THE MAFIA CAN'T CRACK LOS ANGELES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 167
• Publication Date: July 31, 1965
• Content Type: NSPR

SATURDAY EVENING`PO _ 'i-
Approved For, Release 2005/01/11,: CIA-RDP88-01315R00030051b167-2
Q
For all their precautions and attempts at secrecy, the three -
travelers from Chicago might have been CIA agents. First
. they gave false names when they bought their plane tickets-
"Michael Mancuso.," "S. Whate," and "S. Man"-and then they
boarded the airliner separately. At ' International Airport in
Los Angeles three' hours later, they were quietly met by two
other men, and all five drove in a large black car ~p Perino's
Restaurant for a dinner conference. They returned -to the air-
port and, as they stepped from the car, they were stopped,;
by officers of . the Intelligence Division of the Los Angeles
Police Department; the officers had been watching the three'
Chicagoans from the moment they arrived in Los Angeles...,
The encounter took place several . years ago. At that time,
"S. Man," better. known as .Tony Accardo, was boss of the
I I..
By BILL DAVIDSON
While other major U.S. cities
writhe in the grip of the powerful
. crime syndicate, Los Angeles
keeps the mobsters at bay. Police
across the nation are rushing
to copy the techniques
that have stopped the Mafia.
. Continued
Approved For Release;2005/01/1'x': CIA-RDP88-01315RQQ9300510167-2.
 Approved For Release 2005/01/11: CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
powerful Chicago Mafia organization. "Michael Then came the typical Eastern Mafia tactics;
Mancuso" was Sam Giancana, soon to become witnesses were relentlessly intimidated (some had
Accardo's successor as overlord of the Chicago wheels fall off their cars), and a high-priced lawyer
mob. "S. Whate" was Accardo's doctor. The two was flown in from New York to handle the cases. !
men who met and conferred with the three were' In Los Angeles, however, the Mafia tactics failed
the late Frank (Strongy) Ferrara, then the under- to work: On November 28, 1962, all three mob-
boss in charge of the Mafia's gambling operations stern were given life sentences-punishments far.
more severe than the New Yorkers had ever
in Chicago, and the notorious Anthony Pinelli,
ob's expected-and the Gallo mob has not been heard
Chi
cago m
known to the L.A. Police as the
I resident agent in California and today a fugitive from in Southern California since. Experts believe -
evasion the Mafia deliberately sacrificed Castiglione, Rizz i
. .. . _ r_ d ___, Fa
x
hat
-
-
The five men were not arrested by the unel-. zILeuu and [.uril.,a dust
ligence agents; they were merely taken in for Los Angeles law-enforcement authorities would be.
n of the authorities has been con-
ti
th
Th
e reac
o
e
questioning. When the questions were over,
intelligence men called in the press. The three sistently the same for more than a decade, and one
visitors begged to be let go without publicity, Mafia intrusion after another has been'rebuffed.
offering to board the first plane to any destina- Certainly there is crime in Los Angeles, but it is
tion. Giancana, after a tantrum, observed with' not of the cancerous.Chicago-New York-Cleveland'
one will know I'm Cosa Nostra type; certainly there are individual
t e
h
"
very
a
Now t
resignation,
here, I can't do any business, so I might just as Mafia members living in the Los Angeles area, but
able to organize the kind of
t b
een
well go home." Accardo's remark was more reveal- they have no
ing. "I'm just passing through," he said as he massive crime complex that can take over as the,
pleaded not to be exposed to the press. "Believe second government of a city. The principal reason
me, I don't want no part of Los Angeles." is that Los Angeles has an extraordinary police
One of the strangest of the strange circum- department; former Attorney General Robert
stances surrounding the Mafia in the United Kennedy once described it to me as "probably
States is that most of its members similarly "want the finest and most modern in the United States,
no part of Los Angeles." Although they operate if not in the world."
i freely in nearly' every other major American Unlike other cities-many of which are only
metropolis, they have labeled Los Angeles a no- now beginning to copy its methods-Los Angeles
opu- conducts its operations against the Mafia like a
andin
d
h
l
'
g p
exp
y an
t
s-land. With its wea
man
lation, the nation's third largest city would seem, full-scale war. The key echelon in the war is the
fertile territory for the Mafia's illicit operations ' police department's 50-man Intelligence Division.
mander's desk is a
d i
i
ts com
n
in narcotics, prostitution, gambling, usury, may- On the wall beh
hem and murder, but as ex-Mafia member Joe , large map of Sicily, homeland of the Mafia. Down
Valachi sadly reported to the McClellan Com- ` the hall is a sprawling chart-filled room that looks
mittee, "We have only a very weak family' Out I like an Army command post, with drawings of
there." Since the 1940's, when the city was iri the Mafia family trees from all over the United States,
of the Mafia
tor
hi
th
m
y
e
s
e on
iron grip of Mafia boss Jack Dragna and his allies, volume after volu
eles in Europe and in America, and files crammed with
Los An
h
C
g
en,
o
Bugsy Siegel and Mickey
has had only one authentic gangland murder (com- such pinpointed facts as "Joe Sica observed in con,
pared with an average of 50 a year in Chicago), versation with Angelo Polizzi in parking lot of
and all the Mafia's attempts to establish a strong-, Santa Anita racetrack," with cross-references W.
hold in the rich province have failed. similar previous conversations.
ence Division knows the Prefix
Intelli
Th
k
g
e
In 1962, for example, the Gallo mob in Broo- e
whereabouts of every Mafia member in Southern
lyn, harassed by the New York police and by the,
and what he is doing at almost any
ia
lif
C
i
,
orn
a
ng
rival Profaci gang, began to think about mov
en masse to a less perilous environment and, with given time. It uses"round-the-clock surveillance.
d undercover agents
n
formers an
that in mind, sent a probing mission to Los . electronic devices, i
Through a remarkable
foe
f it
k
.
s
o
Angeles. The advance men were Louis (Lefty) to keep trac
Castiglione and Michael (Rizzi) Rizzitello, both organization called L.E.I.U. (Law Enforcement ;.,
of whom had -long criminal records in New York. Intelligence Units), which it helped create, it has
When they arrived in Los Angeles, they checked trusted police specialists all over the United States
d at"
in with Nick Licata, one of the three men con- who tip -it off whenever a Mafia member from
the heads of the weak Los Angeles lother area heads for California; only rarely
b
d t
id
r
e
o
e
e
s
family of the Mafia, and got Licata's permission. it fail to spot a Mafioso the moment he sets foot
i-
e Di
lli
y
genc
to operate. Somewhere along the way, they also in the forbidden territory. The Inte
from Mafia-ridden
n even has a "hot lin ',
Anthony Zurica
f
o
i
l M
l
!,
. s
,
ios
o
a
oca
picked up a
The Castiglione-Rizzitello-Zurica operation was Las Vegas, one hour awax` y plane, and it keeps
crude. "In fact," says Inspector of Detectives!il a permanent reception committee at the airport,
Henry Kerr, "it was so rudimentary that we could' meeting all airliners from Vegas.
only conclude they were testing our defenses." Intelligence Division officers are almost always
n a Sunday or Monday morn- 'n Band any time there is an ,opportunity to
t t
M
b
A
wo A.
. o
ou
t a
ing they would enter a bar whose cash register I harass,a visiting or resident Mafioso. In 1959, for
was overflowing with money from the weekend example, Philadelphia's Blinky Palermo was wait-
business. They would pistol-whip the cashier in!ing for a plane at the Los Angeles airport; he
full view of the staff and patrons, then warn them wandered over to a newsstand, and, his larcenous
not to talk to the police on pain of revenge from nature being what it is, he walked off without pay-
the rest of the Gallo mob. They were easily identi- ing for 80 cents' worth of candy and papers. Sud-.
1 1965 fled by the Intellie!~ ce Division of the Los Angeles lldenly two Intelligence officers appeared and ar-
trued.
~u~ policed& Rbi~ ry~Crt b*se i2005/01111 CIA-RDP88-01315R0,903005101
INA;
 Q
C f- t %r~'Y, Fi ~GY I~3! r)~ xb 1ORV ti , dtzz J?.:
~' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~X~i~r3LL7i~.'#!~ii~rY'~i~a ~ ~ !~i~" ~ ~ ?, ,I,Y~1f~`~(~~'('~'i, P
;rested him for petty theft. Palermo, who was;
totally unused to such treatment by the police
back home, threatened and blustered. He then
called a movie-actor friend to bail him out. "Who
made the pinch?" asked the actor. "Some guys
from what they call the Intelligence Division,"
said Blinky. "Oh, no I" said the actor with finality,
and Palermo had to stay in a cell `until he could
raise his bail elsewhere.
In the same year, the Intelligence Division was
keeping an eye on another distinguished Mafia
visitor, Gus Alex, identified in congressional testi-
mony as an under-boss in charge of vice in down-
town Chicago. Alex had been arrested more than
100 times in Chicago, but for some peculiar reason
'there was not a single police-identification photo-
graph on him in existence. "We must rectify that,"
Lt.' Marion Phillips of Los Angeles Intelligence'
told his men. "Let's see what we have in the file
on him." The officers searched the file, and they
came up with a five-year-old Los Angeles traffic
ticket that Alex had ignored on a previous visit..,
Within an hour or so, Sgts. Robert Devin and.
William Unland'had'obtained a warrant for Alex's
arrest on the $10 violation. The warrant gave
them the authority to enter the Los. Angeles home
of Alex's mother-in-law, and there they found the
dapper thug hiding in a closet behind 'a rack of
women's clothes. They took Alex to police head-
quarters and made a mug shot, copies of which
Continued
'JUL 31 1965
.Approved For Release` 205/01/11 CIA-RDP88-0131,5ROpO300510167-2
 4
Approved For Release 2005/01/11: CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
numbers whenever the protected bookies were
about to be raided. This is the exact method used
for years by Mafia-police alliances in` such cities
as Chicago and New Orleans.
Both De Maddalena and Gunn are of Sicilian
extraction, but Gunn was shocked by the pro-
posal. He told De Maddalena he'd think about it,
then went directly to his commanding officer and
told him the story. Almost immediately he was
whisked in to see Capt. Sidney Mills, the head of :
other branches of the police department.'Most of the Bureau of Internal Affairs. That same day.
them are
,Fb~slRelta?>rOQlf/j1~~1N~fA~BAdf~flO~fO0+6ikH
~JL 3 1 1965 Continued
Carbo, the Mafia's unofficial czar of boxing, tried Chicago's Gus Alex was often arrested, never photographed;
to get a "piece" of a new welterweight champion, I. then Los Angeles police made these, his first "mug shots.":
as Miami and Philadelphia.
The opportunity for a coup arose when Frankie
now have been added to every police-identification
file in the United States.
Los Angeles' internationally famous Police Chief
William H. Parker (often mentioned as a candi-
date to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as director of the
FBI) describes his war against the Mafia in vivid
I terms. "The Intelligence Division," he says, "is the
spearhead of my offensive forces. They jab and
probe and do the reconnaissance, and they harass
the enemy's flanks. When it comes time to deliver
a major blow to the enemy, they lead the attack."
Such a major blow was delivered in 1959. It elim-
inated one of the top Mafia figures in Los Angeles
and shook the syndicate in strongholds as far away
any part of the deal arranged by Leonard, saying ter what a man's education or experience, it takes
he had no right to speak for them, and this put about a year to train him properly to be an Intel-
would be 15 percent. But Leonard had neglected an economics major at the university of Southern
to get the agreement of Jordan's managers, Don California, got a B.S. in public administration and
Nesseth and Jackie McCoy They refused to have took two years of graduate studies. Still, no mat-,
ing promoter Jackie Leonard that the "piece" who until very recently headed the division, was
Leonard on the spot with Carbo.
First Carbo phoned Leonard from his head-
,,.quarters in Miami, telling him, "You're going to
be hurt. And when I mean hurt, I mean dead."
Then there was a series of meetings in Los Angeles
at which the recalcitrant promoter and managers
were intimidated by Carbo's emissaries, headed,
by Mafia hoodlum Blinky Palermo of Philadel-
phia. At one of the meetings, a Los Angeles Mafia
"enforcer" named Joe Sica made some threats.
This was unfortunate for Sica and the other Carbo
ligence Division agent. He must-not only acquire
specialized knowledge in.a wide number of fields
but learn undercover techniques and develop
underworld informants.
"The Mafia is afraid of our department," Chief
Parker says. "That's why we have so little trouble
with them. But it's not only our offensive arm,
the Intelligence Division, that frightens them.
It's also our defensive arm, the Bureau of Internal
Affairs. It's a historical fact that the Mafia can-
not operate in a city unless they are in league with
emissaries, because both Leonard and his office `-corrupt policemen who look the other way and let
had been wired with miniature radio transmitters 41 them function. It's the job of the Bureau of In-
by electronics experts of the Intelligence Division; ternal Affairs to make sure that we have no cor-
every word of the conversation was being tape- rupt policemen-and they do their job well. With
'
re bound to get a
recorded a block or so away. Included in the re- any group of 5,000 men you
corded dialogue was a remarkable description of bad apple every once in a while, and we do get
Mafia mayhem technique, reported here verbatim: them. But we find them, and we deal with them,
"See what they do? They use a water pipe, see? and the Mafia has learned time and time again
'
s no way of dealing with us."
You know, regular lead. waxer pipe. Lead pipe..1 that there
your
your skull and knock you unconscious. And they Gunn take part in? a scheme to protect a group'
just drop the pipe wrapped in the newspaper and
in the crowd nobody knows who did ?it." of bookies. For this, De Maddalena said, Gunn
This evidence and much more was turned over would be.paid $200 on the 15th of every month.
to the FBI by the Intelligence Division, and the He gave Gunn a $50 bill as a token of good faith
case was heard in Federal court in 1961. It resulted and explained that all he had to do was,tosound
in a disaster for the national Mafia organization. a warning by calling a series of ry'rivate telephone
'
And about that short. About that thick. And they long ago, for example, the Bureau of in-
ternal Affairs-called "the headhunter detail" by
dust get an ordinary piece of newspaper, see? the other cops-uncovered an ingenious plot which,
Newspaper don't show fingerprints. Then they if it had succeeded; could have subverted the en-
see?
take it and they wrap it up just in the newspaper, tire police department. On February 15, 1964, a
see. And you're sitting in a crowd. And they try policeman on the Administrative Vice Squad,
to give you two bats, and they kill you with two if they can. But they whack you twice and split named Henry De Maddalena took his young
partner Joseph Gunn aside and proposed that
Carbo, immune to justice for more than
two
decades, received a 25-year sentence (for extor-
tion and conspiracy), Joe Sica, the "enforcer"
who was also the Los Angeles caporegima, or
under-boss, got 20 years. Palermo was put away
for 15. The case against Louis Tom Dragna, also
accused in the intimidation, was weaker, and his
five-year term was eventually reversed on appeal.
The Intelligence Division, in the main, is made
up of men who have already proved themselves in
I?
 5
Approved For Release 2005/01/11: CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
ture tape recorder, He ordered Gunn to return to
ile \taddalcnn and pretend to go along with the
plan. while with the help of the hidden tape re-
corder the secret agents of the bureau developed
the evidence. The mobsters had researched the
police department thoroughly and knew exactly
where it was vulnerable. Their plan was to corrupt
just one key man in each of five key offices, includ-
ing both Intelligence and Internal Affairs. "With
those five men," Chief Parker told me, "they
would have controlled the whole department."
But again Los Angeles' defenses held. The pene-
tration had not gone beyond two of the five
when Mills's men closed in and made their arrests.
With Officer Gunn as the principal witness, De
Maddalena was indicted, along with Sgt. Peter E.
Stafford of Central Vice and several bookies. All
was dismissed from the force on charges of neglect
of duty for not knowing what was going on.
It was not always thus. As recently as 15 years
JUL 31 1965
ago Los Angeles was
just as Mafia-ridden as
any of the big Eastern
cities, and its police de-
partment was just as
thoroughly infiltrated.
Mafia members from
Sicily were identified in
Los Angeles as early as
1906, just a few years
after the main Mafia
i migration into the Eastern United States. In ,
Southern California their initial effort was an
attempt to take over the fruit-and-vegetable busi-
ness-by murder and violence-from law-abiding. j
Italian and Sicilian immigrants. The mob soon
expanded into what was to become its main busi-
ness-extortion. And with the arrival of Prohibi-
tion, the Los Angeles "family" of the Mafia moved
into the lucrative business of bootlegging.
In the '30's; when the Mafia was not yet strong
enough to control organized crime from coast-to-
coast, it formed alliances with such powerful
Jewish mobsters as Louis (Lepke) Buchalter,
the head of Murder, Incorporated, in New York.
To strengthen the Mafia organization in Los
Angeles, Buchalter and New York Mafia boss
Charles (Lucky) Luciano sent out Bugsy Siegel,
an erratic but effective executive, to work with
the local Mafia head, Jack Dragna. Under the
Siegel-Dragna leadership, Los Angeles crime
moved into its golden era. Gambling palaces
flourished, and gambling ships stood off the coast;
nearly all bars and nightclubs were under firm
mob control; relays of mob-owned prostitutes
moved up and down the West Coast; and mari-
juana and heroin poured in freely from Tijuana,
Mexico. The police were
bribed to look the other'
way. Siegel was mur-
dered on June 20, 1947,:
but the alliance with'
Mafia boss Dragna con-
tinued through Siegel's
aide, Mickey Cohen.'
Two years later, how- ,
ever, the mobsters ran
into trouble. They had
depended heavily on
the cooperation of the
Los Angeles police, but
in 1949 two scandals
hit the police departs
ment. First, it was dis-
covered that some high-
ranking police officials,..
were in league with the
Jack Dragna ruled city for notorious madam,
,.Mafia in "bad old days." Brenda Allen; then `
came the revelation that
.members of the Gangster. Squad, who were sup-
posed to be combating the mob, were having
friendly dinners with Mickey Cohen in expensive'!
restaurants and night clubs, with Cohen graciously
picking up the check. The public outcry over
these disclosures resulted in the removal of C. B.
Horrall as police chief and the appointment.;
of a tough retired Marine Corps general, William
General Worton got rid of all of the obvious
bad eggs in the department. He was prevented by
civil-seryice law from serving more than a year as
chief, however, and he began to look around for';
a successor. Wherever he went he heard about a
rebellious, cantankerous, scrupulously honest in-
spector named William H. Parker. Then in his
early 40's, Parker had refused to knuckle under
to the sometimes questionable practices of his
superiors, and he would go out into the street and
arrest prostitutes and hoodlums himself if his men
seemed to be shirking their duty. Parker had
joined the Los Angeles police force in 1927, and
had earned his law degree from the Los Angeles
College of. Law by studying at night. In World
War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had put
Parker in charge of developing the police-and-,
war, Parker had set up democratic police systems
for the cities of Munich and Frankfort:
General Worton jumped Parker over the heads
of several other police officials and made him
deputy chief. During Worton's one-year tenure,
Deputy Chief Parker founded the Bureau of
Squad into the elite force now known as the
Intelligence Division. On August 9, 1950, 'Parker
became chief. ?IIld has held the job ever since,
through several' changes of city administration.
"Chief Parker is hard-headed and tough to get
along with," says the !present mayor, Samuel t
Yorty, "and he still stelis on a lot of people's toes,
,but he's the best co.p4n the world."
From the moment Parker took office as chief of
police, the Mafia's influence in Southern California
began to dissolve. Today its resident members are
jus4 a scruffy band whose structure is .weak. They
Approved For Release 2005/01/11 CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
Continued
 .6
1 0
1JUL 31 1965
Approved For Release 2005/01/11 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
have no crime organization of their own and seem
to be. relegated to doing favors locally-such as
purchasing properties or intimidating people-for
Mafia bosses in other cities. The worst that is sus-'.
pected of the Los Angeles Mafia is that it perhaps
uses the national organization's communications
and transportation facilities to move money from
illegal activities out of the city for these other
organized gangs, for a fee.
j. There ' is no Mafia strong man in Los Angeles.
The Intelligence Division believes that the leader-
ship of the Mafia "family" in the city is split up;
among three men. The first is Frank Desimone, a
55-year-old bachelor who wears rimless glasses.:
Desimone is an attorney who does not practice
and has no visible means of support. He was one .
of two Los Angeles delegates to the 1957 Mafia
Grand Council meeting at Apalachin (the other : ,
delegate, Simone Scozzari, has since been deported
to Sicily), and he was among those arrested by!,!.
the New York State Police. He served four months
in jail for avoiding a grand jury subpoena concern-
ing the Apalachin meeting, and later he was given
a four-year sentence on a charge of conspiracy to
obstruct justice. Like all the other convictions in';
this case, Desimone's was later reversed. ,
.0 ' The Intelligence Division. believes Desimone is !?
,a "super errand boy for the national Mafia in
Los Angeles" and also the legal adviser for the
local mob. He frequently makes mysterious trips I
to Mexico. Although he has no known income, he':
lives well. He drives a white Cadillac and has a
$35,000 home in suburban Downey, Calif.,
The second member of the Los Angeles Mafia
leadership triumvirate is believed to be Nick Li-
cata. Originally a Mafia transferee from Detroit,
Licata, now about 70, still retains strong ties with
the Eastern "families." Originally Licata ran
gambling enterprises for the late Los Angeles boss,
Jack Dragna, and in 1951 he was arrested in con-
nection with the Mafia murder of Tony Trombino
and Tony Brancato, who had committed the in-
.discretion of holding up one of the mob's gambling
,'casinos in Las Vegas. He was acquitted.
Today Licata lives on the income from several
businesses he has infiltrated. He spends most of
his time at the racetrack, where he meets con-
stantly with lesser Mafia members and gives them
Division: as .."one of the big- fines, a decision;.,.,
Joseph Valachi before the McClellan Committee.
The 'third member of the Los Angeles ruling
group, Louis Tom Dragna, was also known to !;
Valachi. Six feet tall and 190 pounds, the 44-year-
old Louis Tom is a nephew of boss Jack Dragna,
who died peacefully in bed shortly after. Chief
Parker took over. Louis Tom's criminal record
includes arrests for burglary, counterfeiting and
conspiracy to commit murder. He now owns two
Approved' For Release 200%4 11 ~h4-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
non-union dress manufacturing companies in the
Los Angeles area, is a member pf two golf clubs,
and frequents the fashionable Perino's Restaurant.`1
The Intelligence Division calls Dragna "the man:.'
.,who. settles disputes in. the_moti,'1,_
 Approved For Release'2005i61/11 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510167-2
There are only 32 Mafia members in the Los
Angeles area, and this figure includes elderly
Mafiosi from other cities who have come to Cali- ;
fornia to retire and die, just like legitimate busi-
nessmen. Recently I discussed this sorry collet-'!
tion and its undistinguished leadership with Chief
Parker and Inspector Gates, then the chief of
Intelligence and now inspector of police.."It looks
as if we've won the war," said Gates.
"Don't be too cocky," said Parker. "With these,
guys you drop your guard, and wham.!"
We discussed the fact that Los Angeles' almost
total victory had given hope to many other cities
in their war against better-entrenched Mafia .
"families," and that one police department after
another was copying Parker's techniques. "Yes,"
said 'Gates, whose acting successor as head of
Intelligence is Lt. Marion Phillips, "a lot of the
1 Mafia are leaving the United States altogether
{ and the new ones from Sicily are migrating to
other countries. The poor Australians are having
trouble with them now." +
I asked Parker if he expected to be fighting the
Mafia for the rest of his life, and he said;'"Yes."
w ; a
"Why?" I asked.
Approved For Release 2005/01/11 CIA-ROP88-01315R000300510167-2?