What is that?

Joe Pistone called Big Paul Castellano the Boss of Bosses and the Boss of everything. Everyone knows Lucky Luciano outlawed that official position. Why was Paul called that? Why did Carlo Gambino dominate the Commission if he was only a coequal? I have a theory...

Maybe the Boss of Bosses in the post Maranzano age was the Boss who controlled the docks.

The harbors and docks is probably where most of the heroin from Sicily came into the United States. The Gambinos, formerly the Anastasias, formerly the Manganos, controlled the docks.

So the Boss who supervised the family that controlled the largest cash crop and who had the closest connections to the mafia families in Sicily was the "Big Boss". But the money made from that cash cow was poured into a pot to be evenly divided between the Bosses.

Cash cows like NY's garment center were supervised by the Lucchese's, but the money was shared between the administrations that made up the Commission.

Places like Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno Nevada, were evenly divided between the families. The idea always being to share in order to avoid conflict and war between bosses.

So Joe Bonanno was at odds with the Commission maybe because he wanted to dominate the Mafia's drug trade.

Carmine Galante was then whacked, because he didn't want to share the receipts of his drug pipeline with the other bosses, a drug pipeline he played an integral role in establishing.

When Joe Bonanno sicced Giuliani on the Commission, that was actually a drug war Bonanno was using law enforcement to fight on his behalf.

These are just theories on how the Commission might have actually functioned, the nuts and bolts of how they kept it together, and the principle that formed the basis of their secret discussions, that principle being that the Bosses shared in the big rackets equally. Maybe one Boss might be richer because his family had more bookmakers or pimps or loan sharks, or what have you. But the big rackets had to be split up evenly at the top....and then money laundered.

Joe Pistone said "Commission members come and go, but the Commission has it's own sources of money...The Vegas skim had been the Bosses biggest source of money since it didn't have to flow upstream. It already was upstream".

I think Boss of Bosses in the modern age was the Boss who controlled and supervised the docks/NY harbor.