Magliocco certainly did not have an easy time as a boss. The Family was splintered into different factions, a fact the Commission used as an excuse to depose him. (They said that not all the factions had been present when he was made Profaci´s successor. In reality they were right but this argument was used selectively against him and not used against others in similar cases.) So on top of the Gallo problem, Magliocco also had to deal with the Commission´s pressure on him. He made it somewhat worse when he demoted many of the captains who had been under Profaci, replaced them with younger guys in order to make his captains totally loyal to him. This backfired because many of the younger guys, for more reasons than one (and Colombo being one of them), rather sought the guidance of the Commission than followed Magliocco´s orders.

Magliocco´s first underboss was "Big" John Misuraca. He stepped down a year later and the official reason was to concentrate on his legal buisnesses in Florida and NJ. Magliocco did not replace him with anyone. There was no official consigliere either. The one who acted in this position, Charlie LoCicero secretly opposed Magliocco and according to some accounts, sought Commission´s permission to hit Magliocco. He was supposedly replaced by Mussacchio, a Magliocco loyalist but Mussacchio was not an effective consigliere. He was considered weak, a brokster and a puppet. So the Family was in extreme disarray at the time.

Oh, one more thing just to add to this thread´s actual topic. There is yet another theory on who and why Colombo was shot. It says that Jerome Johnson acted on his own as a revenge killing. Will not go through explaining this theory again (it has been posted here before) so If interested, use the search function to find the post.