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F
orget the shifty-eyed charac–
ters with wide-brimmed hats
and zoot suits. Brass knuckles
and pistol whippings are now passé.
Chances are you could pass by a
mobster in the street and never
know the difference.
The men of the mob have gone
" legit." You're just as likely to find
them in the executive suite as on the
waterfront.
Unfortunately, most Americans
tend to think of crime in terms of
overt and obvious crime. They
hardly stop to realize that sorne of
the most seemingly straight activi–
ties when run by the mob are just as
criminal as the gangland beatings,
extortion, drug pushing, and prosti–
tution that have been traditional
bastions of mob-controlled power.
CuHing Through the Fog
of Popular Misconceptions
S
~
Starting with Prohibition and news-
~
making events like the St. Valen–
{'!.
tine's Day Massacre, through the
1>
~
Murder Incorporated trials of the
l!!
forties, the Kefauver hearings on
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TV in the early 1ifties, Joseph Va–
ORGANIZED
CRIME:
THEFRAUDIN
YOURFUTURE
by
Linda Martens
and
George Ritter
For years we associated the mob with violent ethnic groups,
machine-gun massacres, illegal rum runners and concrete-lined
coffins. But in the last few years the mob has grown up. Organized
crime in America has undergone a radical transformation since the
raucous days ofProhibition. Today many a mobster easily passes for
the average man in the street. No longer is syndicated crime the
relatively simple matterofcopsandrobbers it once was. As this article
will show, the mob has managed to "civilize itself' and has now
become highly interwoven into the very fabric ofour society.
30
lachi's gruesome revelations in the·
sixties, and the spate of Mafia
books and films which have poured
forth in recent years, the story has
been the same: sensational head–
lines for a few weeks and then the
subject fades out of public con–
sciousness. With such sporadic and
often highly dramatized coverage,
it is not surprising that many
people tend to accuse the press of
exaggeration for the sake of eye–
catching headlines.
Others refuse to believe an orga–
nized group of criminals exists be–
cause they feel that conspiracy
theories are too simplistic and serve
as a scapegoat for the ills of society.
They place anyone who writes
about organized crime in the same
category as flying-saucer fanatics
and Communist-conspiracy zealots.
Many people are skeptical be–
cause of the general belief that a
crime is the result of individual mal–
adjustment- something done in the
heat of passion by a basically un–
stable person.
It
is often hard to
accept the concept that people join
together deliberately and calcu-
The
PLAIN TRUTH September 1978