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Omertà May Be Dead; the Mafia Isn’t
By SELWYN RAAB
Published: January 22, 2011

QUITE a coincidence: In January 1961, Robert F. Kennedy, newly appointed as attorney general of the United States, orchestrated the first concentrated attack on the American Mafia. Almost to the day 50 years later, the government swept up more than 120 people in a smorgasbord of racketeering indictments, mainly in the New York area.

It was described as the largest single-day assemblage of Mafiosi defendants in America. The arrests, however, underline a sobering message: despite half a century of law enforcement campaigns, New York’s Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”) continues to prosper. This is often because some change — usually either shifting priorities for law enforcement or improved strategy on the part of the new criminal bosses — gives the mob breathing space to rebuild.

Since the birth of the American Mafia in 1931, New York has been its crown jewel. While other major cities and regions were limited to one family, or borgata, New York was afflicted with five powerful ones, now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese groups. (There is also a satellite unit, the DeCavalcantes, in New Jersey.)

In the decades after the passage of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations laws of 1970, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department eliminated or severely weakened all 20-odd families in other cities and regions. In New York, the hierarchies of the five families were thought to have been pretty much destroyed by the so-called Commission Case in the mid-1980s and other investigations. By the end of the last century, prosecutors and F.B.I. officials all too frequently proclaimed that even the mob’s sacred stronghold in New York was crushed.

As they did to so many aspects of American life, however, the 9/11 attacks radically transformed things. Until 9/11, the F.B.I. had two top priorities: counterespionage and the mob. But in the early 2000s the Justice Department dropped Cosa Nostra investigations as a priority, reassigning hundreds of agents to antiterrorist units.

In New York, the linchpin in the F.B.I.’s crusade against wise guys, the number of agents and Police Department investigators assigned to battling the five families in combined task forces declined to about 100 from a high point of 450. Last week’s indictments demonstrated how effectively the borgatas had regrouped.

Federal officials, as recently as five years ago, boasted that the New York Mafia had been expelled from its main bastions: private garbage carting, the garment center, the construction industry, waterfront cargo and control of key unions. But the current indictments tell a different tale — most allege that the mob was behind corrupt construction deals and waterfront shakedowns through infiltration of unions.

The sweeping arrests also reflect a major change in Mafia strategy. There were no celebrity names reminiscent of former kingpins like John J. Gotti or Vincent Gigante, known as “Chin.” The alleged bosses are virtually unknown outside of law enforcement circles. Like the dons of the 1930s and 1940s, they maintained low profiles and, unlike the flamboyant Mr. Gotti, were presumably aware they were running secret organizations.

This is not to say the arrests don’t indicate progress. It’s encouraging that law enforcement is still able to overcome the Mafia’s code of silence, or omertà. The racketeering statutes’ threat of severe prison sentences, including life behind bars, is reported to have spurred many low- and middle-ranked mobsters to turn informant.

Nonetheless, even if we drive the criminals out of their traditional corruption rackets, it’s unlikely to be an obituary for the mob. Sports bookmaking and loan-sharking, the Mafia’s symbiotic bread-and-butter staples, will continue to flourish and provide seed money for other criminal endeavors.

There are several reasons for this. High-end gamblers prefer wagering with the mob rather than with state-authorized gambling operations like Off-Track Betting, where you have to pay taxes on your winnings. Moreover, the mob is adept at running bookmaking mills and, even when arrests occur, sentences are rarely harsh.

The timing of the government crackdown, which included some raids on gambling networks, might put a crimp into an exceptionally profitable venture for the mob — the Super Bowl next month. A study by the New York Police Department’s Organized Crime Control Bureau 20 years ago estimated that more than $1 billion was wagered on the Super Bowl with mob-linked bookies in the New York area.

Another huge money-producer, loan-sharking, is customarily a partnership with illegal gambling. Compulsive bettors in debt to a bookie frequently have recourse only to a loan shark for quick cash. Hard economic times can be a bonanza for mob lenders. They learned during the Great Depression that honest business owners will seek usurious loans when banks are reluctant to finance small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Above all, though, the mob’s ability to survive is a legacy from Charles (Lucky) Luciano. He was a brilliant criminal executive who created the framework, culture and ground rules for the American Mafia 80 years ago. Luciano realized that other ethnic gangs were loosely organized, usually involved in just one type of crime and easily obliterated when their leaders were imprisoned. Hence his cardinal principle: the organization — the family — was supreme and not reliant on a single individual or one racket. Whenever a boss or a capo was removed, a replacement would be waiting in the wings to keep the loot flowing.

So, while the unveiling of the indictments last week by Attorney General Eric Holder was a sharp warning that the Mafia was again on the Justice Department’s radar screen, we should bear in mind the mob’s previous Lazarus-like revivals. The removal of the current crop of Mafia barons will probably engender a new generation of mobsters. There have always been, and always will be, ambitious, greedy wise guys who are willing to risk long prison sentences for the power and riches glittering before them. The Mafia is wounded, but not fatally.

Selwyn Raab, a former reporter for The Times, is the author of “Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.”

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.