General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[Snakes]

Reportedly Carlisi wanted to focus more on the Italian element. He shut out Gus Alex and may have taken some income sources away from him. Although Alex preferred to be retired in Florida, he undoubtedly enjoyed having streams of passive income. Maybe this played a role in going after Patrick's resources.

I'm sure the successful prosecutions from the 1980s played a large part too. That hurt the overall income to the Outfit in a big way. The way to increase income to the administration was to trim the fat. Without Alex and Patrick taking their cuts there would be more income left for Carlisi, DiFronzo and Marcello. We know that Marcello was making payments to Nick Calabrese's family, but we don't know if he was supporting the families of other imprisoned members. My guess is that he was.

So whatever reasons Carlisi had to take over the operations of loyal non-Italians with a long history with the Outfit, there was probably more to them than just simple greed.

It’s seems that Outfit became more traditional and on line with other LCN organizations and squeezing out the Jews and Greeks was on line with that along with the making ceremonies. I’m still not completely convinced that they had making ceremonies before the 70s.

They had one in '56

I’m sure you talked about this before so if you have the link that would be great. If not my questions about this is: who got made, who presided over it and why there was no ceremonies until the 1970s?

I'm sure there were ceremonies between then and the 70s, we just don't know about them. In fact, we don't know the details of any ceremony between 1956 and 1983 (who was made, exactly when it was, etc.). The only other instance we know of was 1976 or 1977 when Balistrieri came to Chicago when some guys got made.

The guys made in '56 were:

Phil Alderisio
Jimmy Allegretti
Chuckie English
Joe Ferriola
Albert Frabotta
Tony Eldorado
Vincent Inserro
Anthony Maenza
John Varelli

I believe the total number was in the twenties, but those are the only names we are confident in. It's unknown who presided over it, but I'd guess it was Accardo.

Who gave the information about the 56 ceremony and was it a traditional ceremony with blood and card of saint burned? Funny that Roemer had Butch Blasi as an informant and he told Roemer that it was just a hand shake and welcome to the club type thing. I was under the impression that Aiuppa made it the ceremony more on line with other families’ LCN protocol

Sal DeRose (actually Jewish, not Italian) was a CI but was well-connected and understood the protocols and the idea of "making" members. His understanding was that each capo sponsored a handful of guys for induction and they had a private banquet where the proposed individuals were inducted. Exactly what the ceremony consisted of is unknown. Non-members were not allowed to attend, but there was a party afterward which some of the newly made members attended that also included associates. I suppose some members could have been made with just a handshake as "bare bones" ceremonies would hardly be exclusive to Chicago, but it seems like there was at least some type of ceremony surrounding the 1956 inductions. Whether it included the knife, gun, etc., we don't know as no (known) attendees ever divulged any details.

[B.]

Like we've discussed before, the Bonannos, Luccheses, and DeCavalcantes did inductions for a significant amount of time that didn't include all the bells and whistles and were sometimes outright informal.

Bonanno and Lucchese CIs described at times what was essentially a dinner or banquet. In the Bonannos too it could be little more than a brief synopsis of the org where they were told they were made. Other times these Families did do the more traditional ceremony.

Chicago may have been similar in that they at times did less traditional ceremonies but we have far fewer personal accounts from someone who went through this process. In the past the descriptions or allusions to a non-traditional ceremony were treated as Chicago exceptionalism but even if they did this we can absolutely say Chicago was not exceptional.

[funkster]

As discussed before Fosco has also said that Jackie Cerone was made in a church, which sounded like a fairly formal ceremony.

[PolackTony]

Reportedly Carlisi wanted to focus more on the Italian element. He shut out Gus Alex and may have taken some income sources away from him. Although Alex preferred to be retired in Florida, he undoubtedly enjoyed having streams of passive income. Maybe this played a role in going after Patrick's resources.

I'm sure the successful prosecutions from the 1980s played a large part too. That hurt the overall income to the Outfit in a big way. The way to increase income to the administration was to trim the fat. Without Alex and Patrick taking their cuts there would be more income left for Carlisi, DiFronzo and Marcello. We know that Marcello was making payments to Nick Calabrese's family, but we don't know if he was supporting the families of other imprisoned members. My guess is that he was.

So whatever reasons Carlisi had to take over the operations of loyal non-Italians with a long history with the Outfit, there was probably more to them than just simple greed.

It’s seems that Outfit became more traditional and on line with other LCN organizations and squeezing out the Jews and Greeks was on line with that along with the making ceremonies. I’m still not completely convinced that they had making ceremonies before the 70s.

They had one in '56

I’m sure you talked about this before so if you have the link that would be great. If not my questions about this is: who got made, who presided over it and why there was no ceremonies until the 1970s?

I'm sure there were ceremonies between then and the 70s, we just don't know about them. In fact, we don't know the details of any ceremony between 1956 and 1983 (who was made, exactly when it was, etc.). The only other instance we know of was 1976 or 1977 when Balistrieri came to Chicago when some guys got made.

The guys made in '56 were:

Phil Alderisio
Jimmy Allegretti
Chuckie English
Joe Ferriola
Albert Frabotta
Tony Eldorado
Vincent Inserro
Anthony Maenza
John Varelli

I believe the total number was in the twenties, but those are the only names we are confident in. It's unknown who presided over it, but I'd guess it was Accardo.

Who gave the information about the 56 ceremony and was it a traditional ceremony with blood and card of saint burned? Funny that Roemer had Butch Blasi as an informant and he told Roemer that it was just a hand shake and welcome to the club type thing. I was under the impression that Aiuppa made it the ceremony more on line with other families’ LCN protocol

Sal DeRose (actually Jewish, not Italian) was a CI but was well-connected and understood the protocols and the idea of "making" members. His understanding was that each capo sponsored a handful of guys for induction and they had a private banquet where the proposed individuals were inducted. Exactly what the ceremony consisted of is unknown. Non-members were not allowed to attend, but there was a party afterward which some of the newly made members attended that also included associates. I suppose some members could have been made with just a handshake as "bare bones" ceremonies would hardly be exclusive to Chicago, but it seems like there was at least some type of ceremony surrounding the 1956 inductions. Whether it included the knife, gun, etc., we don't know as no (known) attendees ever divulged any details.

We've gone over all of this in close detail before. Several times now, in fact. But just to go through it again.

The intel about the 1956 ceremony came from CG 6690, who Ed Valin identified as Theodore "Teddy" DeRose. DeRose was a French jew from NYC who moved to Chicago in the 1920s as a young man and successfully "passed" as Italian. He was a longtime associate who was working for Ralph Pierce (who he claimed specifically wanted a "well-spoken Italian" to represent his interests) when he was pinched on heroin trafficking charges, which led him to begin informing to the FBI in 1964. The FBI had no member sources in Chicago at this time, and the handful of member sources that they developed subsequently often shared little info, particularly about the formal mafia organization. Thus, DeRose was a very important source for the Chicago office, and while not a member, he was very well informed about the organization, both at the time that he informed as well as the history going back to the 1920s (he was, for example, aware that Capone started as a Camorrista and that the Camorra and Mafia merged in Chicago in the 1920s). I believe that DeRose may well have wound up getting made himself, given that people took him for Italian, if he had not gotten pinched on the dope charges.

Here are some of the relevant sections of his intel with respect to the ceremony, as well as the status of important non-Italian associates who were respected but could not be members (as these two points seem to perenially crop up as sources of confusion with Chicago). DeRose allows us to say that Chicago had a formal induction ceremony that at least included the administration of an oath of umirtà. Whether it included all of the features typical of the full "traditional" ceremony -- recorded since the late 19th century in Sicily and called punciuta (literally, "pricking"or "piercing"0 or cumbinaziuni ("making") in Sicilian -- such as the pricking of a finger and burning of an image of a saint, we can't say. DeRose had obviously not attended any ceremonies himself.

As Snakes notes, we don't know for sure who officiated the 1956 ceremony. My guess, however, would be that it was officiated by Giancana, as we know that Accardo stepped down and Giancana was installed as boss in '56. Given that a Family is, in essence, re-made whenever a new boss takes power, it is often the case that a bunch of new members will be inducted when a new boss comes in (we also know, as Snakes notes, that a bunch of members were inducted in a Chicago ceremony in 1976, shortly after Aiuppa took power).

Funny that Roemer had Butch Blasi as an informant and he told Roemer that it was just a hand shake and welcome to the club type thing. I was under the impression that Aiuppa made it the ceremony more on line with other families’ LCN protocol

I'd have to go back and see exactly how Roemer phrased this. He not infrequently took a lot of liberties with how he framed and narrated things in his books, of course. While Roemer did have Blasi as a source, I'm not aware that Blasi (who, thanks to Ed Valin, we know was CG 6481) discussed initiation into the organization; at least, not in any of the files citing Blasi that I can recall seeing. As Ed noted, Blasi "appears to have been very circumspect about the kind of information he shared with the FBI [...] His disclosures often consisted of little more than telling Roemer where he could find Giancana or other Outfit members on their vacations".

Now, several sources in the 1960s did tell the FBI that they were unaware of any ritual or ceremony involved in "membership" in the organization. It's important to keep in mind here that the FBI had poor insight into the formal organization in Chicago for decades, as they relied in many cases on informants who were not made (including a bunch of sources who were law enforcement, reporters, restaurant owners, gambling clients, and businessmen with ties to organized crime). As noted above, even when they did develop member sources, many of them were cagey and shared little substantive intel.

We have this source, for example, CG 6512. This was in 1963, before the Chicago office had developed any member informants. I don't know the identity of CG 6512, just that he was friendly with some outfit guys and gave some intel on things like the jukebox racket. Just because he was, apparently, unaware of any ceremony isn't good evidence that they didn't have one. Nick Calabrese, for example, testified that prior to his own ceremony, he was totally unaware of what it entailed, and he had been an associate on record for ~13 years by that point and had committed multiple murders in service to the organization. It's also not clear to me that this source necessarily understood "membership" in the way that we mean it -- as a made guy, an inducted LCN member. He may well not have understood what this meant (we have seen before that the FBI had Chicago informant sources as late as the 1980s who were unclear on the concept and what it meant) and could have been referring to being put on record as an associate (hence, the comment about being "added to the payroll").



Later in the '60s, the FBI had a report citing three sources claiming that they were unaware of any ceremony involved in "membership' in Chicago: Lou Fratto, Tony Amatore, and a still unidentified source (CG 6968). Note that the report refers to these three as "members of the Chicago 'family'". I have some strong reservations about the FBI's designations of Chicago membership in this period (which was much less rigrous than in later decades when they revised their protocol for LCN member identifications). Lou Fratto, who was interviewed by the FBI on his death bed in Iowa, was the only source for his own membership. In fact, Teddy DeRose explicitly denied that Lou Fratto was "made" and instead claimed that Fratto was tasked with handling Chicago interests in Iowa while not being an actual member (his brother Frank Fratto, on the other hand, was identified as a longtime Chicago member by Augie Maniaci). Then, Lou Fratto was the only source for Tony Amatore being a member, So, not only was Tony Amatore a cop, but he didn't even identify himself as a member. That the FBI could be totally off about membership during this period is underscored by a 1973 Chicago membership list where the Feds designated Frank Calabrese as a member, identified by three sources as such, a full decads before he was actually made. I'd think that the intel in this report likely informed Roemer's claims, also.



It's worth being very careful in how we interpret and read these sources, given the lack of robust sources for Chicago in this period and the overall poor insight that the FBI had into the Chicago organization early on. Unfortunately, the last two excerpts that I posted above have been taken as "proof" on these forums that Chicago never had any kind of ceremony, ever, without even a basic critical reading of who these sources were (as well as other issues like the general lack of verbatim attestations from the sources themselves, where what we are reading is not necessarily what they actually said, but how the agent/s who typed the report interpreted what said).

I believe that Nick Calabrese's testimony engendered a sort of cognitive dissonance for a lot of people interested in Chicago. People spent years assuming that Chicago not having a ceremony was just a "fact", and then a member finally takes the stand and gives a detailed description of his ceremony. So, for some people online, the assumption seems to have been "well, then, they must've suddenly changed it right before he got made", hence the hypothesizing that Aiuppa was the one who started it. The fact is, we don't have any sources that tell us anything like that, while we do know that there was at least a formal ceremonial induction of some sort in past decades.

Like we've discussed before, the Bonannos, Luccheses, and DeCavalcantes did inductions for a significant amount of time that didn't include all the bells and whistles and were sometimes outright informal.

Bonanno and Lucchese CIs described at times what was essentially a dinner or banquet. In the Bonannos too it could be little more than a brief synopsis of the org where they were told they were made. Other times these Families did do the more traditional ceremony.

Chicago may have been similar in that they at times did less traditional ceremonies but we have far fewer personal accounts from someone who went through this process. In the past the descriptions or allusions to a non-traditional ceremony were treated as Chicago exceptionalism but even if they did this we can absolutely say Chicago was not exceptional.

And we can add Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, at least, to the list of Families where we have sources claiming that there was no traditional ceremony, at least by the 60s/70s.

We've discussed all of this before in considerable detail, in various threads. But even Families with a strongly Sicilian membership and indisputably "traditional" orientation also forewent the use of the full ceremony at times. If Chicago also did at certain periods in its history, as you note, it wouldn't at all be exceptional and wouldn't have any consequence in terms of their status (and the status of their membership) within the mafia. We have examples from other Families of guys burning toilet paper instead of a Saint, of guys getting made in person and pulled over at the side of the road in a cramped car. In the back of a bar while Happy birthday played on the radio. Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato, of all guys, seem to have been made in a non-traditional verbal-only ceremony, for chrissakes.

[B.]

Yep, there were definitely other national Families who did the "non-traditional" ceremony. I point out the New York / New Jersey ones because the framework is typically to contrast Chicago with New York, much as those cities are contrasted with each other and seen as rivals in general American culture. New York is also framed as the most traditional iteration of the mafia in America when that is not true -- it is simply the largest and most well-covered branch of the American mafia but in many ways it does not reflect the mafia's traditional practices.

I don't blame anyone for theorizing based on limited evidence, as I do it myself, but years ago it was theorized that Chicago began doing a traditional ceremony in the 1970s/80s to impress New York or because Aiuppa wanted to emphasize the Sicilian roots of the org. There is no evidence to support this beyond speculation based on vague accounts earlier on of Chicago being looser with the ceremony and it doesn't make sense. By the 1970s/80s, Chicago was much more Americanized and had even more autonomy than the previous 50 years and those kinds of details are not supposed to be freely discussed. I also don't understand how those details would enhance Chicago's relationship with New York when they were already a highly-respected, ultra-disciplined Family during the previous decade with NYC/NJ leaders like Joe Colombo (via Scarpa), Calogero LoCicero (again via Scarpa), and Angelo DeCarlo showing admiration and even envy toward the way Chicago ran their org.

The only example we have of a Family reverting to the traditional ceremony to impress a New York Family is the DeCavalcantes, a secretive Sicilian-centric group who were forced by John Gotti of all people to re-induct their members the traditional way when he found out they had done verbal-only inductions for at least 15 years. The DeCavalcantes were upset this information got out and speculated as to who told Gotti (blame falling on John D'Amato), it being a violation of the Family's internal secrecy to discuss these details with another group. Members are not supposed to discuss the details of their initiation with other members and we know in Chicago's case they were extremely disciplined when it came to discussing formal matters even within their own Family.

Now, I am very open to the idea that Chicago did do banquet or simply verbal inductions during periods of their history as we do have some references to it. If they did do those types of inductions though I just don't assign the same meaning or motivation to their decision to pinch fingers and burn saint cards as others might and can't rule out that these practices fluctuated throughout their history rather than simply going from "non-traditional" to "traditional" in one distinct wave between the 1960s and 70s. In the many other Families who didn't do the full ceremony it doesn't seem to have been a major philosophical decision but something they did out of convenience, concerns about law enforcement surveillance, or other circumstantial factors. It would also be well-understood that regardless of the way the ceremony was decorated, these men were fully schooled in the rules, practices, and culture of the mafia and the way a member was inducted had little bearing on the end result.

With Roemer, in one of his books he detailed Tony Accardo's verbal induction by Al Capone in 1927 with McGurn serving as Accardo's sponsor and he invented ridiculous dialogue to go along with it. If we're being generous maybe Roemer as an FBI agent did receive some kind of information about McGurn sponsoring Accardo under Al Capone's leadership but who told him and is it documented in an unknown FBI file or was he told off the record by one of his sources? There are many issues with Roemer and he was prone to fiction, the description of the ceremony being blatant creative writing even if there was some basis for the idea. The specificity is also a question, as in 1927 Al Capone may not have been a mafia member yet and when he did become one he was with the Genovese Family for his first several years. He was a Camorrista according to Maniaci, DeRose, and the DeCarlo tapes then a Genovese member but Roemer's story about Accardo's induction offers nothing about this and I'm not sure Roemer was aware of or cared about those kinds of details.

We also have the early 1970s Chicago member informant, a Sicilian who may have been Leonard Gianola, who discussed non-traditional / verbal initiations taking place in the organization much earlier in its history. I believe he said his older relatives, Sicilian immigrants, had been initiated in Chicago this way which, much like Aiello's close relationship to important non-Italians, backdates these trends even further.

One of the issues with CI accounts even with initiated members though is they are not required to bare every detail and as long as their information is basically reliable the FBI is content with any information they provide. When Bonanno member Willie Dara told the FBI about his verbal, banquet-style induction the FBI noted in the report that he was visibly agitated and impatient while discussing his induction so they decided not to press him for more detail at that time. Even though Philly member Bobby Luisi was a CW and was required to share the full details of his induction with the FBI, he refuses to fully discuss it on podcasts despite being open about many other aspects of the org. Information on earlier Chicago inductions is typically brief, sparse, not comprehensive, and most sources were not full insiders so we are extremely limited when it comes to understanding exactly what they did and especially why. Personally I push back more on the "why" than the "what" as Chicago is often assigned motivations that have no basis and their conduct is not fundamentally different from other Families around the country.

There is a tendency to frame the idea of Chicago doing non-traditional ceremonies as a deliberate move toward or away from mafia tradition when we have nothing to support that framework and nobody does that with other Families where there is much stronger evidence of expedited or less formal ceremonies. If Chicago did it, it must have had some deep and deliberate meaning that makes their group exceptional but when the DeCavalcantes, Luccheses, Bonannos, Pittburgh, Buffalo, and Milwaukee do it there is little speculation as to why and it doesn't change anyone's perception of them beyond "Huh, interesting."

[Ivan]

There's this really retarded "Second City Exceptionalism" where people are inclined to tout a unique way of doing things "the Chicago way!" with the implication that in the Windy City we ain't got time for all that tradition nonsense and were all business here! Pretty sure that things like Roemer's silliness about the induction ceremony, or claims about Chicago being super different in this other ways, are downstream from that.

The only actual made guy I've ever heard say the induction ceremony was silly like this, incidentally, was Tommy DelGiorno, who described his as "comical."

[funkster]

There's this really retarded "Second City Exceptionalism" where people are inclined to tout a unique way of doing things "the Chicago way!" with the implication that in the Windy City we ain't got time for all that tradition nonsense and were all business here! Pretty sure that things like Roemer's silliness about the induction ceremony, or claims about Chicago being super different in this other ways, are downstream from that.

The only actual made guy I've ever heard say the induction ceremony was silly like this, incidentally, was Tommy DelGiorno, who described his as "comical."

Ive never taken it as exceptionalism, i've always taken it as slight...as if saying theyre "not a real mafia family".

[B.]

Yeah, and to me it takes away from the fact that Chicago did have elements that made them unique, it just wasn't exceptional in the way it is often framed. Every American organization adapted to their unique surroundings, demographics, and opportunities and what made Chicago unique was different from what made Philadelphia unique but neither was fundamentally different as a mafia organization. Even the five New York Families are not carbon copies of one another and we all accept that there are unique characteristics, cultures, and attitudes we associate with each of them.

As I've said before, if you removed the word "Chicago" from Nick Calabrese's testimony it would be virtually indistinguishable from a New York Family. This has led to theories that there was a deliberate change in how the Family functioned in the years immediately before Calabrese was made but there are no sources that I'm aware of who alluded to any kind of organizational "revolution" within the Family after Aiuppa took over. We know they inducted new members in 1976 and a new boss took over around this time which can certainly represent a shift in the "company culture" like we see any time a leadership or membership change takes place but the idea of the organization fundamentally changing under Aiuppa is in my view an empty theory invented to reconcile earlier reports and narratives drawn from the limited info previously available.

It doesn't mean there weren't changes -- maybe they did do verbal-only ceremonies in the 1950s and later started pricking fingers again but as discussed above those sorts of superficial changes don't represent a change to the fundamentals of the org and we see this with other mafia Families around the country. We know Milwaukee didn't do the traditional ceremony either for what may have been decades but if they decided to reinstitute it under Balistrieri we wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Milwaukee was running things completely differently let alone assign grandiose motivations to it. That said, we know Balistrieri did represent a major cultural change in the Family which sources like Maniaci talked about constantly but it didn't change what the organization was or how it operated at a core level.

I always use the DeCavalcantes as an example when this comes up. Between 1976-1988 they performed verbal-only inductions and in the 1960s we have Sam DeCavalcante referring to the Family having two underbosses. So right there you could say they didn't follow the mafia tradition and had an alternative structure yet we know they were a highly traditional Family in most other respects. I've wondered if they truly did have two official underbosses in the 1960s or if LaSelva was official in CT and Majuri acted for him in NJ and when this was casually discussed they didn't need to specify official vs. acting. But it is not an emotionally-charged discussion either way so you don't see YouTube comments or forum wars about it. Even if they were the only known Family in existence who had two official underbosses for a time it doesn't change what they were.

Another side of this too is how unlikely it is that Chicago re-Italianized or attempted to appease New York in the 1970s/80s when the organization was even more Americanized, there were far fewer Italian and Sicilian-born members, and their relationship to East Coast Families was even more distant than it had been in previous decades. They had a founding seat on the Commission and kept this seat throughout most if not all of the Commission's known existence and were allowed autonomy but autonomy does not mean autonomy from Cosa Nostra, it means autonomy within Cosa Nostra. Informed New York leaders like Colombo, LoCicero, and DeCarlo admired Chicago's discipline, cold-bloodedness, exclusive recruitment practices, and overall adherence to the life. They felt that New York should actually draw more influence from Chicago, not the other way around. Chicago didn't present that image to them to impress anyone, that's what Chicago was.

[Snakes]

I do think Rick brought up a good point where as the decades progressed, it seemed like the more senior non-Italian associates were squeezed out or shunted aside as the rackets dried up. This may have made it look to outsiders like the family was re-orienting and becoming more "traditional," but I think it was more a case of the pieces of the pie getting smaller and the Italians wanting to look out for their "own" before outsiders.

[B.]

Which is standard practice, really. Associates of previous leaders lose their privileges / protection and the new leadership "ain't respecting old arrangements." While their advocate is alive and in the mix they are treated like high-ranking members but when the situation changes their non-member status affords them fewer advantages.

When Uncle Junior tried to squeeze Hesh, it was the DiMeo Family becoming more traditional and re-Italianizing. Uncle Junior started pricking fingers and burning saint cards again. No more Jewish consiglieres.

[B.]

And of course new leaders can choose to afford high-level associates the same status they previously had but it's at their discretion. When Castellano was killed, Joe Watts continued to be a high-level associate under Gotti much as he had been under Castellano but if Gotti wished he could have changed that. If that happens, the associate can then reach out to someone else, much as Hesh reached out to Tony, but there may be little to nothing his would-be advocate can do or wants to do. On the Sopranos Tony couldn't stop the shakedown but gave Hesh his own personal cut as consolation.

The Sopranos can be ridiculous but sometimes it gives perfect examples of how the system works even though it doesn't explain them outright. A senior associate was allowed to operate at the upper rungs of the Family with full financial freedom under previous leaders and influenced Family politics but a new leader took over and the situation changed. Junior didn't throw Hesh to the street and force him to collect parlay tickets and report to a soldier but he did exercise his right to shake him down given Hesh accumulated wealth under the Family's protection. Junior then distributed the money among the Family leaders, not only taxing him but communicating to Hesh and everyone else that he was an associate who operated at their mercy.

Sometimes I think there's a perception that certain associates are invincible. There is no member, boss, captain, or associate who is invincible. They are all afforded different levels of protection but it can deteriorate quickly if the circumstances change. Meyer Lansky was the highest level associate in the country, being described by both Frank Bompensiero and Tony Accardo as an "avugad" for the Jews and a defacto voice on the Commission, but even Lansky could have been shaken down or killed if his advocate(s) died and he defied the Genovese leadership. "We can kill the boss but we can't kill Tom Hagen, an Irish consigliere." These Chicago associates were no different and important non-Italians losing status and operations is how the system works when the leaders of the system want it to work that way. I'm surprised that would be seen as a fundamental change in the system.

[PolackTony]

Some points that I think are important to keep in mind here.

DeRose was a Jew passing himself off as Italian and worked for Ralph Pierce, one of the most respected associates in Chicago, so his insight into the dynamics between the leadership of the mafia and these respected non-Italian associates is valuable. These guys had personal relationships with important members, which is one thing. This is particularly important, say, with Gus Alex, given that he grew up around Italians in Chinatown (where his father almost certainly knew men like Mike Merlo and Bruno Roti); came up with Frank Ferraro, who would rise to become Underboss of the Family; and was a brother-in-law of Joey Glimco, so he also had familial relationships with important Italians (similar to Maishe Rockman in Cleveland). But DeRose frames these relationships as being mainly predicated on instrumental utility, emphasizing that the high-status associates were respected because they were "producers for" the mafia (emphasis added), with important expertise in rackets like gambling and juice, as well as vital contacts with people in the business, organized labor, and political worlds (the Italians had plenty of these themselves, of course, but in the highly ethnically-structured world of Chicago machine politics, their ties were primarily to their fellow paesani, whereas important non-Italians had ties to power brokers and people of influence in other communities). We were told by informants like Pierce that the leadership wouldn't permit Alex to retire to Florida (despite repeated mental breakdowns and hospitalizations) because his connections were vital to the organization, not because he was a big crime boss with a whole wing of "the outfit" under his command (as some fanciful and baroque theories about Chicago have posited). Others, like Patrick and Pierce, were important because they essentially managed criminal racket activity and political corruption in their communities (Jewish, black) on behalf of the mafia. Italians weren't going to be running every gambling and juice book in every neighborhood in Chicagoland, and unlike other cities, after the 1930s and 40s, there weren't really autonomous ethnic crime syndicates in Chicago independent of the mafia. You had independent operators, sure, Italian and non-Italian, many of whom at times were forced to pay street tax to the mafia and its associates, but guys like Patrick and Pierce were essentially given licenses by the mob to racket rights in their communities.

By the 1980s, how much utility did a guy like Patrick offer? He was basically a throwback to an earlier era of Jewish gangsters, from his early days in Lawndale through the exodus of the Westside Jewish community to the Northside and beyond. My understanding is that when Patrick got out of prison in 1979, he had little of substance really going on. Some gambling and street tax from a few businesses around Rogers Park and Albany Park, etc. In 1985, his main guy, Lenny Yaras, was whacked out (and we don't know why, though it has been theorized that it was a response to the bust of the DiVarco gambling operation that I just posted about in another thread). So he takes on a younger, tough Italian, Mario Rainone. According to Rainone and Patrick, it was actually Rainone who spearheaded their juice operation in the late 80s, as Patrick testified that he had been out of the juice game since the '60s (more on that below). Presumably, they got the investment capital for this from the Carlisi crew, as we have Rainone and Patrick discussing how Patrick was kicking up ~$10k a month to Jimmy Marcello (which Patrick characterized as just what was owed to Marcello, which sounds more like ROI than simple "tributary").

So it wasn't like there was this whole robust non-Italian organized crime network that guys like Carlisi and DiFronzo decided to push out just because they wanted to be more "traditional", whatever that means (and, not for nothing, the guys working for Patrick at this time were Italians themselves, they just weren't members). By the 1980s, there really any important Jewish, Greek, Irish, etc gangsters left in Chicago due to basic historical processes like attrition and assimilation (unlike the Italians, organized crime elements in other communities didn't have a structured formal organization and tradition at their core, and the Jews and Greeks, who formed the backbone of the important non-Italian organized crime networks of yesteryear, were increasingly dispersed across Chicagoland). There wasn't the sort of social infrastructure left in Chicago to produce a new generation of Alexes, or Patricks and Vogels and Larners; the "Jewish gangster" had gone the way of the cowboy, a mythical figure associated with Prohibition-era Maxwell Street and 1940s Lawndale. You had Patrick, with Lenny Yaras as the only young Jewish guy of any note in that era. And then you have who, Mike Posner? Although Patrick went on to testify that Alex was his "boss", and he managed to get himself on a wire giving Alex an envelope of money, we also know from Ralph Pierce that Alex was basically done with criminal racket interests by the early 70s (and we have other CIs that claimed that he had lost a considerable amount of status when Ferraro died). And then we have the transcripts of Rainone and Patrick, where Rainone is trying to convince Patrick that the leadership of the mafia has decided to wash their hands of them and allow DiFronzo and his men to kill Rainone and muscle Patrick out. They discuss Carlisi, DiFronzo, Marcello, rulings that were not in their favor. And guess who never comes up? Gus Alex. Like, not at all. So whatever remaining respect that he may have had from some of the old timers notwithstanding, it wasn't like he was representing a non-Italian "faction of the outfit" to the Family's administration, or whatever people have assumed his role was. From the transcripts, he was a non-entity when the guys who were, according to the G and the media, "members" of his "crew", were dealing with literal life and death matters vis-a-vis the organization. The G had a hard-on for Alex since the 1950s, and Patrick wasn't an important enough target on his own for them, so they flipped him to finally nail Alex (while also using Patrick against Carlisi). But my take is that Alex was little more than a historical figure by this time.

We also know that there was a lot of backstabbing, conniving, and competing for dwindling racket resources in this period, Italian or not Italian. For example, Lombardo talking about "flattening" Frank Orlando because he opened up a massage parlor near one controlled by Ferriola. Or the beef between Matassa and D'Amico (who, we should recall, was a very aggressive guy in this period and was apparently the root cause of the issue that Rainone and Patrick were having) over vending machines. what we don't have is any evidence of any kind that I'm aware of (for example, I'm not aware that Patrick or any of the other guys who testified during this period said any such thing) that there was some specific shift by Carlisi to favor italians over non-Italians (which, again, only persisted in a vestigial form by this time anyway).

An incident that I've discussed before was the issue that occurred in the 1960s between Fifi Buccieri and Myron Patrick, Lenny's brother. The Buccieri crew had asserted interests in juice loan territory on the Far NW Side (possible that this was through Rocky the Parrot, although we still don't really know for sure who he was assigned to), and a low-level Jewish gangster who worked for the Patricks was seen going to a cigar shop in Buccieri territory up there. So Buccieri reportedly flipped out, called Myron Patrick to his social club in Cicero, yelled at him, and then told him that from that point on he was to give 50% of his juice proceeds to Buccieri (this was reported by a CPD informant who was present in the club when it occurred). Had Giancana instituted some rule or new program to disfavor non-Italian associates? Or, was Buccieri able to throw his weight around because Myron Patrick wasn't a member and didn't have any real recourse if someone like Buccieri (a captain, and according to DeRose, on Chicago's Consiglio) wanted to muscle in on him? This was also a period where increasing local and Federal LE pressure was causing tensions to develop as streams of racket income were drying up, so you had guys who were going to go after opportunities when they could (we also know from other informants that Buccieri was causing problems with other crews in this period in trying to assert interests in their territorial spheres). Recall how Lenny Patrick testified almost 30 years later that he had gotten out of the juice racket in the 1960s, which I suspect was related to this issue with Buccieri.

Thinking of sentiments and favoring. Again, some of the important non-Italian associates of yesteryear had personal relationships with influential mafia members, but, most importantly, offered skills and personal connections that were useful to the mafia. It wasn't like Chicago Italians were particularly cosmopolitan or anything in their worldview (they weren't, and I've read accounts noting the general distrust of outsiders and non-Italians that prevailed among Chicago Italians through the 1960s, at least). One of the things that I've sought to underscore here on the forum is the strong connection over time between the mafia network and the networks of Italian social institutions, and of paesani and familial affiliation, in Chicago. While this was exemplified by the mafia capture of the Unione Siciliana/IANU, it persisted for decades through the various branches of paesani societies and political organizations (corollary to assumptions about the mafia in Chicago being less "traditional", I believe, is a sort of unstated assumption that this reflected an Italian community in Chicago which was somehow disinterested in Italianità, didn't care about being Italian, or about their hometown and regional origins, which couldn't be further from the truth). As I noted above, Rainone stated that DiFronzo was going around saying that he wouldn't even "talk to that fuckin Jew" when an issue apparently erupted between D'Amico and Patrick. Was this some new, suddenly (and implausibly) more chauvinistically Italian generation of leadership in Chicago, whereas the old guard used to spin dreidels on Chanukkah with the boychiks? Of course not. I think here of a 1962 bug of a conversation between Rocco Fischetti (as old guard/Capone-era as it gets) and Jackie Cerone. Fischetti was recounting a heated argument that he had with Trigger Mike Coppola, where Fischetti flipped his wig because Coppola wanted him to talk to some Jews in Miami about an issue, telling Cerone "I says, I'm blowin my top, but these Christ killers, I got to talk to a Christ killer?? I says, I got respect for you, Mikey, but not for this guy" (the way that Fischetti talks about the incident makes it sound like him and Coppola even came to blows over it).

There's your "multi-ethnic criminal syndicate" right there.

-------------------------

A final point. As B noted above, we've gotten some accounts from New York mafiosi (since the de facto assumption for a lot of people is that NYC is the gold standard of the "traditional" mafia, which of course in many notable ways it was not) about their views on Chicago in the 60s/70s, as well as informants from other cities around the country. Some guys in New York thought they should have been more like Chicago, with a smaller and more conservative membership and a well-deserved reputation for heavy use of violence. We have guys like Fratianno, Bompensiero, Maniaci, all of whom knew Chicago members well (Fratianno even believed he was one for a while!). What none of them, not a one, ever tell us is that Chicago was perceived as being the odd-man-out in the world of LCN, as less "traditional", as having anything anomalous about their membership or structure, or as having any sort of relationship to or role for non-Italian associates (some of whom, like Gus Alex, Guzik, and Humphreys, having been very well-known figures to NYC and other cities) that was distinctive, idiosyncratic, or unlike other Families. Chicago guys didn't report that Chicago was different in any substantive way from "the outfit" in other cities either. Here was what Lou Fratto had to say about the use of savvy Jewish associates by LCN in 1967, for example (as a note if there any newer readers here, "the outfit" did not denote specifically the Chicago Family, but was used by people all around the US as a synonym for "Cosa Nostra"):

[B.]

I think here of a 1962 bug of a conversation between Rocco Fischetti (as old guard/Capone-era as it gets) and Jackie Cerone. Fischetti was recounting a heated argument that he had with Trigger Mike Coppola, where Fischetti flipped his wig because Coppola wanted him to talk to some Jews in Miami about an issue, telling Cerone "I says, I'm blowin my top, but these Christ killers, I got to talk to a Christ killer?? I says, I got respect for you, Mikey, but not for this guy" (the way that Fischetti talks about the incident makes it sound like him and Coppola even came to blows over it).

Not just any Jew, as Coppola wanted Fischetti to touch base with Max Eder about a financial arrangement involving his brother Joe. Eder was an associate direct with Coppola (a Genovese captain for three decades by then) and the two were inseparable in Miami, being partners in foreign casinos and countless other interests. Eder was essentially Coppola's alter ego in business affairs and could be described as "like a member" of the Coppola crew even though he couldn't be made.

That Rocco Fischetti exploded in anger at a Genovese captain because Coppola simply told him to touch base with his high-level Jewish associate about a financial issue and that Fischetti's anger came from Eder being a "Christ killer" is very interesting. The Fischettis were "cousins" of Al Capone and part of his inner circle and Rocco was associated with the Genovese Family for many years, having a close relationship not only to the Jewish-friendly Coppola but also Vincent Alo whose relationship to Meyer Lansky needs no introduction. As a ranking Capone-linked Chicago member with a long history of association w/ the Genovese Family we would otherwise assume Fischetti was comfortable discussing business with an influential Jewish Genovese associate but in the transcript with Cerone it's clear Fischetti was disturbed by the mere principal of having to talk business with a "Christ killer", to the point of threatening violence.

Of course there were Chicago members who were comfortable with Jews / non-Italians and certain figures were treated like insiders, but it being Fischetti who reacted this way tells us that even within the Capone school there were members with an aversion to Jewish associates. Then to flip the script we know there were old line Sicilians in the Northside crew who readily mingled with non-Italians in important affairs. Like I always say, a Family or even an individual crew / faction is not always of one mind.

The Fischetti transcript also damages the narrative that "New York = more traditional and Italian-centric" and "Chicago = progressive and multi-ethnic" as you have the opposite situation here and it's not stated casually, it's an issue where Coppola deeply offended Fischetti by trying to involve Eder in their dealings.

[Antiliar]

Like in biological families, members of Mafia families can have extreme political differences and strong racial and ethnic prejudices. Growing up, some of them could have heard or been influenced by Detroit-based Father Charles Coughlin, who had a popular national radio program where he regularly ranted about Jewish conspiracies.

It's also worth noting that Accardo was recorded saying, "I see they made the Jew an avugad." He didn't use his name, he just disparaged Meyer Lansky as "the Jew." If two powerful old-timers like Accardo and Fischetti had these prejudices, they were probably widespread. Al Capone may have been more tolerant and was known to be close to Jake Guzik.

[B.]

Though his tirade was antisemitic, it's clear in the transcript that Fischetti was also upset about the protocol violation of Coppola wanting to use his associate as a middleman when handling an issue with a fellow made member. That Eder was Jewish really brought the rage out of Fischetti but some of Fischetti's statements indicate that organizational protocol was at play too.

Good point about the Accardo quote. I always read it as dismissive or disparaging as well. I actually had an unfinished post about that quote that I might as well include here:

November 1962 recording of Accardo commenting to Ricca and Giancana: "I see they made the Jew an avugad, he's really reaching out."

- He's referring to Lansky, who Bompensiero confirms was a de facto Commission member (avugad) representing the national Jewish element in the 1960s, but we're missing the tone Accardo said it in. It's idle gossip and he's not outwardly angry but the wording is definitely dismissive and detached. He didn't say "We (the national mafia) made the Jew an avugad," he speaks from a distance and says "I see" that "they" made Lansky an avugad. Giancana was on the Commission at this time and Accardo didn't say "you guys" made Lansky an avugad, meaning Giancana and the Commission, he says "they" as if non-Chicago elements on the Commission are responsible which would obviously be taken to mean NYC, the Genovese in particular.

- As I said, we don't know the tone so it could have been stated sincerely, sarcastically, or any number of ways, but we do have the wording which tells us a little bit: this was a newer development, Accardo comes across dismissive, and it was worthy of idle gossip among three top Chicago leaders. Lansky is simply "the Jew" which coming from a guy like Accardo could be a neutral description of a Jewish guy just as easily as it could have been a derisive remark but it doesn't exactly sound warm.

- If you read it sarcastically, you could interpret Accardo as saying Lansky was simply acting like a big shot and throwing his weight around more than usual, that he was acting as if "they made [him] an avugad" rather than an actual change to his role. That'd be interesting in its own right. However we have Bomp's info from 1968 which is more detailed but complements what Accardo said, that Lansky was seen as an "officially unofficial" Commission representative for the national Jewish element.

- The Accardo comment was in late 1962 so what happened around this time that changed the perception of Lansky to "Jewish avugad" opposed to what he was earlier? Bonanno said Luciano asked to bring Lansky to a Commission meeting in the 1930s and the Commission agreed he could come along as long as Lansky didn't attend the formal meeting itself. How is that different from his relationship to the Commission in the 1960s? He could stand in the doorway now?

- Did the Commission pull Lansky to the side in the early 1960s and say, "Hey Meyer, we know you've been rappresentante of the Jewish mafia going back to 1931 and that we've always treated you like an honorary amico nostra and allowed you to stand outside of Commission meetings and stuff... but what do you say? How about we finally make you a semi-official Jewish avugad? Just imagine, when the Jews have a problem you can sit down with us and... discuss it." Was he not doing that in the 1930s-1950s?

- Did the Genovese Family provide more of a buffer between Lansky and the Commission before the 1960s? Did Lansky taking on a more direct relationship with the Commission by November 1962 relate to Luciano's death earlier that year? Luciano was long-removed from the Genovese leadership but remained influential and for all we know Lansky could have been "on record" with Luciano until his death. Valachi also flipped only a couple months before Accardo's comment and by then Vito Genovese had been in prison for a few years and factionalism was rising. Valachi said Genovese and Lansky worked together very closely, believing Genovese had an interest in all of Lansky's rackets and that they shared an interest in a Vegas casino. There was a lot of turmoil and change going on in the Genovese Family between the late 1950s and 1962 so it's possible the Commission gave him a more direct line as a result. The circle of Genovese leaders who he rose up with in the 1920s/30s were definitely fading.

We can only guess Accardo's intention in bringing it up (offhand I don't think I've seen the full context, just different reports that excerpt this comment) but it raises questions about Lansky's story and Chicago's POV on Lansky. As usual I'm writing paragraphs here on one tiny quote from an FBI tape but it raises questions about Lansky's story (in context with his Cosa Nostra association at least) and Accardo/Chicago's perspective on Lansky's role.