I know the mafia was given carte blanche to become powerful because of poor leadership from the FBI. I've mentioned that recently. I still maintain people like Costello had to offer stuff to become that rich and powerful. Hell, we already know Luciano and Bonanno had no compunctions about snitching - if we're holding them to the same standard as the snitches Ralphie alludes to.
People go on about Castellano being afraid of jail. I bet Gambino was, too. Galante had his number.
Joe Bonanno's "snitching," if you can call it that, didn't go far beyond a factually incorrect and self-embellishing book. In fact, the book got him in even MORE trouble with the federal government because he was called to testify, refused, and served 14(?) months in prison for it. Does that sound like a particularly 'cooperating' witness to you?
Also, OakasFan's argument has been that because mob bosses like Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese avoided prison throughout most of their career, they must have been cooperating witnesses. The figure that Oak put it at was "half of all mobsters" in the history of LCN.
But the big, striking issue there is how many mob bosses went to prison after the RICO law was fully used in the 1980s. The answer is: pretty much all of them.
What does this mean? If you follow Oak's philosophy, then that means that post-1980, mob bosses all suddenly stopped cooperating with law enforcement as mob bosses had done before. If Oak's philosophy is to be believed, than the RICO law coming into effect was just a coincidence.
Just about every single mob boss post-1980 was busted and given long sentences, with the majority dying in prison, whereas mob bosses prior to 1980 stayed out of prison because, according to Oak, they were informers. Which still leaves some burning questions unanswered:
Why did all mob bosses post-1980 suddenly decide to stop cooperating with law enforcement whilst they were on the street?
Building on this, why did all mob bosses post-1980 suddenly decide to stop cooperating with law enforcement whilst they were on the street JUST AS the RICO law came into use and the FBI announced a major initiative to destroy the Five Families? That seems like pretty poor timing, wouldn't you say?
If you use your head, you'll open yourself to the possibility that perhaps most mob bosses (that stayed on the street) prior to 1980 weren't informers, but maybe the federal policy and laws were ill-equipped to combat the Mafia. Maybe the fact that Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese and Joe Bonanno were able to stay on the street for so long is because the lack of the RICO law meant it was close to impossible to convict mob bosses with the street-level crimes such as murder and loansharking that they were able to be convicted of in the future.
