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In Illinois, La Cosa Nostra exerts major influence in a dozen Chicago wards and dictates the votes of as many as 15 state legislators. Known as the West Side Bloc, a newspaper euphemism to avoid libel suits, the Mob opposes anticrime bills in the state legislature, forces gangsters onto the payroll of Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago machine, and corrupts the city police department. Salvatore ("Momo") Giancana may be hiding in Mexico, but his stand-ins, Tony ("Big Tuna") Accardo and Paul ("The Waiter") DeLucia still pack influence. Example: When a Justice Department report charged 29 Chicago policemen with being grafters, Daley pooh-poohed the allegations, took no action. Some of the 29 were subsequently promoted.
Protection can also mean death for informers. Richard Cain, once chief investigator for the Cook County, Ill., sheriff's office, gave lie-detector tests to a quintet of bank robbery suspects. Cain, now in prison, was not after the guilty man but in search of the FBI informant among the five. The tipster, Guy Mendolia Jr., was subsequently murdered.
Three federal men arrived in Columbus last year to investigate gambling. They were soon arrested by local police, accused of being drunk in public. The G-men were acquitted and eight Columbus cops were indicted for taking $8,000 a month in bribes.
Ralph Salerno, co-author of an upcoming book on the Mob, The Crime Confederation, estimates that the votes of about 25 members of Congress can be delivered by mob pressure. New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher was an associate of Joe Zicarelli, a Cosa Nostra power in New Jersey. Zicarelli's command over Gallagher was strong enough, in fact, to bring Gallagher, whom Zicarelli calls "my friend the Congressman," off the floor of the House of Representatives to accept Zicarelli's telephone calls. Although Gallagher has denied the allegation with varying degrees of indignation, he has never bothered to sue LIFE for its disclosures about him. He has since been reelected, and remains a member of the House Government Operations Committee, which watches the federal agencies that watch the Mob.
Even the judiciary is not beyond reach, and the Mob has a special set of instructions for judges on the payroll. An FBI "bug" placed in the First Ward Democratic organization on La Salle Street, a favorite gathering place for Chicago gangsters, overheard the following conversation between Illinois Circuit Court Judge Pasqual Sorrentino and Pat Marcy, a friend of the Chicago LCN family. What should he do, Sorrentino asked, if federal agents questioned him about his associations with gangsters? Marcy's answer: "Stand on your dignity. Don't answer those questions. Tell them they're trying to embarrass you. Stay on the offensive. Remember, you're a judge." The trouble is, of course, that Sorrentino and some of his colleagues, on federal as well as state benches, have forgotten just that fact.
Nowhere has organized crime subverted more than a tiny minority of public officials. But a minority can be enough both to