Vic Socotra

06 July 2008

Deal with the Devil

Charles “Lucky” Luciano enjoys a beer in Italy, after the War

I got tagged with a proposal and will have to work this morning. I was going to generate a story along the lines of "Deal with the Devil," and it may yet come about the alliance of Naval Intelligence and the mob. The next step is to talk about what happened after the Normandie burned. That is all real enough, and we are on solid ground.

I have been able to find nothing definitive that conclusively indicates the Luciano gang torched the Normandie- one of the great disasters of the war, since it occurred between 57th St. and 48th in New York, and the smoke and soot of the fire covered Mid-town Manhattan. The Castle Newsreel footage, and the air of disaster, are still palpable nearly sixty years later. You can watch it on YouTube, if you use the search word Normandie, and there is bonus material on how luxurious that magnificent Gallic Liner was before the conversion to troop-ship began.

The official investigators may have glossed over things- Clement Derrick, whose torch was blamed for it- could have been told to set the fire. You did not question the edicts of Tough Tony Anastasia, or the suggestions of Frank Costello, the Luciano associates whose portfolios included the Longshoremen's International, and the associated waterfront support activities.

The division of labor and turf was the Lucky's great legacy. It is said in some accounts that he owed his success as much to the methods of Prince-Waterhouse as Smith & Wesson, but it was the age when business "best practice" was becoming the watchword in the legit world, and he simply applied it to the wild west of criminal activity.

Things were disordered enough that no one could tell the difference, and the braggadocio from the mobsters in later years, when liberty had been secured and malicious credit for an ordinary industrial accident burnished a reputation for ruthless efficiency and cleverness.

At the at point it did not matter- the deal had been struck. Oh, Tom Dewey stewed over the deal, and the fact that political opponents in the New York and Washington legislatures accused him of taking a bribe to deport Lucky Luciano.

The only complete investigation that remains was commissioned by him as Governor of New York, the State investigating the Feds, and Judge Herland talked to everyone. Over two thousand pages of interviews with hundreds of Naval officers and mobsters was collected that definitively proved the mob was useful to the war effort- and of course, mostly to themselves.

RADM Espe, DNI 1952-56, managed to convince Dewey not to release the report, and all the interviews and depositions were sealed until 1976. Maybe it was because Dewey was a patriot, and the news could only tarnish the Navy's good name, and maybe it was because his Presidential aspirations were done anyway.

I will not try to pull the string on the uneasy relationship between the bad guys and the good guys. Lucky clearly was ecumenical in his approach to continuing business even after his deportation in 1946. The terms of his release stated that he would not set foot on US soil again, and yet eight months after his release, he was in Havana, intending to set up the Vegas of our current day just south of the Florida Keys.

Bugsy Siegle was in hot water with the East Coast establishment over his failure to turn an instant profit in the barren Nevada Desert, and he paid for his lack of immediate success with his life. Now he looks like a visionary. Then, The Boys thought he was a cheating shmuck.

Lucky made a profitable start at establishing a gambling Mecca in Cuba, at least until good rivals leaked word of his presence to the Feds, who applied pressure to get him extradited. He chose to return to Italy, even as his former associates lost their investments to the Communists. There his connections between the crazy Corsicans, who had magnified their influence through the suppression of the Communists on the Marseilles waterfront, and his continued influence in New York made a natural connection to the transshipment of heroin- the trade link that corrupted the NYPD and produced the French Connection.

The evidence room produced a steady income for the cops for years after, despite the efforts of Popeye Doyle and Detective Frank Serpico.

There is a tantalizing connection to what Lucky was up to in Europe. The Navy was the only service that brought greenbacks into conquered Europe; the rest of the vast military establishment was still paid in MPC, and the real source of greenbacks was in the gray hulls of the fleet.

It don’t know any of that for a fact, and there are too many layers of denial to penetrate. We know definitively that the DNI was trying to cooperate as little as possible with the Herlands investigation about what had happened only adecade before.

Naval Intelligence fades from the story thereafter, or at least that is the official version of the story. I have commentary from senior officials in the Department from the 1970s who knew nothing about it, and I have no reason to think there is a special sealed drawer in the Pentagon that holds the crown jewel secrets of their offices. Whatever might have existed was shredded long ago, except for the Herlands report that languished in the official papers of Governor Dewey.

Of course, they served on this side of the mad sixties, and the wild speculation that still swirls around what the gangsters were doing with the CIA to their nemesis Castro and their bad blood with AG Bobby Kennedy and Camelot in general is way too strange a land for an amateur and skeptic like me to wander into.

I know that in 1976, the year the Tall Ships came to New York City, and the Third Naval District was disestablished, the Mob told one of our mutual friends that they would provide the same services for the bicenntenial that they did during World War Two- and crime came to a halt during the festivities.

It is a curious story, wouldn't you agree? I don’t accuse or blame anyone for doing what they had to do. Sometimes you have to deal with the Devil, and in 1942, even Churchill said he would put in a good word for him in Parliament, if he helped against Hitler.

Close Window