Boston Gang Wars: The FBI and the Mafia

The word around Boston among the Mafia was that the FBI wanted to protect the Irish so the FBI could go after the Mafia. The FBI did go after the Mafia rather than the Irish. The FBI pursued the Mafia because of one reason: the Mafia embarrassed its leader J. Edgar Hoover.

For many years as the Mafia grew and prospered while the FBI acted as if it was not there. Head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had shut his eyes to its existence. He adamantly denied the Mafia existed.

Some suggested Hoover feared that if he went after the Mafia, the Mafia would corrupt his agents. Others said it was because the Mafia helped the government in World War II by keeping the New York docks operating and assisting during the invasion of Sicily, Hoover felt an obligation to the Mafia. Still others connected him with some Mafia figures who influenced his thinking.

I suggest the real reason is he did not see it as a threat to the American system of government. He was more concerned about the Reds or Blacks. He saw his job as protecting America from an overthrow by those opposed to the capitalistic system.

Hoover declared that there was no nationwide criminal organization. His stance was questioned but he stubbornly stuck to it.

His stance on the Mafia would change suddenly. The Mafia was about to stick its finger in his eye.

A dispute among the New York Mafia families was ongoing. The New York Mafia was made up of families, known as the Commision.  The Commission controlled the Mafia’s business throughout the United States.   The bosses of each family were vying for power. On October 25, 1957, the power struggle among the families was brutally thrust into public notice when one of the bosses, Albert Anastasia, was murdered as he sat in a barber’s chair in the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan. Anastasia was known as the “Mad Hatter” or the “Lord High Executioner.”

Anastasia was the leading figure in Murder, Inc. which enforced the Commission’s business by murdering others. Murder, Inc. was said to be responsible for between 400 and 800 murders. After Anastasia’s murder, bringing peace to the war was paramount. The families knew that peace would only come if one person was named as boss of the bosses.

Vito Genovese hoped to assume that role. To bring it about, he called for a meeting of all the Mafia leaders in the United States.  This was to happen twenty days after Anastasia’s death on Thursday, November 14, 1957.   Over one hundred top members of the Mafia from the U.S. met at the estate of Joseph “the Barber ” Barbara.

The meeting became known as the Apalachin meeting for its location in Apalachin, New York a town of a little more than two hundred people.  As ill luck for the Mafia would have it, New York State Police Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell had been in the habit of snooping around Barbara’s location as he did his patrols. He picked up the news that Barbara ordered a huge number of steaks and reserved an unusually large number of hotel rooms shortly before the November date.

Believing some ill-conceived event was afoot, Croswell rounded up other law enforcement agents. They conducted a raid on Barbara’s home. Over 60 Mafia leaders were arrested while others successfully fled. Sergeant Crosswell said: “They are the hierarchy of the eastern seaboard criminal world, with others from across the country and the Caribbean thrown in.”  The New York Daily News headline shouted out in bold black letters: “Seize 62 Mafia  Chieftans In Upstate Raid.”

 

The arrests of the Mafia bosses changed everything for Hoover.  The one thing J. Edgar Hoover could not stand was being embarrassed. The arrest embarrassed him and the FBI.  He was faced with media questions about his denial of the Mafia’s existence as well as many questions asking why the FBI had done nothing about it.

To save his face, the face of his treasured organization and to send a message that he was not to be embarrassed, Hoover immediately set out to bring about the Mafia’s demise. The end of the Mafia became the FBI’s number one goal. Hoover pursued Italians and the Mafia not because he or the FBI preferred the Irish; nor was it because United States Attorney General Bobby Kennedy demanded that he do it; Hoover relentlessly pursued the Mafia because the Italians embarrassed him.

The war against the Mafia started slowly. Hoover initially sought to find out how much information his many offices throughout the country had on the Mafia. He found out that his offices and the FBI hardly had any information. Hoover then started pushing for more action. Hoover’s push for information would lead to widespread electronic surveillance in the early 1960s. But, while the FBI concentrated on the Mafia, it lost sight of the other local gangster groups.