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Dec 31,2006 - Jan7,2006 |
The Mafia downfall
Part 19 - With most Bosses behind bars, La Cosa Nostra is facing a crisis
By Antonio Nicaso
Originally Published: 2001-06-24
Once upon a time there was La Cosa Nostra, the myth of organized crime, American style. It was a powerful organization that dominated Hollywood, controlled trade unions, flirted with the White House and extended its tentacles into Canada. Its bosses were feared and respected. Sam Giancana and John Fitzgerald Kennedy shared their lovers, Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner Campbell. Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Gaetano Lucchese, Joe Colombo and Joseph Bonanno belonged to the old guard. They spoke a slang born with the first Italian immigration wave that was a mixture of American and Italian. And, without dirtying their hands with drugs, they built an empire with a turnover well above those of Ford and General Motors put together.
Then things began to change. Turncoats started to surface, and American authorities started to play tough, developing efficient laws such as the RICO, the anti-mob act.
Nowadays, for the first time in its long history, La Cosa Nostra is recoiling. In the U.S., it’s in a tight spot.
The Gambinos, after John Gotti got sentenced to life in prison, have no boss. Last year, La Cosa Nostra’s Commission appointed Nicholas "Little Nick" Corrozzo as Gotti’s successor. But he didn’t have the time to look around: the judges in Miami’s Court of Appeals convicted him of criminal association. Gotti’s son had no better luck; some weeks ago he was sentenced to seven years in jail for extortion and racketeering.
Same fate for the Genovese family, America’s most powerful following Gotti’s exit, which last year lost its boss, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, convicted for a series of murders and attempted murders.
In order to avoid his reckoning with justice, Gigante, formerly Vito Genovese’s right hand man, went around in slippers and for some time a dressing gown, mumbling incomprehensibly.
But few believed he was insane.
"Let’s not make the mistake of underestimating them," warns Lou Freeh, FBI’s director. "They’re in a tight spot, not in shambles. La Cosa Nostra is an organization strongly rooted in America and still to be feared."
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