Here we go again--more bulls**t parading as "knowledge":

--The Gallos did not want to be heads of the Profaci family. They wanted to be quasi-independent, operating the gambling rackets that Frankie "Shots" Abbatemarco had established in Profaci's territory without his approval. Profaci promised them the territories if they whacked Shots. They did, and he welshed (calling Frank Pentangeli!). That was the start of a long war whose immediate result was that the Gallos were no longer part of the Profaci family.

--Carlo Gambino and everyone else in the Mafia hierarchy regarded Joe Gallo as pazzo, and wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole--that's how he got his name. The idea that Gambino would have a tete-a-tete with Gallo as described above is beyond absurd.

--Gambino wanted Profaci, "the old man," to step down as Don in order to break up the alliance he had with Joe Bonanno. After Profaci died, the Commission refused to recognize his brother in law, Joe Magliocco, as his successor. Gambino encouraged Joe Columbo to undermine Magliocco from within. Columbo ratted out a plot that Mag and Bon cooked up to whack Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. Mag was forced to step down and Columbo, now Gambino's protege, was rewarded with the Donship.

--Meanwhile, Larry Gallo died of cancer, Joe went to prison for a long stretch on a vending machine rap, and Albert more or less disappeared. When Joe Gallo got out of prison, he approached Columbo, not Gambino, about receiving a share of the rackets that he'd originally disputed with Profaci. Columbo refused.

--Columbo had become a regular media star with his Italian-American Civil Rights League. His high profile angered Gambino. Columbo was shot and incapacitated at his Columbus Day rally in 1971. Many people at the time believed Gallo did it. Today, the consensus of most knowledgeable people is that Gambino ordered the shooting, but that Gallo didn't carry it out--Gambino just wanted people to think that he did. Carmine (the Snake) Persico was the major beneficiary of the shooting, not Gallo.