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May 31 - June 3, 2023
Haffenden invited Gurfein to his office at the Hotel Astor for a meeting where they would be joined by Socks Lanza.
instead he was revealing the limits of his influence with the Italians and other gangs and families.
Lanza would be the “inside man” to contact Luciano and convince him to cooperate.
Gurfein insisted that one person who could help Lanza convince Luciano, and perhaps assist in the process, was Moses Polakoff, Luciano’s attorney of record.
Gurfein approached his boss, Frank Hogan, for the go-ahead.
Hogan permitted Gurfein to contact Polakoff and enlist his help to get to Luciano.
But when Gurfein started talking about the threat of sabotage and U-boats, and how Luciano could help, the former sailor changed his tune.
“If Luciano made an honest effort to be of service in the
future,” Gurfein said, “[the DA’s office] would bear that in mind.”
sway with his client was his business partner, current accountant, and best friend, Meyer “Little Man” Lansky.
was the first time Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano met. Luciano was shaking down kids for protection, which was his first venture into racketeering. It was an encounter that would be the start of a friendship that lasted a lifetime.
Frank Costello (known then by his real name, Francesco Castiglia), and Lansky brought into the gang his fellow Jewish friend Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.
But of all the rackets that Lansky ran, the most notorious was his murder-for-hire business that the press called “Murder Inc.”
“We have to be very careful making any moves because . . . Mussolini [is] popular with some Italians in New York.”
Plus, Luciano was Sicilian, and they considered themselves as part of a different country than Italy.
The attorney for the most notorious gangster in prison, the most notorious gangster not in prison, and the man who was busting crime bosses all over the city left together and took a Sunshine taxi the dozen blocks to the Hotel Astor.7
Luciano was adamant that the whole gang pool their money, so nobody got jealous of the others. It was a move with deep foresight, and a philosophy that would shape the underworld in the future.8
In case there was any doubt, he won $244 in a craps game shortly after coming home, which would’ve been a year’s salary working for Goodman.11
But there was also an Italian that Luciano respected, and his name was Francesco Castiglia (later changed to Frank Costello).
was the shame he felt for what had actually got him caught—running a massive prostitution ring.
Luciano’s prison file had a deportation warrant in it that would send him back to Italy, and it was to be executed in the event he ever got paroled.
He had never gone through the trouble of becoming a US citizen, so technically he was still Italian.
His underboss was already in Italy—Vito Genovese—and Genovese, amazingly, was friendly with Mussolini’s government. That could come in handy if Luciano were deported.
“Whatever I do I want it kept quiet,” he said. “Private so [if] I get back to Italy I’m not a marked man.”25
They only needed Luciano to talk to a few key people, not the entire waterfront and city of New York.
Lansky then told Luciano they thought it was a good idea to bring Socks Lanza up to visit him so he could tell Luciano
exactly what he needed and where he needed it.
Haffenden agreed that he would keep Luciano’s name under wraps at ONI. As for secrecy in the underworld—Lansky and Lanza were in charge of that.
If Lansky could contact Ryan and Sullivan and tell them that Luciano wanted them to help the navy, they could have most of the longshoremen in the city cooperating.30 What about Brooklyn?
To button up the Brooklyn waterfront, they’d need the “Lord High Executioner” himself—Albert Anastasia. Anastasia was a good friend of Luciano’s.
Originally started by Lansky and Siegel, “Murder Inc.” was later taken over by Anastasia and a Jewish gangster named Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.
Operation Underworld would need someone else to help in Brooklyn. That person was someone very close to Luciano, and another one of Mangano’s capos—Joe Adonis.
Adonis and Luciano went way back to the days of the Bugs and Meyer Mob. Back then, Adonis ran the Broadway Mob, and frequently worked with Luciano and Lansky during Prohibition, even introducing Luciano to some major bootlegging players.
“Tough” Willie McCabe was Luciano’s guy in Harlem, as McCabe ran the numbers racket there, had union connections, and also ran a legitimate vending machine company in midtown Manhattan. Luciano gave Lanza instructions to go meet McCabe
What about Frank Costello? “Go and see Frank,” Luciano ordered Lanza. “And let Frank help along. This is a good cause.”
Costello his acting boss, but he was also the most well-connected gangster ever to grace New York City, as
If anyone needed to be bribed or influenced to let Luciano out of prison, Costello was the man for the job.
Between their six locals in Brooklyn, there were thousands of longshoremen loading war supplies onto Allied merchant ships, making control of their territory of vital strategic importance.
Haffenden was freelancing, after all—he had no official clearance from the navy for what he was about to do.
provided to ONI. Among a treasure trove of information, Squad #3 provided ONI with diplomatic codes, an index of pro-Axis residents living in the US and abroad, and other information linking the consulate to espionage activity within the US itself. But the contents of the envelope were never used against anyone, as ONI found it far more valuable to have Haffenden keep spying on the consulate than confront
Luciano’s plans were beginning to take shape, and he was bringing in his closest and most trusted associates, one by one, using Operation Underworld as a cover for his true intentions.
Harlem’s culture was still rich as its economy was recovering, but there was plenty of unrest in the summer of 1942, and thus it became the location of a proposed revolution against the United States of America.
But it wasn’t the Germans, or even the Italians, who were plotting—it was a Japanese cell.
The Black Dragon Society was created by a Japanese nationalist who was trying to spread ideas of imperialism in the United States.
De Guzman also told them that the Japanese were procuring firearms to equip an army, but that they should try to arm themselves with whatever they could.
Jordan was known by another name—“the Black Hitler.”20
Japan’s largest concentration of spies against the US resided in Mexico.
But the navy interfering with labor rights was something more akin to what was happening in Nazi Germany,
The fallout from such an exposure would seriously harm the reputation of the navy and bring serious questions as to the right of the federal government to spy on its citizens.
An Australian-born man named Harry Bridges—the president of the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union (ILWU)—was an idealist and labor rights activist. He was also an outspoken Communist, had been behind one of the only general strikes in the nation’s history (which had shut down nearly every port on the West Coast), and was currently fighting his own deportation order. The
