I'm glad this topic was brought up because it is very similar to a thread I was going to start. My thread though delt with dissident factions in a family and how a boss decides who goes away and who they can get to fall in line. For example after Carlo had Albert killed he then had to contend with a few powerful capos who were still very loyal to Anastasia I.e Rava and Dellacroce. My question was how did he choose and how did he know that he had to whack rava but dellacroce would fall in line? Same thing with Gotti, appears he knew he wold have to take out billoti but he let a lot of the other members of that faction continue on as long as they fell in line. How do they know who will acquiesce to the new situation and who would fight?
Glad you brought this up. A lot of the times the way it seems to happen is like the following:
The Commission (or someone) is fed up with some very powerful frightening mobster's nonsense, so then send a hit team/delegation to the allies of the mark to garner support for the hit.
The allies are summoned to some meeting whereby the only means of escape is acquiescence. They are told that so-and-so is a marked man and that if they don't get with the program they themselves will be whacked...by someone else...within 24 hours. To me, that always meant that if they didn't express support for the plan that they would actually be killed right on the spot.
Now everyone is on the same page. The mark is isolated. His allies have been told to either not interfere or to even help hit the victim. If they don't, they're toast.
The mark is then hit in public, even though he was surrounded by 10 heavily armed body guards. No one saw the shooters. Everyone goes home whistling minding their business hoping they survive the housecleaning to follow.
So there it is. They know who is on their side and who isn't because they spoke with them (IE threatened them) about the upcoming hit ahead of time.
Now, revisit the Galante hit, the Maranzano hit, the Masseria hit, the Anastasia hit, the...you get the idea.
