(4 of 8)
Beyond Johnson lie several fascinating theories about the motives for the assassination attempt. An hour after the shooting, in a telephone call to the Associated Press, a group calling itself the Black Revolutionary Attack Team claimed credit for the shooting and vowed further assaults on figures who exploit the black community. Two days later they warned that an apartment house owned by a white Harlem drug pusher would be bombed; it was. The group had never been heard of before the first phone call, and authorities were unable initially to determine the identity or strength of its members. The rhetoric of black militants has recently become increasingly abusive of the Cosa Nostra, accusing Mob heroin traffickers of committing narcotics genocide in black neighborhoods.
Less altruistic motives could have been at work in New York's black communities: black mobsters eager to gain control of Mafia narcotics and gambling operations in the ghettos would have had reason to have Colombo shot. Black gangsters have become impatient to move out of the lower-echelon, dangerous jobs traditionally assigned them by, Syndicate leaders.
Colombo's career as a gangster also could provide a plausible motive—revenge. One product of his years as a member of the assassination team of Joseph Profaci, head of a New York family, is a list of victims' relatives—young men orphaned by contract, brothers bound to avenge a family murder—who would like to see Colombo killed. His rise in the Mob hierarchy has also earned him the bitter enmity of former comrades, notably Joseph ("Crazy Joe") Gallo, onetime Profaci triggerman whom Colombo opposed during a bloody gang war in the early '60s (see box).
But the most likely explanation for the Columbus Circle attack is as old as the Mafia itself and as new as Joe Colombo's vision of his role of Mafia chieftain. The New York families, or tribes, of the Cosa Nostra are on the edge of a classic power struggle, precipitated by Colombo's refusal to rule as Mafia bosses have always ruled — quietly and privately, in the tradition of the Sicilian dons. The Mafia that he insists is nonexistent almost surely tried to kill Joe Colombo.
A Cruel Dilemma On successive nights, 50 Colombo faithful marched in a prayer circle outside the hospital's emergency-entrance parking lot. Propped against a wall was a floral display of wilting red, green and white carnations. Small plaster statues of saints were mounted on the display's legs, and candles in various stages of use were piled beneath it. Their candles flickering in the warm evening wind, the marchers chanted, "St. Jude, help Joe Colombo" or joined in the Lord's Prayer.
The assassination attempt posed a cruel dilemma for Italian Americans, who regard the league as a voice for their frustrations and have attempted to overlook Colombo's Mafia life. Father Louis Gigante possesses a unique in sight into this moral tug of war: he is both the league chaplain and the younger brother of a man who was accused of trying to assassinate Frank Costello in 1957. Father Gigante was among those keeping vigil outside Roosevelt Hospital. Said he: "The league is definitely a positive thing, but all they talk about in the papers is the crime thing.