Article: The reign of notorious Mob...

The reign of notorious Mob boss, Sam "Mooney" Giancana, may have ended in 1975, but in Chicago, among the Outfit's old guard, Mooney's legacy -- as well as his vision of an international crime syndicate -- still lives on.

In a Windy City backstreet bar, retired Outfit enforcers sit around knotty pine tables, whiling away Happy Hour. That's how they spend most afternoons: smoking half-gnawed stogies at the neighborhood watering hole, reminiscing about organized crime's past -- and sometimes, pondering its future.

The future. That's the topic today. The dark bar suddenly turns lively. Organized crime, they insist, isn't dead. No, it's alive. And growing. Going high-tech. Sure there are the same tired scams: prostitution, gambling, protection rackets. Hell, those games are as old as Man himself. But after cocaine came on the scene in the late seventies, the game took on a new twist. And so did organized crime. Since then it's been all about money, not power.

Nowadays, the old men say, the guys on top are a new breed. Organized crime isn't an Italian "thing" anymore. The guys today are Columbians and chinks and ruskies. Mooney Giancana may have dreamed of a global future for the Outfit, but truth is, he only dabbled in international deals. These new guys? They're doing it. They're buying up the whole damned world, investing in everything from football teams to satellites. Can you believe it? Just read the headlines if you don't. The chinks and Columbians are financing political campaigns, the Triads and Nigerians and Russians are trading arms for drugs and drugs for arms. What's the world coming to? What's left for our people? For La Cosa Nostra?

The old men grimace in unison. Even the United States government is in on the action. The feds have the lottery, they've taken over the Outfit's corner on gambling.

They shake their bald heads despairingly and stare into their Manhattans. No, they mumble to one another, organized crime didn't die when their boss, Mooney, got hit. There's always an angle, a loophole, and somebody willing to go for it. Crime is here to stay. But the Italian American Mafia? It's all penny ante shit now. They look at one another and ask, "How the hell did that happen?"

"Omerta," one of them whispers. That's what happened. Loyalty -- loyalty's as dead as Mooney Giancana. It was those young greaseballs we put in power that did it. They thought playing by the rules was out of style. Too "old country." The men lean forward in their chairs. Yeah, they nod in agreement, that's what killed the American, the Italian, Mafia -- forget what those bigmouths in New York say. They'd like you to think the Italians have got it all locked up. Fuck. Isn't their man Gotti in prison? Truth is, the families started to forget the rules -- or maybe, they just started to ignore them. But it was the new guys that really screwed things up. That goddamned "me" generation -- those snot-nosed kids who broke the cardinal rule of dope dealing: never do your own shit. After a few snorts of coke, they'd get paranoid and spill their guts to the feds. Hell, it was almost as if the Columbians who supplied the dope had planned it that way.

Around the table, the dim eyes meet and, for one brief moment, light up. So that was it: It was the Columbians and their fucking cocaine that took down the Italian American Mafia. God rest the snitches' souls. The poor sons-of-bitches didn't know what they were doing. But the Columbians did.

Of course, the old men agree, it wasn't that those guys in the Columbian Cali cartel were geniuses. They just were in sync with the times. That's why they're bigger than the Medellin cartel today. The Cali guys, they've got style. They don't pull out a gun first thing. No, they shake your hand. Play a round of golf with you, maybe. They're businessmen.

Mooney would've liked the way the Cali boys conduct business. Can you imagine -- they use computers, the Internet. Faxes, cell phones. Satellites. The Columbians don't use muscle to stay ahead of the law. They use technology. A communications network with something like twenty, maybe thirty thousand, businesses working for them all over the world.

The Columbians didn't stay in their own backyard like the Italian American Mafia did, either. That was the Italian's mistake. Mooney saw it coming. He saw that someday, all the walls would come down. That the world would be one big global village. Now, the whole damned world is everyman's oyster, a melting pot of people and resources. It sounds like a swell idea. A borderless society without a governing body is like fat cow just waiting to be slaughtered.

The bar goes silent. The old men here all know the truth. Thanks to things like the European Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the whole world is a universal sap waiting to be taken. Bosnia, Czechoslovakia, Bolivia, Peru, Nigeria, Thailand, Russia. The list of countries controlled by organized crime goes on. If the Columbians have their way, the entire world may soon be hemorrhaging.

But, as Mooney Giancana's story in Double Cross pointed out so clearly: For crime to exist, one must have "partners." And Mooney, like his counterparts today, had plenty of those: politicians and kings, common laborers and intelligence agencies.

Likewise, the Columbians, the Triads, the Mafzia -- these criminal organizations have not reached their enormous heights of financial and political power alone (annually, the Columbians gross as much as the United States federal budget: three trillion dollars). Oh, yes, from Andean farmers to Harvard foreign exchange students, the Columbians have had their partners. The Russian Mafzia has formed its legions from cast-off KGB, angry muslim terrorists from distant provinces, and aging communist dissidents. The Triads have followed their people into foreign lands, bringing with them opium as well as fear, ritual, and violence.

But it doesn't stop there. To achieve their ends, all of these organized crime syndicates have made their bed with radicals and terrorists. They've lined the pockets of corrupt customs officials, military personnel, and high-ranking officials all over the planet. Weak nations make strong criminals. Indeed, the world today may be a global village. But it is a village of corruptibles. The old men in Chicago know the truth: That's the real strength of international crime. And the real danger.

But for now, that danger is still imagined. Still lurking ahead on the horizon. To truly fulfill Mooney Giancana's vision of an international network of organized criminals something more must happen: The Columbians, Triads, and their cohorts around the world must join together. They must unite. Cooperate. Cooperation -- ah, it would seem that is the sticking point. Cooperation requires trust. Trust is one commodity which cannot be sold or stolen. Trust must be earned. It is unlikely in the days of witness protection programs and lucrative book deals, that such trust will come readily.

The Columbians may have "mules" around the world. But these individuals and groups work for the cartel not with it. They are not Cali peers or equals. One could point to the Columbian's trade relationship with the Asians (cocaine for heroin) as a cooperative venture. A convenience, perhaps. A way to test market opportunity with a low investment, most probably. Indeed, now that the demand for heroin has become apparent, the Columbians have started growing their own poppies in the Andes. Such competition with the Triads, one can assume, will not lead to collaboration. And certainly not to trust.

To divine the future of organized crime, one must see through the eyes of Mooney Giancana's old timers. And look back to the days of prohibition turf wars, when Valentines were sent with a bullet. It is there, in the past, the old men insist, that the future of global, organized crime lies. Perhaps, they say, wry smiles crossing their lips, that the next great world war will not come about because Men wish to protect the innocent. But rather, because Men wish to protect the guilty.

Copyright 1998 by Sam and Bettina Giancana