Legacy of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron

Marcello. John Diuguid, who prosecuted Marcello in New
    Orleans during much of November 1963, later read the transcript of
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    LEGACY OF SECRECY
    the only instance in which Marcello’s conversation was ever bugged
    during the 1960s. Since the FBI in New Orleans left Marcello alone, this
    single instance involved one visit to Marcello’s headquarters by a very
    scared wired informant for the Bureau of Narcotics. Diuguid described
    the scene to fellow Mafia prosecutor, Ronald Goldfarb, who wrote that
    “the overheard conversation between Marcello and other supplicants
    who came to see him and seek his favors sounded like a scene from
    The Godfather.” Diuguid confirmed that to us, describing Marcello as a
    “godfather” who was “holding court.”
    However, Marcello was more powerful than any traditional god-
    father, or even a fictional one such as Don Vito Corleone, the character
    in The Godfather . Even he had to share New York City with the heads of
    other Mafia families, and the real Mafia families of New York sometimes
    feuded as they vied for power. In contrast, Marcello reigned supreme in
    Louisiana and large portions of the surrounding states, including Texas,
    where he controlled rackets in cities like Dallas and Houston. Instead
    of feuding with Mafia bosses in adjacent territories, Marcello became
    business partners with them, as he did with Florida’s Trafficante.
    There was another very important difference between Marcello and
    almost every other Mafia chief in America: As the head of America’s
    oldest Mafia family, Marcello didn’t need permission from the informal
    National Mafia Commission to stage major hits. This made Marcello
    more powerful in 1963 than far more famous mob bosses who had held
    sway over only a particular city, such as his friend Mickey Cohen (of Los
    Angeles) and New York’s Vito Genovese, both of whom had still been
    subject to the commission. Unlike most other Mafia families in America,
    the Louisiana Mafia had a long tradition of murdering government offi-
    cials, beginning with the assassination of a New Orleans Police Chief
    in 1890. Marcello himself had attempted to have New Orleans Sheriff
    Frank Clancy assassinated in 1955, and was linked to two successful hits
    on much higher-ranking government officials.
    The Mafia assassinations of an attorney general in 1954 and a presi-
    dent in 1957 had a major impact on how Marcello, Trafficante, and
    Rosselli assassinated JFK. Marcello had learned in the 1950s that by
    working with other Mafia bosses like Trafficante and Rosselli, he could
    extend his considerable power even further. While Trafficante had pri-
    mary control of corrupt Phenix City, Alabama, in the 1950s, Marcello
    also had vice interests in the town. Across the river from sprawling
    Fort Benning, Georgia, Phenix City was so lawless that even General
    George S. Patton had been unable to tame it. However, in 1954, an anti-

Chapter Three
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    corruption attorney general for the state of Alabama, Albert Patterson,
    was elected from the town, after he pledged to run the mobsters out of
    Phenix City once and for all. The mobsters faced a huge loss of revenue,
    so the state’s new attorney general–elect was assassinated in Phenix
    City on June 18, 1954.
    However, the vice lords had been so used to the lax attitudes toward
    organized crime by the state of Alabama, J. Edgar Hoover, and the
    Eisenhower-Nixon administration that they didn’t bother to use a patsy
    to quickly take the heat and divert attention from the real culprits. This
    was a serious mistake, and suspicion quickly focused on Trafficante’s
    lieutenants and a corrupt official, one of whom fled to Marcello’s terri-
    tory to hide, while two others went to Trafficante’s Florida. The brazen
    assassination became a national scandal, causing a barrage of media
    coverage. After nationwide calls for action, President Eisenhower finally
    declared Martial Rule and sent in National Guard troops to clean up