Mobsters and Political Leaders
Wiseguys and the White House: Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made explores how certain felonious men take up crime, while others find legal ways to be dishonest. They occasionally work together, and there are eventual winners and losers. The son of a La Cosa Nostra founder, quoted near the end of this volume, acknowledges that “a small group of men, operating in secret, not only were able to survive, but also to thrive.” As he put it: “The Mafia for a long time was part of the power structure of the country itself. Any history of the United States from 1930 on that doesn’t take that into account will be a false history.”
This is not fictitious. Some of the illicit players may favor submachine guns, while many licit ones tend to shoot from the lip.
Author Eric Dezenhall, who acknowledges that he has been collecting stories about organized crime for much of his life, fittingly kicks off his tale right inside the White House. He recalls that when he was a young aide during the Reagan administration, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, popped up in the national news. That was, as he acknowledged to his co-workers, his hometown, and it was indeed a Mafia stronghold, being the headquarters of the “Cherry Hill Gambinos.”
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