Cosa Nostra News

When last identified by the Fed's, Liborio (Barney) Bellomo's street boss, Michael Ragusa , was notched as a soldier in the Genovese family's East Harlem/Bronx crew. Pasquale Falcetti Some of the Genovese family's most storied and powerful wiseguys also are/were from the East Harlem/Bronx crew, and many of them were nabbed around the same time in 2001-2002 in a complex, multifaceted case involving rackets and frauds and schemings revolving around the International Longshoremen’s Association, which controlled the docks on the East Coast. The case itself was only a part of law enforcement's ongoing (for decades) efforts to wrest control of the New York-area ports the hell away from the gangsters. Genovese Turncoats The case saw the emergence of landmark testimony from hardcore wiseguy George Barone, who flipped. Barone was an "aging, ailing, battle-weary Hell's Kitchen gangster" who "was a powerful waterfront racketeer in the days when ...

Following is an episode of a1950s radio news program called "The Nation's Nightmare," which spotlights the Mafia's then-growing infiltration of the New York and New Jersey waterfronts. Narrated by veteran correspondent Bill Downs, one of the so-called (Edward R.) Morrow's Boys , he sounds the alarm about "the greatest concentration of Mafia power in the world." And he does it using that  tinny, clipped 1950s tone called Transatlantic speech , a specific speaking style taught to broadcasters in the mass media's early days in an attempt to offset America's thousands of rich regional dialects. Albert Anastasia, "Socks" Lanza, and just about every mobster of notoriety in the 1950s is mentioned in the broadcast, which also describes everything from the dockworker "shakeup" in the mornings to how various mobsters came to dominate certain sections of the ports, as well as related unions. This particular episod...