With all of his clout and wealth, and being such a top-tier mobster for many decades, since the Castellammarese War, in fact, why did Vito Genovese become a hands-on operative in such a lowly narcotics enterprise in the late 1950s?

He didn’t, was a frame up from everything I’ve read

That's what I was thinking, everything I said above seems to lend credit to that theory. If Vito Genovese was to involve himself in a narcotics operation, it just seems to me like he would've been involved in tons, being a boss of his stature. The operation that brought him down seemed to be too pente-ante for a boss like that.

And your evidence is…

Very disappointing comment. I was hoping for a good explanation, sometimes I regret clicking on these things.

I've read in a couple of places that Don Vitone called the ill-fated 1957 Apalachin meeting to get other Dons to approve drug trafficking. It can't be verified because there's no transcript of that meeting, So, you have to wonder if "historians" reverse-engineered Genovese and drugs: He was nailed on a drug charge in '59 (yes, it was a setup), therefore he must have called the Apalachin meeting to legitimize drug trafficking. What we do know is that Bonanno (who was absent from the Apalachin meeting) in that same year met with Luciano and some Sicilian pezzanovanti to set up a drug operation. The Bonannos were up to their eyeballs in drugs for decades.

Thanks Turnbull. I hate it when so-called historians state these things as "facts," when they are nothing but assumptions and hypothesis. If this was a less-powerful captain, soldier, or associate we were talking about, it would be much more believable for him to have played than role within that mid-tier drug operation. We even see examples of that in this day and age. However, I can't think of any other time when it involved a full-fledged don with a seat on the Commission like Vito Genovese. Even before he became official boss in 1957, he carried on like one decades in advance.

Selwyn Raab said that Nelson Cantellops a portorican drug dealer was used to frame Genovese.

Thanks Furio, I've heard that before too.

The information you seek can easily be found on this very forum.
http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=666922

In all fairness, Raab’s book is filled with many errors especially on pre-1958 years. This, of course, isn’t to say that the book is bad, it’s actually very good compared to the average mob book.

Just ignore him.