Y'all gotta understand, the army of zips was NOT HIS STRENGTH, his strength was his control of Montreal, thus controlling the gateway for heroin, thus controlling a huge money faucet.
He was a Sollozzo, and Sollozo didn't have a crew that we saw, but he had the backing of two families because they knew they could make a lot of money with him.
What did Galante in was one, he didn't want to share, and two, he got replaced by Nicola and Vito Rizzuto in Montreal, So, he wasn't needed anymore.
He became as much of an impediment as Violi in Canada.See Galante was representing the Sicilians, so fucking with Galante meant challenging the Sicilians. And by Sicilians, I mean the whole French connection, heroin operation, these guys were representing whole families in Sicily, it wasn't just about an upstart capo, same way dealing with Sollozo meant dealing with half the commission. Only bigger, cause the whole Sicilian commission was invested in these drug crews moving narcotics. Same thing killed Galante killed the three capos... In Sixth family, it says Sonny Red took a 1.5 million consignment then decided he didn't have to pay. I think he thought he's gonna be boss soon, so he didn't have to pay an underling he outranked. But he was taking from Sicilian bosses who invested in that shipment. Notice the Gambinos signed off and became the principal distributors.
The book The Sixth Family does a better job of explaining this, it wasn't really the BONNANO FAMILY's heroin trade, it was the SICILIAN MAFIA's HEROIN TRADE, in partnership with the bonnanos since that 57 meeting in Palermo,I think the families were afraid of losing a potential source of revenue, more than scared of Galante... Any thoughts?
I'd say you nailed it with this explanation, well said. This is one of those historical situations that seems shrouded in mystery but really isn't. There was a simpleness at play here that worked too well to do anything about. Too much money was being made and not enough high ranking members of any family were openly trafficking enough to warrant Galante being challenged until regime changes within the Bonnano's and the zips representing Sicily mandated his removal and replacement.
