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.
The reasons is simple. Before the 1980s the directors of FBI was from the Hoover old school that prefer fast indictments that long investigations. In the 1980s when was created the squads for every mob family the things changed.
The Jaguar tapes are a good example: the feds before find a same model of Sal Avellino Jaguar and start to practice forcing the door, disassemble the radio and connect the bug to the battery and close everything again so Avellino can understood nothing.
The first time Avellino went to holiday,at his return the bug consumed the car battery and the feds removed the bug at the last minute and replaced it even was raining and there was the risk that Avellino can see the wet car seats.
And after all,the feds with cars with an antennas must follow the Jaguar for a clear recording.
And this because the RICO needs many proofs and evidences and the LE must spendmany time (months or years) for made a good Rico case.
