by PolackTony » Mon Jun 02, 2025 10:40 pm
Chin and B already said it, but admin positions in a Family can go unfilled for years at times. We can expect this to be more likely when a Family is under duress due to internal conflict or intense LE pressure. The latter was certainly the case with Chicago in the 90s, as the organization was reeling from a series of major cases that seriously damaged the administration and senior membership in the period.
Having said that, Chicago could very well have had an official underboss during the period in question (at least at some point in that interval), and we just wouldn’t know. It’s sort of a cliche, but important to keep in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially relevant here given that we only have one made member from this period who testified, and he was a soldier and already off the street during this period. Nick C didn’t discuss the admin and structure of the Chicago outfit at the time of his defection during his testimony for Family Secrets, as this was not relevant to the specific charges (e.g., older murders) being tried in that case. He may have discussed these things a bit with the FBI when he was debriefed, but we have only seen a tiny snippet of his 302s, so who knows what all he actually told them. We are well justified in assuming that there were a number of things going on with Chicago that we otherwise have no clue about. And unless a guy who was made during that period flips and fills us in on what was happening, we may well never know for sure what exactly was happening. As always, the subject of Chicago is a very challenging one due to the lack of solid evidence from made members.
It’s also worth noting that a Family having a formal Consiglio doesn’t imply that they necessarily wouldn’t have an official underboss, or vice versa. These are two separate questions. A Family can have a full admin and these guys sit on the council. For example, we know from Chicago CI Teddy DeRose that Chicago used a council during Giancana’s tenure as boss (The FBI cited DeRose as calling it a “ruling committee”) and we also know that Frank Ferraro was official underboss for Giancana, succeeded in that position after his death by Battaglia.
We’re in the dark as to whether Chicago maintained the use of a formal council like this after the mid-70s, but this question then gets us back into the “absence of evidence” problem. Aiuppa may have done away with it, but we really don’t know this for a fact. Personally, I find it unlikely that a formal council was in place in the late 90s/2000s, as from the little that we do know, attrition and LE pressure had degraded the leadership of the organization to the point that I just don’t see there having been the personnel to form, or the need to have, one. This was a period when Chicago was likely to have been restructuring in the face of serious threats to the coherence of the organization (basically, a protracted crisis since Strawman in the 1980s). If there wasn’t a formal underboss for a number of years during this period, this would, again, not be unexpected in that light and the factors involved there, if this were the case, I would think would have mitigated against a more complex administrative apparatus like a formal council.
Chin and B already said it, but admin positions in a Family can go unfilled for years at times. We can expect this to be more likely when a Family is under duress due to internal conflict or intense LE pressure. The latter was certainly the case with Chicago in the 90s, as the organization was reeling from a series of major cases that seriously damaged the administration and senior membership in the period.
Having said that, Chicago could very well have had an official underboss during the period in question (at least at some point in that interval), and we just wouldn’t know. It’s sort of a cliche, but important to keep in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially relevant here given that we only have one made member from this period who testified, and he was a soldier and already off the street during this period. Nick C didn’t discuss the admin and structure of the Chicago outfit at the time of his defection during his testimony for Family Secrets, as this was not relevant to the specific charges (e.g., older murders) being tried in that case. He may have discussed these things a bit with the FBI when he was debriefed, but we have only seen a tiny snippet of his 302s, so who knows what all he actually told them. We are well justified in assuming that there were a number of things going on with Chicago that we otherwise have no clue about. And unless a guy who was made during that period flips and fills us in on what was happening, we may well never know for sure what exactly was happening. As always, the subject of Chicago is a very challenging one due to the lack of solid evidence from made members.
It’s also worth noting that a Family having a formal Consiglio doesn’t imply that they necessarily wouldn’t have an official underboss, or vice versa. These are two separate questions. A Family can have a full admin and these guys sit on the council. For example, we know from Chicago CI Teddy DeRose that Chicago used a council during Giancana’s tenure as boss (The FBI cited DeRose as calling it a “ruling committee”) and we also know that Frank Ferraro was official underboss for Giancana, succeeded in that position after his death by Battaglia.
We’re in the dark as to whether Chicago maintained the use of a formal council like this after the mid-70s, but this question then gets us back into the “absence of evidence” problem. Aiuppa may have done away with it, but we really don’t know this for a fact. Personally, I find it unlikely that a formal council was in place in the late 90s/2000s, as from the little that we do know, attrition and LE pressure had degraded the leadership of the organization to the point that I just don’t see there having been the personnel to form, or the need to have, one. This was a period when Chicago was likely to have been restructuring in the face of serious threats to the coherence of the organization (basically, a protracted crisis since Strawman in the 1980s). If there wasn’t a formal underboss for a number of years during this period, this would, again, not be unexpected in that light and the factors involved there, if this were the case, I would think would have mitigated against a more complex administrative apparatus like a formal council.