The Strength of the Wolf by Douglas Valentine Read Free Book Online Page A

22
    Luciano was cut so badly he acquired a permanent droop to his right eyelid; but he remained true to the Mafia code of omerta (a word derived either from the Sicilian
umirta
, for humility, or the Spanish
hombre
, to be a man) and revealed nothing. By the time the story got around town, he had also acquired the nickname “Lucky” and the abiding respect of the upper underworld. He also acquired a seething Sicilian hatred for federal narcotic agents in general, and for Anslinger in particular, whom he mockingly referred to as “Asslicker.” It was the start of a very bitter rivalry that would help define the course of FBN history.
    Shortly after his run-in with the federal narcotic agents, Luciano retired the old Mafia dons, established New York’s five crime families, made peace overtures to his rival crime lords in Chicago, and formed a national commission of Mafia bosses, with himself as chief executive officer, Lansky as chief financial officer and liaison to a worldwide network of Jewish gangsters, and respectable Frank Costello as prime minister and liaison to the Establishment. The Commission settled disputes and regulated four industrial-sized rackets: labor racketeering, gambling, prostitution, and a drug importation and distribution syndicate which, according to Anslinger, had its own legal staff and sales force. Under general manager Nicola “Nick” Gentile (a member of the Mangano family), this Mafia drug syndicate would secure a monopoly (originally established by Jewish gangs) over interstate distribution, and by the late 1930s was the focus of the FBN’s attention. 23
    Incredibly, Luciano’s reign as the
capo di tutti capi
(boss of bosses) did not end in 1936, when New York State’s special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey – using wiretaps placed in Luciano’s bordellos, the perjured testimony of three addict prostitutes, and the testimony of Mafia turncoat Joe Basile, an informant for FBN agent J. Ray Olivera – convicted Luciano on sixty-two counts of compulsory prostitution. Luciano received a thirty-to-fifty-year prison sentence, but maintained his status as boss of bosses even behind bars. Lansky eluded the long arm of the law altogether, and the Mafia’s drug syndicate survived, as did the Luciano family under the leadership of politically astute Frank Costello. With its managers still inplace, the Mafia would ironically in 1942 become one of America’s most undesirable allies.
    This development was a terrible blow to Harry Anslinger. He hadn’t been to the right schools, and he didn’t speak with the right accent, but he did understand the meaning of power, privilege, and place. Standing erect with his head held high, he was the image of strength and sobriety. He owned a home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and he resided at the exclusive Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. His circle of friends included judges, bankers, diplomats, and affluent executives who liked to hunt bear and elk in Canada, or deer and pheasant on their country estates. He was not the type of man to suffer underlings, let alone mobsters.
    Indeed, few FBN agents ever met the Commissioner; and if they did, it was while serving as his chauffeur when he was in town courting police chiefs or politicians. Anslinger only discussed Bureau matters with his deputies, never with agents. When he did receive an agent, he was reserved and soft-spoken, but direct and to the point. “If you got a ‘well done’ from him,” Agent Howard Chappell recalls, “it was like getting a citation from someone else.” There were only a few agents Anslinger considered equals. Charlie Dyar was a close friend, as was Ralph Oyler. Both, like Anslinger, were married to money and when necessary, flamboyant enough to bring the Bureau favorable reviews.
    Most everyone in Anslinger’s inner circle came from the Old PU, and when he became Commissioner he took these men into the FBN