Tell me about it. Sometimes I have to read a sentence in that book 2 or 3 times to get a gist of what is being said. The author writes in a very convoluted backwards way. You don't know what he's talking about until you get to the very end of the paragraph.



We know this. But we also know that Rusty was backed by the Commission to run his family.

From what it looks like to me, an outsider, each major family of the Commission controlled it's own pipeline(s). So yes, even though the Bonannos weren't on the Commission then, they had their own connects. Absolutely. The other two families roles are more obscure, at least to me, but basically, the Bonannos had the stuff coming down from Canada and being sold in Canada. The Genovese and Gambinos controlled the Manhattan and Brooklyn harbors. Someone had the airports. An educated guess off the top of my head says the Lucchese's were responsible for importing through JFK. Someone else will need to chime in on that, and on the Colombos.



IMHO as outsiders it's hard for us to say. Every major family contained a drug conspiracy, so how did that keep the Bonannos off? Just a wild guess: Maybe Rusty couldn't join the Commission UNTIL he took over the drug crews in his family. In order to do that, he had to bring the three capos down! We DO know, that the Commission was a drug investment club comprised of the major bosses only. That's the money Joe Pistone spoke of that is NOT kicked up. That money starts up and stays up. The Commission has their own money and sources of money. If Rusty wasn't let in, it had to be because he hadn't yet controlled the Bonanno drug pipeline. That would provide backstory to the anecdote we heard about when the Commission told him to gain control of his family to join the Commission as a full voting member.



I'll admit it sounds plausible, but it sounds like an excuse to me. If you read mob books like I do, you begin to notice that every single victim of a hit "deserved" it and broke some sacred rule. But we know that couldn't really be true. People were killed over money, to misappropriate their riches, and to consolidate the power of those ordering the killing.




As you can tell, I'm a little opinionated. I don't believe conspiracies like the Pizza Connection were Sicilians just paying "rent" to American Cosa Nostra to be able to sell junk in the USA. That's a cover story. I think the Commission were investors actually, that outsourced the importation to illegal aliens known as "zips". They were OWNERS.




What I don't respond to means either you made a point I can't refute, or you re just plain right. One or the other. But again, "everybody and their mama" had Sicilian contacts, even the poster here that was named Carmella...probably originated family-wise from Agrigento. Big deal. You know why they were dealing drugs from Sicily? Because they were dirt poor. Sicily had lots and lots of poverty. I don't know about today.



Like I said, I am probably 75% through the book. But Violi is covered early on. It just looks to me like the Rizzutos and their friends wanted Violi out because he had rank and money over them, and they used the fact that he was not Sicilian as the excuse to hit the guy. It was just an excuse. So why was he the one getting hit? He was the only non-Sicilian in the room. Hate to say it, but it's just that simple. And actually, in the United States, the non-Sicilians tended to get a similar raw deal, including Al Capone right after the Commission was formed. They made The Big Guy a "Father", but then they told him to take a hike by doing a stint in prison for the media. Other non Sicilians were simply eliminated, in the United States proper. You can even include Roy Demeo in that group. His ethnicity worked against him.





Early in the book we read how the fathers or uncles of Sonny Red and Bruno were already migrating into Canada.

A made man has got to earn. It's up to him to figure out how. The Indelicatos picked themselves to move junk. Someone else approved of it because they saw the mutual benefit.



I'll get back to you on that. I really don't want to proffer a theory until I've researched it a little. One clue however, might be that the guy who whacked Montagna was not Italian. If the hitman was Italian and affiliated in some way, then we could break down an analysis. But Montagna seems to have been killed by an outsider to Cosa Nostra. Desjardins was a suspect in that hit. Desjardins became an open enemy to Vito Rizzuto, yes? So Montagna was not killed by Cosa Nostra. It was someone else.




Everyone from Agrigento that is mobbed up is not part of the same mafia family. Also, there are not poppy fields in Agrigento either. Two of the Agrigento clans, the Caruanas and C[untreras, formed a link between Colombia and everyone in the United States, yes they did. But that is only the pipelines coming from Canada. The big two families, the Luciano and Mangano, otherwise known as Genovese and Gambino, control probably the biggest pipelines, which are transatlantic and not Canadian. The Luciano and Gambino families did not need help from anyone in Canada...maybe not even Agrigento.





I don't have a map with all the routes on it. All I know is that Vito's primary responsibility was moving someone else's property, not his own. Now whatever he was doing on the side, like the things you describe above....he had to pay tax on it.




I think they were separate. I think Giacomo's comment merits a closer look, that the Caruana C[untreras answered to Sicily. Maybe they answered to the Cupola. I don't believe Vito was under Alfonso or vice versa.


Thanks for the article Cabrini.