Mafia - The Prototypical Alien Conspiracy

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American Academy of Political and Social Science

Mafia: The Prototypical Alien ConspiracyAuthor(s): Dwight C. Smith, Jr.Reviewed work(s):Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 423, Crime andJustice in America: 1776-1976 (Jan., 1976), pp. 75-88

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ANNALS,AAPSS,423, Jan. 1976

Mafia: The Prototypical Alien ConspiracyBy DWIGHTC. SMITH,JR.

ABSTRACT: The attractiveness of alien conspiracy theoriesin American public opinion stretches back to the earlydays of the Republic. "Mafia" has been the name of onesuch theory. When placed in context with other conspiracytheories, such as the Bavarian Illuminati scare of 1798-1799 and the Red Scare of 1919-1920, the reasons foremergence of a "Mafia" theory in 1890-91, and again in1946-1963, become clear. Contemporary public opinionregarding crime is heavily influenced by the post-WorldWar II resurgence of "Mafia"claims, though the evidencebehind them is questionable. The role of "Mafia"as a forcein public policy is clear, however, and events of the lastdecade suggest that the consequent shifts in legal strategies,and an increasing sense of injustice generally, have beengreater threats to American society than the presumedalien conspiracy behind the anti-Mafiapolicies.

Dwight C. Smith, Jr., is Director of Institutional Research at the StateUniversity of New York at Albany. Educated at Yale and Syracuse Universities,he is the author of The Mafia Mystique. Before joining the Albany staff in1967, he was Assistant Deputy Director for Systems Planning and Researchof the New York State Identification and Intelligence System.75


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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYA MERICANS ave always beensensitive to threats from rivalnational interests. The historic rootsof this cultural trait have been evi-dent since the early days of the Re-public, as a newly-won indepen-dence had to be maintained againstpolitical pressures from the mothercountry and from her Europeanrivals. In a world arena dominatedby the politics of nationalism, fewof us seriously question the authen-ticity or the propriety of that con-cern.Lurking behind this concern,however, is a parallelcultural threadwith potentially greatersignificanceto American public policy: a recur-ring apprehension that somewhere"out there" is an organized, secret,alien group that is poised to infil-trate our society and to undermineourfundamentaldemocraticbeliefs."It" is more foreboding than theknown national rival, because con-spiracies can set to work in ourmidst without apublic declarationofintent or an overtly hostile act; evenbefore we know it, "they" can beoverrunning our internal defensesand overwhelming any instinct toresist. The precise nature and com-position of the conspiracy varieswith the times; its structure is gen-erally vague and indistinct; but tothose convinced by its signs, there isno room for argument as to itsexistence and no escape from theominous future that it portends. Itmay be a reflection of a human fearof the foreign devil, some enduringexamples of which (notably theElders of Zion) have gained inter-national appeal; but for the UnitedStates, the concept of conspiracyhas occupied an important andsometimes respected position in ourvalue structure.

How DOES AN ALIEN CONSPIRACYTHEORY DEVELOP?

There is a broad, though shallow,thread of willingness to believe inthe alien conspiracy in public opin-ion. At the fringes are anxious per-sons of varying political persuasions,whose apprehensions approachparanoiaas they detect their favoriteconspiracies behind every publicevent. But even in the middle, "sen-sible" ground, it remains painfullyobvious that Americans are suscep-tible to the lures of conspiracyadvocates when their accusationstouch the right cultural anxieties.In fourinstances since 1798,chargesof a secret alien conspiracy1 havecapturedsufficientattentionto affectpublic opinion and public policywell beyond the scope of eventstriggering the original cry. In se-quence, the villains have been theBavarian Illuminati, whose threatbecame evident during the presi-dency of John Adams; the original"Mafia,"which burst on the Ameri-can scene in 1890; the Bolsheviks ofthe Red Scare that followed WorldWarI; and the revived and partiallydomesticated "Mafia" of the mid-1960s.In each case, three conditionshave been present. First, there wasa feeling of unease over the prospectthat forces beyond our borders do,or might, exercise undue influenceover the scope and direction ofdomestic social change-an uneasesufficiently widespread to supporta new look at persons and eventsat the edge of what Kai Eriksonhas called "the community's tradi-tional boundary network."2Second,

1. I distinguish the bona fide alien con-spiracy from the domestic variety, whichtends to be more common but less fore-boding in the long run.2. Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans (NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), p. 69.

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MAFIAa moral entrepreneur, in HowardBecker'swords,3has to take the stageto focus public attention on theconditions, or values, of Americanlife that are at stake. Third, it mustbe possible to construct a set offacts, or assumptions of fact, thatcan be used by the entrepreneuras evidence supporting a conspira-torial explanation of potentialchanges for the worse.The Illuminati were a threat toreligious values. They are long sinceforgotten, perhaps because we nolonger consider religion to be asimportantas did the New Englandclergy ofthe late eighteenth century.The Bolsheviks were a threat topolitical values; and they still hauntus, though faith in a Communistconspiracy has become almost re-spectable since the days of the RedScare, a recognized arm of Sovietforeign policy rather than just ashadowy plot. "Mafia,"in contrast,was a criminal threat, which per-severes in contemporary publicopinion as a prototypical alien con-spiracy, still up to its evil ways.A complex set of conditions led toits originaldiscovery, to its reappear-ance 50 years later, and to its con-tinuing influence today in Americanpublic opinion. By reviewing firstthe Illuminati and the Red Scareepisodes, we may gain a perspec-tive from which the reasons for theperseverence of "Mafia" in publicopinion will be clearer.A THEOLOGICAL CONSPIRACY: THE

BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI,1798-1799The spectre of the Bavarian I1-luminati was first raised in this3. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders (NewYork: The Free Press, 1963), p. 147ff.

country in 1798 by the ReverendJedediah Morse of Charlestown,Massachusetts, who, with many ofhis fellow New England clergy,found rapidly shifting social andpolitical conditions threateningto anestablished sense of order. Politicalcleavages that had emerged on anational scale following adoption ofthe constitution stimulated their ap-prehension. Concern for resiliencyof a new nation was heightened bythe swiftness with which new crisesfollowed upon each other; in thebrief span of six years, for example,the Republic had to absorb such dis-parate and critical events as the ar-rival of Citizen Genet, the briefappearanceof the secret DemocraticSocieties, John Jay's unpopulartreaty with England, the XYZ Af-fair, and the passage of the Alienand Sedition Acts. Lurking behindit all was the anti-establishment,anticlerical French Revolution.Conservative churchmen wereparticularly vulnerable to rumorsthat atheistic forces were arrayedagainst them. A growing demand forreligious tolerance was inexplicablesimply as a popular cause; therehad to be a driving force behindit, using the issue of religiousfreedom as a smokescreen for anattackon religion itself. The absenceof an identifiable force was simplyproof that it was secret; and thenecessity of exposing it required asearch for its true identity. TheFrench Revolution was the obviousplace to look. Not only was itantireligious in its own right, butthe supporters of tolerance in thiscountry were also known to besympathetic to it. Morse's promi-nence in the Illuminati controversycame about because he was thefirst to "expose" to Americans aconspiracy that both explained the

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYFrench Revolution and could belinked tothe cause of tolerance here.The Order of the Illuminati is sodistant from contemporary religiousor philosophical thought that a briefaccount of its history may be help-ful here.4 The order had enjoyeda brief life in Bavaria, from 1776to 1787. Its original mission was toadvance the cause of truth and rea-son. Their opponents, said theorder's founder Adam Weishaupt,were the Jesuits who controllededucation through the enforcementof dogmatic instruction that sup-pressed all liberal ideas. Weis-haupt's argument was not antire-ligious; he wanted to rescue Chris-tianity from "the advocates of super-naturalism and the enemies of rea-son,"5 and that led him and theorder to frequent early utteranceshostile to current Christian dogma.When read apart from Weishaupt'sbasic intent, and in association withother records of the order, thosestatements were interpreted as evi-dence that the order was "devotedto the overthrow of religion and theState, a band of poisoners andforgers, an association of men ofdisgusting morals and depravedtastes."6On the basis of that inter-pretation, coupled with the re-minder that such a cause also chal-lenged political authority,the Elec-tor of Bavariasuppressed the order.But he could not suppress thememory of the order when theFrench Revolution erupted a fewyears later. The order was resur-

4. A detailed analysis of the Illuminatiand its effect on New England is con-tained in Vernon Stauffer,New England andthe Bavarian Illuminati (New York: Colum-bia University Press, 1918).5. Ibid., p. 160. Weishaupt consideredJesus of Nazareth to be the grand masterof the Illuminati (see p. 159).6. Ibid., p. 182.

rected then, to explain the Revolu-tion as simply anattack on religion-that is, as if no other economic,social, intellectual, orhistoricfactorshad any bearing on it. Somehow, asecret conspiracy had so thoroughlyinfiltrated French life that on com-mand it could rise up and overthrowan otherwise stable monarchy.Thatconspiracy was the Illuminati,which had-so the argument went-subjugated the Freemasonry ofFrance to its diabolical conspiracyagainst both thrones and altars.Theexplanation suffered at every turnfrom the lack of evidence, but thelegend survived. Jedediah Morse'sattention was drawn to it throughthe writings of an Englishman, JohnRobison, who charged thatAN ASSOCIATION HAS BEENFORMED for the express purpose ofROOTING OUT ALL THE RELI-GIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, ANDOVERTURNING ALL THE EXIST-ING GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE. . . the most active leaders in theFrench Revolution were members ofthisAssociation . . . [it] still exists, stillworks in secret, and . . . its emissariesare endeavoringo propagateheir de-testable doctrines . . . [I]t stillsubsistswithoutbeing detected,and has spreadinto all the countriesof Europe.7

When he came to Robison's un-supported assertion that severallodges of the Illuminati had beenestablished in Americapriorto 1786,Morse instantly grasped the "truth."He lost little time in passing theword to his congregation. "The as-tonishing increase in irreligion,"Morse preached, gave reason "to7. John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracyagainst All the Religions and Governmentsof Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meet-ings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, andReadingSocieties (Edinburgh,Scotland:n.p.,1797), pp. 10, 11, 15. Quoted in Stauffer,Bavarian Illuminati, p. 203.

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MAFIAsuspect that there is some secretplan in operation, hostile to trueliberty and religion. .. TheIlluminati were at the bottom of it;they were the principal cause ofvirtually every event that had shakenestablished governments during theprevious two decades. Morse con-cluded: "In this situation of things,our duty is plain. . . .9There were no Illuminati in theUnited States, but once Morse's ser-mon was printed and widely dis-tributed, the dispute over their pre-sumed existence continued for morethan a year. After Morse's chargeswere espoused by Timothy Dwightin a public address on July 4, 1798,the reality of the Illuminati becamean accepted article of faith for theFederalist cause. It was an attractiveargumentfor them because it forcedtheir opponents'1 into the impos-sible position, given the absence offacts in the case, of having to provea negative condition. Once it be-came known, however, that Robi-son's European "proofs"had beendiscredited, and that Morse knewthat to be the case even while con-tinuing to press the existence of theIlluminati in this country, calmerheads prevailed and the controversyfaded from view. But the damagehad been done. Morse had demon-

8. Jedediah Morse,A Sermon, Delivered atthe New North Church in Boston, in themorning, and in the afternoon at Charles-town, May 9th, 1798, being the day recom-mended by John Adams, President of theUnited States ofAmerica,for solemn humilia-tion, fasting and prayer (Charlestown: n.p.,1798), p. 19. Quoted in Stauffer, BavarianIlluminati, p. 232.9. Ibid., p. 25. Quoted in Stauffer, BavarianIlluminati, p. 237.10. Jefferson, "the arch apostle of the causeof irreligion and free-thought," and his sup-porters were the principal targets of theFederalist clergy. See Stauffer, BavarianIlluminati, p. 121.

strated that American public opin-ion could be swayed by theoriesframed by the necessities of a de-sired conclusion-that workingbackward from a particularizedanxiety, one could create the evi-dence to justify public fear by em-broidering the past with a conspira-torial cause. The specific presump-tions about the Illuminati droppedfrom sight, as the New Englandclergy turned to other matters offaith and morals;but Morse's meth-odology survived for the benefit offuture supporters of conspiracytheories.A POLITICAL CONSPIRACY:THE REDSCARE, 919-1920

The Red Scare of 1919-1920emerged at anotheranxious time forAmericans.The struggle to organizelabor was stretching social struc-tures: the wartime legacies of in-flationand unemployment added todomestic uncertainty. The debateover immigration, buttressed bywartime appeals for national sol-idarity, had reappeared in the con-text of a xenophobic, near-fanatical100 percent Americanism.Just overthe horizon lay bolshevism, whoseinfluence could be detected, by ob-serversprone to conspiracytheories,wherever the accustomed orderwasunder attack.The unexpected event that trig-gered the Red Scare was the newsthat 36 bombs had been mailedfromNew YorkCity, timed to arriveon May Day at the homes of promi-nent American business and politi-cal leaders."1Only one reached its

11. This event, and subsequent federal ac-tion under Attorney General Palmer, is de-scribed in Stanley Coben, A. Mitchell Pal-mer: Politician (New York: Columbia Uni-versity Press, 1963), chs. 11, 12, pp. 196-245.

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destination, causing minor injuryand property damage, but the impli-cations flowing from simply the in-tent of the act were explosiveenough. Police and Justice Depart-ment officials immediately de-scribed the attempt as an IWW-Bolshevik plot, intended to signala May Day reign of terror. Publicreaction to their charges was swift.Mobs formedin variouscities, some-times assisted by local police, toattack radicalmeetings and parades.The resulting riots became furtherproof to the public at large of thestrength of the radicals and of theirwillingness to resort to force, andthe public clamor for action by theJustice Department reached a feverpitch.AttorneyGeneral A. Mitchell Pal-mer became the moralentrepreneurof the day, using the bombing in-cident as his justificationfor mobiliz-ing public opinion against a radical,Bolshevik-inspired conspiracy. Hiscause had more substance thanMorse's Illuminati: there were atleast five known organizations thatmight threaten the country;'2 theMay Day bomb threats, though notsolved, were obvious conspiratorialsigns; the Bolshevik cause was anindisputable force on the interna-tional scene, widely believed to befomenting conspiratorial activity;and Palmer was in a position to domore than preach.Aftercoopting theDepartment of Labor,which had thepower to deport alien Anarchists,Palmer acted. In nationally coor-dinated raids on November 7, 1919,and January2, 1920, federal agents

12. There were three groups with anarchistleanings: the Union of Russian Workers,El Ariete, and L'era Nuovo; and there werethe American Communist Party and itsfactional offshoot, the Communist LaborParty.

and local police descended on themeeting places of Anarchists andCommunists.To the public at large, the raidswere an immediate success. Thou-sands of supposedly dangerousalienradicals had been rounded up fordeportation. Their roundup gaveproof that the conspiracy threatwasreal,while simultaneously throttlingit. But success was short-lived; bymidsummer the Red Scare had be-come wholly discredited.Two factors contributed to itsdemise. First, once it became evi-dent that Palmer's agents had beenoverzealous in their pursuit ofradicals, an inevitable backlash setin. There had been an almost casualdisregard of arrest and search war-rants, a widespread use of violenceand harassment, denial of counsel,

and protracteddetention of innocentpersons in abominable facilities.13Even the Labor Department, in theperson of Acting SecretaryLouis F.Post, drew back from Palmer'sleadership when the facts emerged.By applying constitutional stan-dards, Post dismissed the greatmajority of deportation casesbrought to him for action. Palmerand his staff were enraged, but inthe ensuing controversy (conductedlargely in the context of impeach-ment hearings against Post) promi-nent members of the legal profes-sion issued a strong condemnationof the PalmerRaids14hat cut sharplyinto the attorney general's support.13. An example: 39 men arrested in Lynn,Massachusetts, for being in a meeting halloften used by radicals had come togethersolely for the purpose of forming a coopera-tive bakery. Coben, A. Mitchell Palmer,p. 229.14. "For more than six months we ....have seen with growing apprehension thecontinued violation of [the] Constitution andbreaking of [the law] by the Department of

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MAFIASecond, the Justice Departmenthad confused the quasi-romanticrhetoric of radical pamphleteeringwith a determination to act, and itscause faltered when widely trum-peted prophecies of future radicalvi-olence failed to materialize. Follow-ing the original bomb plot of May1919, the Bureau of Investigationforecast a Day of Terrorfor July 4;but nothing happened. The follow-ing spring, the department tried

again, warning of a gigantic con-spiracy involving general strikes,assassinations, and bombings onMay Day; when nothing happenedonce again, public opinion turned,and Palmer became the butt of de-risive editorial cartoons.Palmer had been able to mobilizepublic opinion to a much greaterextent than Jedediah Morse. Butwhen his conspiracy turned out tobe ephemeral, the Red Scare col-lapsed. Its demise was so thoroughthatCongress adjournedfor the sum-mer in 1920 without passing apeacetime sedition law that hadbeen widely supported less than sixmonths earlier. Yet Palmer had re-validated a point: alien conspiraciescan be sold to an expectant public,even to the extent of temporarilycondoning illegal government ac-tion.

A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY: THEORIGINAL "MAFIA,"1890-1891"Mafia"became a popular Ameri-can alien conspiracy theory in 1890,as proof of the apparent criminalbent of the southern European and

Justice." National Popular GovernmentLeague, To the American People: Reportupon the Illegal Practices of the Depart-ment of Justice (Washington, D.C.: Govern-ment Printing Office, 1920), p. 3.

as a consequent justification forrestricting immigration. One eventgave rise to the theory: the murder,on October 15, 1890, of the NewOrleans Superintendent of PoliceDavid Hennessey.15 "Mafia" en-tered the case for three reasons.First, Hennessey allegedly toldfriends who came to his aid afterhe had been ambushed that "theSicilians have done for me"; thatcentered attention on the Siciliancolony of the city. Second, he wasknown to have taken the side of theProvenzanosagainst their rivals, theMatrangas, in a dispute over ste-vedoring rights; the Matrangas husbecame the obvious Sicilian sus-pects in the murder and the even-tual defendants in court. Third, theProvenzanos found it convenient,being under suspicion themselvesfor an earlier ambush of the Matran-gas, to allege to reporters that theMatrangaswere leaders of a localMafia group with some 300 ad-herents.The charges of "Mafia" had noplace in the murder trial that fol-lowed; they were strictly a matterof public opinion. They prevailedin the highly charged atmosphereof New Orleans because the allega-tions came from friends of Hennes-sey. No one questioned the Proven-zanos or sought proof of theircharges: allegations sufficed.From a more objective vantagepoint, one might question the gul-libility of the New Orleanscitizenry,but a closer examination would sug-gest that the city's leaders were notreally concerned about either thereality of a Mafia or the necessityof requiring the niceties of legal

15. A detailed description of the event andits aftermath is contained in Dwight C.Smith, Jr., The Mafia Mystique (New York:Basic Books, 1975), pp. 27-40.

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proof.Rather,they were intent uponexacting revenge for a fallen hero,and for that purpose charges of"Mafia," true or not, were a con-venient justification for what wouldfollow. Sicilians had to be punished,one way or another. After all, as adispatch from New Orleans pointedout two days after Hennessey died,"it is the first time in the criminalhistory of the city that the Sicilianshave attacked any one save thoseof their nationality."16The com-munity was patient at first:"Weoweit to our duty as American citizensto try the law first, and to tryit thoroughly,"17was the counselof the mayor's Committee of Fiftythat investigated the case. But whenthe Matranga group that stood trialthe next spring was acquitted, thetrue sentiments of the communityprevailed. Led by members of theCommittee of Fifty, a mob de-scended on the parish prison thefollowing day and shot or lynched11 of the Matrangas then in cus-tody, including five who had notbeen on trial at all.As far as New Orleans was con-cered, the event could have endedthere. Vengeance had been ob-tained. But a lynching of such pro-portions could not pass unnoticed;besides, three of the mob's victimshad been Italian citizens. The af-fair thus became an internationalin-cident. The charges of"Mafia" wereeven more convenient then, becausethey served to rationalize, in a crudeway, the blatantly illegal lynchmob.18Consequently, the New Or-

16. New York Times, 19 October 1890,p. 1.17. Ibid., 28 October 1890, p. 1.18. Ironically so, since the mob was muchmore assuredly a band of "death-boundassassins," as the New Orleans City Coun-cil initially described Hennessey's assailants.

leans incident survived for the nextquarter century as proof that therewas a Mafia and as a standardargument ("look what happened inNew Orleans") in the fight forgreater restrictions on immigration.An international debate over thereality of Mafiarequired more thanthe assertions of the Provenzanos,however well they might have satis-fied the citizenry of New Orleans.There was external supportfortheirtale, in the form of evidence thatbands of men did exist in southernItaly in defiance of the law, andthat "Mafia" was associated withcertain aspects of illegal behaviorin Sicily. There might be some logic,then, in assumingthatillegal activityand "Mafia"had reached the UnitedStates with the immigrant flood.But what was that illegal behavior,and what was "Mafia"?The NewOrleans case established an imageof the Mafia as a gang of cut-throats, held together by fearsomeblood oaths and dedicated to crime;was that accurate?Contemporary scholarship19 sug-gests that it was not. Events inSicily that we have subsequentlycalled Mafiawere essentially local-ized patron-client relationships,held together by an attitude (or"state of mind") rather than formaloaths of allegiance, to which theword "Mafia"was generally applied.It existed in the absence of a stronggovernmental presence. The ma-fioso person served to mediate, ina heavily stratified economy, be-tween absent landlords and land-less peasants; inevitably, men of amafioso character obtained influ-

19. See, especially, Anton Blok, The Mafiaof a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960 (New York:Harper & Row, 1975; and Henner Hess,Mafia and Mafiosi: The Structure of Power(Farnborough, Eng.: D. C. Heath Ltd., 1973).

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MAFIAence thatextended also into politicalaffairs. The system was dependentupon patronageand upon the abilityof a "man of respect" to utilizeviolence when necessary, to main-tain his authority as middleman.To call it "organized" required at-tributing to its practitioners a self-conscious sense of structure wellbeyond either the necessities oftheir circumstances or their senseof being.

The phenomenon of Mafia hademerged in response to culturalconditions, not as an organizationindependent of its surroundingsthatcould decide to export itself. Iftraces of similar behavior were tobe found in this country, it wouldbe because the American environ-ment provided comparable mea-sures of nonexistent governmentalmachinery, a stratified society, andthe consequent need to establishpatron-client linkages. As FrancisIanni has suggested,20 hose culturalimperatives formed the basis of theimmigrant colony; thus the villageculture that had supported mafiosobehavior in Sicily survived with theimmigrant tide to support it here.The citizens of New Orleans, andtheir counterparts in other cities,might well have observed patron-client relationships at work. Thecriticalquestion forthe cay was howto interpret what was seen. Insteadof recognizing what it really repre-sented-that the American system,by denying adequate legal protec-tion forthe immigrantand by allow-ing exploitation of his labor for thebenefit of an established nativeclass, had stimulated the growth ofextralegal social mechanisms-American observers took the easy

20. Francis A. J. Ianni, A Family Business(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972),pp. 43-54.

way out by blaming it all on analien conspiracy.The original New Orleans Mafiascare died down after President Ben-jamin Harrison indemnified Italy onbehalf of the three Italian citizensmurdered by the lynch mob. ButMafia legends built around the Hen-nessey case survived. Every newinstance of Italian-associated crimi-nal behavior became an occasion forresurrecting the Mafia story andprovided even more evidence tosupport pressures for immigrationcontrol. But, unfortunately for thehonest-intentioned immigrant, pub-lic fear of a Mafia did little torescue him from conditions in whichmafioso behavior was a necessityof life.

"MAFIA" REVIVED, 1946-1963As the previous accounts haveillustrated, there was fertile groundin America for conspiracy scaresin 1798, 1890, and 1919. Each oc-casion had its own reasons for un-ease over the prospect that an alienforce might secretly be underminingour social and political institutions:a sense of irreligion spreading fromthe French Revolution; the prospectof lawlessness as a characteristic ofcertain immigrants; and the threat ofan impending Bolshevik uprising.Each had its own moral entrepre-neurs: Jedediah Morse; the Com-mittee of Fifty; and Attorney Gen-eral Palmer. Each had its own setof facts with which an entrepre-neur could exploit a latent sense ofunease against his preferred villains:Robison's Proofs; Hennessey's mur-der; and radical pamphleteering.The results varied. Religious tol-erance was stronger nationally thanthe orthodoxy of New England in1798: Morse was discredited, and

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYthe Illuminati were forgotten. Jus-tice was more importantthan emptywarnings in 1919: Palmer was alsodiscredited, though both publicopinion and formal governmentpolicy eventually concluded thathisRed Scare was in reality a strategicweapon of our principal foreignrival, the Soviet Union-at whichpoint it ceased to be an alien con-spiracyin its own right.The originalMafiascare, on the other hand, hadconsiderably more staying power asa conspiracy theory. Immigrantscontinued to pour into the country,and charges of excessive criminaltendencies amongsome of them con-tinued as well. Mafia remained thelatent explanation, to be resurrectedas in the Petrosino murder case of1909,21whenever an unsolved crimecould be linked to Italians.

The second "Mafia"scare was dif-ferent. It had its own moral entre-preneurs, the Federal Bureau ofNarcotics. But national unease, inthe years following World War II,was directed at the political implica-tions of international communismrather than at criminals; and therewas no clear set of facts yet tosubstantiate an appeal to wide-spreadanxieties over a criminalcon-spiracy.The "Mafia"of the immigra-tion years had been virtually dor-mant22when narcotics agents at-21. See Smith, The Mafia Mystique, pp.45-54.22. Between 1918 and 1943 there were

only four domestic incidents (aside from a fewdispatches from Sicily describing Mussolini'santi-Mafia campaign) in which the New YorkTimes saw fit to identify "Mafia" with the factsof the case. They occurred in 1921, 1925,1926, and 1928, and each reference wasincidental to the story. None of them hadanything to do with the "proof" of Mafia,or Cosa Nostra, that Joseph Valachi pro-duced in 1963. See ibid., pp. 62-65. In1944 Vito Genovese was identified upon hisarrest in Rome as a person associated with

tempted to revive it in 1946. Therewas a certain residual sense of fore-boding attachedto it still, but publicopinion simply was not responsive.For seventeen years the bureaulaboredto produce a receptive moodtoward a criminal threat and a con-vincing set of facts that would re-establish "Mafia" n the public eye.Each time their charges appeared,there was a brief flurry of publicinterest, as the press dusted off andreprinted old stories for a new gen-eration; but though interest mayhave seemed intense each time, itrapidly waned and "Mafia"wouldfade again fromview. This was trueof the charges by the bureau in1946 that Frank Costello was thekingpin of Harlem's Mafia;23 f theKefauver Committee's narcotics-in-spired claim in 1951 of "a sinistercriminal organization known as theMafia";24 f the efforts by narcoticsagents to link Vincent Squillantewith the Mafia during the McClel-lan committee's 1957 investigationof labor racketeering in Long Is-land's garbage-collection industry;25and even of stories associated withthe so-called Apalachin Conclaveof November 1957 and the subse-quent state and federal investiga-tions that it inspired.26It was notuntil the testimony ofJoseph Valachiin the fall of 1963 that the conceptof a real alien conspiracy calledMafia took hold permanently.27Other law enforcement agenciesthen took over the Narcotics Bu-reau's cause. Their efforts culmi-nated in 1967, when the President'sthe Mafia, but his notoriety in that caserapidly faded from view. Ibid., pp. 121-123.23. Ibid., pp. 123-127.24. Ibid., pp. 131-151.25. Ibid., pp. 156-162.26. Ibid., pp. 162-216.27. Ibid., pp. 217-242.

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MAFIACrime Commission officiallyblessed the concept of a Mafia con-spiracy.28The motives of the Narcotics Bu-reau have been variously ascribedto the need for a cause to com-pete with the FBI's Communistmenace or to the inevitable cir-cumstance of being directed towardthe one area of crime that requireda high degree of cooperation andinternational connections. But acloser examination of the bureau'shistory suggests that its main chal-lenge in the period under questionwas to explain failure. The notionof total suppression of illegal nar-cotics use through importation con-trol was a self-proclaimed mission,and it had not been attained. Howbetter to explain failure (and, inci-dentally, to prepare the ground forincreased future budgets) than toargue that, dedicated though it mightbe, the bureau was hard pressed toovercome an alien, organized, con-spiratorial force which, with evilintent and conspiratorial methods,had forced its ways on an innocentpublic?29Obviously, the bureau's strategywas neither that cynical nor thatclear; this description is simply aretrospective summary of a positionthat emerged through a series oftactical skirmishes with the entre-preneurs who found the profits in

28. "Today the core of organized crime inthe United States consists of 24 groupsoperating as criminal cartels in large citiesacross the nation. Their membership isexclusively men of Italian descent...."President's Commission on Law Enforce-ment and Administration of Justice, TaskForce Report: Organized Crime (Washington,D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967),p. 6. See also Smith, The Mafia Mystique,pp. 248-251.29. Smith, The Mafia Mystique, pp. 184-188.

narcotics to be worth the risk. Thebureau's efforts ultimately suc-ceeded, and we can point to twoconditions that made it possible.First, the bureau's early charges laidthe groundwork for a set of expecta-tions regarding what organizedcrime "ought" to look like thatwould be receptive, finally, to theproper evocations of proof. Second,the bureau found in Joseph Valachia sufficiently plausible witness tolend substance to its conspiracycharges. Viewed in a more neutrallight, Valachi appears to be sub-stantially less knowledgeable andinformative than his captors alleged;his principal strength, however, laynot in what he said but in his roleas an insider, repenting, in effect,through his "confession." For thesupporters of the Narcotics Bureau,that gesture was more importantthan the presumed facts that he putforth, since by his admission hejustified the bureau's moral entre-preneurship. As Kai Erikson put itin describing the early Puritan ap-proach to criminality and the crim-inal, "To repent is to agree that themoral standards of the community[the bureau] are right. .."30

COMMERCIALIZATION OF"MAFIA": 1969

The President's Crime Commis-sion's endorsement of a "Mafia"theory was rapidly and widelyadopted elsewhere. The periodduring which proof might have beenrequired seemed to have passed.Popular commentators and scholarsalike now talked and wrote of anAmerican Mafia as an establishedfact. Two years later, however, themoral entrepreneurs of law enforce-ment were outflanked by a new

30. Erikson, Wayward Puritans, p. 195.

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYbreed of "Mafia"pushers, the com-mercial entrepreneurs. Inspired bythe success of Mario Puzo's TheGodfather,31virtually everyone outto make money-especially those inthe publishing and entertainmentindustries-jumped on the band-wagon. "Mafia" became a house-hold word; its images remain pub-lic property, no longer under thecontrol of the law-enforcement com-munity.32

In these circumstances, it is nolonger possible to say with certaintythat there is or is not an organiza-tion called Mafia. Accepted con-clusions of labeling theory arguestrongly that after a quartercenturyof having been labeled as mafiosi,a sense of group identification andacceptance of the label would haveoccurred to a number of Italian-Americans even if there had beenno basis for it previously.33 Thecharacteristicsof illicit marketplacesargue strongly that an entrepreneurlabeled as a mafioso would havelittle incentive to deny it (exceptin certain law-enforcement cir-cumstances), given the increa.edstatus and power that expectationsassociated with the label wouldcarry.34One could argue, then, thatif there was a Mafiatoday, it wouldowe its existence to the efforts of

31. Mario Puzo, The Godfather (New York:G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969).32. See Smith, The Mafia Mystique, pp.292-305.33. "Mafia" acts, then, as the master trait,in the sense intended by Becker, Outsiders,pp. 32-39.34. Crime reporters from localities inwhich "Mafia" expectations are particularlystrong have provided their share of anec-dotal evidence for this argument. An exampleof the effects of rumored Mafia or CosaNostra connections is contained in NormanMiller's account of the enterprising TonyDeAngelis. See Norman C. Miller, The GreatSalad Oil Swindle (New York: Coward-Mc-Cann, Inc., 1965), pp. 26-30.

the Federal Narcotics Bureau andtheir legal andcommercialdisciples.If that was the case, however, theresulting organization would haveno direct historic links either to so-cial organismsof nineteenth-centurySicily or to its immigrant colonycounterparts in this country; theassertions of a foreign creation oralien ideology would be withoutfoundation.On the other hand, it is alwayspossible, though improbable,that anorganization called Mafia predatesthe Narcotics Bureau's postwar cru-sade. Whether its roots ran back toSicilian soil or were simply basedin the social circumstances of theUnited States might be the subjectfor an interesting debate for thesocial historian to pursue, but themore important questions lie else-where: do the imageryand conceptsassociated with "Mafia" direct ustoward the critical characteristics ofa specified group of persons, or dothey really serve to divert us fromanalyses thatmayhave much greatersignificance forthe Americanscene?Is A CONSPIRACY CHARGE MORETHREATENING THAN THE CON-SPIRACY? THE "MAFIA"

EXPERIENCEThe charges of "Mafia" in thefifties and sixties had not beenexclusively figments of the imagina-tion. There were individuals andevents continuously coming to theattention of law-enforcement per-

sonnel during that time who werecollected into a category called "or-ganized crime." However theymight be interpreted, the personsand events were real. Led by theNarcoticsBureau,most law-enforce-ment personnel called them evi-dence of a Mafia. The result, forcontemporarytheories of crime con-

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MAFIAtrol, was to isolate a small group ofmen of Italiandescent and to accusethem, as members of a particularorganization, of having perfectedorganized crime in America. Theywere the embodiment of the alienconspiracy: a group of men moti-vated by criminality and a sense ofloyalty foreign to an open, demo-craticsociety, united by an organiza-tion designed for crime that wasbased on violence and focused oncrime and corruption. They werecharged with corruptingand intimi-dating both business and govern-ment, as if no other group inAmerica had ever tried to influencea Congressman or bribe a police-man orbypass antitrust aws or reachagreedy handintothe WhiteHouse.This interpretationcame about bymisreading three parts of the evi-dence. First, law-enforcement ob-servers noted that their group ofsuspects held a shared sense ofidentification and were often en-gaged in cooperative action, andinterpreted thatbehavior as proof ofa secret organization. From anotherperspective, however, one might askwhether they had any choice. Thesuspects were, after all, engaged inenterprises in adjoining portions ofthe marketplaceand would have hadreasons for collaboration and groupidentification similar to those in theconditions governing activities oflawyers or insurance salesmen inother parts of the market spectrum.Besides, being brandedby the moralentrepreneurs as "outsiders," theyhad few social openings exceptamong themselves. Second, ob-servers were prone to see evidenceof violence, which clearly markedthe suspects as alien to the socialorder,but were slow to acknowledgeevidence of corruption that mightjust as easily have marked them asbeing within the mainstream of

lightly regulated business affairs.Third,observers forgotthatthey hadbegun by assembling evidence ofItalian wrongdoing; when the evi-dence was later analyzed, its ex-clusively Italian coloration becameproof that only Italians engaged inorganized crime.The result was a misinterpreta-tion of a much wider range ofactivities that are inherently Ameri-can, not alien, and fundamentallylinked to a free-market economy.These activities might be betterknown as illicit enterprises.35 Ratherthan being the outgrowth of somealien, violent, criminalorganization,they are businesses supported in-formally by networks of mutual ob-ligations-some of which can be re-inforced by bonds of kinship-thatare based as much on corruptionason violence and are focused on pro-viding patron-client type favorsandenforcement (or security) services.A misreading of the evidence bythe law-enforcementcommunityledto a group of strategies that donot effectively address the problemsof illicit enterprise. They focus onlegal action that might put someentrepreneurs, Italiansorotherwise,behind bars but would do little tochange the structures of their mar-ketplaces. More importantly, how-ever, though ostensibly aimed atdestroying organized crime, thosestrategies have themselves beenmore threatening to this countrythan the illicit behavior they weresupposed to control. They havebeen threatening on two counts.First, they have affected law en-forcement beyond the confines oforganized crime control; second,they have had a significant impact

35. For a more complete description of"illicit enterprise," see Smith, The MafiaMystique, pp. 335-345.

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACAPEMYon the corruption of justice in theUnited States.The strategies in question arethose of the 1968 Omnibus CrimeControland Safe Streets Act and the1970 Organized Crime Control Act.They were justified as weapons ina courtroomcampaign against a con-spiratorial foe; they included wire-tapping and eavesdropping, investi-gative grand juries, wider witness-immunity provisions, stronger per-jury laws, and extended sentencesin organized crime cases. They weresupported by a finding that organ-ized crime was such a threat tothis country that to control it wewould be justified in modifying theexisting balance between privacyand order. In the context of exist-ing "Mafia"-oriented assumptionsof the nature of organized crime,the argument seemed plausible. Butno sooner were new laws on thebooks than government agencies be-gan finding new conspiracies tofight. The antiwar movement of thelate sixties soon became the target,as the men who exercised govern-ment control became the ogresstiflingpolitical dissent-victims in-deed of the paranoia that thriveson, and reinforces, allegiance to aconspiracy theory.36

36. For evidence that the Justice Depart-

"Mafia"-induced strategies ofcrime control also served as asmokescreen for the continued ero-sion of justice and equity in Amer-ica. By focusing on violence asa principal characteristic of Mafiaorganizations, law enforcementagencies have evaded the continu-ing problem of corruption in thecriminal justice system. The "head-hunting" strategy only placedgreater premium on the power-brokering skills of the entrepreneur.His success has obvious repercus-sions. When the shady dealer canstay on the street-Wall Street orBroadway-by co-opting politicalleaders and law-enforcement per-sonnel, he spreads a message that"equal justice" is not a cherishedvalue but a hollow phrase. It isthis fact of life, not the illegal na-ture of certain services, that stillrepresents the greaterthreat of illicitenterprise; it is a fact of life thatan alien conspiracy theory domi-nated by traditional"Mafia" magesis unable to comprehend.

ment still endorses generalized anti-con-spiracy strategies, see Jerrold K. Footlick,Jon Lowell, and Anthony Marro,"How toGet Your Man," Newsweek, 1 December1975, pp. 113-114.

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Mafia - The Prototypical Alien Conspiracy

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