Antiliar wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 6:27 pm
Great job, B.
We can't forget about Frank Costello. Thanks to Joe Valachi we knew that he was Lucky Luciano's acting boss while he was in prison and for his exile until he stepped down. Years later Bill Bonanno tells us he was Luciano's consigliere. So it makes sense that if the consigliere was the sostituto that Luciano would pick Costello over Genovese to run the Family.
Thanks, my friend. I forgot Bill confirmed Costello's rank.
Piscopo's comments about consigliere's importance depending on the personalities comes to mind. The Genovese family had both Pandolfo and Costello in the same position, but look at the difference in authority and influence between them.
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- More evidence that consigliere played a factional role is not only Joe Buffa as consigliere under Profaci, but Sam Badalamenti as acting consigliere and Benny D'Alessandro as the next official consigliere. All three men were relatives from the Carini faction. Low probability that the Profaci family would randomly select these three guys for consigliere.
- What's strange is the Gambino's ongoing use of a "sostituto" over a certain faction regardless of rank. Traina served as sostituto for the boss, which was essentially an acting boss, but you also had a soldier (Gentile) serving as a sostituto over multiple crews (the Agrigento faction). Later Magaddino described someone (probably Tommy Rava) as having been a capodecina who was in charge of a group of other captains (the Anastasia faction), then Angelo Bruno was recorded describing Dellacroce as a "capodecina dei capodecina" in the early 1960s, which sounds similar to Rava. Dellacroce continued to serve as the defacto boss of the former Anastasia faction after becoming underboss. These guys were captains and not soldiers, but their role sounds like Gentile's sostituto position.
- The term sostituto was out of use in later decades, but the Gambino family has a long history of semi-formally promoting someone to serve as a representative over a faction. What's strange is it wasn't based on rank, as you had a soldier and captains serving as sostituto over (or between, depending on how you see it) groups of captains.
- Allegra and Gentile, who were contemporaries, both used the word sostituto. I'm not 100% comfortable saying it perfectly translates to acting boss, but it can include the duties of an acting boss for sure. It's just that it is also used by Gentile to indicate a sort of defacto rappresentante of a faction. Sostituto seems to mean that someone has been designated as a representative of the boss and acts on his authority. As the word translates, someone is to be seen as a substitute for the boss.
- Seems part of this sostituto system had to do with the Gambino family's size -- it would be a practical as well as political decision to gives factions a degree of autonomy with their own representation. It would be difficult to micromanage a ~300 member family and like Jethro told Moses, you've got to delegate authority or you'll lose your mind. It appears the Gambino family understood Jethro's advice. The Genovese family was the same size and heavily factional so they may have had a similar arrangement, regardless of the word used. The old Genovese crews / factions were highly autonomous.
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- I welcome the Accardo discussion, but I've got no dog in the race except to take in the different accounts. I find it interesting Fratianno had an impression of Accardo that included the word consigliere but also a great deal of power. Interesting doesn't always mean accurate, though in Fratianno's case I believe he's giving his honest impression of the situation, whatever that is based on.