East Bronx wrote:The smarter bosses today are content to keep their own families earning and out of prison. Unless there's some overlap (like the Luccheses and the Genovese in the Bronx, for example), I can't imagine one boss caring too much about what another boss is up to.
Agreed. That's why there has not been a functioning commission since 1985. The Ruling Body known as the Commission, went through several changes in history, the eras I would separate them by 1931-1957, 1961-1975, 1975-1985. The last era was a boy's club for NY's top bosses to engage and collect in white collar crimes, Chicago was officially still on it but they went their separate way at some point. Post-Gambino the Commission dealt mostly with NY Affairs, it had nowhere near the scope that it did in previous eras. Gravano quoted Gigante as saying that commission meetings were becoming irrelevant as they dealt less with LCN affairs and more with day-to-day financial affairs which the Chin didn't believe merited such a prestigious conference.
I say it ended in 1985 because the next generation of bosses were not meeting and coordinating affairs as frequently. Cafaro even said the new generation of bosses would act "on autopilot, Chin has his family, John has his, but the respect is there." When you read Gravano, he makes mention that after Castellano the Gambinos sent word to the Genovese that they expected their seat on the Commission, but after 1985 coordination all but ended. The next alleged Commission meeting was in 1987 in a parking lot, the next one was in 2000 or 2001. If you go back to 1931, the original Commission members presided over the entire national crime syndicate, in 1957 it got broken up and fractured, in 1975 they reduced membership to NY and Chicago according to Fratianno by way of Roselli, after that it become a NY crony system, and by the time leadership went to the Chin (officially), Gotti , Amuso, none of these guys were building a bridges beyond anything but their own personal ambitions at the local level, what Cafaro predicted became true. If their position as boss deemed them Commission members, they never enjoyed the powers that former leaders took for granted. A meeting between bosses here and there is a bastardization. Joe Bonanno is flicking his hand under his chin from beyond the grave and grabbing his crouch NY Fuckka You Style. Playing hockey every season and attending a game once every 10 years can't be viewed as the same thing. But to the contemporary bosses' credit, they can't meet anymore and get away with it. If google can record the entire world streetmap and upload it, imagine the powers that the feds have at their disposal. The degradation of the commission from a national criminal ruling arbitrator to New York situated white collar scams (Windows case, gas tax) to contemporary (short term) NY bosses meeting rarely with no national impact can be fully accredited fully to the FBI's aggressive assault, which has been a successful endeavor with great rewards on their end. They made the case in the 1950's that they were the best equipped to fight "the evil enemy within" communisn and national organized crime "the mafia" and as a result, the once prestigious FBN's influence declined and the FBI grew to become the powerhouse they are today. It didn't matter that most of the FBI's knowledge of organized crime came from the FBN, they were ground-breaking in their day to dust off one of their many informants (Valachi) and present him to the public. The FBN and SS before them never contemplated a televised marketing strategy for federal funding, so the SS went from a national agency to presidential security and the FBN now stands for the Fox Business Network. In short if the FBI is Alexander Bell, the FBN is Antonio Meucci "and he got robbed! And everyone knows that."
NY Mafia Leadership 1900-2012 (more or less) Add Nicola Taranto's name before Giuseppe Morello's, and that's the entire list of known Boss of Bosses. Taranto was convicted in 1896. Prior to him we don't know and its possible someone could have interim'd between Taranto from after 1896 until whenever Morello got the title, he returned in NYC from Texas in 1897. Prior to Taranto, it could have been Gaetano Russo who had history in New Orleans before moving to New York in the 1870's, he's been cited as NY's Mafia founder but that's questionable. Mafiosi were in NY as early as 1850, but there most likely wasn't enough members to warrant a Family until after the 1860's. Before 1873, the Mafia's American capital was New Orleans, whether or not they had such a rank would be purely guesswork on our (Rick, Lennert, myself) end. It get's hazier the farther back you go when less resources are available. Were it not for the Civil War, New Orleans would have continued being America's main metropolis and New York, unquestionably, would have taken a different trajectory. The great migration may not have impacted NY as growth might have stayed exasperated in the South. Between 1870/1880, the US' economic world view shifted from the Deep Dixie South to the American Northeast and NYC became the expatriate Italo American epicenter (among many other things). In other words, East Bronx, were it not for the Civil War your handle might have been French Quarter.
And going back even further, Sicily, New Orleans and Buenos Aires had a triangular citrus commerce trade. It's a non-OC story, pretty amazing piece of forgotten history. Given that the Mafia was in Sicily, New Orleans and at some point Buenos Aires, I personally wonder what influence they had on that. In Sicily, the mafia's hold on the citrus industry declined the profits and crashed the industry (which is when California took the citrus helm), so I think it's very possible that the Mafia was a significant international presence prior to 1870 through the triangular citrus trade. But who gives a fuck?
Note: Based mostly on Joe and Bill Bonanno..
Note: New Info has come out that Crea is not the official boss and Dan is now official. Despite the errors, it's a "who's who." Pogo indirectly assisted with 80% of the (correct) stuff.
