Angelo Santino wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2024 6:51 pm
3 If you have any thoughts on Gambino please share because the only noteworthy thing I'm seeing is he provided stability and given the changeover in other families he defaulted into the senior commission member despite not having been boss for very long. All the Machiavellian, Lion and a Fox, master manipulator stuff I don't buy into.
Gambino's conduct is more vague before he becomes boss and it's hard to speculate on the finer details. Worth getting into that in another post, but after he becomes boss we have a lot of claims to interpret.
- The only substantial source I can think of who paints Gambino in a Machiavellian light is Joe Bonanno. Has another member ever made Gambino out to be that way? We have anecdotes from guys like Dom Montiglio who claimed when he met Gambino he told him about the Lion and the Fox, and maybe Gambino did like Machiavelli, but there's a difference between quoting Machiavelli vs. carrying out full-blown Machiavellian conspiracies all the time.
-Joe Bonanno was biased against Gambino and goes out of his way to disparage him, but he did say Gambino derived much of his power/influence from his in-law Tommy Lucchese and became weaker when Lucchese died which does coincide with Gambino's heart issues, appointing Castellano acting boss, and taking a step back all around. I doubt Gambino was a pawn of Lucchese but if nothing else the two represented a unified front on the Commission so Lucchese's death inevitably had an impact on Gambino's position, much as the death of Profaci impacted Bonanno. In terms of their relationship, Lucchese had been a boss for years and an underboss even longer by the time Gambino became boss so I'm sure Lucchese's deeper experience as a mafia boss impacted their dynamic and that Lucchese provided guidance when it came to ordinary admin matters in addition to whatever scheming they did. I doubt it was a "the man behind the man" thing but if it was, as Bonanno suggests, then it was Lucchese who was truly Machiavellian rather than Gambino anyway.
- I don't buy the "Don Carlo boss of bosses" mastermind angle obviously but after becoming official boss and Commission member Gambino did cultivate immense power. By 1964 he had bosses of other Families like Angelo Bruno, Sam DeCavalcante, and Joe Colombo under his influence and they often consulted with and arguably took direction from him even though Bruno and Colombo were Commission members themselves and DeCavalcante's avugad was the Genovese Family. I wouldn't call them minions of Gambino but the Bruno and DeCavalcante tapes as well as Scarpa's info, along with other accounts, show Gambino was a consistent influence on those bosses and their Families. It could be argued these bosses simply liked Gambino and as friends they valued his opinion and enjoyed mutual benefits but often that's what alliances and mafia patronage look like. This isn't a pulp movie or some cartoon of a fish getting eaten by a bigger fish which is getting eaten by an even bigger fish.
- I hate the Machiavellian trope but if there is one example of Gambino's Machiavellianism, it would be his actions with the Colombo Family. When the Gallo revolt started, Gambino gave an audience to the Gallo brothers to hear their case and some of them were placed under Gambino's protection which naturally upset the Profaci faction, who felt Gambino legitimized them. During the war, Charlie LoCicero played both sides against each other while allegedly consulting with Gambino. Joe Colombo then informs Gambino(?) that Magliocco is plotting to kill Gambino and Lucchese, further ousting Magliocco from his de facto boss role before his death. Gambino forms a close relationship with Joe Colombo and is believed to have influenced Colombo's rise as acting then official boss / Commission member, this relationship continuing for years and it being widely perceived that Colombo unofficially answered to Gambino. Note that the alliance with Colombo gave the Lucchese/Gambino alliance three votes in NYC alone in addition to Philly. We know from both Joe Bonanno and Tony Accardo (talking about Bonanno) that these Commission voting blocks were crucial and often on their minds. Vito Genovese was originally part of this block with Gambino and Lucchese but it's not clear if it continued when he went away.
- It's funny because Bonanno says the Genovese-Lucchese-Gambino voting block was the "liberal" wing of the Commission. Genovese and to some degree Lucchese I can understand, but on paper Gambino is identical to Bonanno and Profaci: Sicilian-born, came to the US in young adulthood, from a clan where virtually all male relatives are members if not leaders, relatives in the Sicilian mafia, highly traditional and culturally Sicilian. Bonanno says Anastasia also represented the liberal faction when he was on the Commission but Bonanno seems to have seen the Calabrian Anastasia as more of a wild card or independent as it's clear he preferred Anastasia over Gambino and linked Gambino to the formation of a new liberal voting block with Anastasia's enemies Lucchese and Genovese. Bonanno says straight up that "conservative" means the traditional Sicilian approach while "liberal" means Americanized so it's funny Bonanno placed Gambino with the liberal wing given Gambino was basically a mirror image of Bonanno, but maybe there was more to Gambino than meets the eye or he aligned himself with the liberal faction simply because it was advantageous.
- I don't see direct influence from Gambino in the Bonanno war. Bonanno blames Gambino/Lucchese along with Magaddino but from what we know it's mainly Magaddino and I can't confidently say he was doing anything underhanded. Bonanno was causing so many problems across the country and his misconduct was so well-known there was no need for a conspiracy to bring him down. The Commission was also unified against him not only for his infractions but because he openly disrespected the Commission itself. You could argue Gambino meddled with the Profaci/Magliocco's Family to indirectly undermine Bonanno politically but again Bonanno was so blatantly and arrogantly out of line it is difficult to blame anyone but Bonanno himself.
- Even though he had influence in Philly, NJ, and the Colombos, it doesn't seem like he tried to meddle in their affairs. Sam DeCavalcante honored Gambino's union requests and committed a murder for him but that's what mafia bosses do for each other. Although both the DeCavalcantes and Philly had internal conflicts in the late 1950s that led to bosses stepping down, there is nothing to suggest Gambino played a role and he likely wasn't official boss / Commission member yet anyway.
- Can't think of examples where Gambino pulled strings around the country either even though he was likely avugad for Tampa and had interests all over. Between 1967 and 1976 I can't think of him involving himself in much aside from turning his back on Joe Colombo. You could theorize Gambino pushed Colombo's antics with the League then used it against him to get rid of him but Gambino was winding down by then and there are reports from 1967 or 1968 that say Gambino and Colombo were already becoming distant. I don't see where Gambino had anything to gain from setting Colombo up for failure and Colombo was doing a great job alienating his peers on his own.
- Can't think of anything he did within his own Family that was Machiavellian or manipulative. Not a single captain or admin member was killed between 1960 and 1975. For a Family that large and complex you don't hear about a lot of Family drama. Biondo's demotion doesn't seem to have been anything underhanded on Gambino's part. He allowed Dellacroce to act as a sostituto over the old Anastasia faction first as a capodecina then as underboss, letting him direct the affairs of that group as he saw fit. It isn't until his death that the Family's natural factionalism started becoming a problem again and even then it took nearly a decade to come to a head. I don't see where he played his members against each other or manipulated them in any way, nor do I see where he did this with other Families apart from possibly the Colombos who to be fair were already heading toward disarray and at most Gambino exploited it.
- We already hit on his rise as boss and there's not much to suggest he schemed his way into becoming boss. All kinds of problems were coming to a head under Anastasia and in NYC as a whole, Scalise was killed, and the Riccobono-Biondo group, a power in their own right, planned and executed the murder. This comes from a member CI under Riccobono-Biondo and what DiLeonardo heard adds support. Gambino seems to have been ostensibly neutral as consigliere hence becoming acting boss but Bonanno believed Tommy Lucchese and Vito Genovese pushed for it. That would make Gambino a pawn, though, not the mastermind. Before a boss is killed the would-be killers often send out feelers to allies in other Families so it isn't hard to believe Gambino played a political role in the Anastasia murder by reaching out to Tommy Lucchese for quiet support beforehand, though Bonanno said he wasn't sure if Lucchese and Genovese condoned the Anastasia hit or simply looked the other way as they hated Anastasia.
- Aside from that, what is there? Am I forgetting another story? Joe Bonanno is the prime example of a Machiavellian mafia boss and Gambino doesn't come close to that unless you just start making stuff up. And of course in Bonanno's account almost everyone except for him and Joe Profaci were Machiavellian schemers, including Gambino.
