Bringing Down the Mob: The War
Against the American Mafia by
Thomas Reppetto
How The Mighty Are Fallen
“American Mafia . . . was lucid, concise, and devoid of sensationalism . . .
This equally well-written sequel [is] cogent [and] coherent.”—The New
York Times Book Review In his critically acclaimed American Mafia,
Thomas Reppetto revealed the details of organized crime’s ascendancy in
America. His fascinating sequel follows the mob after its peak during
Prohibition and the mayhem that followed. Drawing on a lifetime of field
experience, he tells the stories of the Mafia’s twentieth-century bosses,
showing how men such as Sam Giancana, “Crazy Joe” Gallo, and John
Gotti became household names. By 1960 crusaders such as Robert
Morgenthau, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, Robert Kennedy, and scores
of ordinary cops and U.S. marshals began to gain the upper hand in what
became a war against organized crime.

In vivid, fast-paced prose, Bringing Down the Mob reads like a dramatic
fifty-year military campaign. Reppetto concludes his lively history with
evidence for a provocative theory that, given the right formula of global
connections and shrewd business decisions, a new generation of
multinational criminals appears poised to take up the Mafia mantle.
Personal Review: Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the
American Mafia by Thomas Reppetto
In his _New Yorker_ essay "A Look at Organized Crime" from thirty years
ago, Woody Allen had fun with gangster nicknames, including Thomas
(The Butcher) Covello, Ciro (The Tailor) Santucci, Albert (The Logical
Positivist) Corillo, Dominick (The Herpetologist) Mione, or Little Petey (Big
Petey) Ross. I could not help thinking back on this silliness when reading
_Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia_ (Henry
Holt) by Thomas Reppetto. There is nothing funny about Reppetto's
chronicle of the decline and fall of organized crime (which is a sequel to his
2004 _American Mafia_ which described the mob's ascension), but here
are Salvatore (Tom Mix) Santoro, Christopher (Christy Ticks) Furnari,
Vincenzo (Chin) Gigante who was also nicknamed Aunt Julia, Carmine
(The Snake) Persico, Antony (Tony Ducks) Corallo, or Murray (The Camel)
Humphreys. Gang members may have acquired their names in childhood,
or they might have been given in respect or derogation within the gang
itself. The press had a field day with the names, sometimes providing its
own, denominating Chin Gigante as "The Odd Father", as he tried to fake
mental illness to avoid prosecution. Sure, the names are colorful, and
many of these characters had more going for them than just being
sociopaths or murderers. But this is a gritty story, even if it has the theme
of the general success of law enforcement. It has plenty of throw-away
lines that encapsulate horror, like "This time the government's chief
witness had his head blown off in front of his wife." It is a coherent,
wonderfully organized tour of an underworld most of us know just from the
movies.
Anyone familiar with those movies, like _The Godfather_, _Goodfellas_, or
_Casino_ is going to find much familiar here, and much at odds with the
movie scripts. Reppetto says that anyone with his sort of knowledge of
Mafia lore is asked if the movies reflect the reality of mob life. "The answer
is no - and yes." Movies have to concentrate on action, so that murders
and gun battles are far more concentrated on the screen, but are
extraordinary events in real life. Investigators often learned to their
surprise, "Mob life was dull. Most of the soldiers and their associates sat
around eating, drinking, and playing cards, occasionally making the rounds
of their various hangouts." The movies did convince the public that the
Mafia existed; that the existence of the Mafia was ever an issue is
surprising, but Reppetto shows that this was a legacy of J. Edgar Hoover,
whose had a famous reluctance to admit the existence of a national crime
syndicate. Once the FBI was finally in action, there was a real war with the
Mafia, and it was generally a law enforcement victory, but this was also
due to outdated Mafia culture. For instance, the mob should have easily

controlled Las Vegas, but it sent out bosses who were badly chosen to be
managers. The violence such bosses brought with them to Las Vegas was
out of place where discretion and decorum were needed for advancement.
Eventually the corporations took over, and the prospects for a mob
paradise faded.
There have been eventual changes in the culture of the mob, mostly in
response to societal changes. Respect for elders was not automatically
rendered by young people as the twentieth century went on. The old-world
traditions of ring-kissing and ceremonial bowing were regarded as silly by
the sons of Mafia chieftains. Belonging to a secret men's organization
became less fashionable, as it had for, say, the Masons. Young
Americans started the century with sticking to one company, even one job,
for a working lifetime, but it became the pattern to jump from one job to
another if the second job had advantages. For the Mafia, this meant that
the soldiers who used to have lifetime loyalties would skip to another job or
another family if the money was better. The young guys also tended to
use drugs, and some wound up as their own best customers. These
factors meant that there was a constant turnover in leadership, and some
put into leadership roles were simply not ready for them. It also meant that
mob families were operating as simple street gangs rather than devoted
criminal syndicates with some semblance of a code of honor. Make a list
of any gangsters whose names you know, and look at how few of these
names are operating now; the Mafia is getting by as an organization with a
great past. Not all the decline is sociological; Reppetto devotes a chapter
to the RICO statute, passed in 1970 but not put into action for a decade,
which broadened the way the FBI could look at the patterns of organized
crime. Reppetto knows that the Mafia is not completely defeated, and he
has a scary vision of what international organized crime might become.
His book, however, full of details and anecdotes, documents an impressive
decline and fall.
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