The Quiet Don by Matt Birkbeck

Author:Matt Birkbeck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

The disastrous outcome of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the loss of Cuba were monumental blows to the gangsters who had profited for years from the island, and their anger toward the Kennedy administration was of such intensity that the only way to make them whole would be the unthinkable.

The conversations began immediately after the failed invasion and were further fueled when Bufalino and others finally returned home. They had, as a group, been disrespected to such a degree that under normal circumstances, the offending party would have been dispatched immediately and with extreme prejudice.

They may have been at their cores violent hoods, but many, including Bufalino and Meyer Lansky, had always been known as men of their word. It was their bond, and no one ever doubted them when they said or promised something. How to deal with the president of the United States and his troublesome brother, who was now attorney general, was a matter that would take some consideration.

As they pondered and spoke secretly of their options, the U.S. Department of Justice began placing more resources and men into its ongoing Top Hoodlum Program. Only now everyone knew they weren’t just hoodlums, but members of a secretive, violent national organization that had a firm grip on several major U.S. industries, from the shipping docks on the East and West Coasts to the garment industry and the Teamsters union, which controlled interstate trucking.

Beginning in 1961, the new efforts by the FBI, under the orders of its new attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, would be to crush organized crime wherever and whenever it could. To meet that end, Kennedy ordered the FBI to begin daily surveillance of every mob boss in the nation, and that included Russell Bufalino.

Agents began a virtual twenty-four-hour watch on Bufalino, with reports filed to the Philadelphia bureau every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The regular surveillance began in March 1961, and one of the first texts from the Philadelphia bureau to J. Edgar Hoover provided a bombshell piece of information: Russell Bufalino was sending arms to Cuba.

The information came from an informant who knew Paul Winter, an anti-Communist who in 1938 had stolen records from the Wilkes-Barre office of the Communist Party. Winter subsequently copied the documents and distributed them to local organizations and thus identified the Communist Party members to the public. The FBI was amused by Winter, chiefly for his interest in outing Communists, and remained in touch with him.

According to the FBI text, the informant reported that he was with Winter in February 1961, and Winter revealed that Bufalino was working for a secret organization that was manufacturing and shipping arms to Cuba to use against Fidel Castro. Unbeknownst to the FBI, the “secret” organization was the CIA. But the FBI decided against pursuing the matter, saying it was out of their jurisdiction and a matter for the Department of Customs.

The bureau did take an interest in other matters, particularly Bufalino’s hangouts and acquaintances. Among his favorite haunts were Club 82,

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