Organization & Operation revisited

[Angelo Santino]

I should clarify, I read books but just not lately.

List of books I've read in the past include Bonannos, Mafia Dynasty, Gotti Rise & Fall, Before Bruno 1-3. Anastasia's books, Dickie etc... But I don't keep up to date. I'm reading Family Secrets now which is the first book I've read since Mafia Prince in 2012.

Now days I'm far off the beaten path, what I research hasn't even been written about. I mostly "read" FBI reports, SS records, genealogy, census records, things of that nature.

[Angelo Santino]

org vs op.jpg

[Wiseguy]

Hotdog vending extortion.

Nice touch.

[Angelo Santino]

The key point is that people- members and non- involved in the same "industries" are going to know each other and connect. These relationships form mini-cartels/groups who perform as leaders, assistants, operatives, fronts etc. But when issues/problems arise, the organization steps in as a system of representation and situations are (attempted to be) mediated.

[cavita]

org vs op.jpg

The Operational/Functional chart seems to be spot on for Rockford especially noting that Underboss Frank Buscemi seemed to have his own faction within the family of Sicilians he imported into the country.

[Angelo Santino]

org vs op.jpg

The Operational/Functional chart seems to be spot on for Rockford especially noting that Underboss Frank Buscemi seemed to have his own faction within the family of Sicilians he imported into the country.

Thanks. The Org is the Org, it doesn't change, hasn't changed in 200 years But the Op is about personal relationships and personality dynamics at play. Boss Castellano and Under Dellacroce enjoyed a very different relationship than Boss Gotti and Under Gravano. In Chicago, the Ricca and Accardo as consigs have always been more powerful than Unders Ferraro or Cerone, yet in Cleveland, Underboss Milano was more influential than De Marco the Consig. There's no law that says consig is over/under the under, it all boils down to personalities and who occupies what position when.

The Org and Op are yin and yang, anatomy and physiology.

[Angelo Santino]

Antiliar, B., Snakes and Tony, I sent you the chart above and you all had your opinions, I hope you share them here. There were disagreements with the above. We're not a hivemind seeking vindication, and also critique/disagreements help me improve. Based on all of youree input I may redo it. I'll push back on things but it'll be thru debate.

[B.]

The one on the right minus the color-coded racket stuff is a more accurate representation of a mafia organization than the one on the left. The left one is a good way for novices to understand the basic hierarchy of the mafia but the way you mapped out the organizational positions on the right is a better representation of how most if not all Families are formally structured, i.e. not all associates report to soldiers and not all soldiers report to captains plus the "shape" of a Family isn't uniform.

A true operational chart would be visually even more chaotic and difficult to chart accurately with many overlapping and criss-crossing lines. Easier to chart out the relationships and operating hierarchy of a specific racket or operation like the government did in the Pizza Connection case but that too isn't black and white. Your chart on the right is good at explaining that the organization doesn't always reflect rackets/streets which I think was your main point.

A soldier might be represented by a captain who has no involvement with him on a practical level while the soldier could have a piece of a numbers operation with the captain of another crew, own a restaurant with a member of another Family, and have a closer relationship to someone else's associate than the made members of his own crew. Yet his captain would be the one who sits down for him if there's a problem in any of those arrangements. Then in five years it could all change and he's partners with someone else, involved in a different business, and assigned directly to the boss acting as his liaison to the street.

I've always liked when charts place the consigliere off to the side of the admin with a dotted line rather than putting him as part of the top-down pyramid. Consigliere can be something of an equal or more to the boss in some Families and in others he might be part of the top-down pecking order or the "number 3". Then you have Massino who said when he was promoted to underboss he was told it was the "number 3" because the consigliere Cannone was considered "number two". Good thing it wasn't Chicago, as people might think they had a formal position called "number 2" within a completely unique hierarchy.

There was a period in the late 80s where Joel Cacace was a Colombo soldier direct w/ the admin and carried messages between them and the captains. We'd consider him a leader within the Family's operating hierarchy and if we only saw it from the outside we might assume he was the underboss or at least a captain. He was probably more important than many captains but that's not what the Colombo Family designated him, they designated him as a high-level soldier who was tasked with helping leaders run the Family. The Family could have made him a captain but didn't. You could say he was "like a captain" to explain his influence to someone who has only seen the Sopranos but that also prevents people from understanding that a soldier could report to the admin and assist them without needing to be a captain and it takes nothing away from him that he's officially a soldier.

One of my goals researching and writing about this is to be as accurate as possible about these details not only because it's factual but because it provides a better understanding of what the different formal ranks can entail. When an associate has a very important role, it doesn't mean he wasn't an associate it means an associate can be very important. When the secretary of the consiglio can go to the Commission and take down his boss it doesn't mean he's the real boss it means a secretary/consigliere is able to do that. It's why I'm hesitant to assume too much about certain eras without having inside intel. Without Gentile I doubt we'd guess many of the people he identified as high-ranking members and we'd probably identify other people in those roles.

[CornerBoy]

I guess I don't see the need to describe guys as unofficial co-captains or co-underbosses if they weren't. There are duos who would seem like co-captains like DeCarlo/Rega and Corozzo/DiMaria because they were best friends, partners in everything, made together, etc. They weren't co-captains though, they just operated that way to some degree and maybe in some cases one of them acted for each other. Castellano and Dellacroce directed different factions but why call them unofficial co-underbosses when you could call them by their official titles which describe their roles more accurately.

Neil Dellacroce was described by Angelo Bruno as a "capodecina di capodecina" because he represented a faction of other captains but he wasn't officially that. When someone was making a formal introduction they wouldn't say "Joe meet Neil, capodecina di capodecina". But in conversation Bruno wanted to communicate that Dellacroce had a representational role over a group of captains and Magaddino indicated Tommy Rava previously had the same role over the same faction. Nick Gentile wasn't a captain but him being named sostituto over multiple Agrigento decine in the same Family is similar.

Basically the Gambinos gave certain factions their own de facto leader and for Dellacroce it became even more concrete when he became underboss and repped them on the admin. You also see this with Vito Genovese when Costello was boss. You don't see this with Profaci/Magliocco or Bonanno/Garofalo/Morales where the boss and underboss came from the same faction. Another side of the organizational vs. operational discussion that hasn't been brought up much in this thread is politics. Politics often relect formal org titles but politics also go outside of it.

Like the above guys said, there is organizational precedence for a group of consiglieri. Buscetta and Calderone said it existed in Sicily and it was all over the historic US. It wasn't because they all operated as advisors -- it was because the organization formally elected/appointed them. This disappeared over time but we're at a point where many of us aren't surprised to find out a given US Family had a consiglio.

That's why it's exceptional the DeCavalcantes allegedly had two underbosses or there is more to it that wasn't put in context (i.e. Majuri was acting for LaSelva because he was on Connecticut). We don't see Cosa Nostra Families with two underbosses and it would mean the DeCavalcantes truly were "different" as some people try to make other Families out to be. If we had wiretaps of Giancana that made reference to two underbosses it would be taken as evidence that Chicago was fundamentally different but because it's the good old DeCavalcantes it's treated with a shrug. "So they might have had two underbosses, okay let's talk about John Gotti."

One reason I question the info about the DeCavalcantes is a city like Chicago where it was believed they had a very different version of sottocapo that was taken to mean "personal underboss". Nick Calabrese put this to rest by stating explicitly in court that they used sottocapo to mean acting capodecina. This isn't that weird, as the shortened term "capo" is traditionally a term for the Family boss himself and a century ago it would be out of place to call a capodecina a "capo" even though it's just a shortened version. If you told a mafioso in 1915 that a Family had multiple people with the title of "capo" they would be confused and think there were multiple bosses not unlike us being confused about Chicago's use of sottocapo. But if you explained to a 1915 mafioso what you meant by "capo" he'd immediately understand that you meant capodecina.

What's important organizationally is the meaning intended, not the term. This has been a constant source of confusion/debate on the boards over the years. "Oh these guys call themselves a borgata but these other guys call themselves an outfit, they must be a different thing." I mean Joe Bonanno hated the term "boss" and felt it was an improper interpretation of the traditional role but he understood what people were referring to when they said it. Because his Family mainly called him a "Father" it doesn't mean he was something different from a boss/capo/rappresentante. "Father" is no different from the euphemism "the Man" when that's been used but these still refer to something formal and it is more confusing than it is helpful to assign "unofficial" versions of formal titles to people even if it's only us obsessives that care.

veery interesting on the dellacroce stuff- you got a source that I can have printed out? Thanks for the granular analysis, B

[Antiliar]

Antiliar, B., Snakes and Tony, I sent you the chart above and you all had your opinions, I hope you share them here. There were disagreements with the above. We're not a hivemind seeking vindication, and also critique/disagreements help me improve. Based on all of youree input I may redo it. I'll push back on things but it'll be thru debate.

My only suggestion - not a critique - for the chart on the left was to remove the associates so it would only show LCN members. The operational one on the right, I believe, is a more accurate representation of reality. Made members at every level have associates, and as members move up in rank so can their associates. Associates of the bosses and capos can be seen as near equivalents to members in authority, power and respect. Some can rise to unique privileged positions such as Meyer Lansky and later Joe Watts in New York, Maishe Rockman in Cleveland, and Jack Guzik, Murray Humphreys and Gus Alex in Chicago. So while it's a busier chart, it's the one I prefer and I think Angelo did a great job of giving us a visualization of how the LCN operates in real life.

[OcSleeper]

I like the way both charts are shown. I think you have to keep associates in the operational chart because although they might not be actual members in the organization, they are part of the formal structure of the mafia.

The only suggestion I would have is for the operational chart. I think you should have a line connected from the captains, soldiers, and associates direct with the boss to the underboss, consigliere, and captains to show they can speak with the authority of the boss behind them.

[CabriniGreen]

org vs op.jpg

I'm honestly confused as to why this is called operational. To me it's a Organizational Flow chart for a mafia borgata.. They even have software for this....

[Angelo Santino]

The one on the right minus the color-coded racket stuff is a more accurate representation of a mafia organization than the one on the left. The left one is a good way for novices to understand the basic hierarchy of the mafia but the way you mapped out the organizational positions on the right is a better representation of how most if not all Families are formally structured, i.e. not all associates report to soldiers and not all soldiers report to captains plus the "shape" of a Family isn't uniform.

After looking it over, you're absolutely right. I think these charts represent a de jure and de facto family. The issue is that, while families are the same 95% of the time, there are little nuances: Scarfo had guys with him direct in Philly while Palermo's crew was reassigned once he became acting of Elizabeth. The Luccheses allowed for their consigliere to have one soldier but that's not universal. Also the power dynamic slightly changes depending on who holds what position. Accardo was the power consig of Chicago undoubtably "over" whoever was underboss whereas in Cleveland that dynamic was reversed, Milano the Under had more influence than consig De Marco.

The fact is, every mafia members who's spoken on the subject, Siino, Gentile, Valachi, Fratianno, Lonardo, Buscetta, Caldarone, Leonetti, Gravano, Natale to Massino are all in 100% agreement when they lay out the structure. The chart on the left represents this. But we as explorers have dug deeper and we discovered these little nuances which accounts for the chart on the right. While colorcoding fictional rackets, the chart is completely organizational based because it shows single lines connecting who was affiliated with who.

A true operational chart would be visually even more chaotic and difficult to chart accurately with many overlapping and criss-crossing lines. Easier to chart out the relationships and operating hierarchy of a specific racket or operation like the government did in the Pizza Connection case but that too isn't black and white. Your chart on the right is good at explaining that the organization doesn't always reflect rackets/streets which I think was your main point.

Yeah it was. Here is a true "operational" chart.
[/quote]

Valentine001.jpg

My only suggestion - not a critique - for the chart on the left was to remove the associates so it would only show LCN members. The operational one on the right, I believe, is a more accurate representation of reality. Made members at every level have associates, and as members move up in rank so can their associates. Associates of the bosses and capos can be seen as near equivalents to members in authority, power and respect. Some can rise to unique privileged positions such as Meyer Lansky and later Joe Watts in New York, Maishe Rockman in Cleveland, and Jack Guzik, Murray Humphreys and Gus Alex in Chicago. So while it's a busier chart, it's the one I prefer and I think Angelo did a great job of giving us a visualization of how the LCN operates in real life.

Agreed, I didn't make an op chart at all, I inadvertently showed a more accurate chart.

I like the way both charts are shown. I think you have to keep associates in the operational chart because although they might not be actual members in the organization, they are part of the formal structure of the mafia.

The only suggestion I would have is for the operational chart. I think you should have a line connected from the captains, soldiers, and associates direct with the boss to the underboss, consigliere, and captains to show they can speak with the authority of the boss behind them.

Good points

org vs op.jpg

I'm honestly confused as to why this is called operational. To me it's a Organizational Flow chart for a mafia borgata.. They even have software for this....

Because I messed up. I didn't make an op chart. A real op chart would be the Pizza Connection chart above.

Thanks for the feedback.

[CornerBoy]

does essence precede existence or vice versa?

[B.]

does essence precede existence or vice versa?

Is that a spiritual question?