General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[PolackTony]

While we have good sources such as BB, Piscopo, and DeRose to support Ricca having been boss, we can also play Devil’s Advocate here. As B notes, Amafa Man claimed that Ricca was never recognized as the official boss of Chicago by the Commission. Yet we know from BB that Ricca came in as Capone’s replacement on the Commission when the latter was convicted in 1931 and remained in this capacity until the 1940s. Now, is it possible that Ricca was a formally an acting boss for this entire period? While I’m not saying that I think this was the case, and it would seem to be very unlikely, I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible. For example, Catena was on the Commission representing Genovese, without being the official boss. We don’t know if Capone was immediately demoted from his official position as boss immediately upon conviction, upon sentencing, upon incarceration in 1932, or if he retained the formal position for some unknown period after he was locked up. While I would very much doubt that Capone, at most, would’ve kept his position once he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1934 (let alone once it became clear how ill he was from syphilis), we don’t know for a fact when he was officially demoted and this does introduce a further level of uncertainty regarding the succession of bosses.

[B.]

Piscopo also said a consigliere can sit on the Commission but didn't give specific examples. Most of his experience was with LA and Chicago.

One theory is that Ricca was chairman / consigliere and served as acting boss when Capone went away while representing Chicago on the Commission. He reportedly did this much later when he was part of the acting admin post-Giancana.

[PolackTony]

Piscopo also said a consigliere can sit on the Commission but didn't give specific examples. Most of his experience was with LA and Chicago.

One theory is that Ricca was chairman / consigliere and served as acting boss when Capone went away while representing Chicago on the Commission. He reportedly did this much later when he was part of the acting admin post-Giancana.

Yes I’ve wondered quite a bit about Piscopo’s claim about consiglieri on the Commission, as I’d think he was basing this off of some real instance rather than a purely theoretical notion (and as we know, these guys were not theoreticians lol). We don’t know of another case where a Family’s consigliere sat on the Commission as their representative, and as you note Piscopo’s experience, for decades was mainly with his own Family and Chicago guys.

[B.]

Frank Costello sat on the Commission as a consigliere / acting boss. Luciano held the seat much as Genovese did when Catena represented them but Costello shows a consigliere could represent his Family when he held the acting boss title.

[PolackTony]

Frank Costello sat on the Commission as a consigliere / acting boss. Luciano held the seat much as Genovese did when Catena represented them but Costello shows a consigliere could represent his Family when he held the acting boss title.

I was thinking of Costello as AB at that time but yeah, he was officially consigliere as well as AB. Good call.

[Antiliar]

While we have good sources such as BB, Piscopo, and DeRose to support Ricca having been boss, we can also play Devil’s Advocate here. As B notes, Amafa Man claimed that Ricca was never recognized as the official boss of Chicago by the Commission. Yet we know from BB that Ricca came in as Capone’s replacement on the Commission when the latter was convicted in 1931 and remained in this capacity until the 1940s. Now, is it possible that Ricca was a formally an acting boss for this entire period? While I’m not saying that I think this was the case, and it would seem to be very unlikely, I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible. For example, Catena was on the Commission representing Genovese, without being the official boss. We don’t know if Capone was immediately demoted from his official position as boss immediately upon conviction, upon sentencing, upon incarceration in 1932, or if he retained the formal position for some unknown period after he was locked up. While I would very much doubt that Capone, at most, would’ve kept his position once he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1934 (let alone once it became clear how ill he was from syphilis), we don’t know for a fact when he was officially demoted and this does introduce a further level of uncertainty regarding the succession of bosses.

No, it's not impossible that Ricca was an acting boss the entire time, but I made my case based on the preponderance of the evidence, which is the common standard used in historical writing. Maybe he was acting until Capone's transfer to Alcatraz, we don't know, so I'll allow it as a possibility. As for his entire reign, I'm not buying that.

Frank Costello sat on the Commission as a consigliere / acting boss. Luciano held the seat much as Genovese did when Catena represented them but Costello shows a consigliere could represent his Family when he held the acting boss title.

Forgot about Costello while writing the previous comment, but I think my overall point about Ricca's position based on preponderance is still the most likely scenario.

[B.]

I'm open to different scenarios given on how limited the definitive evidence is on historic Chicago's official hierarchy. When you bring deeper politics into it, it's very difficult to know what was going on in formal terms. Most of our historic knowledge is operational in nature too especially in Chicago.

If you look at the way Accardo is portrayed, you'd think he retired as boss by design so that he could control things behind the scenes and had a 40 year plan that went almost perfectly. The reality is, his rise as boss was controversial and surrounded by violent warfare in which seasoned mafiosi were killed, he was accused of being greedy, by his own admission he made a mistake and other Family leaders continued to point out other mistakes, and he stepped down under pressure otherwise who knows what would have happened to him. He then found a great niche as an advisor who stepped in to help stabilize the Family and direct things.

Ricca's story is different from Accardo but I'm not 100% confident in everything that's available even though I believe we know the gist of who he was. Historic writing does require you to make some conclusions based on available evidence but some of the finer details we have are thin.

[Antiliar]

All fair points that I can agree with, but when it comes to history we rarely have 100% certainty with anything. I'll say I have a high degree of confidence that Ricca was an official boss from at least 1934, perhaps as early as October 1931 when Capone was sentenced.

For the reasons I previously pointed out, the Amafa CI to me seems like a low quality source. We've discussed the quality of sources before along with discussions of chain of custody and provenance. Based on his information he was probably an low-ranking associate or an associate of an associate who received his limited information third hand. So his outlier claim about Ricca isn't enough to challenge or make me doubt the many other high quality sources that make no mention of him being an acting boss. But we're free to disagree.

[B.]

I don't think this is a debate but a discussion of the different references to Ricca's actual position. I only recently discovered that Chicago had a formal consiglio and that the FBI's belief that Ricca and Accardo were consiglieri in the 1960s was 100% founded which shows this topic is continually open to revision.

Pussy Russo was recorded saying when he talks to Paul Ricca it's the same to him as talking to Vito Genovese. Ricca didn't hold the position of official boss at that time, so he seems to be saying he treats Ricca with the same respect he does his own boss. Did he mean anything about formal ranks? Was he commenting on the close relationship between Chicago and the Genovese, i.e. he treats Ricca like he was part of the Genovese organization? Does it simply mean he can trust Ricca like he does Genovese? Even a comment like that is open to interpretation especially depending on the time and place of the comment.

What we know of Ricca's position circa 1930-31 is he attended multiple national meetings during the Castellammarese War, one of which representing the "Americanized" faction of the Chicago Family and at two of these meetings he sought out high-level Sicilians in other Families where he advocates for Al Capone, at that time a Genovese captain. Ricca was most likely a high-ranking member of Chicago before Capone officially took over. Then Capone took over, quickly went to prison, and according to Bill B and Gentile it was Ricca who represented Chicago on the Commission but Gentile also says Cleveland ran into issues for supporting Ricca. We have references to him as the boss then another reference to him as a leader who for "reasons unknown" was never recognized. He was obviously powerful and continued to receive deference in the 1930s-40s. Later he's confirmed on the consiglio while serving as a joint acting boss to help direct things, and again serving on the Commission.

I've asked before about Capone's title after he went to prison. A few years later Luciano went to prison and kept his title so we can't assume Capone lost it immediately since his allies were still powerful. Chicago often gets compared to the Genovese for good reason so here we have the bosses of both Families going to prison in the 1930s and one is confirmed to have kept his title. In the absence of clear info I can't assume anything. Maybe the syphilis decline led to him losing it or they allowed him to keep it until he died because they were successfully running the Family without his active involvement. Or he did lose it right away, who knows.

It was customary in the mafia to wait a significant period before electing / ratifying a new boss so that has to be considered too. There are periods where there's no official boss and the acting boss / heir apparent is everything except the official boss for a year or more. Joe Magliocco was never official boss and there was none at the time because he wasn't recognized but on the street level he certainly was "the boss". We have explicit intel that clarifies how this played out that we don't have about many other Families but a lot of what you'll find about Magliocco calls him the boss. Ricca may be no exception if it's true he wasn't recognized.

Problem too is we may not be getting the info exactly the way the source presented it. He named Capone-era captains but what did he really mean? Were they names who got their start as members under Capone, became captains later, and he just generalized / was misquoted about them being captains when Capone was around? Did he actually mean the Fischettis headed separate crews or was he just implying all three brothers were seen as the dominant force over a certain crew? That's the problem with statements attributed to informants, there may be nuances we're missing or a slight change in wording could change the entire context.

[Antiliar]

Sure, we're having a discussion. A friendly discussion among comrades. I fully credit you with putting the concept of the consiglio together with the board meetings we see not only in Chicago, but across the country. With regard to what the FBI meant by "consigliere" is a topic up for debate. Generally the consigliere is a position similar to underboss in the hierarchy and ranks below a boss. Soldiers are supposed to have access to the consigliere and he is supposed to represent their interests to the boss. In the case of Ricca and Accardo it seems to mean something very different. Did the FBI understand the distinction or were they trying to shoehorn in their actual positions to fit their definition? I haven't seen anything from the feds that leads me to believe they fully understood their place in the Outfit. According to Joe Fosco, for example, he believes (based on his inside sources) that Ricca was the final authority from Capone's sentencing until his death in 1972. When Accardo stepped down, it was because Ricca wanted him to step down. This would fit with what Accardo said about being forced to step down.

In my opinion (not claiming this is a fact), there was a consiglio from at least the time Capone went away - if not earlier. Capone certainly had to have someone or a group run the Outfit while he served a year in prison in Pennsylvania from 1929-30, not to mention all the time he spent in his Florida mansion and his time in jail after that. It also seems likely that most of Ricca's consiglio got locked up with him in 1943. Fosco insists (and I believe he's right) that Louis Campagna had a higher position in the Outfit food chain that Nitto. Others such as Rio (died 1935), Nitto, D'Andrea and GIoe were probably on the consiglio as well.

(BTW, it was Tommy Eboli, not Pussy Russo, in the Genovese reference: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... boli_ricca)

Regarding Capone's title, he may have kept it while he was in Atlanta, but considering how hard he had it there that's questionable. I believe once Capone was transferred to Alcatraz he was essentially cut off from almost all outside communication so it makes sense that he would have been retired at that time. He had already talked about retiring since the last 1920s, so it makes sense that he was ready to hand off the keys. In comparison to Luciano, Charlie Lucky at least was imprisoned in the same state and had access to visitors. Atlanta was over 700 miles away in the Deep South during the height of Jim Crow. He had to deal with bigoted prison guards and all of his mail was opened before sending and receiving. A decade later Phil D'Andrea was beaten so bad he never recovered, and it was only with a lot of political assistance that he was able to get transferred from Atlanta to Leavenworth, where Ricca and most of the other convicted mob members were locked up.

Problem too is we may not be getting the info exactly the way the source presented it. He named Capone-era captains but what did he really mean? Were they names who got their start as members under Capone, became captains later, and he just generalized / was misquoted about them being captains when Capone was around? Did he actually mean the Fischettis headed separate crews or was he just implying all three brothers were seen as the dominant force over a certain crew? That's the problem with statements attributed to informants, there may be nuances we're missing or a slight change in wording could change the entire context.

Now you're getting into hermeneutics. Welcome to my world LOL.

[Coloboy]

So it sounds like there's a possibility that Ricca was never official boss?

If I may segue way back to something else, I recall the deceased Frank Culotta when he tried to describe the Outfit's hierarchy, it was very informal, very outsider-ish. "This guy was over that guy, these two guys were over this guy and..." Towards the end of his life he claims Spilotro secretly inducted him. For one, he never mentioned that when he flipped and it's certain he would have but second, knowing what we now know about Chicago, I would strongly guess that making members without the admin's permission would probably be a capital offense. The implications are that only captains can sponsor people and Spilotro was never a captain.

FWIW… I absolutely loved listening to Cullota and he had great stories, but I never bought his story about being made. Just goes against everything we know about the family. He also got other organizational things incorrect as far as we can best tell from other more official sources. Regardless, he has great info and was entertaining as all hell.

Great discussion over the last page or two you guys. I’ve learned a lot

[B.]

Consiglieri in this case refers to having seats on the consiglio. A consigliere has an entire range of function, like Piscopo saying it could be a minor role or a very powerful one who could be involved with the Commission. Ricca and Accardo aren't inconsistent with some examples we have of both an official consigliere or especially chairman/member of the consiglio. The chairman of the consiglio for example could sit above the boss or have a boss deposed. Having "final say" would fit what we know of that role.

What FBI descriptions in your opinion shoehorn or distort Ricca and Accardo's role? From what I've seen they generally just repeated what they learned through investigation. A few years ago on here the idea was floated that the FBI only identified Ricca and Accardo as consiglieri in 1960 to shoehorn them into a traditional Cosa Nostra structure like other Families but we've since learned they were in fact consiglieri in the 1960s.

[Antiliar]

No, I'm saying that it does not appear the FBI had a clear understanding of Ricca's position. I'm not referring to just his title, but what his role and level of authority were. When the position of consigliere is defined it's something like this definition:

A consigliere represents the soldiers to the boss and may help to mediate in or resolve disputes on behalf of the lower echelons of the borgata. Typically the consigliere is elected by the members and may retain the position during the reigns of different bosses, although they often step down. They have a rank lower than a boss.

For Ricca the term is used in a different sense. It's not a range of meaning, but something of a homonym. I don't think Piscopo's range of meaning included having authority over a boss. If I recall correctly, for example, Frank Balistrieri was both the Milwaukee boss and the chairman of the consiglio. This was probably the norm. It was unusual to have a former boss chairing the consiglio. There may be other examples, but if there were I think they were probably rare. I haven't seen anything in any file or by a former agent indicating they understood it in this second sense.

Moreover, Frank Pascente recalled when he was an officer and met Accardo in a restaurant. He greeted Accardo, but Accardo told him to go back and greet the boss first. The person Accardo called "The Boss" was Ricca. So I don't think "consigliere" was used internally by the Outfit. I think it was Ted DeRose who spoke about the top leaders as The Man and The Boss. The latter was the day-to-day boss, like Sam Giancana in the early 1960s. The Man was the chairman of the consiglio. (Accardo would be the equivalent of a vice-chairman.)
I've seen The Man and similar terms used elsewhere, such as "the Men from the Bakery" in Kansas City, so this could have been the normal term for Ricca's position in Chicago. It probably derived from "chairman," at least that's what I would guess.

[Angelo Santino]

If I may say a few things-

1 We don't know whether Capone was demoted upon being sent to Alcatraz or whether he retained his official position. Arguments could be made for both cases. This falls within organization, if it was purely an operational thing, it would make sense to remove Capone, why keep on a manager who moved away for whatever reason, but this isn't a purely operational group. It's not like they were waiting to hear Al's word back on say, jukeboxes in the southside.

2 The Consiglio and Boss (who sat upon it) was intended to be a system of checks and balances. And it's hard to say what was above the other. Giancana was made boss in the 50's and Joe Zerilli was boss since the 30's. Let's say their tenures were reversed and Giancana had been boss for 20 years while Zerilli boss for 6, that would likely alter their relationships in regards to the consiglio. It breaks down to dynamics of personality. In CL, no one would say DeMarco the consig was over Tony Milano the under, but in Philly the reverse is true, no one would say Martines the Under was over Tony Buck the consig.

3 In regards to the Boss presiding over the consiglio, that's also up for debate. Zoccoli of SF had the power to remove the sitting boss, should we say that the Consig was more powerful than the boss? In Kansas City, the "Bakery" held a higher status than the boss, same goes for Scranton. We don't know enough about Tampa to say. Detroit on the flipside, Zerilli the boss seemed to be the dominating force.

4 This is why I disagree with and disavow this idea of "front bosses." It's a secret society and there's no reason to have front bosses. These positions are among and only for the members, they don't do a press release. What we're seeing is positions filled with men who have different levels of power intended to serve as checks and balances, a facade of democracy if you will. "Run things from behind," you either are Rappresentante or you are not. In the case of the consiglio, I'd argue they are Shareholders or Stakeholders with the power to influence or remove the boss. But stakeholders and CEO duties are very different.

5 Also, relationships change over time. Mangano and Anastasia were friends until they weren't. I don't think Albert spent 20 years trying to kill Mangano, there was likely a change, a breakdown. Those men shared a relationship spanning 4 decades and most of what we know about the longstanding relationship between these two men could fit into a paragraph so things get oversimplified. We don't know the full story.

-

Whatever the case, I'm glad we're moving away from labeling people as CEO, Senior Advisor, Day Boss, Underboss, Underboss to the Underboss shit. This chedrool is what has kept other Mafia researchers away from Chicago because it makes no sense. Rick, Tony and Eric forgot more about Chicago than I will ever know if I lived to be 300, but I have studied the Mafia for two decades to know that that structure isn't the mafia. To quote Phil Leotardo, it either has meaning or no meaning.

Nick Calabrese was Chicago's first public informant. Chicago's Valachi, who testified in the 2000's, 130 years into the mafia's existence in Chicago. And he didn't describe any special hierarchy, he described a mafia hierarchy, he could have been testifying about NY or Philly or Sicily. There was nothing that he said that deviated from what other informants in other families have said. So every observation or preconceived notion about the "Outfit" that was written before Nick's testimony by Roemer or whoever else needs to be reevaluated and reconsidered. He described a Mafia Family, not something "different." It's their organization as some you are tired of hearing me say but it doesn't take away from the fact that it's true.

[B.]

I don't think there's necessarily disagreement over the basics here, but I want to make it clear how I see it.

Like Angelo said the chairman of the consiglio had authority to challenge or depose a boss like Zoccoli in San Jose. If "the Bakery" in KC was a consiglio, the description of Filardo fits the chairman -- Crapisi said Civella deferred to Filardo and sought his approval in high-level matters. Crapisi saw Filardo holding an advisory position that was above even the boss. It looks like Priziola in Detroit may have been the chairman/secretary (Tony Zerilli was recording saying he had to go to Priziola to organize a council meeting for a judgment) and he was a factional head the Zerilli leadership had to contend with.

With the official consigliere in some Families we also see he wasn't subservient to the boss, as Rugnetta in Philly was the "rappresentante of the Calabrians" (according to Bruno) and Scafidi said he had total authority over his faction which comprised half the Family. He could stop Bruno from holding a making ceremony -- the Commission told Bruno to honor Rugnetta's demands before going through with the ceremony. Magaddino said he didn't have a consigliere because it meant the boss had to split his power. Like the Piscopo reference said, it depended on the individual involved and there was a range to what the consigliere could be. From what I see Ricca and/or Accardo aren't inconsistent with the highest end of that range and depending on the Family or individual there could be some differences.

The descriptions of Ricca and Accardo reported by the FBI show them to be high-level mediators trying to stop factionalism, prevent violence, and keep the Family together while acknowledging their immense influence/power, especially when they stepped out of "retirement" to direct the Family post-Giancana and pre-Aiuppa. The FBI labeled them "consiglieri" then continued to list Accardo as the consigliere for decades, a role Fratianno also said Accardo had. I don't know what the members typically called them aside from using their names but evidence / context has surfaced showing them to be consistent with consiglieri as the FBI described them and I haven't seen specific reports where they were shoehorned into that role, most of these reports only describing their role via CI accounts.

With the consiglio itself, DeRose's description of the "committee" fits some of the functions we see of the consiglio in other Families and Ricca / Accardo's role on the consiglio also fits what we'd expect of them even though different variables are at play depending on the Family and individuals involved.