Word: valachi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...major cities, more money is being spent by police forces, and more men are being thrown into the battle. Hollywood makes movies about it (The Brotherhood), and readers have put it on the top of the bestseller list (Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and Peter Maas's The Valachi Papers). Organized crime is no longer quite the mystery that it was. It is a vast, sprawling underground domain impossible to trace fully; but there is no longer any doubt that its most important part, its very nucleus, is La Cosa Nostra (LCN), otherwise known as the Mafia...
...Valachi...
...decade, even J. Edgar Hoover denied its existence. Its structure was a mystery, and if it had a name, no one on the outside was sure of what it was. Yet, almost unnoticed, it exerted a profound impact on American life. It still does. Small wonder that Valachi, the thug-turned-informer, doubted that anybody would believe or care when he talked about an organization called La Cosa Nostra...
...revelation occurred in 1957, when New York state police happened upon a meeting of the Commission and its lieutenants at the estate of Joseph Barbara in upstate Apalachin. The authorities were able to find out who the mobsters were and, more important, that they were together. In 1962, Joe Valachi, the Cosa Nostra soldier-turned-informer, confirmed and explained what the FBI had been hearing from its bugs for months. Though he looked at the Mob from the bottom up, Valachi's remarkable memory nonetheless provided invaluable insights into its organization. From January 1961 to December 1968, the Government indicted...
...custom that had to be dropped was the kiss of greeting between members. "Charlie Lucky [also known as Salvatore Luciana or Lucky Luciano] put a stop to this and changed it to a handshake," Joe Valachi told Author Peter Maas. " 'After all,' Charlie said, 'we would stick out kissing each other in restaurants and places like that...