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Review: Capone's legacy & the Chicago mob

By PETER ROFF, UPI National Political Analyst

WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- The book at a glance: The Outfit: The role of Chicago's underworld in the shaping of modern America by Gus Russo. Published by Bloomsbury, $35.00, 550 pages.

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Americans are, as a rule, fascinated by gangsters.

The prevailing attitude toward organized crime is not driven by the reality of how it functions in all its brutality. No, the American admiration for gangsterism comes from the way in which the gangster culture is portrayed on television, in the movies and through the tabloid glitz of urban America.

The problem with any purportedly authoritative study of any part of the underworld is that, because they are by nature secretive and their actions are in many cases illegal, it is hard to draw a true picture of their history.

In The Outfit: The role of Chicago's underworld in the shaping of modern America (Bloomsbury, $35.00, 550 pages) author Gus Russo does a yeoman's job of pulling together a chronology of organized crime activity in the city of big shoulders from its earliest days to the end of the era of the big time mobsters in the 1970s.

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The gangster, as seen in movies like The Godfather, is very much the 20th century version of the cowboy outlaw, moving through life according to a personal code of right and wrong. When compared to the general moral ambiguity most people experience in life, the gangster story represents an almost refreshing kind of clarity.

Gone are the days of the Hayes office Hollywood production code that dictated that the gangster must be punished in the final reel, through jail or, more frequently, death. "Is this the end of Rico?" a bullet-ridden Edward G. Robinson asks at the end of Little Caesar, a cinema pastiche of the life and works of Al Capone.

In today's version, Rico and the gangsters like him are the heroes -- or at least much more sympathetic characters than James Cagney's Cody Jarrett character from White Heat or Paul Muni's Scarface.

The picture of the mob Russo paints could, in many ways, be the story of the workings of any American Fortune 500 company. In fact, as he writes in the book, it was this businesslike approach that guaranteed its eventual success.

The Chicago ruled by Al Capone was a bloody world of violence and corruption -- the high watermark being the fabled St. Valentine's Day massacre. In a single instance, the Capone mob cut down most of the gang affiliated with Chicago-rival George "Bugs" Moran in a hail of machine gun fire.

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The massacre was the capstone of community outrage. Business leaders working diligently to bring the World's Fair to Chicago beseeched the federal government to help them resolve the problem.

The gangsters that ran Chicago were not deaf to these protests. They too, as Russo explains, came to the realization that the violence was out of control and, frankly, costing them dearly.

The solution to the problems it posed, provided by Chicago's Johnny Torrio and New York's Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was to create a commission to run organized crime across the United States.

New York, which continued to be divided up among the so-called "five families," could not bring an end to the violence. Chicago, where the gang activities were generally consolidated already under Capone's iron rule, had a much easier time of it.

They were, as Russo recounts, able to transform their gang into a publicity-shy, low key -- for a mob anyway -- group that functioned much more along the lines of a Wall Street law firm than anything you might see on an episode of The Untouchables.

In addition to that which can be established from the available record of events, Russo explains in some detail facts that most modern histories tend to ignore or de-emphasize but which are, frankly, worthy of further consideration.

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Among them:

-- The way that the mob, lead by operatives from Chicago, used their toe-hold in organized labor to establish themselves in Hollywood and how they used their connections to extract millions of dollars from the studio heads;

-- How corrupt politicians allied with Tom Pendergast's Democrat political machine ran the city of Kansas City, Mo., often in consort with figures from organized crime. It was Pendergast's political machine that brought Harry S Truman to political prominence -- with at least some help from the mob, according to Russo. In any case, the relationships proved beneficial during Truman's administration as mob-aligned figures worked inside Tom Clark's Justice Department and in other agencies in somewhat successful efforts to spring some of their cohorts from prison;

-- The real role played by organized crime in the successful political efforts of President John F. Kennedy and how Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, later committed what many in the mob felt was a double-cross;

-- The suspect relationship between the mob, their friends and the Nixon Administration and these relationships played in getting Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa released from prison.

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Much of the activities that Russo says occurred in these matters were illegal, making them hard to verify. Nevertheless, these sections alone make for a compelling and exciting read.

On the whole, Russo's book -- which is heavily footnoted and gives every appearance of being the product of extensive research -- has to be taken with at least a bit of skepticism, not because he is a poor writer or a poor researcher -- he is not -- but because the activities of the Chicago mob specifically and organized crime generally are not easily verified in totality by the public record. Even the so-called insider tales from the likes of Henry Hill, and Jimmy "The Weasel" Frattiano -- people who said they saw firsthand -- have to be taken with the same kind of skepticism because the tellers of these tales were self-admitted liars, cheats and killers.

Russo puts the story of organized crime in Chicago together in such a way that all the pieces seem to fit but also in way that further romances the whole idea of the mob. It is the perfect candidate for a television mini-series and will surely be, in paperback if not hardcover, a best seller.

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