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In many respects, says Ralph Salerno, who was the New York City police department's chief Mafia expert until his retirement in 1967, the leadership has always been a "happy marriage of Italians and Jews." Salerno adds: "It's the three Ms—moxie, muscle and money. The Jews provide the moxie, the Italians provide the muscle, and they both provide the money." In the public mind, however, Cosa Nostra is identified with the Italians, and about 22 million Italian-Americans are being hurt in reputation by the depredations of a very few.
In money terms, the organization is the world's largest business. The best estimate of its revenue, a rough projection based on admittedly inexact information of federal agencies, is well over $30 billion a year. Even using a conservative figure, its annual profits are at least in the $7 billion-to-$10 billion range. Though he meant it as a boast, Meyer Lansky, the gang's leading financial wizard, was actually being overly modest when he chortled in 1966: "We're bigger than U.S. Steel." Measured in terms of profits, Cosa Nostra and affiliates are as big as U.S. Steel, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Electric, Ford Motor Co., IBM, Chrysler and RCA put together.
How It Works
Two years ago, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice simply threw up its hands at the prospect of estimating the crime conglomerate's full penetration. "The cumulative effect of the infiltration of legitimate business in America cannot be measured," it said. Robert Kennedy, who began the first big push against the Mafia when he became Attorney General, warned that "if we do not on a national-scale attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us." No one now disputes its potential for destruction.
Despite its continuing evolution, organized crime follows certain basic patterns that vary little. It must buy or force freedom from the law and from accepted rules of commerce. It must milk gambling, the narcotics trade, industrial relations and usury. It must find outlets for its accumulated profits. These are its main forms of activity:
∙ THE POLITICAL FIX takes many forms, but the most important, from LCN's view, is obtaining the cooperation of the policeman and the politicians. East of the Mississippi, particularly, it is the rare big-city government that is completely free of the fix. In Newark, corruption is rampant. One ganster recently confided to another that $12,000 a month flows to police superiors for protection— which sometimes goes beyond a shield for illicit activities. When he vacationed on the West Coast last Spring, for example, Thomas Pecora, a boss of Teamsters Local 97 as well as a Mafia man, took along a Newark city detective as a bodyguard.
Newark Police Director Dominick Spina was recently indicted for failing to enforce gambling laws. He was acquitted. Mayor Hugh Addonizzio has