Final_Judgment

140 Israel’s Godfather [79]
`THE REAL LEADERS OF CRIME'
Lansky's most authoritative biographer, organized crime writer Hank
Messick pinpoints the tendency of the media—and the law enforcement
community—to overlook the broad and penetrating reach of the Meyer
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate, focusing instead on the media's hype of
"the Mafia"—the Italian wing of the criminal underworld.
Says Messick: "The real leaders of crime have remained hidden while
the nation's law enforcement agencies have chased minor punks. And naive
is he who believes this development is accidental. Research reveals that non-
Mafia leaders of crime have been hiding behind the vendetta-ridden society
[the Italian Mafia] for decades. . . Attempts to frame me have been made,
and I've been smeared as anti-Semitic from coast to coast by gangsters who
used religion as a cloak." 205
In his own memoirs, Lansky's crony, Charles "Lucky" Luciano
revealed one rather interesting fact. According to Luciano, it was Lansky
himself who suggested that the newly-assembled national crime syndicate
dub itself "the Union Siciliano"—a sobriquet which gave the criminal
underworld a decidedly "Sicilian" imagery. 206
`KOSHER NOSTRA'
According to veteran JFK assassination researcher Peter Dale Scott, "It is
relevant that [then-Senate rackets committee counsel Robert F.] Kennedy did
not use the word 'Mafia' when presenting, in his 1960 book The Enemy
Within, his model of organized crime as an endemic, multi-ethnic, partially
institutionalized syndicate." 207
According to Scott: "What Robert Kennedy had meant by the
`syndicate' was very different from what [Mafia experts meant by the term]
La Cosa Nostra." 208 According to Scott, "anyone speaking about organized
crime . . . does so under conditions of great political restraint." 209
To put it bluntly: the term "Mafia" does not account for the substantial—
and indeed predominant—role of Meyer Lansky and his Jewish associates in the
national crime syndicate.
Because of political constraints and fear of being accused of "anti-
Semitism," many have been afraid to point out the important role of Jewish
criminals in the world of crime.
One Jewish gangster, Lansky's West Coast henchman, Mickey Cohen,
discussed the Italian-Jewish conflict in organized crime in his memoirs. He
said, frankly: "See, I don't want to pull any wool over anybody's eyes
because I'm writing a true autobiography, right? And I certainly don't want
to mince any words, but I really don't consider the Mafia or anything of that
type the only strength [in organized crime].” 210