New Orleans.

[B.]

The FBI listed 33 members in 1968. Even if we stipulate they were wrong on some or even most of them it stretches credulity to believe that they would have been wrong on 28 of the 33 names they had listed as members.

Here's where we found the document you've been pulling this info from and determined, down to the exact page number, it was a reference to "suspected members" . "Suspected member" lists are based purely on association and obviously not confirmation of membership.

I'd have to see the exact report you're referring to to gauge the context, but there are other reports from 1968 that reflect the same information on the 1966 and late 1967 reports. Do you have the original report that 1968 info is from? Thanks, man.

Sorry I don't. It was from MF and I just copied down the info. I do have in my notes that it was on page 217 but from what batch of documents I have no idea.


Pogo

Thanks, man.

This is on page 217 of an MF file containing a report from the New Orleans FBI office in August 1968:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... PageId=217

It has the same handful of confirmed members posted by Nash and the rest are suspected members. So as of August 1968, the FBI hadn't received confirmation that those were made members.

They did make some lists ~1963 that included eight men that they believed "logically could be considered members", but that statement and other details show that this was based only on activities and association with the Marcellos, not any direct evidence of membership.

It is impossible for the FBI to confirm members without a member source and they didn't have one in New Orleans. They need a member or a recording of a member to confirm that info. In some cases exceptions are made for exceptional associates (i.e. the sons of Stefano LaTempa in Pittston) but there is no indication an associate of that caliber was cooperating in New Orleans and the FBI's lists reflect that.

[Snakes]

The FBI listed 33 members in 1968. Even if we stipulate they were wrong on some or even most of them it stretches credulity to believe that they would have been wrong on 28 of the 33 names they had listed as members.

Here's where we found the document you've been pulling this info from and determined, down to the exact page number, it was a reference to "suspected members" . "Suspected member" lists are based purely on association and obviously not confirmation of membership.

I'd have to see the exact report you're referring to to gauge the context, but there are other reports from 1968 that reflect the same information on the 1966 and late 1967 reports. Do you have the original report that 1968 info is from? Thanks, man.

Sorry I don't. It was from MF and I just copied down the info. I do have in my notes that it was on page 217 but from what batch of documents I have no idea.


Pogo

Thanks, man.

This is on page 217 of an MF file containing a report from the New Orleans FBI office in August 1968:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... PageId=217

It has the same handful of confirmed members posted by Nash and the rest are suspected members. So as of August 1968, the FBI hadn't received confirmation that those were made members.

They did make some lists ~1963 that included eight men that they believed "logically could be considered members", but that statement and other details show that this was based only on activities and association with the Marcellos, not any direct evidence of membership.

It is impossible for the FBI to confirm members without a member source and they didn't have one in New Orleans. They need a member or a recording of a member to confirm that info. In some cases exceptions are made for exceptional associates (i.e. the sons of Stefano LaTempa in Pittston) but there is no indication an associate of that caliber was cooperating in New Orleans and the FBI's lists reflect that.

Just to add to this, B, the identification standards were much lower back then. I have stated it elsewhere but those MF membership lists are fairly unreliable. In 1982, the FBI completely redid their standards for identifying made members in order to be "absolutely certain that an individual is an actual LCN member before so labeling him."

The criteria they implemented is as follows:

1) Identification of the individual as an LCN member by a "member source."

2) Identification of the individual as a member through admissions or conversations between at least two documented members, and in the presence of UCA(s) [undercover agents].

3) Identification of the individual by a minimum of two highly reliable sources and/or cooperating witnesses, independent of each other.

4) Identification of the individual as a member through results of electronic surveillance wherein an LCN member is discussing his own or other members relationship to the LCN.

Additionally, none of the above "by themselves" will qualify an individual for inclusion on the membership lists without additional corroborating information available to the FBI. Furthermore, those individuals tentatively identified as members prior to 1982 that were still alive had to be re-classified based on the revised standards.

As an added factoid, the FBI also stated at the time that they did not have "member sources" in every family, meaning that identification of members for those families not having one would be more difficult as it was the most surefire way to identify members.

[B.]

Yep, exactly. They were able to confidently identify members in some families early on when they had a reliable member source (or in families like San Jose, at least three) or highly-placed bug, but families like New Orleans and Tampa had no member sources, hence the FBI's lists only being "suspected members."

Based on what you said, in the 1980s the FBI second-guessed even their lists of "confirmed members", so you can imagine how they felt about a list of "suspected members," especially in a place with no inside information like New Orleans.

[Pogo The Clown]

I've already stipulated that probably not all the guys on the list were made. I'm sure there were some who weren't made. Probably many of them but to think that their intelligence was so flawed that 28 of the 33 guys they suspected were made actually weren't goes beyond the relm of believability. Especially since I've already listed more than 5 who were made in 1968.


Pogo

[B.]

I've already stipulated that probably not all the guys on the list were made. I'm sure there were some who weren't made. Probably many of them but to think that their intelligence was so flawed that 28 of the 33 guys they suspected were made actually weren't goes beyond the relm of believability. Especially since I've already listed more than 5 who were made in 1968.


Pogo

Ok, you admit you're guessing about a list where the FBI themselves admitted they were just guessing. We can rest on that note

[Pogo The Clown]

I already listed 8 members alive in 1968 (plus 25 strong possibilities who at least some were almost certainly members). You are the one who is guessing when you say 3 of these members must have transferred families and thus don't count to get to the 5 figure. After all do you have a member source confirming that these guys transferred families?


Pogo

[B.]

Good luck. Pogo.

[stubbs]

I think people don’t realize how small New Orleans as a city is. It has less than 400k people within city limits and the whole metro area is about 1.2 million people. Brooklyn alone has like 2.5 million people.

Not only that, but New Orleans historically is a poor city in one of the poorest states in the union. Outside of tourism, there’s not a whole lot of industry.

Looking at Italian immigration to Nola, it seems like most of the immigration happened in the late 1800s, before the majority of immigration from Italy shifted to New York. So while Louisiana is filled with Italians, most families by the 70s & 80s were 3-4 years removed from Italy and probably completely Americanized.

Everything seems to point that the New Orleans family was a very small family with most of the members and associates being blood family of Carlos Marcello, at least during his reign. It also seems more likely they were structured more like the older families we see in other small towns across the US. That is, almost exclusively Sicilian, and controlling only a few rackets... as opposed to having a monopoly over all organized crime in the city. Another similar trait is them being more like racketeers like an Angelo Bruno or Louis Tom Dragna, as opposed to ruling the underworld with an iron fist and demanding a street tax on all independent operators like Nicky Scarfo did.

St Louis and Dallas are probably apt comparisons as both cities had few rackets and fewer members, while also having powerful non-Italians who operated freely without having to kick back to the local family. Buster Wortman in East St Louis was reportedly closer to Chicago than the local family. Benny Binion in Dallas was either completely independent or under possibly Chicago or LA as well, and he also seemed to have much more power than the local mafia did.

Given the fact that the Nola family is described as being almost defunct by the early 80s (I read that in an old NY Times article, will have to dig it up), it wouldn’t surprise me if there were very few formal members. People describe Marcello as keeping things close to his blood family and not wanting to bring in new members who might bring heat or become informants, something similar to many other old school Sicilian bosses of the same generation.

The fact that Anthony Carolla in the late 80s basically told the Gambinos, Genovese, and Philly families to come on right in and do whatever, seems like they didn’t have a whole lot going on themselves by then. The casino card counting operation also seemed a bit bush league too, especially considering that was only a decade after the much larger Las Vegas casino scam, where the mafia actually had secret ownership stakes.

On a side note, I found out the Maceos in Galveston were 100% independent and not under New Orleans or Dallas, but that’s another long story for another day.

[cavita]

I think people don’t realize how small New Orleans as a city is. It has less than 400k people within city limits and the whole metro area is about 1.2 million people. Brooklyn alone has like 2.5 million people.

Not only that, but New Orleans historically is a poor city in one of the poorest states in the union. Outside of tourism, there’s not a whole lot of industry.

Looking at Italian immigration to Nola, it seems like most of the immigration happened in the late 1800s, before the majority of immigration from Italy shifted to New York. So while Louisiana is filled with Italians, most families by the 70s & 80s were 3-4 years removed from Italy and probably completely Americanized.

Everything seems to point that the New Orleans family was a very small family with most of the members and associates being blood family of Carlos Marcello, at least during his reign. It also seems more likely they were structured more like the older families we see in other small towns across the US. That is, almost exclusively Sicilian, and controlling only a few rackets... as opposed to having a monopoly over all organized crime in the city. Another similar trait is them being more like racketeers like an Angelo Bruno or Louis Tom Dragna, as opposed to ruling the underworld with an iron fist and demanding a street tax on all independent operators like Nicky Scarfo did.

St Louis and Dallas are probably apt comparisons as both cities had few rackets and fewer members, while also having powerful non-Italians who operated freely without having to kick back to the local family. Buster Wortman in East St Louis was reportedly closer to Chicago than the local family. Benny Binion in Dallas was either completely independent or under possibly Chicago or LA as well, and he also seemed to have much more power than the local mafia did.

Given the fact that the Nola family is described as being almost defunct by the early 80s (I read that in an old NY Times article, will have to dig it up), it wouldn’t surprise me if there were very few formal members. People describe Marcello as keeping things close to his blood family and not wanting to bring in new members who might bring heat or become informants, something similar to many other old school Sicilian bosses of the same generation.

The fact that Anthony Carolla in the late 80s basically told the Gambinos, Genovese, and Philly families to come on right in and do whatever, seems like they didn’t have a whole lot going on themselves by then. The casino card counting operation also seemed a bit bush league too, especially considering that was only a decade after the much larger Las Vegas casino scam, where the mafia actually had secret ownership stakes.

On a side note, I found out the Maceos in Galveston were 100% independent and not under New Orleans or Dallas, but that’s another long story for another day.

Excellent synopsis stubbs. I always enjoy fresh information on New Orleans.

[stubbs]

Excellent synopsis stubbs. I always enjoy fresh information on New Orleans.

You're welcome! Glad you liked it.

[stubbs]

I found this website called Bayou Brief a few months ago and it has probably the best overview of Carlos Marcello I have found so far. The author, Lamar White, Jr., is a native of New Orleans and works as an investigative journalist. He says he's now writing a book on Marcello, so I really hope he finishes it and it gets released.

Links to the articles on Marcello below, but first a very good quote from one of the articles:

There is an impulse to treat organized crime in New Orleans and the life story of Carlos Marcello as existing outside of the history of the city itself, as a singular phenomenon that was exported to America from Italy, as something entirely unique to the Mafia. Indeed, there is an entire body of work about Marcello and the New Orleans Mafia constructed around the implication that— aside from the Hennessy Assassination and the lynchings that followed in the early 1890s, the cultural and historical influences of New Orleans are somehow irrelevant.

Nearly all of the scholarship about Marcello, including, most prominently, John H. Davis’s Mafia Kingfish, comes from people who misapprehend or ignore the ways in which culture and history alter the magnetic field in Louisiana and particularly in New Orleans. They rush through those details too hurriedly and interpret many of them wrongly. In his biography of Marcello, for example, Davis referred to former New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story “Chep” Morrison, Sr. as “Chet,” which may seem minor to anyone unfamiliar with the cast of characters but would, to a reader from Davis’s native New York, be the equivalent of a writer misidentifying Rudy Giuliani as “Ruby” in a book about a mafioso from the Empire State, the kind of tiny mistake capable of unraveling a writer’s credibility entirely and leaving a reader adrift with an unreliable narrator.

Davis’s book, Mafia Kingfish, is particularly problematic for anyone attempting to reconstruct the story of Carlos Marcello, not just because Davis (the first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) decided to present his antihero as a creature of the Mafia, as if he was merely an interloper in Louisiana and not a lifelong resident of the state, but also because it’s served as the source material for dozens and dozens of other narratives about Marcello. And like Davis’s book, nearly all of the other accounts were also written by outsiders who were similarity distracted by the novelties and eccentricities of New Orleans too much to be bothered by the veracity of the actual story—in the same way “ghost tours” market the French Quarter to tourists.

Part 1: Calogero Minacore and the Making of Carlos Marcello

Part 2: Carlos Marcello and the Making of a Mafia Myth

Part 3: The American Saga of Carlos Marcello

[Nick Prango]

In this video John Pennisi says that there is still Italian organized crime activity in New Orleans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNr20Zo ... astNetwork

[sdeitche]

In this video John Pennisi says that there is still Italian organized crime activity in New Orleans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNr20Zo ... astNetwork

I was going to post this, but since you already did...

[Pogo The Clown]

In this video John Pennisi says that there is still Italian organized crime activity in New Orleans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNr20Zo ... astNetwork

He doesn't actually say that. Unless I missed it all he said was that Jimmy Burke's daughter told him that her father had a lot of friends in New Orleans. Burke has been dead for 25 years.


Pogo

[Nick Prango]

In this video John Pennisi says that there is still Italian organized crime activity in New Orleans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNr20Zo ... astNetwork

He doesn't actually say that. Unless I missed it all he said was that Jimmy Burke's daughter told him that her father had a lot of friends in New Orleans. Burke has been dead for 25 years.


Pogo

He said "there are still things going on down there in New Orleans"