Gus russo the outfit the role of chicag ica (v5 0)

’Russo has provided the in-depth coverage that reporters working during the heyday of the mob would have liked to have done an informative, tireless read It is for followers of mob lore or the beginner who wants to jump with both feet into a subject that has often been only superficially reported.’ —Chicago Tribune ’A fascinating tale.’ —New York Post ’An impressive in-depth history of Chicago’s elusive crime syndicate Russo humanizes the shadowy gangsters without denying their violent proclivities this is the book to beat in examining this midcentury criminal empire.’ —Publishers Weekly ’This is the most in-depth, dispassionate study of organized crime and big business to date Russo located most of the skeletons in this masterful probe —Jack Clarke, Special Investigator for Chicago Mayors Kennelly through Daley, and Illinois Governors Stevenson through Kerner ’A serious and entertaining read.’ —Baltimore Magazine ’Nothing is left out.’ —Chicago Sun-Times ’Absolutely captivating! For a “wiseguy” like me it was like going back to the neighborhood for an education I couldn’t put it down.’ —Henry Hill, the inspiration for the film Goodfellas and the bestselling book Wiseguys ’The Outfit is an outstanding work of investigative reporting about a crucial juncture in American parapolitics The index alone is worth the price of admission Congratulations, then, to Gus Russo for digging so deep and writing so well about a very mysterious place in time, and the murderous characters who gave it so much glamour.’ — Jim Hougan, former Washington editor of Harper’s and a ward-winning investigative author of Spooks: The Haunting of America - The Private Use of Secret Agents and Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA The Outfit The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America Gus Russo BLOOMSBURY Copyright © 2001 by Gus Russo All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews For information address Bloomsbury, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010 Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Russo, Gus, 1949The Outfit : the role of Chicago’s underworld in the shaping of modern America / Gus Russo p cm Includes bibliographical references and index Outfit (Gang) History Mafia Illinois Chicago History Chicago (Ill.) History Chicago (Ill.) Politics and government I Title HV6452.132 0877 2002 364.1’06’0977311 dc21 2001056637 eISBN: 978-1-59691-897-9 This paperback edition published 2003 10 Typeset by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh Printed and bound in the United States of America by R.R Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia For Anthony and Sadie Russo, my parents And for Augustino & Rosina Russo and Anthony & Rose Cascio, my grandparents, with love and gratitude Contents Introduction Prologue: Origins Part One: The Outfit Young Turks in Charge Curly’s Racket: The Union Takeovers Playing Politics Joe’s Racket: Running the Games (The New Booze) Part Two: Going National The Local Takeovers “Hollywood, Here We Come” (The New Booze II) Waking Up in the Dream Factory The Outfit: Back from the Brink Wire Wars Part Three: Scandals and Investigations 10 Playing Politics II: The Truman Connection 11 The Parole Scandal 12 “Senator Cow Fever” Hits Chicago Part Four: Vegas (The New Booze III) 13 Cohibas and Carpet Joints 14 The Frenzied Fifties Part Five: The G 15 The Game’s Afoot: The G Gets Involved 16 Courted by Old Joe Kennedy: The Outfit Arrives 17 The Pinnacle of Power 18 The Kennedy Double Cross: The Beginning of the End Part Six: The Party’s Over 19 The Outfit in Decline 20 Endgames Epilogue Afterword: The Outfit, and Organized Crime, in Perspective Appendix: The Outfit and Gambling Sources Acknowledgments Introduction In the New Cabaret Artistes, an illegal strip joint in Liverpool, a buxom stripper named Janice gyrated to the rhythms of twenty-year-old John Lennon and his even younger mates, Paul McCartney and George Harrison In Cuba, youthful new prime minister Fidel Castro nationalized the formerly American-owned oil refineries Meanwhile, the first ten U.S.-supported volunteers arrived at a secret Panama Canal Zone facility to begin training to retake their Cuban homeland back from Castro The results of these and other events would be well documented in history books yet to be written But the momentous conference under way in the mansion at 915 Franklin Avenue would, by mutual decree of the participants, never be chronicled It was June 1960, and in far-removed corners of the world unseen events were unfolding that would define a revolutionary era to follow In fact, multiple revolutions - cultural, political, and sociological - were in their embryonic stages This was the interregnum - the transition between the misnamed “happy days” of the Eisenhower years, and the terrifying brinksmanship of the Cold War sixties The palatial estates on Franklin, in the tony Chicago suburb of River Forest, were the setting on this otherwise unexceptional Thursday evening Lawns were being tended by caretakers; Mercedes sedans were having their wax jobs refined Young couples ambled off to the movies, perhaps to see Spartacus, or Psycho The typical residents, stockbrokers, lawyers, and the like, were going about their lives In a much different manner, an atypical neighborhood denizen, a son of Sicilian immigrants named Antonino Leonardo Accardo, was also going about business as usual; with his lifelong friend Murray Humphreys and two other associates, he would, after a sumptuous lasagna dinner, decide who would become the next president of the United States For decades, these Thursday-night meetings were convened at the manse owned by “Joe” Accardo, as he was known to friends Decisions made at these soirees ran the gamut: from who to “whack” for an indiscretion; to which national labor union to take over this week; to whether they should answer the White House‘s call to murder Castro; to the creation of a gambling paradise in the Nevada desert; or, as in this case, to go along with Joe Kennedy‘s request to guarantee his son Jack‘s “appointment” to the U.S presidency The participants prided themselves on the relatively obscure manner in which they were able conduct their business “We start appearing on the front page and it’s all over,” one was heard to say The phrase became a mantra of sorts Of course this enterprise was known, especially to law enforcement agents, but was so smoothly run that proof of the organizational links were unobtainable at least for the first fifty years or so The colleagues in question were, in fact, the heirs apparent to the empire of bootlegging kingpin Scarface Al Capone Capone’s downfall in 1931 provided an important lesson for the AccardoHumphreys generation: exaggerated violence and a high media profile were the kiss of death and were to be avoided at all costs Hundreds of millions were at stake, an amount not worth gambling for the luxury of being seen with movie stars That was for amateurs Be assured, this was not “The Mafia” of the East Coast gangsters, laden with elaborate ritual and internecine rivalry; nor was it “La Cosa Nostra” as described by Joe Valachi when he sang to the feds This band of brothers had shed the more objectionable traits of “Big Al’s” 1925-31 “Syndicate.” The new regime’s capos shared as much commonality with Capone as modern man does with Cro-Magnon cave dwellers Perhaps as a nod to their enlightened, modernized dominion, a new name quickly emerged for the Chicago crime organization: The Outfit Prologue: Origins “Booze" “What hath God wrought?” Although the query posed by Samuel Morse related to the unforeseeable consequences of his “Morse code” telegraphic breakthrough, it could just as easily have been directed at the topic of the religious pilgrimage to America For it was a God-fearing Pilgrim sect called the Puritans who inadvertently set the wheels in motion for a vast criminal reign that would rule the New World two centuries hence Espousing a dogmatic, Bible-ruling theocracy, these seventeenth-century settlers to colonial America set the stage for a hedonistic backlash that reverberates to this day Their humanity-denying canon in fact helped contribute the most unsightly fabric to the patchwork of the soon-to-be-named United States of America The “law of unintended consequences” was never more aptly applied The late-nineteenth-century immigration wave deposited an assemblage of new citizens on America’s shores, many from places far less “enlightened” than the England of Oliver Cromwell These recent emigres quickly sussed out that their forerunners were enduring a lifestyle of denial and joyless deprivation Arriving from Ireland, Sicily, or Wales, the newcomers were more than happy to prosper by supplying a few creature comforts From gambling to girls, they were the providers, while the corrupt authorities looked the other way By the early twentieth-century the shadow economy was already savoring a bull market when an ill-conceived constitutional amendment to ban beer and alcohol created a quick and easy route to extravagant wealth This disastrous federal legislation, which had been percolating for over a century, was the last stand for the Puritan dream of a theocracy But the insanity of a national ban on beer and alcohol had a perverse effect: instead of installing God’s will in government, it bestowed on Chicago’s gangs a foothold on America’s infrastructure And the gangsters in Chicago who would call themselves the Outfit have cherished their gift ever since Prohibition: From a Bad Idea to a National Nightmare Although Puritanical codes forbade drunkenness, they did not exclude mild drinking, especially in the form of beer In fact, the Mayflower’s ship’s log notes that the reason for the landing at Plymouth Rock was the need to restock their dwindling beer supplies, making America’s first permanent colony nothing more than a “beer run.” Beer was one thing, but hard liquor was something else again, for alcohol was seen to lead inevitably to rowdiness and lewd behavior Introduced in London around 1720, cheap gin had additionally created an epidemic of addicts In “the colonies,” temperance societies sprang up in a futile attempt to keep the plague at bay in the New World The rising tide of hard liquor in America was, however, inexorable Nowhere was this plague expressed more vividly than among the tribes of the Native American “Indians,” who happily exchanged fur pelts for liquor The effects left entire tribes decimated By the 1820s, there were thousands of temperance societies, spearheaded from the pulpit by still more thousands of Protestant clergy But no group raised the temperance banner higher than the nation’s distaff side It was, after all, the women who had to deal with the effects liquor had on their saloon-frequenting husbands Thus, in 1874, seizing the forefront of the antibooze movement, these crusading women formed the national Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) ... to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Russo, Gus, 194 9The Outfit : the role of Chicago’s underworld in the shaping of. .. and the CIA The Outfit The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America Gus Russo BLOOMSBURY Copyright © 2001 by Gus Russo All rights reserved No part of this book may be used... The Outfit Arrives 17 The Pinnacle of Power 18 The Kennedy Double Cross: The Beginning of the End Part Six: The Party’s Over 19 The Outfit in Decline 20 Endgames Epilogue Afterword: The Outfit,