Latest / Ridiculous History / The US Navy Teamed Up With Mobsters, Part One: Luciano Gets Lucky

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The US Navy Teamed Up With Mobsters, Part One: Luciano Gets Lucky · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
0:30
Speaker 1: as always for tuning in. Congratulations, welcome to three. No,
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Speaker 1: you did it, you got the best? Oh hey yeah, hey,
0:42
Speaker 1: can you get sued for saying you have a dab
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Speaker 1: a dude? No? No, no, it's not trademarked in some
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Speaker 1: unscrupulous way. It's uh you. I think it would depend
0:52
Speaker 1: on how you did it, Like if it was yabadabadude
0:56
Speaker 1: with the Flintstones theme behind it, Max superproducer Max, let's
1:02
Speaker 1: give it up for him. Yeah, I know it's tempting
1:05
Speaker 1: that Yeah, but we we I mean, it's got to
1:08
Speaker 1: be public domain by it. Now, maybe I mean it
1:11
Speaker 1: gets re opted. I'm sure that one. You just have
1:13
Speaker 1: to make something that's basically the flint Stones but a
1:16
Speaker 1: little different, like family guy. You know, totally remember Scooby
1:20
Speaker 1: Doo does Scooby Dooby Doo, which is very adjacent to
1:24
Speaker 1: Yabadabad But that's also in the hand of Barbara universe still,
1:27
Speaker 1: so they're allowed to steal from themselves. What's this got
1:30
Speaker 1: to do with anything? Nothing? We could. Rabbi hab A,
1:34
Speaker 1: Rabbi hab A who if anyone can do it, and
1:38
Speaker 1: it's the master of transitions, of of non sequit or transition.
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Speaker 1: Let's see, let'slet's see what you got. Oh man, we
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Speaker 1: go from Yabadaba Dude to two Gangster's Paradise. First off,
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Speaker 1: wonderful song. Uh yeah, this is this is something that's
1:53
Speaker 1: been on our minds for a while. As you know, folks,
1:55
Speaker 1: we took Noel and Max and I took some time
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Speaker 1: a little u are in our little ridiculous romance, I
2:02
Speaker 1: think he called it and all. Uh, and we hope
2:04
Speaker 1: you had a wonderful, wonderful end of the year as well.
2:08
Speaker 1: Even though calendars are relatively arbitrary, it's fun to have things. Yeah,
2:13
Speaker 1: we did, we did, indeed. And uh. And so when
2:16
Speaker 1: we're talking about flynt Stone's we're talking about uh, Hannah,
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Speaker 1: Barbara and unineteen. What I love that you pointed out,
2:24
Speaker 1: all is that Scooby Doo is indeed in the same universe.
2:28
Speaker 1: And in my mind, that makes them strange bed fellows.
2:32
Speaker 1: Right in my mind is I know, I know, whatever
2:35
Speaker 1: we're kicking off the rust in my mind, this makes
2:37
Speaker 1: them strange bedfellows. And when we think of strange bedfellows, uh,
2:41
Speaker 1: there's almost no better example in American history than this
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Speaker 1: very weird story. We've got a lot of people to thank. No,
2:48
Speaker 1: you were telling me there we should thank Boardwalk Empire. Yeah,
2:53
Speaker 1: Steve Shemi and his weird eyes that are really fun
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Speaker 1: to superimpose on the Disney processes. Google, you be delighted,
3:01
Speaker 1: slash terrified. But yeah, I mean, you know, Boardwick Empire.
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Speaker 1: Um sort of. I guess it was a hit. Did
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Speaker 1: did see itself out to its conclusion, but I felt
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Speaker 1: like it wasn't like Sopranos level in terms of the
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Speaker 1: way it impacted like the Zeke guys, But I very
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Speaker 1: much liked it. I think they fudged some history here
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Speaker 1: and there, but they largely, you know, hit the broad
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Speaker 1: strokes in terms of folks like Lucky Luciano and uh,
3:25
Speaker 1: you know al Capone and you know, sort of like
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Speaker 1: origin stories of a lot of these largely looming mafio
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Speaker 1: so figures you know, in history. But what it didn't
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Speaker 1: really go into was a connection between the US military, uh,
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Speaker 1: fascism and said largely looming gangster figures. Yeah. Now it
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Speaker 1: might sound like we got together before we recorded and
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Speaker 1: just pulled three ideas out of a hat, like you said,
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Speaker 1: do do that sometimes we we have done that, and
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Speaker 1: it's actually worked. We're not going to tell you which
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Speaker 1: ones though, you'll have to guess. Uh. But I love
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Speaker 1: I love the set up here because you know, when
4:05
Speaker 1: you think of Uncle Sam right according to history textbooks,
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Speaker 1: and you think of organized crime, you see them as
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Speaker 1: two opposed forces. But as we've learned in ridiculous history
4:16
Speaker 1: and and stuff, they don't want you to know, that's
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Speaker 1: not always the case. Now. Fascism, nowadays, fascism is pretty
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Speaker 1: much universally acknowledged to be a bad thing. Fascism bad.
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Speaker 1: Democracy good on paper, you know what I mean, better
4:34
Speaker 1: than fascism. That should be the tagline for democracy. It's
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Speaker 1: better than the fascist democracy, not great, but better than fascist.
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Speaker 1: Who was it, I can't remember who it was. You said,
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Speaker 1: um that democracy was the something like the least worst
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Speaker 1: way to run a government. Yeah, big fan of saying
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Speaker 1: things like the most best or the least worst. But um, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I mean it's true. And you know, even uh folks,
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Speaker 1: well you know, I mean a lot of these Italian
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Speaker 1: American immigrants who kind of created or sowed the seeds
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Speaker 1: of what would become la Cosa nostra in America. Um,
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Speaker 1: they you know, Italy was under a fascist regime, you know,
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Speaker 1: under under Mussolini, and so they didn't care for that
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Speaker 1: as a as a political direction either, you know, because
5:27
Speaker 1: they've seen what it could cause, or even you know,
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Speaker 1: maybe their folks back home were subject to it. Yeah, yeah,
5:33
Speaker 1: and look are there good guys in today's story? Sort of?
5:38
Speaker 1: But this is a media and this is a two parter.
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Speaker 1: We wanted to open the year with a dunk dunk dun.
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Speaker 1: That's why we got two bells. So, yes, yes, it's
5:50
Speaker 1: a Christmas present by the way, from friend of the
5:52
Speaker 1: show of Rowan Nuby, Yes, who appeared on our Idiomatic
5:56
Speaker 1: for the People's Series. We've got to get him in
5:59
Speaker 1: our pal Frank back on. So we're gonna have more guests,
6:06
Speaker 1: but right now it's just the four of us, Noel,
6:08
Speaker 1: Max yours truly and you listening along at home to
6:13
Speaker 1: learn a very weird story. All right, So why why
6:16
Speaker 1: do we say they're not necessarily good guys in this? Well,
6:22
Speaker 1: the US government during World War Two got even more
6:26
Speaker 1: into institutionalized racism. And they did it not because they
6:32
Speaker 1: just woke up and said, hey, let's be jerks. They
6:35
Speaker 1: did it because they were terrified the Access Powers had
6:38
Speaker 1: brought chaos across the world, and so the US government
6:43
Speaker 1: started saying, well, what about all the citizens of our
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Speaker 1: country who have heritage in Japan or Italy or Germany?
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Speaker 1: How American are they? Can we trust them? And as
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Speaker 1: a result, they started doing some really terrible things to
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Speaker 1: these innocent people. Yeah, I mean, unless they forget that,
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Speaker 1: like a big selling point of America is this whole
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Speaker 1: melting pots, you know, ideology like send us your poared,
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Speaker 1: you're tired, you're hungry, and all that, unless you know
7:11
Speaker 1: their potential turn coats from from an enemy state like Japan,
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Speaker 1: Germany or Italy. They were worried that because of where
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Speaker 1: their sympathies might lie, um, that they could potentially be
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Speaker 1: a rot from within, you know, they could actually cause problems,
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Speaker 1: uh for the United States, um from from the ground,
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Speaker 1: you know, or like PA perhaps participate in plotting and
7:39
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And certainly we know
7:42
Speaker 1: things like that do happen, but it's almost always on
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Speaker 1: a pretty small, lone wolfie individualistic kind of scale. Correct
7:50
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong here, Ben, I'm wondering what your
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Speaker 1: thoughts are ye, if this was an overblown concern. Yeah,
7:55
Speaker 1: the idea too was that it was it was rooted
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Speaker 1: in the assumption that these people, because of their because
8:03
Speaker 1: of their heritage, would somehow be un American, even if
8:07
Speaker 1: you know their grandparents were the folks who immigrated and
8:11
Speaker 1: they knew nothing but like the Bronx, you know, or Manhattan.
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Speaker 1: So this all starts. I I do agree with you. Um,
8:19
Speaker 1: they are worried about domestic terrorism, but they're kind of
8:21
Speaker 1: attributing a larger conspiracy to something without proof because they're
8:26
Speaker 1: based in a racism. Anyway, it all hits the fan
8:29
Speaker 1: in ninety two or that's when the spark is lit.
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Speaker 1: There's a U. S. Troop carrier ship which is originally
8:37
Speaker 1: called the S S. Normandy and it had been renamed
8:40
Speaker 1: the U S S Lafayette. It catches fire and sinks
8:44
Speaker 1: in the harbor in Manhattan, and the authorities believe this
8:50
Speaker 1: may be sabotage, This may be the work of a sabotea,
8:53
Speaker 1: a domestic terrorist. And so so the government says, you
8:58
Speaker 1: know who, we got to check out those doc workers,
9:02
Speaker 1: and then some other guy goes, yeah, hey, a lot
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Speaker 1: of them are Italian aren't they. So they started investigating,
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Speaker 1: and they came up with bub Kiss and they said, okay,
9:12
Speaker 1: we need some experts on the ground here, We need
9:15
Speaker 1: some we need some folks who understand the lay of
9:18
Speaker 1: the land. And again, because of their prejudice, they immediately
9:22
Speaker 1: went to not like an Italian American civic or community center. No,
9:27
Speaker 1: they went to the mob. And that's why Lucky Luciano
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Speaker 1: was a big star today's show. That's right. Um Luciano
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Speaker 1: had immigrated to the United States UM and settled on
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Speaker 1: the Lower East Side of New York City, Manhattan, UM
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Speaker 1: at the age of ten uh, and very very early
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Speaker 1: on became a member of the notorious Five Points gang UM, which,
9:51
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, is like that's the the I
9:55
Speaker 1: guess escalation or I mean, I guess it would have
9:57
Speaker 1: been exactly the same time as the Gangs of New
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Speaker 1: the scors Casey picture where they were in the nice
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Speaker 1: stovepipe hats. That would have been like the earliest iteration
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Speaker 1: of that mob or that that gang UM this you know,
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Speaker 1: I guess if he was born yeah, in the twelve
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Speaker 1: I don't know that was like in the eight like
10:15
Speaker 1: early like late eighteen hundreds, I want to say, yeah,
10:18
Speaker 1: the you're right. Yeah, the Five Points Gang originally started
10:22
Speaker 1: off with Irish American members and it was in the
10:27
Speaker 1: late nineteenth centuries, so late eighteen hundreds nailed it. So no,
10:31
Speaker 1: So maybe as a child it would have been Yeah,
10:35
Speaker 1: that lines up, doesn't it. Yeah, he might have had
10:37
Speaker 1: himself a sovepipe hat, you know, and been rolling deep
10:41
Speaker 1: with Daniel day Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio type fellas, and uh,
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Speaker 1: you know, if I'm picturing a ten year old with
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Speaker 1: a stovepipe hat, I'm I'm picturing an animal crossing character.
10:54
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be honest with you. He probably you're
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Speaker 1: picturing that. It sounds delightful. Uh, sot if I've had
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Speaker 1: just kind of makes everything seeming It's like hard to
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Speaker 1: take a guy seriously wearing a skinny stovepipe hat. But
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Speaker 1: I think that's sort of what the the goal is.
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Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you underestimate me and then boom,
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Speaker 1: you get knifed. Yeah, maybe there's a practical thing. I mean,
11:13
Speaker 1: think of the potential storage space anyway. Uh, we're pretty
11:16
Speaker 1: sure that Luciano joins the gang, not because he's into
11:21
Speaker 1: the esthetics or the habitashary. But more so, like many
11:26
Speaker 1: young people, there aren't a lot of alternatives. Right, there's
11:29
Speaker 1: a lot of discrimination in the community. And this stuff
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Speaker 1: still happens and leads to the formation of gangs in
11:35
Speaker 1: the US and abroad today. Big things were happening in
11:40
Speaker 1: the country at this time. Prohibition starts right the time
11:46
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show multiple times. It's back
11:48
Speaker 1: when um uncle Sam had the cartoonishly daft idea to
11:55
Speaker 1: make booze illegal. Uh. And then you know they paved
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Speaker 1: the way for unprecedented profits in organized crime. And you
12:06
Speaker 1: know the government wasn't on it too anyway. So this
12:09
Speaker 1: Proula Bishop was an active buffoonery, as well intentioned as
12:12
Speaker 1: it might be. Uh, it was pretty much doomed to fail.
12:15
Speaker 1: And this was a great time to be an organized crime. Right.
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Speaker 1: You've got a brand new income stream. The money is
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Speaker 1: rolling in, and Luciano in is recruited as a gunman
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Speaker 1: by Giuseppe mess Aria, otherwise known as Joe the Boss.
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Speaker 1: M hmm. That's an awkward nickname, though, isn't Joe the Boss. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: As as you would say, Ben in a burst of creativity,
12:42
Speaker 1: it's a pretty self serving nickname. Wouldn't be surprised if
12:46
Speaker 1: he had something to do with giving it. Oh, he's
12:49
Speaker 1: just going around speakeasy's going. You know a lot of
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Speaker 1: people call me Joe the Boss, call me Joe the Boss.
12:54
Speaker 1: I'll tell you was because I'm the boss. Oh that's
12:57
Speaker 1: sad making your own nickname. Yeah. Um, but then so
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Speaker 1: we we well, you know, let's be fair, Joe the
13:03
Speaker 1: Boss is not exactly top tier right mafia history. You know, Fodder,
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Speaker 1: I've never heard of Joe the Boss of you Max. Oh,
13:12
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I've never heard of. But I do want
13:14
Speaker 1: to make a shout out to one of my friends,
13:16
Speaker 1: my friend Greg. He is known for his many attempts
13:20
Speaker 1: of trying to give himself a nickname. And it's a move.
13:24
Speaker 1: I'll give you that. And he's really come to your credit. So, like,
13:27
Speaker 1: you know, there was one time he's hanging out with
13:28
Speaker 1: me and my friend Phil and he's like, call me
13:31
Speaker 1: Cougar and they'll call me a mountain line. It's like, well, man,
13:33
Speaker 1: it sounds like you want to be called a cat,
13:34
Speaker 1: so let's give be a cat name, like Mr Fussy. Pause.
13:38
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, with those nicknames. The rules work. Um,
13:43
Speaker 1: the rules were counterintuitively in the criminal underground, Like if
13:48
Speaker 1: you were ever unfortunate enough to be incarcerated, then you
13:52
Speaker 1: need to know that the person with the most innocuous
13:54
Speaker 1: sounding nickname is the most dangerous. There's some guy called
13:57
Speaker 1: snake Bite might be a cool dude, you need to
14:00
Speaker 1: watch out for the guy named Smurf. Don't talk to him,
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Speaker 1: sneak By. It's a big old, cuddly sweetie, cold blooded,
14:08
Speaker 1: dead eyed killer. Uh. Or you know, sometimes the ones
14:12
Speaker 1: you really have to look out for are the ones
14:14
Speaker 1: that would never get blood on their hands or, as
14:16
Speaker 1: they say in rap, never touched dope. Like Arnold Rothstein
14:20
Speaker 1: played wonderfully one of my favorite performances in the whole
14:23
Speaker 1: series in Boardwalk Empire by Michael Stolberg, Um, who we
14:27
Speaker 1: know from a serious man and uh, he's also in
14:30
Speaker 1: that new movie Bones at All, which looks looks really interesting.
14:33
Speaker 1: I am interested in it. But Rothstein was incredibly key
14:39
Speaker 1: figure in the early days of organized crime in the
14:42
Speaker 1: United States. Um. And you know again just like running
14:45
Speaker 1: all the the the grifts, you know, and really kind
14:49
Speaker 1: of writing the rule book for how organized crime would
14:53
Speaker 1: really play out, and like you know how the mafia
14:56
Speaker 1: would essentially, um, you know, just create constant revenue streams
15:00
Speaker 1: various sources. And he worked with Luciana, who was making
15:04
Speaker 1: millions in the mid nineteen twenties bootlegging. Like you said,
15:08
Speaker 1: then because of that genius idea, uncle Sam, how let's
15:11
Speaker 1: make everything illegal. Everyone will just take it right, nobody,
15:15
Speaker 1: They'll be fine. No, Instead, they opened up the black
15:18
Speaker 1: market in a very very real way. So um. Rothstein, though,
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Speaker 1: was in fact murdered, which opened up a big old
15:26
Speaker 1: vacancy in the in the crime world, which Luciano happily filled. Yes, yeah, Rothstein.
15:31
Speaker 1: By the way, his nickname was the brain, uh and
15:35
Speaker 1: he actually was from a pretty well to do family.
15:38
Speaker 1: His older brother, who he always resented, became a rabbi,
15:42
Speaker 1: so that was he was the like favorite child anyway. Yes,
15:45
Speaker 1: you nailed it. It's you live by the crime, you
15:48
Speaker 1: die by the crime. So goes Rothstein off stage, and
15:53
Speaker 1: Luciano returns to work for Joe the Boss, who was
15:57
Speaker 1: really the one filling the gap. Really mean, Luciana was
15:59
Speaker 1: still sort of more of a trigger man. He wasn't
16:02
Speaker 1: really you know, yeah exactly, And by this time our
16:07
Speaker 1: buddy our by buddy Joe. I'm just laughing because so
16:11
Speaker 1: it's just cartoonish. Uh. He has promoted himself in the
16:16
Speaker 1: nickname game, and now he's walking around saying, you know
16:19
Speaker 1: a lot of people call me Boss of Bosses. Yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say this. He definitely got an honorable mention
16:27
Speaker 1: and a creative writing class. Yeah, he got fair enough,
16:31
Speaker 1: fair boss of that's like, you know, that's like some
16:34
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ kind of stuff, you know, like King of Kings,
16:37
Speaker 1: Lord of Lords and all that stuff. Um, boss of bosses,
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Speaker 1: Boss of bosses. Yeah, exactly, I'm I'm the boss boss.
16:43
Speaker 1: That's a British thing. I like that one, just being
16:45
Speaker 1: the boss boss. But at this point, the Boss of
16:48
Speaker 1: Bosses um just decided it was time to clean house,
16:52
Speaker 1: you know, to really make some room for his entrepreneurial
16:56
Speaker 1: spirit to thrive. So he went to war, like you,
17:00
Speaker 1: with a rival boss of Bosses, or the Duke as
17:03
Speaker 1: he was known, Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano. Yeah, and Luciano is
17:11
Speaker 1: not a guy really given to a moral compass or
17:16
Speaker 1: nor loyalty, so he sides with the Duke in this
17:21
Speaker 1: crazy crime war and he helped set up the boss
17:25
Speaker 1: of bosses for an assassination in ninety one, So Joe
17:30
Speaker 1: the boss is murdered with the help of his own lieutenant.
17:35
Speaker 1: Uh and before ends Luciano and his other colleagues, who
17:41
Speaker 1: are now being called the Young Turks. They also kill
17:45
Speaker 1: the Duke. And now they're they're saying there's a new um,
17:52
Speaker 1: there's a new regime in the criminal underground. Maronzano's assassination
18:04
Speaker 1: comes about because of a a gang from Murder Incorporated.
18:11
Speaker 1: Shout out to jaw Rule uh And and no, you're
18:14
Speaker 1: more familiar with Boardwalk Empire. Do they get into any
18:17
Speaker 1: of this stuff here? It escapes me at the moment.
18:21
Speaker 1: You know that they cover a lot of ground, uh
18:23
Speaker 1: in a relatively tight you know, I think three or
18:26
Speaker 1: four seasons. Um. So I can't quite remember, but I
18:29
Speaker 1: do want to say, um, there is an actual brick
18:32
Speaker 1: and mortar place and an associated website called the Mob
18:35
Speaker 1: Museum National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, which
18:40
Speaker 1: we got a good bit of this um this research
18:43
Speaker 1: from and it is in uh downtown Las Vegas. Such
18:47
Speaker 1: a profile it did, Yeah, and it tells me a
18:50
Speaker 1: little bit of sense. I definitely want to check. I
18:53
Speaker 1: think I'm actually going to Vegas for the very very
18:55
Speaker 1: very first time, um, in a couple of months, definitely
18:59
Speaker 1: planned to make a trip there. I'm finding all this
19:02
Speaker 1: out in real time, folks. So uh yeah, well then
19:07
Speaker 1: let's not spill the beans yet because surprise, surprise, I'm
19:10
Speaker 1: pretty sure you're gonna be going to and we might
19:12
Speaker 1: be doing a little something about the very topic we're
19:14
Speaker 1: discussing right now. Yeah, gosh, folks, it's so hard for
19:19
Speaker 1: us to like, we're guys who literally talked for a job.
19:22
Speaker 1: So we're so weirdly proud of ourselves when we can
19:27
Speaker 1: keep a projects secret. Um. Yeah, this is a great
19:30
Speaker 1: teaser though, So all right, Luciado, as a result of
19:35
Speaker 1: all these assassinations, Luciado comes in as as you would
19:39
Speaker 1: um kind of foreshadowed earlier Nol to fill the vacuum
19:44
Speaker 1: of leadership. And he loves organizing. He likes having meetings.
19:50
Speaker 1: He's one of those guys you know, he has parties
19:53
Speaker 1: and stuff, yeh, scrap booking parties even you know, the
19:57
Speaker 1: real stickler for the details and for in a paste.
20:01
Speaker 1: And he had the funny and sheets of yeah, and
20:04
Speaker 1: those one of those plastic sheets acetate, Oh yeah, and
20:07
Speaker 1: the stuff that you put on top of the pages
20:09
Speaker 1: so the pictures don't get ruffled and uh. But he
20:13
Speaker 1: was also, of course still uh into crime, and he
20:17
Speaker 1: continued this cooperative, this loose confederacy called the Five Families,
20:22
Speaker 1: the Committee of the Five Families, and this would go
20:26
Speaker 1: on to control all the East Coast criminal rackets for
20:29
Speaker 1: decades and decades. But Luciano wanted a little more credibility.
20:36
Speaker 1: He said, I don't want to call myself boss of bosses.
20:38
Speaker 1: It's kind of sad and lame to go around telling
20:41
Speaker 1: people to call me that. Yeah, just call me the
20:45
Speaker 1: Chairman of the board. And now we're gonna have national
20:49
Speaker 1: meetings and we're gonna organize this. We're gonna get a
20:52
Speaker 1: spreadsheet involved. Let's avoid the blood and let's make money together.
20:57
Speaker 1: And it's funny too. Speaking of Vegue, you know who
21:01
Speaker 1: went on to borrow that nickname? Who Frank Sinatra? Oh,
21:05
Speaker 1: that's right, he was. He was referred to as chairman
21:08
Speaker 1: of the board. Yeah. I don't know if he ever
21:12
Speaker 1: directly murdered anybody, but I wouldn't be surprised with his
21:15
Speaker 1: connections if he maybe had some people. He also did
21:19
Speaker 1: some pretty dastardly stuff. He was the guy who he's
21:22
Speaker 1: a dirty dirty he's a dirty boy. He had a
21:24
Speaker 1: he had a quotation where he said, it's amazing what
21:27
Speaker 1: abroad will do for a buck or something like that. Yeah,
21:31
Speaker 1: and he wasn't talking about choreography. So so yeah, this okay.
21:38
Speaker 1: So Luciano is still continuing criminal enterprises, but he's trying
21:44
Speaker 1: to make it more corporate essentially, And he also immediately
21:50
Speaker 1: gets a target on his back because he's a very
21:52
Speaker 1: public leader of a group that does very illegal stuff,
21:56
Speaker 1: and law enforcement has their eye on him. Specifically, a
22:02
Speaker 1: young prosecutor up and comer in New York named Thomas Dewey. Yes,
22:08
Speaker 1: and Dewey and his assistant who was an African American
22:11
Speaker 1: woman that named Eunice Carter. Uh, they were seeing some things.
22:16
Speaker 1: They were they were making some observations, and they were
22:18
Speaker 1: finding them pretty suss in terms of the sex workers
22:23
Speaker 1: who were being arrested that they you know, that they
22:25
Speaker 1: were seeing filtering through the justice system. We're being represented
22:29
Speaker 1: by the same bondsman and lawyers that worked for Luciana.
22:37
Speaker 1: I wonder what us about This sounds like a conspiracy
22:41
Speaker 1: to me. Uh yeah, So they they said, all right,
22:47
Speaker 1: let's strike while the iron is hot. We're going to
22:50
Speaker 1: do a massive raid. In ninety six, Carter and Dewey
22:54
Speaker 1: raid tons of brothels throughout New York. They arrest more
22:58
Speaker 1: than a hundred people and a lot and they set
23:01
Speaker 1: bail pretty high. Of the people they arrest, most for women,
23:06
Speaker 1: and quite a few of them cannot afford the ten
23:10
Speaker 1: thousand dollar bail ten thousand dollars in nineteen thirty six,
23:16
Speaker 1: one inflation calculated. Yeah, oh my god, can't we boot
23:19
Speaker 1: boom bot boop. Ten thousand dollars in nineteen thirty six
23:26
Speaker 1: is worth two hundred and fourteen thousand, three d dollars
23:32
Speaker 1: and sixty eight cents? Can we just say too. I'm
23:35
Speaker 1: not trying to high horse or soapbox here, but a
23:38
Speaker 1: lot of these, you know, these types of prohibitions were
23:42
Speaker 1: based in sort of puritanical Christian morals, and there's all
23:46
Speaker 1: this morality, you know, mongering or whatever. And uh, I
23:50
Speaker 1: think it's absurd that sex work is still illegal and
23:54
Speaker 1: in many parts of of the world, you know, I
23:56
Speaker 1: mean it's uh, it's absolutely something that's based in this
24:00
Speaker 1: kind of evangelical you know bent sex work is real work,
24:04
Speaker 1: you know, what I mean, and we have yeah, and
24:07
Speaker 1: um to pretend otherwise is just willfully misleading. And also,
24:13
Speaker 1: you know, too again without soapboxing too much, we have
24:16
Speaker 1: to admit the reality of this which continues today. A
24:19
Speaker 1: lot of these people who are being arrested are victims themselves.
24:24
Speaker 1: They've been forced into rights, right, They're not doing it
24:28
Speaker 1: for funzies. And so some of the people who get arrested,
24:34
Speaker 1: they flip and they give information to the prosecution team
24:38
Speaker 1: that leads to Lucky Luciano having an unlucky arrest and
24:43
Speaker 1: he gets uh taken a trial in Nix on June
24:47
Speaker 1: sixth of that year. He's convicted on no less than
24:50
Speaker 1: sixty two separate charges of compulsory prostitution, which lands him
24:57
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty years in the state pen. And he
25:01
Speaker 1: can't get out of it. He can't buy his way
25:03
Speaker 1: out of it. So after after he gets the message
25:06
Speaker 1: and he sees the writing on the wall, he turns
25:09
Speaker 1: over leadership of the National Commission of Mafioso to a
25:13
Speaker 1: guy named Frank Costello. Also, I just want to kind
25:16
Speaker 1: of jump in here real quick and point out that
25:18
Speaker 1: we have an upcoming episode where we're going to talk
25:20
Speaker 1: about Thomas Dowey a little bit more and a part
25:24
Speaker 1: of history that he is an exclusive group with that
25:27
Speaker 1: is not a group you want to be part of.
25:29
Speaker 1: Let's to say yes, and artfully done teas by superproducer
25:34
Speaker 1: Max Williams, especially because off Mike. I don't know about
25:39
Speaker 1: you know, but I was thinking, oh right, oh do
25:42
Speaker 1: we Oh right, yeah, right, yeah, do we? We did
25:46
Speaker 1: that one? I remember that now we It is not
25:49
Speaker 1: an episode that we have recorded. Jetted is one that
25:51
Speaker 1: is in the work. So it was nice to realize
25:53
Speaker 1: that we haven't completely lost our minds during these quote
25:57
Speaker 1: unquote down times. But moving on, We've got a big
26:01
Speaker 1: high water mark moments in history and in this story
26:05
Speaker 1: and just you know, talking about looming large Pearl Harbor
26:08
Speaker 1: heard of it seeing the movie not very good, but
26:12
Speaker 1: the events, you know, absolutely was a trigger obviously for
26:15
Speaker 1: our intervention into the war and for further anti um
26:21
Speaker 1: foreigner kind of mentality in the United States and the
26:25
Speaker 1: idea of truly cracking down on these perceived outsiders because
26:31
Speaker 1: of what they might be able to accomplish, you know,
26:33
Speaker 1: in secret communications with their you know, their masters across
26:38
Speaker 1: the pond. Yeah this okay, So we're going back to
26:41
Speaker 1: we're picking up that thread we laid down the beginning
26:44
Speaker 1: about the US government and this this is what we
26:48
Speaker 1: mean when we say this story is medi We're like,
26:50
Speaker 1: we're cinematically cutting into all these different slices of American history.
26:55
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, noal Uh, people were trying into play
27:01
Speaker 1: the spy game. Right. It's its own separate theater of
27:04
Speaker 1: every war. And the o n I Office of Naval
27:09
Speaker 1: Intelligence knew that war was coming, and by the mid
27:13
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties they had started building up this core of
27:17
Speaker 1: reserve officers they called the Naval Intelligence Volunteer Service or KNIVES.
27:23
Speaker 1: These folks, we're not your typical shaking bake soldiers or
27:27
Speaker 1: your typical enlisted members of the Navy. They were lawyers,
27:31
Speaker 1: they worked with the newspapers. They might be p i s.
27:34
Speaker 1: They might be executives at shipping companies. Uh, they might
27:37
Speaker 1: be linguists. Just they were kind of assembling um like
27:41
Speaker 1: a heist crew for intelligence that they they have their specialties, uh,
27:44
Speaker 1: and then they were given training. They were not paid.
27:49
Speaker 1: In NIVE there were five hundred of them, but by
27:52
Speaker 1: nineteen forty there were almost three thousand, and they started
27:57
Speaker 1: getting their cards pulled they were called up to active duty.
28:01
Speaker 1: Also a shout out to the Naval Criminal Investigative Services
28:05
Speaker 1: History Project h and c i S A history project
28:10
Speaker 1: dot org or n c i S A history dot org.
28:13
Speaker 1: What a specific uh organization. I love it, Yeah, exactly,
28:19
Speaker 1: our researcher says to Zach Uh. Doctor Zach found this
28:23
Speaker 1: wonderful article by Rear Admiral Tom Brooks, retired U S.
28:27
Speaker 1: Navy UM that really goes into detail about the naval
28:31
Speaker 1: intelligence connection with the mafia during World War Two. So
28:34
Speaker 1: this is like fabulous um research material that if anyone
28:38
Speaker 1: wants to read the full thing, it's a PDF that
28:40
Speaker 1: you can get online and that we highly recommend you doing. So. Yeah,
28:45
Speaker 1: and big thanks of course to April Brooks. So in
28:49
Speaker 1: the beginning of nineteen forty two, as any World War
28:54
Speaker 1: Two enthusiast knows, German U boats were hammering the supply
29:01
Speaker 1: lines of the Allied forces, and in just January of
29:06
Speaker 1: that year, Access submarines had sunk twenty different Allied vessels,
29:13
Speaker 1: including a tanker, and the tanker was a very scary
29:16
Speaker 1: shot across the bow because that thing was taken down
29:19
Speaker 1: just sixty miles off the Long Island coast, and people
29:23
Speaker 1: were saying, how can German submarines, German submarines get all
29:28
Speaker 1: the way across the pond and and operate on the
29:31
Speaker 1: coastline of the United States. Somebody called those naval intelligence dudes,
29:36
Speaker 1: and they said, here's what we think is happening. We
29:39
Speaker 1: think that there are some very unpatriotic people on the
29:42
Speaker 1: East coast and they're using their American fishing vessels to
29:47
Speaker 1: resupply these submarines somewhere near Long Islands. These guys might
29:54
Speaker 1: be ex prohibition folks who you know, lost all their
29:58
Speaker 1: money when the US got over prohibition, or it might
30:02
Speaker 1: be a huge conspiracy of more or less like spies
30:06
Speaker 1: sleeper agents all around the Port of New York. So
30:10
Speaker 1: they call in a guy named Captain Roscoe McFall, who
30:15
Speaker 1: is a naval veteran. Uh. He has been with the
30:18
Speaker 1: Navy for forty years. He knows his stuff. He's the
30:21
Speaker 1: chief intelligence officer for the third Naval District, and that's
30:25
Speaker 1: a huge region that's New Jersey, New York, in Connecticut altogether. Yeah, exactly.
30:30
Speaker 1: So the Captain was very much in need of taking
30:34
Speaker 1: quick action, uh, in order for the Allied war effort
30:38
Speaker 1: to be a success. On February two, fire engines responded
30:44
Speaker 1: to a massive blaze at Pure eight eight in Manhattan.
30:50
Speaker 1: This was a fire and arson. Let's call it. Call
30:56
Speaker 1: it what it is that's destroyed the French bill. Uh.
31:00
Speaker 1: Super Liner is what they referred to as the Normandy. Uh.
31:04
Speaker 1: And this is something that you know couldn't be couldn't
31:09
Speaker 1: be ignored, both physically and uh and geopolitically. Yeah yeah,
31:13
Speaker 1: and uh we we don't have to do the sound effect.
31:17
Speaker 1: But for everybody wondering, five million dollars in two is
31:20
Speaker 1: worth more than ninety one million dollars today. A boop
31:25
Speaker 1: a boop, indeed, and uh not the kind of boop
31:28
Speaker 1: you want to get. Right. So, the fire that takes
31:31
Speaker 1: down the Normandy, people are jumping to and they're trying
31:35
Speaker 1: to not just contain the fire but also save the
31:38
Speaker 1: port and the other ships. Right. So the fire boats
31:42
Speaker 1: are dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water onto
31:47
Speaker 1: the Superliner, and they mess up because they put so
31:52
Speaker 1: much water on it that the ship goes into a list.
31:56
Speaker 1: So it gets wonky by about thirty degrees. Everybody a
32:00
Speaker 1: looking is panicking, right, Uh. And this is a huge,
32:04
Speaker 1: huge l for the American forces. This vessel could carry
32:09
Speaker 1: ten thousand troops. It could go across the Atlantic in
32:13
Speaker 1: just four days and less than a week. So of
32:16
Speaker 1: course the Navy says, al right, somebody else knew how
32:20
Speaker 1: important this ship was. We think it was probably the Nazis.
32:23
Speaker 1: Our guy, Captain Roscoe says, no. Look, I read the
32:28
Speaker 1: FBI file and the FBI's explanation says this was an accident,
32:32
Speaker 1: a spark from a blowtorch. I don't buy it. This
32:36
Speaker 1: is also a symbolic attack. It makes us look weak,
32:40
Speaker 1: and we need to figure out what's really going on here.
32:45
Speaker 1: So Captain Roscoe gets those Navy operatives in playing clothes.
32:51
Speaker 1: They're not trusted to sailors. And I really like the
32:54
Speaker 1: way that Gregory Padutto describes it at Warfare History Network.
32:59
Speaker 1: I think we've both love this. We'll just read you
33:01
Speaker 1: the quote here, playing clothes, Navy operatives descended upon the
33:05
Speaker 1: New York docs seeking information with their best Jimmy Cagney impersonations.
33:10
Speaker 1: Ivy League educated naval officers crept into the raucous haunts
33:14
Speaker 1: frequented by long shoreman. This stevend oors met the agents
33:18
Speaker 1: with a threatening brick wall of silence. I like the
33:22
Speaker 1: Cagne impersonation for some reason. I do. I also love
33:26
Speaker 1: the the brick wall of silence. But they made you
33:30
Speaker 1: sit in in uh in elementary school. People got to
33:34
Speaker 1: rauc us. You know, Okay, we're we're gonna we're gonna
33:36
Speaker 1: do the brick wall of silence children. And this is uh,
33:39
Speaker 1: this is a strange thing for us uh to to
33:43
Speaker 1: think about. Right, this is an intelligence operation now, and
33:47
Speaker 1: these guys who might be a little divided by class
33:50
Speaker 1: because they're from the upper crust and they're trying to
33:52
Speaker 1: talk to doc workers. These guys don't get immediate success,
33:59
Speaker 1: right because the officers are very much outside of this culture.
34:05
Speaker 1: And a lot of these ship workers are just instinctively
34:08
Speaker 1: ducking to trust someone they ate, don't know and be
34:11
Speaker 1: is wearing a uniform. It doesn't matter who they are.
34:14
Speaker 1: We're just rejecting that authority. And the longshoreman love that
34:20
Speaker 1: job title. But shore the longest time, I didn't know
34:23
Speaker 1: what I meant, but you always heard people using it
34:25
Speaker 1: to refer to kind of a roughneck, you know, like
34:27
Speaker 1: someone that's a little bit uh rough around the edges
34:30
Speaker 1: that might swear a little bit perhaps cat call a
34:33
Speaker 1: lady um, But now it does refer to individuals to
34:36
Speaker 1: load and unload ships. And the term it's sort of
34:39
Speaker 1: like a shortening, I guess of along the shore. There
34:42
Speaker 1: are folks who hang out along the shore and uh,
34:44
Speaker 1: you know, the technology obviously has changed over the years
34:46
Speaker 1: to render them a little bit less you know, crucial.
34:49
Speaker 1: But it used to be they would even like have
34:51
Speaker 1: these poles and like pull the boats in closer than
34:53
Speaker 1: unload them and all that stuff. Yeah, and this is
34:55
Speaker 1: the season of the wire talking about talking about longshoreman
35:00
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, and the mob really does control this industry,
35:06
Speaker 1: these longshoreman. Uh, and the Mob has given the green
35:11
Speaker 1: light to these guys to beat the snot out of
35:14
Speaker 1: people who are asking too many questions a reporter down
35:18
Speaker 1: at the docks, you know, better better walk right, as
35:21
Speaker 1: they say, a midnight special. Indeed. And so because you know,
35:26
Speaker 1: the the idea of the mob controlling the longshoreman it
35:31
Speaker 1: you probably put this together cells or you've you've seen
35:33
Speaker 1: or read about it. So they could steel things. Oh,
35:38
Speaker 1: it is literally the the entry way into the world
35:41
Speaker 1: of goods, you know, coming in and uh, you know
35:45
Speaker 1: it's open fell off the back of a truck, that
35:47
Speaker 1: whole expression, you know, or out of a boat, and
35:49
Speaker 1: they would do it in such a way where it wouldn't,
35:52
Speaker 1: you know, raise so much suspicion. So it had to
35:54
Speaker 1: be done kind of in an organized fashion, and that
35:56
Speaker 1: was controlled by by the mob. And they had a
35:59
Speaker 1: they had a port folio of pursuits regarding the ports
36:04
Speaker 1: and shipping, because you could also cooperate with UH, some
36:08
Speaker 1: third party to hold a shipment out of port right
36:12
Speaker 1: and screw somebody else's business over. You could force people
36:16
Speaker 1: to pay protection money right to make sure their stuff
36:18
Speaker 1: doesn't fall off the back of the proverbial truck, because
36:22
Speaker 1: you're making money hand over fist, is what we're saying.
36:25
Speaker 1: And the Navy quickly realizes that they cannot infiltrate this.
36:30
Speaker 1: They're just they're not doing it the right way, and
36:33
Speaker 1: they may not have the tools to do so because
36:36
Speaker 1: the American mafia runs the harbor and we had this
36:42
Speaker 1: is something from Warfare History Network. Oh and I warrant
36:45
Speaker 1: officer named Maurice Kelly talked about this. UH talked about
36:50
Speaker 1: this with the benefit of retrospect, and this is a
36:53
Speaker 1: pretty pretty blunt description of what they were dealing with.
36:58
Speaker 1: That's right, and he said this only the American mafia
37:01
Speaker 1: claimed an utter dominance of the Duck. Union officials and
37:05
Speaker 1: people in illegal operations along the waterfront had as much
37:09
Speaker 1: influence with conditions on the Duck as the shipping people themselves,
37:12
Speaker 1: and in many cases, to your point, been more. Um So,
37:16
Speaker 1: the Navy saw this as a as a point of opportunity,
37:21
Speaker 1: you know, like if we play nice with the mob,
37:24
Speaker 1: then they can give us insider information that will help
37:26
Speaker 1: us in our efforts, you know, to uh to root
37:29
Speaker 1: out the rats, as I guess there were a lesser evil,
37:33
Speaker 1: right kind of ends justify the means. It's one of
37:37
Speaker 1: those things where you say, okay, this is temporary arrangements,
37:40
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. We're you, We're gonna help you,
37:42
Speaker 1: You're gonna help us, and then you know, when all
37:44
Speaker 1: this is over, we're probably gonna go back to being
37:46
Speaker 1: bitter enemies. You know, exactly exactly. It's uh, it's the
37:50
Speaker 1: way we deal with Jonathan Strickland, correct. So so, oh man,
37:55
Speaker 1: it was a bit of a crime lord of of
37:58
Speaker 1: of of of annoyance himself, you know what I mean. Yeah,
38:01
Speaker 1: oh man, I gotta love him though, because you know
38:04
Speaker 1: he's unapologetic. You don't have to well, he just goes in,
38:08
Speaker 1: he commits, so so yes, strange bedfellows. Indeed, the Navy
38:16
Speaker 1: is weighing this moral quaundry, but not very long. And
38:19
Speaker 1: you can understand their calculus because they're saying, we don't
38:24
Speaker 1: want to be the people who were in charge when
38:27
Speaker 1: the next super liner goes down, when the next vessel
38:31
Speaker 1: is attacked, and we all know we were too Pollyanna
38:34
Speaker 1: to really solve the problem. So they say, all right,
38:37
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to just swallow our pride for a second,
38:42
Speaker 1: work with the mob because we have to fight a
38:44
Speaker 1: greater evil, right, And they can make a good appeal
38:47
Speaker 1: to the mob too, because it's like, hey, you guys,
38:50
Speaker 1: things that are bad for the US might also be
38:53
Speaker 1: bad for your bottom line and that's what you care about.
38:56
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was. It was a very quid pro
39:00
Speaker 1: oh kind of situation and they had to kind of
39:01
Speaker 1: make the sales pitch uh to the mob, but you know,
39:05
Speaker 1: the sort of saw they sort of saw the benefit. Yeah,
39:14
Speaker 1: this is okay, this is this is where it gets
39:17
Speaker 1: very strange. So they figure it out, we don't know
39:21
Speaker 1: what that boardroom or that media room looks like. But
39:23
Speaker 1: eventually they can see they're gonna have to contact the mob,
39:27
Speaker 1: just like you said, Noel. But this guy, Lucky Luciano
39:32
Speaker 1: has has been sent up the river, and there are
39:36
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are trying to run things
39:40
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, in addition to Costello. So
39:44
Speaker 1: there's this guy named Joseph Lanza. His friends call him Socks,
39:51
Speaker 1: like like the Clinton's cat. Yes, the Clintons cat is
39:55
Speaker 1: named after Joseph. To your point, Ben, I bet this
39:59
Speaker 1: guy was an absolute psychopath with a name like that
40:04
Speaker 1: to have been, you know, like they call him socks
40:07
Speaker 1: because he, you know, cuts your feet off. I don't
40:10
Speaker 1: know why did they Hey, why they call him socks? Pretty?
40:13
Speaker 1: You never find out now, use you're just a big
40:18
Speaker 1: fan of fancy socks, you know, and you are those
40:21
Speaker 1: garter those men's garter things that hold your socks up
40:24
Speaker 1: gangsters did. In those days. It was of the fashion.
40:27
Speaker 1: It was so weird. Having your socks tall was way
40:29
Speaker 1: more important back then. A Yeah, I don't know if
40:32
Speaker 1: I would. You know, that's one I don't miss. I
40:35
Speaker 1: think it was just more of an era of tailored suits,
40:37
Speaker 1: and that often meant like the pants, the height of
40:40
Speaker 1: the pants were a little bit shorter, you know, that
40:43
Speaker 1: was the style, so you would see the sock. You'd
40:45
Speaker 1: be more likely to see the sock. Yeah. I love
40:47
Speaker 1: a tailored suit though, that unreservedly. So this guy Socks,
40:52
Speaker 1: we can tell you the real reason for his name.
40:55
Speaker 1: And it's not as funny as it's not as good
40:57
Speaker 1: as our ideas. Just to be honest, Uh, not blowing smoke.
41:01
Speaker 1: I'm just objectively, we have better pitches. His real the
41:06
Speaker 1: real origin of his name Socks comes from his insane
41:12
Speaker 1: fighting ability. He's like a one punch knockout dude. And
41:17
Speaker 1: he oversees Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market for his buddy, Lucky Luciano.
41:23
Speaker 1: And because Lucky Luciano is getting locked up for decades,
41:28
Speaker 1: an assistant district attorney named Murray Gurfein and uh the lawyer,
41:35
Speaker 1: the mob lawyer for old Joe's Joey Socks. They get
41:39
Speaker 1: together and they say, Hey, maybe this is our guy
41:42
Speaker 1: that we approach about helping us fight for America. Maybe
41:46
Speaker 1: we can appeal to his patriotism, maybe we can pay him.
41:49
Speaker 1: Let's just let's see, let's figure something out because we
41:51
Speaker 1: think it's an opportune time. That's so funny, man, I
41:55
Speaker 1: think I'm pretty sure. Correct me if I'm wrong. Listeners. Uh,
41:58
Speaker 1: there's a character in the Prano's named Joey Pants. I
42:02
Speaker 1: love it. He would have he would have been right
42:05
Speaker 1: at home with Joey socks. And ah, God, we jumped
42:08
Speaker 1: the gun with our conjecture about the sock nickname. But
42:11
Speaker 1: still it's easy to mistake socks the back of the day.
42:15
Speaker 1: You know, I guess I sack you in the jar
42:17
Speaker 1: or whatever. But still I think it was ambiguous enough
42:20
Speaker 1: to to to warrant our theory about you know good,
42:26
Speaker 1: our ideas from good. We should be in charge of
42:28
Speaker 1: board nicknames. We should we have a chairman of the
42:30
Speaker 1: Board of Nicknames. Um so, Yes, this is Fulton Fish Market,
42:33
Speaker 1: which is in fact an active fish market but also
42:36
Speaker 1: a hotbed of illegal activity. So around midnight on Mar
42:41
Speaker 1: uh there was a bit of a huddle on a bench,
42:44
Speaker 1: a bench huddle, gotta love those uptown in a park
42:49
Speaker 1: called Riverside Park, lovely Park, to colude to form a
42:54
Speaker 1: literal conspiracy. The Naval Office of Intelligence or sorry, the
42:59
Speaker 1: Office of Naval Intelligence. The O and I they needed themselves,
43:03
Speaker 1: a rat, an informant, someone from the inside. You could
43:06
Speaker 1: feed them information you know that they might be getting
43:10
Speaker 1: from the docks. You know, you hear things along the docks.
43:13
Speaker 1: People are coming from far away lands oftentimes and um
43:17
Speaker 1: bearing tales of their travels, and sometimes there might be
43:20
Speaker 1: a name, perhaps a little detail, something that was overheard.
43:24
Speaker 1: Who knows. Yeah, keep your eyes and your ears open.
43:27
Speaker 1: Be discreet, and they're very clear. They say, look, we
43:31
Speaker 1: understand that we're usually on different sides of the game.
43:37
Speaker 1: We're not going to give you immunity for any criminal
43:40
Speaker 1: activity that may or may not be happening at the docks.
43:44
Speaker 1: We're not gonna pay a ton of money. We're appealing
43:47
Speaker 1: to your patriotism. We can agree Nazis are bad for business.
43:52
Speaker 1: Same with those fascists. Bro same with the fascist don't
43:55
Speaker 1: stock me. These are just the facts. And a week
43:58
Speaker 1: later Box goes uh and meets with the commander of
44:03
Speaker 1: the Office of Naval Intelligence. And according to the records
44:06
Speaker 1: you can find PDFs of this, Lanza tells the O
44:09
Speaker 1: and I commander, you let me know where you want
44:12
Speaker 1: the contacts made or what you want, and I'll carry on.
44:16
Speaker 1: And this marks the beginning of what would be called
44:19
Speaker 1: Operation Underworld. Ah, let's show his Operation Underwear that our
44:26
Speaker 1: ideas hit us up for for name for nicknaming uh people, mobsters, criminals,
44:34
Speaker 1: regular folks were oh yeah or um a secret undercover operations. Um.
44:40
Speaker 1: So this was a good thing. This is a very
44:42
Speaker 1: good thing. Um. Lanza seems to be willing to play
44:46
Speaker 1: ball and um this again. And not only are our
44:50
Speaker 1: dock workers dealing with you know, folks coming in on
44:53
Speaker 1: these vessels, they're also dealing with the truck drivers. You're
44:56
Speaker 1: the teamsters. He really was this kind of hub, you know.
44:59
Speaker 1: So with all of this, this network of of informants,
45:02
Speaker 1: essentially it was not just one, it was the whole shebang. Um.
45:06
Speaker 1: It kept the O and I fully informed about any
45:11
Speaker 1: you know, odds and ends that came in on fishing
45:13
Speaker 1: vessels for example, like you know, flot some and jets,
45:16
Speaker 1: some bits of things that were found floating out in
45:18
Speaker 1: the and the ocean, stuff like airplane scraps or perhaps
45:22
Speaker 1: even human remains, um, you know, or or like flares
45:26
Speaker 1: or whatever. So this is stuff that they could use
45:28
Speaker 1: to literally kind of get the lay of the land
45:31
Speaker 1: in terms of what flyovers you know, who might be
45:34
Speaker 1: spying perhaps, or folks maybe encroaching, you know, on our territory,
45:38
Speaker 1: because you know, Pearl Harbor really knocked us out of
45:42
Speaker 1: that complacency in terms of like not on our soil.
45:45
Speaker 1: This is never gonna happen here. These are things that
45:47
Speaker 1: happened to other countries. Now now the rules have changed
45:53
Speaker 1: a hundred and it's hard to really understand the extremity
45:59
Speaker 1: of this situation, right unless you were there, because these
46:02
Speaker 1: were people very much working with the enemy, and folks
46:05
Speaker 1: on every side of the equation had a lot of
46:09
Speaker 1: skepticism about this, even lands as people were worried that
46:14
Speaker 1: he had turned They said, look, you say you're supporting
46:17
Speaker 1: the war effort. I get it. Nazis are bad for business,
46:21
Speaker 1: But how do I know you're not working with the
46:22
Speaker 1: d A. Didjam me up? It's a good question, like
46:26
Speaker 1: like like long term, big picture, right, Okay, so we
46:29
Speaker 1: made this handshakes gentleman's agreements, and I guess you said
46:32
Speaker 1: they didn't give them immunity though, right, that was clear exactly,
46:36
Speaker 1: But they're not necessarily Yeah, that's why we're right, because
46:39
Speaker 1: they are kind of observing them. Their whole enterprise, their
46:44
Speaker 1: whole operation. By virtue of them participating in this network
46:48
Speaker 1: of informants, it acknowledges the existence of said informants instead
46:53
Speaker 1: kind of participation in all of this, uh, this dock activity.
46:57
Speaker 1: So that's a weird one, isn't it. It is it is.
46:59
Speaker 1: It's definitely not a sustainable situation. And everybody realizes that
47:04
Speaker 1: in the world of intelligence, one of the biggest things
47:07
Speaker 1: to learn is not always you know the information you're targeting,
47:12
Speaker 1: it's the ways in which that information is acquired and disseminated. Right,
47:16
Speaker 1: how it's not necessarily what you know all the time,
47:20
Speaker 1: it's how you learned it. And giving the keys to
47:23
Speaker 1: that machine over to the U. S. Navy, that's it's
47:27
Speaker 1: not a good look anyway. Also, let's mention right Lucky Luciano,
47:32
Speaker 1: Luciano family, his crew, they love socks like socks is
47:36
Speaker 1: so much fun. He gets us, you know, discount off
47:39
Speaker 1: of off the fish that fellow let me is amazing.
47:44
Speaker 1: But the other four crime families are annoyed a f
47:49
Speaker 1: by this guy. So if they if the Navy wants
47:53
Speaker 1: to really get in behind the curtain here, they have
47:58
Speaker 1: to work with those other four families. So they need
48:00
Speaker 1: the approval of a guy named Albert Anastasia. His street
48:06
Speaker 1: name is High Lord Execution or Oh okay, I kind
48:12
Speaker 1: of feel like that one probably was earned. I don't
48:15
Speaker 1: think that the innocu I don't think this guy was
48:18
Speaker 1: was a squish mellow. Okay, I think this guy, you
48:21
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, Lord High it's it's it's
48:26
Speaker 1: it's got smacks of royalty, doesn't it. You know, these
48:29
Speaker 1: guys really wanted to be aristocrat. They really did. Yeah,
48:32
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. Yeah, this guy is so hashtag no
48:36
Speaker 1: chill that even socks doesn't want to mess with him
48:39
Speaker 1: now he does in socks Um was very aware, as
48:43
Speaker 1: was imagined anyone in his circle, of Anastasia's ruthless demeanor,
48:49
Speaker 1: you know, his his absolute explosive you know, violent rages
48:55
Speaker 1: he might fly into, and um, the fact that he
48:58
Speaker 1: had a bit of an itchy trigger fingy he was.
49:01
Speaker 1: He was not one to hold back lead m I
49:07
Speaker 1: like it poetry m m hm. Lanza. Also, I just
49:11
Speaker 1: didn't have enough juice to kind of like bridge the gap,
49:16
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of the divide between these different
49:19
Speaker 1: ethnic groups. You had your Irish gangsters, the controlled Hell's Kitchen,
49:24
Speaker 1: which is like kind of a it's sort of adjacent
49:26
Speaker 1: to like where a lot of the Broadway theaters are.
49:28
Speaker 1: It's not terribly it's sort of like the next kind
49:30
Speaker 1: of area over. We spent a decent amount of time
49:32
Speaker 1: there in our work travels in the past. Um, so
49:36
Speaker 1: that areas under control of the Irish. Uh, this around
49:40
Speaker 1: the Hudson River piers, which included again we've got piers,
49:43
Speaker 1: we've got railway terminals, we've got you know, warehouses and
49:47
Speaker 1: things like that. So in order to for the Navy
49:51
Speaker 1: to be able to acquire and organize the West Side docks,
49:54
Speaker 1: they had to get cooperation now from the Irish, which is,
49:58
Speaker 1: you know, the Irish and the Alliens don't get along,
50:01
Speaker 1: so they don't really have suction within their already existing agreement,
50:06
Speaker 1: you know, with the with the Italian mafia. So they
50:09
Speaker 1: already have a lot of what you would call stakeholders
50:13
Speaker 1: in corporate America, right, and the stakeholders don't all get along.
50:18
Speaker 1: But why can't we all just get along? Why can't
50:20
Speaker 1: what I ask, you know, especially if we're trying to
50:23
Speaker 1: fight Nazis. So they're gonna make it work, right there,
50:26
Speaker 1: fighting for a greater good, so on June fourth, Lanski
50:30
Speaker 1: and a Lucky Luciano's mob lawyer Moses Pola cough that's
50:37
Speaker 1: a cool name, uh, and an old Socks. They traveled
50:40
Speaker 1: a Great Meadow and they decided they're gonna plan their moment.
50:44
Speaker 1: This is a big win at work for a buddy
50:48
Speaker 1: Socks because Lucky Luciano says, you have my permission to
50:52
Speaker 1: use my name on the streets, so now you can.
50:55
Speaker 1: You know, he can go around and oversee the whole operations. Say, hey,
50:59
Speaker 1: I am speaking on behalf of Luciano, of Boss Luciano,
51:04
Speaker 1: so if you hear something from me, you need to
51:07
Speaker 1: treat it like it came from him. I want to
51:10
Speaker 1: know more about this Great Meadow. This sounds like it's
51:13
Speaker 1: just like a Camp David kind of situation. Is this
51:15
Speaker 1: where they're going on like a retreat, you know, to
51:18
Speaker 1: do team building exercises and and plan their attack. Great
51:23
Speaker 1: Meadow is the maximum security prison where Lucky Luciano is held.
51:31
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, I'm glad. I'm glad we're talking about
51:34
Speaker 1: this because it does sound like it's a nice subdivision, right,
51:37
Speaker 1: it does, doesn't It reminds me of like, what's that
51:40
Speaker 1: movie The land before time, or they're all going there
51:42
Speaker 1: heading for the Great Valley. A little Foot's mom dies
51:45
Speaker 1: spoiler alert movies A lot older, jeez got we're old,
51:52
Speaker 1: very sad. Took a lot of cues from Bambi. And
51:57
Speaker 1: this is where we see Operation Underworld is anying traction.
52:01
Speaker 1: It's happening. The Mob and the United States government have
52:06
Speaker 1: teamed up in the weirdest way, and the stories just
52:10
Speaker 1: getting started. Uh. Thank goodness, we did a preemptive two
52:14
Speaker 1: parter here because we're gonna have to pause and come
52:17
Speaker 1: back with you this Thursday, in just a few days
52:20
Speaker 1: to dive into the end results of Operation Underworld. Things
52:27
Speaker 1: heat up and flexes are flex Let's just say Liciano's
52:32
Speaker 1: got got a kind of a surprise coming his way.
52:34
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at that. In the meantime, why don't
52:37
Speaker 1: you hit us up on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians
52:39
Speaker 1: and let us know any other ridiculous mafia stories that
52:43
Speaker 1: we should cover, because we love this stuff. This when
52:46
Speaker 1: is such a fabulous intersection of these two things that
52:49
Speaker 1: we did. You know, World War two history and the
52:51
Speaker 1: history of organized crime in the United States. You can
52:54
Speaker 1: also find Ben and Max and I as individuals on
52:57
Speaker 1: the Internet. I learned exclusively on Instagram, where I am
53:00
Speaker 1: at how Now Noel Brown. In a burst of creativity,
53:03
Speaker 1: I'm calling myself at Ben Bulling b A W L
53:06
Speaker 1: I N. On Instagram you can get a behind the
53:09
Speaker 1: scenes look at some of the weird stuff we're getting
53:11
Speaker 1: into for various shows. I'd also hit us up with
53:14
Speaker 1: any questions or suggestions. You could also go to Twitter
53:19
Speaker 1: Appen Bowling hs W, where you will see uh, not
53:23
Speaker 1: just me, but also the one and only Mr Max Williams. Yes,
53:27
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter at athl Underscore Max Williams,
53:31
Speaker 1: where I'll mostly just beatrolling Ben Boland and that's about it.
53:35
Speaker 1: Nicknames also send us, send us cool nicknames. Oh no,
53:39
Speaker 1: before we go to uh to part two of this
53:42
Speaker 1: Call It a Day, I wanted to give you a
53:45
Speaker 1: couple of weird mop nicknames. Can I just laundry listen? Real? Okay? Man?
53:49
Speaker 1: But I relish these all right, Anthony, Big Tuna a Cardo,
53:54
Speaker 1: These are real ones. These are real ones. Lou to
53:57
Speaker 1: be confused with Jim uh from from the Office. He
54:00
Speaker 1: also got the nickname big Tuna did Andy Bernard Andy
54:04
Speaker 1: bernarcas he was eating like a tuna sandwich one day
54:06
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he's big tuna. I'm gonna say,
54:09
Speaker 1: you know what, We'll just do rule of three. I'll
54:10
Speaker 1: give you one more, I'll give you two more. Uh
54:13
Speaker 1: Donald the Wizard of odds Angeline. A lot of these
54:16
Speaker 1: are just too long. That's pretty clever though it's it's
54:22
Speaker 1: a little long. No one call it. That'd be the
54:23
Speaker 1: whiz for store. Maybe there we go and the one
54:26
Speaker 1: I wanted to end on. I'm sure there's a story
54:28
Speaker 1: behind this. Luigi baby Shacks. Minoccio Boom maybe says that
54:33
Speaker 1: like s h A c K S. Yeah, it's l
54:35
Speaker 1: J q U s okay cool. Yeah, another one won't
54:38
Speaker 1: have made sense, baby shacks. What does a baby shacks?
54:41
Speaker 1: Sounds very untoward. That sounds very sketch. We'll find out
54:46
Speaker 1: in part two, I guess we will, and the meantime
54:49
Speaker 1: as well. Once again, more meantime thanks to Chris frostiotis
54:52
Speaker 1: here is spirit Eves, Jeff Coats out in the world
54:54
Speaker 1: making moves, John the Strickland a k the quizz Are
54:58
Speaker 1: uh long made rain. Yeah, I guess on his side
55:03
Speaker 1: of the you know things. Yeah, indeed, see you next
55:07
Speaker 1: time folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
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Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
55:19
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.