Originally Posted by Dwalin2011
Imo it's also interesting that, even though the RICO law was introduced in 1970, it wasn't used against the most important mafia bosses until the 80s, letting guys like Carlo Gambino, Joe Zerilli or Stefano Magaddino basically off the hook until they died, and even in the later period characters like Tony Accardo, Philip Lombardo, Santo Trafficante etc remained untouched or got off with minimum sentences, like Jack Tocco. Quite a selective approach to the mafia issue by whoever was supposed to use RICO against them imo....While flamboyant characters like Gotti went down, the smarter ones with connections to the government and law enforcement were basically left alone, or "dealt with" in a very lazy way.


You know I'm reading that book Gotham Unbound right now, which looks at each of the big industry rackets the mob was involved in through the 80's and how they were taken down, and there's no chapter about the ports. And the Newark port is still supposedly heavily controlled by the Genovese family.

Anyhow, I've always felt the real reason for Giuliani's anti-mafia crusade was to crush the unions.

"...the successful annihilation of organized crime's subculture in America would rock the 'legitimate' world's foundation, which would ultimately force fundamental social changes and redistributions of wealth and power in this country. Meyer Lansky's dream was to bond the two worlds together so that one could not survive without the other." - Dan E. Moldea