Accardo, Fosco, misinformation, gullible people

(WARNING--If you are NOT interested in the Outfit, don't read this.)

No one outted Chicago/ElmwoodParker/the Don, but a few people on here now have an idea of the kind of person he is in real life. This is a good time to reiterate that Joe Fosco is the first person, on either side of the law, to ever assert that Accardo was overrated in the organization. “the Don” and “Black Angelo” seized upon Fosco’s revisionist history, and, using their multiple identities, polluted forums and blogs of all kinds on the internet with this misinformation. Everyone rolled their eyes when “Black Angelo” (a fool who never brought anything to the table himself but leeched off everyone else’s information) acted like Fosco’s revisionism was common knowledge and that anyone with street smarts has been aware of that all along. Well, as I said before, I am acquainted with Fosco and have communicated with him both in person and through email numerous times, and he has laughed heartily while acknowledging his stunt.

This morning, Fosco acknowledged for the first time publicly (in his comments) that he misrepresented Accardo’s legacy on his blog repeatedly over the years. (quote: “Another person who I have been unfair with is the now late Anthony "Joe B" Accardo. I used to listen to Billy Daddono III bash Accardo in many ways. I used to listen to him bash Accardo for many years. It occurred to me in recent times, with the help of Michael, that Billy is holding a grudge over what happened to his grandpa's guy, Mooney.”) Fosco gives reasons for it, but omitted a very important motive in denigrating Accardo. I think this undisclosed motive would be extremely interesting to anyone interested in organized crime, but Fosco will never disclose it because it would be embarrassing for him and the memory of his late father.

I do not care about Accardo at all, but I do care about facts, and it has always bothered me that Joe Fosco distorted Accardo's legacy and people on the internet (who know nothing in reality) actually somehow believed his garbage and polluted other sites with his revisionism. Outfit discussions online have absolutely zero credibility now thanks to the people behind Black Angelo and the Don’s identities.

(Here is the link to Fosco's article and, if you care, you can find his admission in the comments: http://americannewspost.com/joseph-fosco/7299/suspended-sports-show-host-terminated/#comment-18463)

(GaryMartin you can PM me.)

Totally disagree with you. Joe Fosco has tried to be careful with his information and has always acknowledged that he gets it from different sources. He'll say who those sources are unless there's an agreement to keep them confidential. He had no personal grudge against Accardo. When Fosco realized that some of his biased sources were putting out false information he admitted that. He's been honest about it the whole time. Just for the record, historians make revisions all the time as they learn new things. Look at the earlier FBI files of mobsters compared to newer ones: they made revisions. And let's be honest, the Outfit structure is a bit different than other crime families, and it is confusing.

Can I PM you?

Who was stronger between Accardo and Ricca?

Was Accardo the guy calling the shots?
Was Ricca the guy calling the shots?
Or was the Chicago mob really run behind the scenes by dual dons with equal authority and power?

Accardo was deferential to Paul Ricca, certainly. Before Paul began to decompensate, Accardo was his #2. Don’t get me wrong, Giancana was a boss in his own right, too, but only ever second fiddle to Paul, and that was only during Accardo’s hiatus. After Giancana was out of it, every boss thereafter was more or less bearding for Accardo while he was alive. (Or at least until he was nearing death.) Aiuppa was extremely powerful, and both he and Cerone were national mafia figures. But they were only wearing the boss’ uniform. They were both leaders, but the orthodox history regarding Accardo is true. He was the power. By the way, does anyone here know Nick (last name witheld)—a close relative of the late Joey O? He will corroborate what I just said with regard to Aiuppa.

Another thing that was overstated by Fosco (and Chicago and Black Angelo) was the supposed "rivalry" between the Taylor Street and Grand Avenue Italians. There were beefs between individuals within the organization, but the fact that they might have been from different neighborhoods was irrelevant. Accardo was close with Teets and Phil who were from Taylor Street. Ricca is not accurately described as a “Taylor Street mobster” either—another distortion perpetuated by idiots.

If you were to make a chart of the hierarchy during this period, what would it look like?

Was Bill Roemer a reputable source on the Chicago mob?

What StonePark is saying is absolutely consistent with The Chicago Crime Commission, The Chicago Police Dept., The FBI, The Justice Dept., organized crime writers, Outfit historians and former FBI agents. Oh, and the IRS.

If in doubt, just do some "digging" and you will get the facts. It may not be easy, but it's out there. Be persistent.

For which period? If you are talking about the Giancana years, it would be Ricca as the chairman with something indicating that Giancana was a front boss, or day-to-day boss with authority over the capos. Accardo could be thought of as Paul Ricca's partner at the top but he always deferred to Paul while Paul was healthy, so it is in that sense that Accardo was Paul's #2. Accardo respected Paul like no one else. During the Giancana years, Accardo did not try to go legit or anything, but he reduced his day-to-day involvement significantly. So on a chart something roughly equivalent to consigliere with Cerone bearding for him on matters concerning him.

Right. I don't know why people were so quick to believe "Black Angelo" and "the Don" who are just two personas to emerge from the void of cyberspace. They are all of a sudden experts on the Outfit? Joe Fosco, by the way, has a WordPress account with no editorial oversight whatsoever. Doesn't that raise some flags? ANP is not a news source. IT IS HIS BLOG! Anyone of us could set one up in ten minutes. Thank goodness, Fosco is finally saying in his blog comments what he has been admitting in person for years now.

What do you think about Humphreys? They way Gus Russo wrote about it he had Accardo, Rica, Humphreys and later Giancana at the top. And he pretty much had Humphreys as the brains of the whole thing.

I have been told that Humphreys was as much of a genius as people say he was, but he was obviously never made or anything. I also understand that Accardo frequently sought out the "know-how" of non-Italians.

Interesting. Well, they didn't start making people until well into those guys' tenure, did they? I forget the specifics. But from what I remember it was well past the glory days.

Good post SP. Good info too. I know who Aiuppa's nephew is. I will PM you as I'd love to know what you mean by Fosco's motive for denigrating Accardo.

For some reason, Outfit watchers WRONGLY view the Accardo-Giancana situation within the Outfit as a “zero sum” scenario, meaning people have the odd tendency to believe that either Accardo was all-powerful and Giancana was a nobody or vice versa. People also wrongly assume that Accardo always hated Giancana. This is false.

First of all, Accardo always deferred to Ricca, and Ricca brought Mooney up. Accardo endorsed Mooney’s elevation because he respected and trusted Paul’s opinion. Second, Giancana was the face of the Outfit during its peak. He was well-networked with other leaders all over the country at a time when Ricca was not up to the task and Accardo was on hiatus. Giancana was VERY powerful, even beside Ricca and Accardo.

Furthermore, Accardo and Giancana relied on each other, especially early on. Along with Ricca, Accardo had to trust Giancana, and Giancana never got JB killed or imprisoned. Giancana’s downfall was only due to his temperament, antics, and his inability to see what his behavior was doing to the larger organization. It was not because Accardo and Aiuppa "had it in" for Taylor Street since the beginning or any nonsense along those lines, espoused by anonymous trolls from American News Post.

Giancana became an authoritarian, paranoid narcissist—and that is a familiar, recurring persona in the history of American LCN. He was larger than life.

I'll let the Chicago experts handle the other questions; but I think it's been shown here and other sources that Bill Roemer was reputable when it came to making himself look good. Much of his writings have some truth behind them, but in his era (he was with the FBI from the mid-50s-mid 80s), the FBI knew a lot less than he made out to. If you believe Murray Humphrey's wife, Accardo, the Hump, Ricca, Giancana etc all knew they were being bugged and made shit up to fuck with the FBI.

Bill Roemer's mistake was inserting himself as a character into "true crime" accounts of the Chicago Outfit. His other mistake was releasing a terrible crime novel (a work of fiction) with the same publisher in which he used real-life Chicago and New York mobsters as characters in the story. I think Roemer's anti-Giancana bias and grudging admiration for Accardo and Joe Bonnano hurts his credibility. But then again, I don't think he invented everything he wrote.

If anyone wants to know how a book about the mafia should be written, they should read Jeff Coen's Family Secrets.

There was certainly a friendly rivalry between Chicago's Italian neighborhoods. For instance, there were social clubs that sponsored softball teams in both the The Patch and Taylor Street and they would hold tournaments. But in the end, it was not heated rivalry. Italians/Sicilians in Chicago stuck together. Both the Patch and Taylor Street were Mezzogiorno (southern Italian/Sicilian). Most Outfit guys were (and still are) Mezzogiorno. I agree with SP and do not think Taylor Street would be singled out or "hated" due to their neighborhood alone.

Agree with everything you wrote, but I believe he had little respect for Bonnano*, he praised Bonnano his cunning for keeping secrets, but mocked Bonnano as a "whiny old man" who got himself kicked out of New York.

*stemming from a time that Roemer interacted with him in Chicago around the time of Bonnano's "kidnapping", Bonnano insulted Roemer while he was in custody-again my memory is fuzzy since it's been a time since I read the book.

Hands down my favorite mob book ever written.

Just to clarify, Mooney was never Chairman of the Outfit. Ricca was. Accardo was. But never Giancana. He still had power, though. Without a doubt.

Mine, too. Coen is a top notch journalist. Coen's book and the Family Secrets evidence page on the DOJ website are great resources.

Yes, you can pm me.

What I encourage is the free flow of opinions on the Outfit and I don't think it's necessary to get work up over something that is pretty trivial as a matter in our own lives. Yes, Fosco is using a WordPress site to do his American News Post, but it's not a simple blog. He's writing articles along with a group of others. Some of the other writers are political; with Magnafichi he tried to do sports. Fosco also does have a background that includes not only knowing, but being friends with made guys and having a family background in the mob. I've seen his relative's names in FBI files. So Fosco does bring things to the table, but since he was never a made guy himself he was not privy to a lot details (sometimes, however, people did share things with him that he probably shouldn't have been told).

Some of the poster who commented on his site did have their own sources of information, whether from their relatives, associates, or books and newspaper articles. Sometimes their info was on the money, other times it was not.

Regarding Accardo, he was certainly a top guy. He was almost equal to Paul after Giancana went to Mexico, then when Paul started going senile Accardo was recognized as the top man. When Giancana was there Accardo was a respected adviser. I wouldn't call him a consigliere because Chicago never had a true consigliere (consiglieris are elected by the members and represent their interests to the boss, can act as a treasurer, and retain the crime family traditions and policies).

On Roemer, he couldn't stand Giancana because of how Giancana treated federal agents. Accardo, Cerone, Ricca, English, and numerous others were respectful in their dealings with the feds. Giancana acted like a punk to them. It's all there in his books.

If you're talking about The War of the Godfathers, then I agree. It was the worst mob book I ever read and I (as many others) was led to believe it was a true crime story. After I did some research, I realized it was a fiction book.

Actually, if it were all true, it would have been a great book. But it wasn't. Pretty sneaky on Roemer's part to fool customers just so he could sell books.

Well, to be fair, it did say it was a work of fiction at the front of the book. But it was easily overlooked and a lot of readers, who were unfamiliar with actual mob history, didn't catch it until later.

Finally, someone has pointed out Fosscos' Taylor street crush..The illegal fed wire tapes don't lie.