang representatives from Detroit, etc. Torrio is involved, and Capone at the beginning too. I think he might list a couple of Irish members also. He tells you that Guzik would travel into NY once per month or something to attend meetings. He says that there were two official boards of directors created in 1931 - the Italian Commission, and the National Syndicate Board of Directors. And the Syndicate is effectively the more important one. There is a Wikipedia page which has info about this too, and you see it in various places in online articles and whatever. I remember a reference to bootleggers in back woods Virginia getting a “Syndicate lawyer” in the 2012 move Lawless. Sifakis gives no referenced sources in his encyclopaedia at all, so he gives no information about how he learned about this apparent formal national body.
From what I can tell, to use a British expression, it is all total bollocks. You guys are far more knowledgeable researchers than me, but I have never seen any actual proper source back to anyone who was involved about any of this. It seems to me that the idea goes back to the way people were thinking about what might be going on back at the time of the Kefauver hearings in the early 50s. They could kind of tell some sort of organised thing was going on, but they didn’t know what it was. They used the term “Syndicate” a lot, but didn’t know anything about what the actual structure might be, but it looked multi-ethnic, largely Jewish and Italian, from the outside. This is pure speculation on my part, but it kind of looks like these early ideas about a possible multi-ethnic National Crime Syndicate got glommed onto information that came out after Apalachin and Valachi about the Italian organisation that actually existed, and fused together to create this legend of the National Board of Directors etc. I haven’t read The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, but based on a word search of a digital copy, this formal National Crime Syndicate is not referenced in there at all. But, it seems like ideas about Luciano as this revolutionary business CEO type of guy got fed into the myth. Perhaps, as people wrote speculative articles, other people wrote articles quoting those articles, and then books, until it became part of the lore? But I think the reality is, it never existed. The Cosa Nostra Commission was the only such centralised formal body that ever existed (unless the Camorra or some other group had one that I don’t know about?). Jewish and other gangsters would be involved by way of association with Italians, but never participated directly.
That is my take on the supposed National Crime Syndicate anyway, and it seems to fit with what others have said here, but if anyone thinks I am getting anything wrong, please let me know. Cheers
[quote=Sullycantwell post_id=258265 time=1680446639 user_id=7821]
[quote="Angelo Santino" post_id=258259 time=1680445010 user_id=69]
No idea. I'd have to look up the AC 29 meeting on wikipedia to freshen up. As far as I can tell it involved plenty of non-Italians so it was likely racket-based alliance related. If making connections and trying to dominate certain industries with non-members constitutes an informal "national crime syndicate" then yes. If it's arguing that this NCS is some "new organization" then no.
[/quote]
yeah this was my understanding as well. using your term, it clearly seems operational and people make it seem like Luciano created a new thing. not even sure if it's confirmed he was there though. we know Capone and Nucky Johnson were there.
[/quote]
Yeah, there is a whole bunch of info floating around out there about how a formal National Crime Syndicate was created, which, by some telling, began being organised at the 1929 AC Conference, and was fully formed some time in 1931. This allegedly included a formal “National Board of Directors of Organized Crime”. Carl Sifakis goes into great detail on this in his Encyclopaedia of Organised Crime (forgive my British spellings). I think J Robert Nash talks about it too. Sifakis tells you exactly who was apparently on this board of directors, and it included a mixture of mostly Italian and Jewish gangsters. He has Luciano as the Chairman of the Board, the overall big shot. But then he has Costello and Joe Adonis on it (where I believe Adonis was never administration level in Cosa Nostra). Then he has Lansky, plus Jake Guzik from Chicago, Longy Zwillman, I think Dutch Shultz, plus I think Purple Gang representatives from Detroit, etc. Torrio is involved, and Capone at the beginning too. I think he might list a couple of Irish members also. He tells you that Guzik would travel into NY once per month or something to attend meetings. He says that there were two official boards of directors created in 1931 - the Italian Commission, and the National Syndicate Board of Directors. And the Syndicate is effectively the more important one. There is a Wikipedia page which has info about this too, and you see it in various places in online articles and whatever. I remember a reference to bootleggers in back woods Virginia getting a “Syndicate lawyer” in the 2012 move Lawless. Sifakis gives no referenced sources in his encyclopaedia at all, so he gives no information about how he learned about this apparent formal national body.
From what I can tell, to use a British expression, it is all total bollocks. You guys are far more knowledgeable researchers than me, but I have never seen any actual proper source back to anyone who was involved about any of this. It seems to me that the idea goes back to the way people were thinking about what might be going on back at the time of the Kefauver hearings in the early 50s. They could kind of tell some sort of organised thing was going on, but they didn’t know what it was. They used the term “Syndicate” a lot, but didn’t know anything about what the actual structure might be, but it looked multi-ethnic, largely Jewish and Italian, from the outside. This is pure speculation on my part, but it kind of looks like these early ideas about a possible multi-ethnic National Crime Syndicate got glommed onto information that came out after Apalachin and Valachi about the Italian organisation that actually existed, and fused together to create this legend of the National Board of Directors etc. I haven’t read The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, but based on a word search of a digital copy, this formal National Crime Syndicate is not referenced in there at all. But, it seems like ideas about Luciano as this revolutionary business CEO type of guy got fed into the myth. Perhaps, as people wrote speculative articles, other people wrote articles quoting those articles, and then books, until it became part of the lore? But I think the reality is, it never existed. The Cosa Nostra Commission was the only such centralised formal body that ever existed (unless the Camorra or some other group had one that I don’t know about?). Jewish and other gangsters would be involved by way of association with Italians, but never participated directly.
That is my take on the supposed National Crime Syndicate anyway, and it seems to fit with what others have said here, but if anyone thinks I am getting anything wrong, please let me know. Cheers