Atlantic City
has been known as a convention town for a long time, but the most significant
convention the city has ever hosted didn’t meet at Convention Hall or even
conventionally, and certainly didn’t abide by Roberts Rules of Order.
The May, 1929 meeting of organized crime bosses in Atlantic
City was probably the most significant ever held, not only because of it’s
effect on the future development of the town, but because of the national
impact the decisions made there had on society, not only then, but over time,
up to and including today.
At the time Atlantic City
was considered “wide open,” a place where gangsters could go to make private,
if sometimes illegal investments and for sit-down mob meetings, as were a few
other cities – Miami, Las
Vegas and Old Havana. Atlantic
City was run however, by one man – Enoch “Nuckey”
Johnson , the local political boss who ran the town as his private domain. Like
“Commodore” Lou Kinley had before him. Nuckey got a percentage of practically
every business in Atlantic City,
especially illegal businesses, and as it was during Prohibition, the most
lucrative business at the time was the importation of smuggled liquor.
Lonnie Zwillman of North Jersey controlled
most of the bootleg market once the cases of booze from the Caribbean
and Canada were
transferred at sea from mother ship transports to small Chirs Craft speedboats.
Once brought ashore the booze was put on waiting trucks to be transported the
goods throughout the rest of the country. It was later estimated, by the
Kefauver Committee that Zwillman’s outfit had a 65% market share of all illegal
booze in North America.
But there were also illegal casinos in Atlantic
City at the time, all operating openly and open to the
public. And Big Time confidence men like Charlie Gondorff (of The Sting fame)
were allowed to run Big Store Con games, as long as long as they only hit on
transients and didn’t take any local citizens for Marks.
Booze, casino gambling, the boardwalk and beach, it didn’t
even seem like there was a Depression going on. Things appeared quite normal on
May 12th, 1929 when
newlyweds Meyer and Anna Citron Lansky checked into one of the city’s finer
boardwalk hotels. They were assigned the Honeymoon Penthouse with it’s
panoramic view of the ocean and boardwalk.
Which hotel they checked into is not recorded for history,
but you can be sure it was one owned by Jewish businessmen, as all the first
class hotels at the time were owned by Jews or Quakers, and each served a
different clientele. That’s a fact that came into play the very next day when
Alphonese “Scarface” Capone stepped off a train and took a cab to one of the
city’s classier hotels. Although he entered town unnoticed, and he signed into
the hotel under an assumed name, his cover would soon be blown, the city of Atlantic
City would be shaken upside down and the nation would
rattle with the aftereffects for decades.
Snickering to his lieutenants as he signed the fictitious
name to the register, Capone got a smile from Frank Nitti, Murry Humphries,
Jake Guzik and Frank Rioi, but the joke quickly turned sour when the somewhat
naive and strictly formal desk clerk looked at the name and politely informed
Capone that, “I’m sorry sir, but this hotel does not serve those of your
persuasion. My I suggest you try the hotel just down the street.”
This was Atlantic City, New
Jersey, probably the only place in America
where “Scarface” Al Capone could mingle with the masses and go unrecognized. He
did however, have a friend in his old pal Nuckey Johnson. Capone had been
Johnson’s gracious host two years earlier when Nuckey went to Chicago
and was supplied with ringside seats to the Jack Dempsy-Gene Tunney heavyweight
fight – the famous battle of the “long count’ bout.
Now Capone was in Atlantic City
to meet with Meyer Lansky and other mob bosses. They came to Atlantic
City because Nuckey Johnson controlled the town and
they were assured they wouldn’t be subjected to the police hassles the Sicilian
Mafia guys were subjected to in Cleveland
a few weeks earlier.
Although Nuckey Johnson couldn’t protect Capone from some
ethnic embarrassment, he did have such tight control over all facets of the
city’s operations that, unless they robbed a bank or made a scene, known
gangsters from out of town didn’t have to worry about being picked up for
questioning by the police. Capone made a scene.
Told by a hotel clerk that he couldn’t check in because he
signed his name under a wrong ethnic persuasion, Capone’s famous temper flared,
and after a burst of obscenities and the trashing of some lobby furniture,
Nuckey Johnson quickly learned that Al Capone was in town. Moving quickly to
meet him, Capone and his entourage were heading south on Pacific Avenue when
they were intercepted by Johnson’s convoy of dull, black limos heading the
other way. They met in the middle of the street, blocked traffic for a few
minutes as Capone emerged from his cab, cigar in hand, and gave Nuckey an
obscenity laced public verbal lashing, letting off steam from the hotel desk
incident.
Once appeased by Johnson, always the gracious host, they
hugged and patted each other on the back and adjourned to the back of Nuckey’s
limo. After seeing that Capone and his people had proper accommodations at the
right hotel, Johnson and Capone were later seen taking in the tourists sights
together and strolling down the world famous boardwalk.
Johnson and Capone then had dinner in the Italian “Ducktown”
neighborhood, not far from the recently completed Convention Hall – the new
auditorium which was then the largest of its kind in the world, with the
biggest stage and the largest pipe organ as well. While it established Atlantic
City as a major convention town on the East Coast,
it’s facilities were not to be used by the guys who started checking in behind
Lansky and Capone.
From Cleveland
came Al “the Owl” Polizzi, one of the Sicilians hassled by cops at the earlier
regional sit-down a few weeks earlier. Also from Cleveland
was Moe Dalitz of the Mayfield Road Gang and his bootleg companions, Morris
Kleinman, Sam Tucker and Louis Rothkopft. Other gangsters who have been
identified as having attended the Atlantic City meeting include Charles “King”
Solomon from Boston, Joe Bernstein from Detroit, and Joe Lanza from Kansas
City, all of whom came with their henchmen in tow.
From North Jersey there was Abner
“Longie” Zwillman, who controlled most of the New Jersey
bootleg shipments. Philadelphia was
well represented by Harry “Nig Rosen” Stromberg, Max “Boo Boo” Huff, Sam Lezar
and Charles Schwarts. By far, the biggest delegation came down from New
York, and consisted of Frank Costello, Author “Dutch
Schultz” Flegenheimer, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Joe Adonis, Salvadore “Lucky”
Luciano and Meyer Lansky.
Anne Citron Lansky got angry the next morning when she read
in the morning newspaper that Al Capone was in town, and knew that it had to
more than just a coincidence. Her new husband couldn’t even go on his honeymoon
without having business to take care of.
Born Maier Suchowljansky in Grodno,
Poland in 1902, young
Meyer came to the United States
in 1911 with his mother, sister and younger, but bigger brother Jake. Like so
many other arrivals, his birthdate was noted by immigration officials as July
4th, and he took quickly to the American dream.
Later telling Israeli journalists Uri Dan that he took to
gambling early, relating an incident that occurred when he was a young boy
walking down Delancy Street in Manhatten on an errand for his mother. Coming
across a sidewalk craps game he quickly lost his mother’s nickel, an event that
had a profound affect on his life. “What troubled me more than anything else,”
Lansky said, “was that I had been a loser, and that night….I swore to myself
that one day I would be a winner.”
Going back to the sidewalk craps game young Lansky watched
and studied the gamblers intently, and learned when to place his bet with a
sure winner. “Then I began to notice,” he said, “that the men who actually ran
the dice games were only pawns…of other well dressed and prosperous men,” who
he also noticed seemed to be all Italians who in turn were “servant” who were
“collecting the money for somebody bigger. So it must be a very big business,
gambling with nickels and dimes on the sidewalks of the Lower East
Side.”
After graduating from Public School #34 in 1917, Lansky
worked as an auto mechanic, and first came to the attention of the police when
he was arrested for fighting with Charles Luciana and Benjamen Siegel. That was
the first time he was known to have officially used the name Lansky, and after
the judge listened to their story, he decided that the boys had “bugs in their
heads,” which temporarily gave Lansky the nickname “Meyer the Bug,” but Siegel
could never shake the name “Bugsy.”
The three boys became fast friends and developed business
associations, while Luciana rose in the ranks of the Italian Mafia allied under
Joe “the Boss” Masseria. They were perennially at war with another New
York gang run by Salvatore Maranzano, whose henchmen
picked up Luciano and took him for a ride to Statin
Island where they shot him a number
of times and left for dead. Luciano miraculously survived, earning him the
nickname “Lucky” Luciano.
Lansky, Siegel and Luciano formed a life-long alliance with
each other and established themselves on the Lower East Side
as a competent and efficient guns-for-hire entrepreneurs that became known as
“The Bugs and Meyer Mob,” which also included Joseph “Doc” Stacher, Joe Adonis,
Abner “Longie” Zwillmen and Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer. They either
escorted Zwillmen’s bootleg liquor or they hijacked any competitors who tried
to muscle in on their rackets in their territory.
Philadelphia
gangster “Waxy” Gordon was especially upset at the Bug and Meyer Mob for
hijacking some of his truck shipments and, as with the Capone-Moran feud in Chicago,
there was tension between gangs. Since Capone actually controlled only certain
sections of Chicago, other Chicago
gangsters also came in to the Atlantic City
meeting, including Joe “Polock” Saltis and Frank “Machine Gun” McEarlane,
complete with violin cases under their arms.
Other than Capone, these were mostly new names and faces in
the underworld of 1929, but before long they would make their mark and become
household names. The old-guard “Mustache Petes” who ran the big city rackets
for the previous few decades, referred to these new, young gangsters as “The
Young Turks,” but they in turn, were considered too old fashioned,
narrow-minded and set in their ways to mingle with the gangsters of other
nationalities and neighborhoods. The “Petes” were not even invited to this
meeting.
To some, Luciano was thought to represent the New
York capo de capi Guseppi “Joe the Boss” Masseria,
but in retrospect, Luciano had Masseria murdered and replaced him after the
protracted war that was wagged between Masseria and the other New
York rackets boss Salvadore Maranzano. Masseria and
Maranzano were from the Old Order and were on the way out, and The Young Turks
knew it.
One member of the old school who was invited and did attend
the Atlantic City conclave was John
Torrio, who was born in Naples and
was one of the first immigrants to leave the notorious “Five Points” section of
Brooklyn to go to Chicago,
where he ran his uncle’s whorehouse. After killing his uncle and setting up his
own numbers racket, Torrio brought in Al Capone from the old neighborhood to be
his enforcer.
Torrio, who didn’t drink or smoke, was Capone’s mentor and
one of the oldest and wisest of the delegates at the Atlantic
City convention. He would play a significant role by
making key policy decisions concerning the promotion of other vices, most
notably gambling.
While there would be other, more notorious meetings of
mobsters – Havana, 1946, the 1957 Apalachin, New York meeting that was broken
up by local police, a New York restaurant sit down that was also busted by the
cops, the 1929 meeting in Atlantic City was most significant because it
established a new policy of inter-city-gang cooperation on a nationwide basis.
It was not a question of who was at Atlantic
City, but who was not there. Besides the Mustache
Petes from the Old Order of things, Bugs Moran was the most notable big name
absentee. He was left back in Chicago
to lick his wounds and regroup his forces after the disastrous St. Valentine’s
Day Massacre.
As the most blatant gangland mass murder in history, the
massacre called attention to the mobsters and put pressure on them from the
public, the press, politicians and the police. It became the most influential
factor in persuading the factional mob leaders of the necessity for a meeting
to hash things out. Rather than let the situation get completely out of hand
and reach a level of violence that would force the authorities to take action,
the gangsters decided to sit down at the same table for the first time, discuss
their mutual problems and arrange for an agreeable solution like normal
businessmen.
Although most of the published sources place the main
gathering of gangsters at the President Hotel on the Boardwalk, the large
number of delegates made it necessary for them to meet in smaller caucus to
discuss the topics on the agenda. Pushed along the boardwalk in wicker-rolling
chairs, they didn’t talk in front of the push cart operators, but at the end of
the boardwalk, like other tourists in from the big city, they took off their
shoes and socks, rolled up the cuffs of their pants and waded in the shallow
surf like any normal day-tripper. With their conversations muffled by the
sounds of the surf breaking, the mobsters plotted strategy and began the long
term planning that would control organized crime activities for the next fifty
years.
Since minutes of the meetings were not transcribed for
posterity, legend has it that the order of business was basically two fold. For
one, they had to agree on an amiable solution to the conflicts that erupted
into mob warfare, primarily geographic turf battles. Secondly, since by then it
was obvious that Prohibition would not last forever, they had to get involved
in legitimate businesses as well as devise an alternative source of illegal
income once Prohibition ended.
As for mob warfare, since such violence hurt everyone’s
business, they decided to end such conflicts by adhering strictly to the
territorial spheres of influence, with each gang controlling particular rackets
in each area. They also agreed to work together in setting prices, sharing
warehouse space and coordinating the wholesale distribution of liquor.
The Atlantic City
accords were a radical departure from pervious mob practices because they also
agreed to form an executive committee to oversee and arbitrate all disputes,
denote the degree of punishment to all violators and to set policy for the
governing of all future illegal operations.
The creation of the Board of Directors of the National
Syndicate of Organized Crime was as big as the founding of the United Nations.
Although it’s very existence would be kept hidden from the public for decades,
and spy novelist Ian Fleming would ridicule them with his fictional Special
Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion – SPECTRE,
it would become generally known as “The Commission.”
As for the second item on the agenda, they decided to
explore gambling as a replacement for the lucrative illegal liquor profits
after prohibition. With the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933, gambling became
the main preoccupation of the local mobs until 1946, when, after the Havana
meeting, the French Connection became the primary source of the drugs and
narcotics that would become the Syndicate’s primary source of revenue other
than gambling.
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics concluded, from information
provided from undercover informants, that the Atlantic
City convention established the basis for the
Syndicate that carved the nation into specific territories, developed a system
of kangaroo courts that provided the gangsters with their own quasi-judicial
system, and protected the hierarchy of the local mafia families.
Arrangements were also made to invest in a multi-million
dollar slush fund to bribe law enforcement officials, ensure the election of
certain politicians, hire the best attorneys and pay for the educational
development of promising young men who could serve their interests in the
future.
The hallmark of the meeting in Atlantic City was the
centralizing of particular powers with an executive committee, like the board
of directors of a blue chip industry, an exceptional and extraordinary concept
that was not immediately acceptable to many of the ethnic oriented gangsters
like Massaria and Marrassano, who were dinosaurs that had to go the way of the
buffalo.
The dissentions of the still primarily ethnically Italian
gangsters was overcome in a power-play move when Lansky nominated the Mafia’s
own Johnny Torrio as Chairman of the Board, a motion that quickly won the
endorsement of most of the mobsters present. Torrio was also the only one who
could take care of Capone, whose violent ways were causing problems for all of
them.
With the Commission in charge, Torrio at the helm and
business completed, the final item on the agenda was Capone, and what to do
with him. While the Chicago rackets
were combined, and Capone was the nominal boss, he had to take a vacation, or
he was going to be thrown to the wolves. He was given the option of dieing
right then, or taking a sabbatical from the business for a while. The
newspapers had all reported that Capone was in town and one of the William
Randolph Hurst newspapers even ran a faked composite photograph of Capone,
Knucky Johnson and Meyer Lansky walking down the boardwalk, all of which had
the pubic clamoring for Capone to be busted for something.
Although they put an APB – All Points Bulletin out for the
man who was seen all over town – throwing chairs in a hotel lobby, screaming
obscenities on Pacific Avenue, having dinner in Ducktown, riding in a
wicker-walker and strolling down the boardwalk with Johnson, suddenly, Capone
couldn’t be found anywhere.
According to local legend, when the heat was turned on,
Capone slipped out of Atlantic City
and retreated to a local private country club, either the Atlantic City Country
Club in Northfield or Seaview in
Absecon, where he played bad golf and good cards until the heat was off a few
days later.
On May 16, 1929,
a week after Lansky’s wedding, Capone showed up at the train station but missed
the train by minutes. With a police motorcycle escort to the edge of town,
Capone’s entourage drove to Philadelphia,
where he again just missed a train to Chicago.
Going to a movie on Market Street
with his bodyguard Frank Rio, Capone emerged from the theater to be confronted
by Philadelphia Police Detective James “Shooey” Malone.
Malone flashed his badge, they talked quietly for a moment
and Capone calmly volunteered his .38 caliber revolver and was promptly
arrested by Malone. Rio momentarily balked, but Capone
smiled and urged him to surrender his weapon too.
Philadelphia’s Director of Public Safety Major Lemel B.
Schoefield accepted praise for the arrest of the nation’s number one crime czar,
though it later became apparent that Det. Malone had met Capone the year before
at Hialeah racetrack in Florida, and Capone had arranged for his own arrest.
Besides taking the heat off the rest of the Syndicate, in the secure hands of
the law he also acquired sanctuary from a vengeful Bugs Moran.
In the custody of the Philadelphia
authorities, Capone was forthcoming about the Atlantic City Sit Down,
emphasizing the decision to end mob warfare. “I told them,” Capone said,
reciting a line from one of Lansky’s lectures, “there is enough business to
make us all rich, and it’s time to stop the killing and look on our own
business as other men look on theirs.”
When asked about the purpose of the meeting, Capone said,
“It is with the idea of making peace among the gangsters that I spent the week
in Atlantic City and got the word
of each leader that there will be no more shooting.”
But Capone also told them he, “…had to hide from the rest of
the racketeers,” who weren’t at the meeting. They had a vendetta against him.
It seems that there comes a point in every gangster’s career when, despite all
the power and money they have accumulated, life is suddenly vulnerable to one
professional contract killer. John Torrio thought that prison was the safest
place, Sam Giancana, who would later take over the Chicago
mob, fled to Mexico
and South America, Joe Bonnano had himself kidnapped.
Capone chose jail.
Philadelphia Criminal Court Judge John E. Wash sentenced
Capone harshly for such a petty crime of being a suspicious person and carrying
a concealed deadly weapon, the maximum of one year at Holmesburg Penitentiary.
After a short stint there however, Capone was transferred to the more relaxed
confines of Eastern Pen, where he served out the duration of his sentence under
the lenient warden Herbert B. Smith, who furnished Capone’s cell with lamps, a
library, radio console and lounge chair and gave him access to his private
office telephone.
With Capone in jail, the Syndicate began the process of
getting rid of the old Mustache Petes and preparing to engage in Big Time
gambling activities on a very large scale.
In Hoboken, New
Jersey, Lansky’s new father-in-law permitted him to
use his Molaska Inc. as a front for a number of his illegal businesses, one of
which was the largest distillery in the state. Molaska took its name from
molasses chips, a necessary ingredient for the making of rum, which became more
profitable than smuggling it.
Molaska rum business took Lansky to Cuba,
where he met with Sgt. Fugencio Batista, the strong-arm coup leader who twice
took over the reins of Cuba.
The first time he was in power Lansky made a deal with Batista to allow him to
open a legal casino in Cuba,
much like the illegal casinos he operated in Florida,
New York and New
Jersey. In order for the Syndicate to control casinos
in Havana, it was arranged for
casinos to operate in hotels with 500 rooms or more, and since the Syndicate
controlled Hotel National was the only hotel in Havana
with 500 rooms, the Lansky mob owned the only casino in Cuba.
The second Havana
hotel to qualify for a casino was owned by Santo Traficante, who hired Atlantic
City native John Martino to run his electronics and
security operations.
Two weeks before Castro came to power Lansky and the
Syndicate sold the National Hotel-Casino to Mike McLaney and Carroll
Rosenbloom, both of whom would loose their shirts in the deal. While Mike
McLaney’s brother William owned the land near New Orleans
where anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained – and reportedly the Magazine
Street house where Lee Harvey Oswald lived, Lyndon
Baines Johnson would be Rossenbloom’s houseguest in Atlantic
City during the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
In 1976 New Jersey law allowed for legal casinos in Atlantic
City hotels that had 500 rooms or more, – the Havana model, with only one hotel
in the entire city that qualified – Resorts International, a Lansky-Syndicate
controlled company. The second and third Atlantic City
casinos – Bally and Caesars, were also Syndicate controlled companies,
following the policies, delineating the strategies and continuing the
traditions laid out at the 1929 Convention.
The federal government did not officially recognize the
existence of the syndicate until May 1, 1951 when Estes Kefauver, Chairman of
the Senate Crim Investigating Committee, visited Atlantic City, New Orleans,
Chicago and New York before determining and reporting that, “a nationwide crime
syndicate does exist in the United States,…and behind the local mobs which make
up the national crime syndicate is a shadowy, international criminal
organization known as the Mafia.”
Even after that, the FBI refused to place a priority on the
Mafia or organized crime until years later, when local police broke up a major
mob meeting in upstate New York.
The records of Kefauver’s investigation were then promptly
and routinely locked away for 50 years as “Congressional Records,” which are
exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests.
In 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board refused to
release the records of the Kefauver Committee investigation by declaring them
“assassination records” because they claimed they were not related to or
considered relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy, even though the
second chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)
believes that the President may have been the victim of a mob hit.
The Kefauver Committee records were scheduled for release in
2001, but are being systematically released after being reviewed by request.
More recently the HBO TV production of “Boardwalk Empire” has called attention
to Nucky Johnson and his control of the rackets in Atlantic
City and how he helped fuel the nation during
prohibition.
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