I swear, some people here love and believe every story or conspiracy theory that comes along. God forbid any questioning of claims to logic is applied. A person can say Lansky was behind the Kennedy assassination and it will be accepted as fact. If another story says it was the CIA that will be accepted as fact.
The journalist Lansky complained about in the Israeli TV interview was Hank Messick, who in 1965 published a series of articles in the Miami Herald in which he called Lansky "the boss of the Eastern Syndicate," "the biggest man in organized crime today," and said he was "worth $300 million." All were wild exaggerations. But, all of us here know that BS like that sticks to OC and the wilder the exaggerations, the more they stick--and the more myths get built around them. That article, which became established "fact" thanks to lazy, sensation-seeking journalists, was the beginning of the end for Lansky thanks to the myths that got built around him,
The Justice Dept. in 1971 launced an 18-city Organized Crime Strike Force. Seventeen of the 18 were cities. The Messick article stimulated them to make Lansky the 18th "city." The department and the FBI dogged him for the rest of his life--in the US and in Israel.
Robert Lacey, in his outstanding biography, "Little Man - Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life," said this about Lansky's attempts to establish himself in the Bahamas: "The Royal Commission of Inquiry into The Bahamas Casinos in 1967 reported that 'we began to wonder whether the name of Meyer Lansky was not some vast journalistic piece of fiction, so ghastly and mythical a figure did he appear.'"
"Such was the magic of the Lansky name that Lansky and the underworld had become virtually synonymous," Lacey wrote. "Like the word 'Mafia' itself, 'Meyer Lansky' had become shorthand for a particular sort of evil. If an operation was cunning and financially complicated, it had to have been devised by Meyer Lansky. To write 'Lansky' was a substitute for analyziing investigative complications, and when reporters found that the facts could not support the concept of the hidden Lansky command structure that had become an article of investigative faith, they resorted to expressions like the 'Lansky Group' or the 'Lansky Syndicate.'"
I remember Hank Messick, he was a longtime reporter on the organized crime beat when also wrote a few books, one of which was about Lansky as you said. I also remember how Lansky was dogged by the U.S. Government. So much so that he went to Israel to seek asylum as a Jew. But the Israeli government turned him down not wanting to anger U.S. authorities, forcing him to return to Miami where he was placed under arrest at the airport.
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But I'm not following your train of thought Turnbull. Are you saying that Lansky and his underworld operations and associations were not as far-flung as they had been reported to be?
Or simply that his "reputation" was blown out of proportion, which I happen to partially agree with in certain areas?
For instance, the false claim that "he" was the biggest boss, he ran everything, or that he actually "sat" in on Commission Meetings? There were many more falsehoods made about him over the years (as with most mobsters reporters write about).
But how do you feel about the breathe and scope of what Lansky reputedly created and accomplished? Is it true or false, in your opinion?
Fair questions.
One of the keys to Meyer Lansky’s success and longevity was that he was never a threat to anyone more powerful than he. He never had an organization of subordinates who carried out his will through intimidation, extortion and violence. He accumulated wealth slowly and modestly, mostly through points in hotels and casinos, skimming profits, rakeoffs from gambling junkets, and influence-peddling. He wasn’t greedy—house odds were good enough for him, and he shared his rackets. He lived modestly and never flaunted his wealth, such as it was. He did nothing that engendered fear, resentment, envy and greed among more powerful men that so often leads to murder. He didn’t have
associates under him, as do Mafia bosses, but he had a big network of mobsters, criminals and Mob-connected civilians with whom he was
associated in criminal and legitimate enterprises—sometimes long term, sometimes in one-shots. They trusted him, and were the source of his considerable influence, because they made money with him and had no reason to feel threatened by him.
He also sailed under the flags of more powerful men. He organized the squads that assassinated Masseria and Maranzano, but he didn’t order the hits: they were ordered by Lansky’s close friend and business partner Charlie Luciano. He partnered with Luciano in booze and gambling, but not in drugs and prostitution—the latter responsible for Luciano’s long prison sentence and exile from the US. Another Lansky pal and partner, Fulgencio Batista, brought him in to clean up gambling in Havana after he returned to power in 1952. Lansky installed his brother, Jake, as casino manager in the Hotel Nacional, no doubt skimming the proceeds. Lansky acted as gateway for Batista’s favors: If Meyer liked you, you did business in Cuba; if he didn’t, you didn’t. No doubt he was paid off in points and skims. But he never owned a hotel until he and other investors opened the Havana Riviera in March 1958—a rare step into the limelight for Lansky. Castro seized it nine months later—a rare setback for Lansky. He was an investor in Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel in Vegas. The Feds indicted him for trying to hide a “hidden interest” in the hotel by collecting a $200k “finders fee” for “brokering” the sale of the Flamingo to Mob-connected hotelier Morris Lansburgh. But the case never went to trial.
He couldn’t sit on the Commission, but he advised Commission members like Luciano and Frank Costello. He partnered with Costello and Joe Adonis regularly in gambling. Vincent (Jimmy Blue Eyes) Alo was another Mafia partner, as well as protector. He had legitimate businesses, too, including jukeboxes, TV rentals and investments in mining and molasses.
Robert Lacey, his biographer, says Lansky avoided prison, lived to age 80 and died peacefully in bed because “he was the accountant, never the boss.” I think that understates the influence he wielded during his long lifetime. But he was never the boss of a syndicate of associates as the myth-makers claimed.
