What I don't understand is that, according to Sammy Gravano, Johnny Keys was at war and he was constantly surrounded by guys.
When you read Phil Leonetti's book, he barely mentions the situation and just say that Johnny Keys was opposing the new leadership and the Gambino wre going to kill him. It doesn't look like Testa and Scarfo felt they were at war with anybody. They made sure to eliminate the people behind Bruno's death and Keys was one of them but it was hardly a war.
So to me, when Johnny Keys said he was at war, he was mostly protecting himself from being targeted by the Family. I mean, on his part, he didnn't do anything against the new leadership; He didn't attack any of their members.
The way I heard this story after Sammy’s book came out is above. If that’s close to how it went down then my guess is Keys felt like he was at war with a faction that was trying to take over the family and he saw his crew more as the old guard. Again if that’s the case then Keys was trying get support from the commission rather than just start killing. Scarfo might not have felt like he was at war because he already knew he won. Then again a lot of people say Keys was involved with the Bruno hit which would be a completely different story.
And you gotta remember this before Gotti and the commission case. If Keys just started killing people that probably wasn’t going to fly with the commission. Who called ALL the shots at the time. Unlike when Stanfa and Merlino were going at it.
