Meyer Lansky Did Unthinkable: He Kept a Diary
Meyer Lansky and his wife, Teddy; photo taken in Havana, Cuba. Meyer Lansky kept a written record of some events -- he kept a diary, as Rick Porrello's AmericanMafia.com reported. Lanksy, who was there at the dawn of organized crime in America and was known for his razor-sharp business and street acumen, was the one most likely to have kept such a document. Throughout his life, he spoke of the importance of a good education, not something that Lanky friends and partners such as Lucky Luciano or Bugsy Siegel are known to have proclaimed. Nicknamed the "Mob's Accountant" by the press, Lansky was instrumental in the development of the mob's gambling rackets in Las Vegas and Cuba, when the island off Florida's coast seemed to be a potential new frontier for the Mafia, a place where it thought it could operate with impunity under the auspices of a friendly government. The goal was to operate where it had the freedom to develop its business r...